What was the theological and philosophical significance they were supposed to communicate?
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/411971-i-cordially-dislike-...
... the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it can be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it
https://writingishardwork.com/2013/06/19/tolkien-on-allegory...
...
Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
http://askmiddlearth.tumblr.com/post/53933390053/tolkien-and...
But you will see very strong parallels between Tolkien and Christian mythology and pre-Christian myths. Like in Silmarillion you have blatant parallels to God and Satan. Tolkien likely did not consider this allegory. Like the sacrifice of Aslan in Lewis is not intended as an allegory for the death of Jesus but rather as a retelling of the same (universally true) myth - but come on, it is obviously an allegory for Jesus.
But I really dislike how Lewis uses allegory in his Narnian series. The Space Trilogy is much better in that respect and I highly recommend it.
Tolkien and Lewis had some bizarro theories about universals myths which meant that to them, blatant Christian allegory was not actually allegory but just a retelling of eternal truths in the form of myths. But as a reader, we don't have to accept those theories. We can enjoy their stories as stories.
I think a lot of fantasy readers dislike allegory because it kind of turns reading into work and takes the escapism out of it, so it is nice when Tolkien in person validates this aversion. But be careful - you can enjoy Tolkien without caring about the underlying worldview, but that emphatically does not mean it is not there.
(Of course to me Christian mythology is just as much fantasy as Middle Earth, but it certainly was not like that for Tolkien)
Note I’m not criticizing Tolkien for this, I believe his power very much stem from the deliberate fusing of pre-Christian myths with a Christian worldview which leads it to a more straightforward engaging “good vs evil” narrative. I just find it hilarious when Tolkien fans uncritically buy the “there are no allegories” quip.
I guess my question is this. In some ways storytellers are trapped in that if you want to do good vs evil - you're going to reuse themes. Whether it's a single "abrahamic" God/Devil, or pantheons and aspects, you're going to step on some toes and parallels can be drawn. If you try and avoid that you're warping the story you want to tell for the fear of readers assuming intent etc and that strikes me as far worse than accepting that mythology is always going to have got there first.
I don't know, I've never really thought about this before or seen the allegory arguments he made.
So back to Tolkin. He was a linguist, so I guess he preferred to say things directly. If there are nebulous, abstract allegories to be seen, then because the concepts were intentionally not defined.
Rebirth is not an allegory for rebirth. What would the allegory be. Being chosen? Well, yeah, by the author.
Yes, there are some similarities but the entire story is markedly different. Jesus didn't die to come back as a more powerful Jesus 2.0 in order to defeat his former boss.
Gandalf's death had nothing to do with absolving the sins or saving the souls of humans. That's a fundamental aspect of Jesus' death and ressurection.
There are many more fundamental differences than there are similarities.
The point is not that there are differences. The point is that the differences are far more numerous and significant than the similarities.
I don't know, but I can think of an analogy: If angels were commonly depicted as cheerful and a bit silly characters in cartoons, perhaps religious people would have the same complaint.
By the way movies do get angels wrong, they are described in the Bible as having 6 wings for example. No Christians that I know are angry about that.
No, a particular high order of angels (Seraphims) have six wings. Your run-of-the-mill, proletarian angels have two wings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_angelology?oldformat...
They will only be angry if they found those depictions disrespectful/mocking. Perhaps a few will like to point out the inaccuracy.
But most Western art has depicted angels with only two wings: even art by the most devout Christians.
And, iirc, it is a specific type of angel that had six wings (covered with eyes, etc...)
From what I can surmise the elves represent preindustrial humans. The Maiar are elemental forces (fire, water, etc). Not sure what the Valar are exactly, lesser gods of mythology I guess.
Within that landscape play out all manner of basic lessons, the importance of different crafts, the danger of vengeance, etc.
I guess “bippity boppity boo” and the patron saint of class mobility didn’t do it for Tolkien.
Also, Valar and Maiar are greater and lesser Ainur, primordial spirits. Angels might be the closest thing, not elemental forces.
Which, of course, strikes everyone except Tolkien as hilarious, seeing that he wrote LotR in the 1940s.
I think you can see a big parallel in LOTR here, with the Elves/Hobbits/etc. basically being pre-industrial peoples, while the "evil" forces were industrial societies: they felled trees, burned forests, causing widespread destruction to build their society.
