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Revision as of 09:49, 30 December 2001 edit137.28.191.xxx (talk) *Support for childhood tales; citation for Tolkien as a Catholic← Previous edit Latest revision as of 17:59, 22 September 2024 edit undoChiswick Chap (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers297,206 edits →"Although often mistakenly called a trilogy...": ok 
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<i>The Trilogy</i> thing made me write this.
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For a long time I kept LOTR and the rest of the Tolkien universe and my vision of it to myself. I felt it was too personal too discuss. Only lately have I been reading up on what others felt about Tolkien's works. And I discovered that apparently was not the only one who felt his views on the ] chronicles to be more or less private.
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So, for instance, this 'Dubbed The Trilogy by its many fans' came out of the blue for me. I think that many of its many fans dub the books any way they like and do not care to discuss it. However, I am not sure if this would warrant making a distinction between what the vocal fans say, what the silent fans (may) think, and the plain facts (for as far as they can be ascertained).
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=="Although often mistakenly called a trilogy..."==
Even if Tolkien hadn't himself called it a trilogy (which he did), this is slightly unhinged / {{sc|]}}y wording for something that{{mdash}}regardless of original intent{{mdash}}was in fact published and has continually been republished as a trilogy, innit?


People who call it a trilogy aren't mistaken in any sense, although there are historical / resurrection-of-the-author reasons not to consider it a mistake to refer to it as a single book or a hexalogy either.&nbsp;—&nbsp;] 13:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)


: Thanks for your thoughts. However, the statement is not an editorial Point-of-View as you imply: it is reliably cited both to one of Tolkien's letters, and to the Tolkien Society, so we have it on extremely good authority. ] (]) 13:44, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
:''What does this have to do with Tolkien? I'll be removing this in the first week of 2002 unless someone gives a reason not to. -- ]''
:: Except those ''aren't'' authorities, any more than the guy who tried to get everyone else to change how they talk by putting up a sign that "GIF is pronounced JIF, not GIF".


::Trilogy has a straightforward meaning, is widely used for this work, and original authorial preference for how the work ''wasn't'' published has no bearing. Leaving aside that you've got a separate source for Tolkien himself calling it one, not that it especially matters.


::In any case, the wording as it stands is incredibly {{sc|]}}y. See ] for how it used to be more sensibly worded based on the same sources.&nbsp;—&nbsp;] 13:51, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

:::There are any number of critical and scholarly sources saying the same thing, e.g. . ] (]) 13:56, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
:The above comment was a reference to language, that has since been changed, in the first draft of the B5/LotR connection. I hope you don't mean to say that you will remove all of the B5 stuff from the LotR page. Much of that material could be moved to a B5/JMS page & cross-referenced. --DGJ
:::: Your source admits in his opening sentences that everyone but the people involved in the process of publication (and a minority of fans) considers it a trilogy. , showing the balance of scholarship and actual use ''isn't'' on the side of using the word "mistakenly" here.&nbsp;—&nbsp;] 14:04, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

::Note also that Tolkien pointedly objected to describing this works as a novel (]). The current article begins

:::''This article is about the novel... The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel...''

::Any particular reason you're devoted to following the guy's opinion on one term but not the other? If anything, it's certainly a 3-volume work and only questionably a novel, unless you're going by the definition that ''any'' long piece of prose is automatically one.&nbsp;—&nbsp;] 14:02, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
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::: You are very argumentative. I'm aware of what Tally says, and we are not relying on him alone, you won't get anywhere by picking and choosing among the evidence. As you have already been told, there are multiple RS of which I've told you about 3 so far, there are others: the matter is reliably cited and not in doubt. Tally makes quite clear that folks think it's a trilogy but, and the emphasis is on the but. The weight of sources is more than sufficient for the statement. ] (]) 14:24, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

::::I would tend to agree that 'mistaken' is too strong to be written in wiki voice. Whether the 3 published works are a trilogy or not is not an objective fact that one can be wrong or right about, it's a descriptor applied to the work by sources. If we're going to say that it's 'mistaken' to be described as a trilogy without in text attributation, the bar isn't that there are sources that support mistaken, it's that any that don't are so outnumbered or discredited that they're basically fringe. I'm not seeing that. Britinaica refers to it both as a novel and also the Fellowship as being the first of the trilogy, which I think is reasonable; both descriptors are valid. I'm fine with the top of the lead describing it as a novel, but would support removing the word mistakenly, which would have added advantage of being in line with the body text in the publication history section. ] (]) 16:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Just heard on a radio programme that Tolkein sent new chapters to his son Christopher when Christopher was fighting in WWII (source was an interview with Christopher)-- how does that fit into the bedtime story thing?
:::::This sounds pretty reasonable to me. The vast majority of people who have read the work did so in three volume form. In the common meaning of "trilogy" this is a pretty apt fit so to call the majority of people's reasonable common sense interpretation "mistaken" on the basis of some letters from Tolkien definitely seems like it is a Point of View. Removing the word makes it substantially more neutral and conveys the same intent ] (]) 09:09, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

