Certainly having a symbolism-soaked text was something that several Modernists experimented with decades earlier (including Joyce, which I know you find to be execrable), and before them the French Symbolists did something akin to it, albeit for a mostly realist setting. I'm not discounting his importance for a certain branch of literature as much as suspecting his work probably could be placed in context of a certain evolution in approach.
I'm not so sure Tolkien could be fitted so easily in the context of an evolution of approach in modern and pre-modern literature (with his predecessors, I mean. It's of course much easier to place him in such a continuum looking at his influence on others later)
I dunno. There certainly are traces of the approaches MacDonald and Eddison took (the mythopoeic for the former and the use of more "Northern" legenda for the latter) in his work, but while one could argue that Tolkien took these developments in a different direction, there still really isn't any evidence of a complete break from past traditions.
In his use of symbolism, Tolkien was as "unmodern" and "uncontemporary" as could be IMO. His symbolic language is essentially borrowed from mythology. Obviously some of his recurring motifs had deep personal signifiance to him, but they remain extremely easy to decipher, as he barely strayed off the beaten path (in doubt, we even know which domains in mythology to look into and which to exclude to precise meanings or paths to decipher him).
Some would also argue that that in turn goes back to Christology. I personally would not argue that symbolism plays a major role in his writings, nor would I contend that he utilized symbols in a markedly different fashion than several other authors before him.
I wouldn't see his use of symbolism a sign of his literary talent or his imagination so much as a sign of his scholarship and the profound intimacy he had with the texts and literary genres he took his inspiration from (which probably explains in turn why Tolkien's symbolism has not been the focus of scholars the way for instance Joyce's has been - including a Jungian essay by Joseph Campbell about Finnegan's Wake, as it happens. I doubt he would have thought LOTR a worthy subject of study, except from the angle of its mass appeal being rooted in its use of mythology archetypes, as he did with Star Wars). With the publication of the Silmarillion that gave the last few "keys" to the symbolism in LOTR it became fairly transparent.
True. It's rather easy to decipher and doesn't hold too many levels of interpretation within the text. More than average fare, yes, but far from even the brief bits found in Greene's The Power and the Glory, which was still stunning after a re-read this past month.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
1961 Nobel Finalists: J.R.R. Tolkien
- 19/01/2012 09:27:46 AM
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It's difficult to assess Tolkien's relative merits then 51 years later.
- 19/01/2012 02:41:52 PM
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Yes, Edwardian prose does not thrill me
- 19/01/2012 02:58:00 PM
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Re: Yes, Edwardian prose does not thrill me
- 19/01/2012 03:34:02 PM
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Re: Yes, Edwardian prose does not thrill me
- 19/01/2012 03:45:07 PM
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Tolkein is an excellent example why I usually dismiss literary critics/critiques
- 23/01/2012 05:57:51 PM
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Tolkien. Please. You're doing your entire argument a disservice there. *NM*
- 23/01/2012 06:42:12 PM
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You can't dismiss his impact, even if you do not like his storytelling.
- 23/01/2012 07:40:19 PM
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That's an odd argument
- 23/01/2012 07:51:49 PM
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Not really
- 23/01/2012 10:35:39 PM
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Depends on what you see as the point of literature.
- 24/01/2012 08:14:07 AM
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