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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cayzle (talk | contribs) at 14:57, 30 December 2001 (*Hobbit written as bedtime story). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Trilogy thing made me write this.

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 Middle Earth chronicles to be more or less private.

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).

"J. Michael Straczynski (creator of B5) has been known to get into a snit ...." What is a snit? How does one get into a snit? What do they look like? Do they come in sizes? Colors?

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. -- Cayzle

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

No, no, sorry for confusion. I just meant I'd clean up this Talk page a little by deleting the "snit" thing. -- Cayzle

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?

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

If you don't agree with the default wikification of ISBN's on Misplaced Pages, don't nowiki them, just take it up with the coders. I believe it's being changed in Magnus's script.

--TheCunctator

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 epic fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien 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 trilogy, it is nevertheless a single story. It is often referred to in brief as "LotR."

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 J. R. R. Tolkien's impact to describe his incredibly heavy influence on modern fantasy fiction, gaming, and Christian thought (especially viv-a-vis C. S. Lewis and The Inklings). The pop-culture references would go here too. Hmmm. Note to self: put this on to do list! -- Cayzle

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

I'll be working on such a page shortly. I look forward to your comments and collaboration! -- Cayzle

"'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.)

Frankly, we need an "Impact" page to talk about pop cultire and influences and a "religion" page to talk about the role/influences of Christianity on Tolkein's work. Hmmmm. Note to self ... -- Cayzle

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.

Actually, this note is misleading. The "He" in the quote refers to Sir Stanley Unwin, JRRT's publisher, Allen and Unwin. Sir Stanley tried out The Hobbit on his son Rayner, who liked it. (For more on this topic, see "Letters.") If I recall correctly, JRRT had three children, John, Michael, and Priscilla. -- Cayzle

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".

On the jacket flap of the first printing of The Hobbit, someone at Allen and Unwin wrote that The Hobbit was "read aloud in nursery days" to JRRT's kids. JRRT wrote back that he never had a nursery, and read to his kids in his study. He also said, "My eldest boy was thirteen when he first heard the serial . It did not appeal to the younger ones who had to grow up to it successively." (from "Letters," Letter No. 15)

I think the "bedtime stories" reference is misleading because it was read in a study, not a bedroom, and to a 13-year old -- not exactly the age at which one reads bedtime stories. If a "bedtime story" reference should be made, it should be in The Hobbit entry, I think, not The Lord of the Rings. -- Cayzle