:::::: OK, the sentence is clear enough without it. ] (]) 17:59, 22 September 2024 (UTC)


:Tolkien did take a long time writing the whole works, and perhaps was creating the stories to his children long before he started writing them down for publication. But it's worth looking into. --DGJ



: I've done some looking. Tolkien's prologue to LotR mentions sending the the chapters describing Frodo's journey to Moria to his son Christopher (then about 20 and with the RAIF) in 1944. According to a random Tolkien chronology I found on the Internet, Tolkien's youngest child was born in 1929 (around the time he finished Sh, and so would have been 15 or so. Too old for bedtime stories perhaps, but this was some seven or eight years after Tolkien had begun writing LotR; the fact that he sent chapters to Christopher overseas may suggest how important it was to Tolkien to continue to share the creative process with his son. But the "telling stories to his children" thing ought perhaps to be moved to a general Tolkien article (if there's not something there already). --DGJ

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'''Re: "dubbed The Trilogy"'''



As a Misplaced Pages contributor focusing on Tolkien and as someone who thinks of himself as a fairly well-read Tolkien fan, I have to say that this characterization of The Lord of the Rings as "The Trilogy" is unfamiliar to me as such. I tried to search Google to confirm common usage, but it is impossible, since Google ignores caps and the word "the."



I suggest that the article begin in this way:



:'''The Lord of the Rings''' is an ] ] novel by ] published in 1954-1955. Although it was originally released in three volumes due to printing considerations, Tolkien originally concieved of it as one work divided into six long segments he called "books." Although it has therefore been regarded as a ], it is nevertheless a single story. It is often referred to in brief as "<nowiki>LotR</nowiki>."



:The three volumes of the work are:



Since I hate to delete stuff without giving folks a chance to respond, I won't make this change until next the first week of 2002. I would love to see evidence of "The Trilogy" in common usage.



'''Re: bedtime stories'''



I agree that the bedtime stuff is misleading at best. Really, it was Tom Bombadil stories, the Father Christmas Letters, and maybe The Hobbit that were for his kids when they were little.



:Misleading at worst, I think... --DGJ



moreover, this entire paragraph ...



:This remarkable work by the mid-1960s had become, especially in its appeal to young people, a sociocultural phenomenon. Whatever life Middle Earth has taken on for itself in the mind of the public, Tolkien himself -- a devout Catholic -- thought of his fantasy works (originally begun as bedtime stories to amuse his children) as ways to teach religious truths to people who would ordinarily not be interested in moral instruction.



...in my opinion has NPOV issues (such as the word "remarkable") -- and the religious motivations need attribution. Moreover, this content deserves its own page, such as ] to describe his incredibly heavy influence on modern fantasy fiction, gaming, and Christian thought (especially viv-a-vis ] and ]). The pop-culture references would go here too. Hmmm. Note to self: put this on to do list!



-- ]



:I do have quotations from Tolkien's letters to his sons describing his moral/religous aims. It's also fair to note that the passge quoted above does not claim that Tolkien *only* thought of his work in such overtly religious terms. I'll make a few changes to that section, but you're right -- a page on Tolkien's impact would be a better place to explore this issue. -- DGJ



::"'The Lord of the Rings' is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and symbolism." (from a letter in 1953 to Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1981)



:I don't know enough about Tolkien to know whether he had a habit of telling Catholic priests that LotR was fundamentally Catholic, chefs that it was fundamentally about food, and cartographers that it was fundamentally about geography. Nevertheless, there's some support to the religous claims. Joseph Pearce has written much on Tolkien as a Catholic, and has done a lot of interviews lately; one might also cite him. (I've only heard Pearce in radio interviews, though he's on my "to read" list.)


