Misplaced Pages

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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

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

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.

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