I don’t think Tolkien sees this as a fundamentally deleterious development. But I haven’t seen how it ends for the Noldor so I don’t know. :)
As for Melkor, I don’t see him as fundamentally a force of decay. Destruction, yes. But Ilúvatar seems to have constructed Eä such that Melkor will always fail, that destruction will lead to differentiation and new lifeforms: not decay.
I wonder if this is an allegory for the way that life seems to defy the 2nd law of thermodynamics... not literally, the end always comes, but by creating a kind of a standing wave which seems to defy entropy, even if it is doomed to eventually decay.
That "decay" interpretation would just as well to our earth: The old has gone, "decayed". You misinterpret change just as in "Today's youth is the worst generation", a theme that can be traced through history.
Well, tbh, if you've seen Dwarf Fortress or read Terry Prattchett, then one of the first things that comes to mind is work ethic and moral. The ethic is highly puritan and greedy, the moral is upright but loose. I'd say that's somewhat faithfully represented, except that the sense of a wider community is missing, they don't live in a mountain and of course Disney didn't do war machines jugging liters of bear and hoarding gold for the sake of it. One might argue those features were exaggerated in folk lore to begin with.
Wikipedia should have some more [1], but I can't get past the Etymology section. An ancient mythology about short spirits not withstanding, it's rather obvious that German Zwerg was related to work, Werk, PIE wérǵ- [2]. Now if I look at the indo-arian cognates, I can't deny that those look similar to warrior, related to PIE wers-[3]. That leaves the initial d unexplained. My best guess is that's pejorative, because we- as in very, venerable etc. is too positive, but which short root the d came from I wouldn't know. I guess so far that's nothing new and where previous attempts called it quits.
By the way, guess the Zerg from Starcraft are an analogy to Zwerg, and then some. kekeke
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_(mythology)
[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
No, it is not obvious. In fact, that is not a mainstream etymology at all. Nor is positing the initial dental as a “pejorative” prefix, something any recognized scholar of comparative Indo-European linguistics would do. Furthermore, your connection of ‘dwarf’ and the PIE ‘work’ root to ‘warrior’ is, frankly, crackpot.
> No, it is not obvious. In fact, that is not a mainstream etymology at all.
It rhymes. That is not obvious? The proposed root *werg has hardly changed at all in over 2000 years!
> Nor is positing the initial dental as a “pejorative” prefix, something any recognized scholar of comparative Indo-European linguistics would do.
Was that a compliment? I'm aware that humanities research is full of opinion. That doesn't mean I was pretending to be a recognized scholar, just because I admitted an opinion.
> Furthermore, your connection of ‘dwarf’ and the PIE ‘work’ root to ‘warrior’ is, frankly, crackpot.
I did not read this off from a cracked pot to fill in the missing bits. I attempted internal reconstruction which is admittedly highly speculative.
--
Frankly, I suppose you are, like pretty much every linguist, biased towards your mother tongue, and can't readily accept the rhyme work~dwarf ... because that doesn't rhyme, indeed. Conversely, I have to admit a bias, too.
I couldn't even explain in detail how dwarf and Zwerg could be cognate or how to derive a Germanic root from those and other cognates. So, of course I expected the need to take this with a pinch of salt. But your spoon full was a bit much.
Is it? A quick glance at the Wiktionary reference and the etymology section in the Dwerg-article on the German Wikipedia doesn't yield any concrete evidence to support that statement.
'Rather obvious' seems overly optimistic — I would go with 'dubious' at best. For all we know some travelling story teller made the word up on the spot because it had the right dwarfish feel.
> For all we know
No, absolutely not. Rhymes are very important to old folk lore. And to language acquisition in general. And, in a metaphoric sense, to pattern matching over all.
Of course it is possible that the word was obscured from the get go lest it would appear derived. But I don't think it's onomatopoetic, if that's what you mean (I guess you didn't, though). Thinking about that, it's likely though that the word had to be pronounced by children, requiring easier phonemes, so perhaps no th. That gives a lot of leeway to speculate about an original root. Anther thought is that "swarz" (black) should be considered, because mines are inherently dirty, and as a kind of derogative. I agree though, expecting a single root would be too easy. A rhyme compressed into one word would easily obscure the term.
A very sad thought related to small people working in mines is child labor.