:Another follow up on "bedtime stories". Here's a quote regarding the first draft of The Hobbit: "He tried it out on his 10-year old son Rayner, who wrote an approving report, and it was published as The Hobbit in 1937." -- http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/biog_frame.html I don't happen to have any recent biographies of Tolkien, but it does appear that the "bedtime stories" comments are better applied to Tolkien in general, rather than LotR in particular.



:I happen to have a copy of "Tolkein: A Look at the Lord of the Rings" (Lin Carter, 1969). Probably not the best source... nevertheless: "For some years -- as early as 1935, perhaps -- he had found himself amusing his children by telling them tales of the imaginary world he had invented." (p. 11... and this world is indeed identified as "Middle-earth"). Since LotR is the sequel to the Hobbit, and since Carter associates the Hobbit with stories told for his children's amusement, it's fair to make some connection between LotR and the bedtime stories (which, admittedly, might have been breakfast time or teatime stories -- I don't have a citation for that.) Note, also, how the first chapters of book 1 focus on Frodo's upbringing, and are so very different in tone than the chapters he wrote later (after the outbreak of WWII). Yet on page 17, Carter quotes excerpts from 2 C.S. Lewis letters, referring to the embryonic LotR as "the new Hobbit book".

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"Although often mistakenly called a trilogy..."

Even if Tolkien hadn't himself called it a trilogy (which he did), this is slightly unhinged / WP:POVy wording for something that—regardless of original intent—was in fact published and has continually been republished as a trilogy, innit?

People who call it a trilogy aren't mistaken in any sense, although there are historical / resurrection-of-the-author reasons not to consider it a mistake to refer to it as a single book or a hexalogy either. — LlywelynII 13:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. However, the statement is not an editorial Point-of-View as you imply: it is reliably cited both to one of Tolkien's letters, and to the Tolkien Society, so we have it on extremely good authority. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:44, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Except those aren't authorities, any more than the guy who tried to get everyone else to change how they talk by putting up a sign that "GIF is pronounced JIF, not GIF".
Trilogy has a straightforward meaning, is widely used for this work, and original authorial preference for how the work wasn't published has no bearing. Leaving aside that you've got a separate source for Tolkien himself calling it one, not that it especially matters.
In any case, the wording as it stands is incredibly WP:POVy. See Archive 7 for how it used to be more sensibly worded based on the same sources. — LlywelynII 13:51, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
There are any number of critical and scholarly sources saying the same thing, e.g. Robert T. Tally. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:56, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Your source admits in his opening sentences that everyone but the people involved in the process of publication (and a minority of fans) considers it a trilogy. Ngram bears that out, showing the balance of scholarship and actual use isn't on the side of using the word "mistakenly" here. — LlywelynII 14:04, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Note also that Tolkien pointedly objected to describing this works as a novel (Archive 3). The current article begins
This article is about the novel... The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel...
Any particular reason you're devoted to following the guy's opinion on one term but not the other? If anything, it's certainly a 3-volume work and only questionably a novel, unless you're going by the definition that any long piece of prose is automatically one. — LlywelynII 14:02, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
You are very argumentative. I'm aware of what Tally says, and we are not relying on him alone, you won't get anywhere by picking and choosing among the evidence. As you have already been told, there are multiple RS of which I've told you about 3 so far, there are others: the matter is reliably cited and not in doubt. Tally makes quite clear that folks think it's a trilogy but, and the emphasis is on the but. The weight of sources is more than sufficient for the statement. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:24, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
I would tend to agree that 'mistaken' is too strong to be written in wiki voice. Whether the 3 published works are a trilogy or not is not an objective fact that one can be wrong or right about, it's a descriptor applied to the work by sources. If we're going to say that it's 'mistaken' to be described as a trilogy without in text attributation, the bar isn't that there are sources that support mistaken, it's that any that don't are so outnumbered or discredited that they're basically fringe. I'm not seeing that. Britinaica refers to it both as a novel and also the Fellowship as being the first of the trilogy, which I think is reasonable; both descriptors are valid. I'm fine with the top of the lead describing it as a novel, but would support removing the word mistakenly, which would have added advantage of being in line with the body text in the publication history section. Scribolt (talk) 16:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
This sounds pretty reasonable to me. The vast majority of people who have read the work did so in three volume form. In the common meaning of "trilogy" this is a pretty apt fit so to call the majority of people's reasonable common sense interpretation "mistaken" on the basis of some letters from Tolkien definitely seems like it is a Point of View. Removing the word makes it substantially more neutral and conveys the same intent Strangefeatures (talk) 09:09, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
OK, the sentence is clear enough without it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:59, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
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