Talk:The Lord of the Rings/Archive 1

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The correct abbreviations for the booksar RotK, LotR, and so on. Note lowercase t. --samth

Cleaned up this page by removing resolved discussion of the books as dubbed "The Trilogy." -- 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 Wikipedia, don't nowiki them, just take it up with the coders. I believe it's being changed in Magnus's script. --TheCunctator

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 have the page number, as I cut and pasted this passage from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tolkien.htm.]
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 [here referring to The Hobbit]. 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

The LOTR movie is #61 on the www.imdb.com list of top-grossing movies in America. I expect it to finish in the top 10 or 20. Ed Poor


I removed the following:

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.

The comment 'originally begun'... is just false as it stands; his fantasy works were begun before he had children.

The idea that he thought of his works as ways to _teach_ religious truths is new to me. I find no reference to it in the Carpenter biography nor in his collected letters. I'd like to see a reference for this if it's to stand.


Matthew Woodcraft

Where shall we put information about The Lord of the Rings movies? Shall we create a LotR subpage or shall we just add that information to the The Lord of the Rings page? The information I'm thinking of is stuff like actors and awards the movie won and so on. Peter Winnberg

I'd say a separate page. Otherwise it becomes difficult to talk about the actual events in the story without getting tied up in knots in cases where the stories differ. It doesn't need to be a subpage; Cinema adaptations of the Lord of the Rings seems like a fine page title to me. Matthew Woodcraft

Reading this LotR entry, I wondered why there was such a long piece about Babylon5... then I find the SAME (to teh word almost?) rant on the B5 entry. This duplication is unescessary, but I don't feel qualified to make the call on which entry it should exist on. Am thinking B5 should get the rant, since B5 cans are likely to care about it, but LotR fans are, on average, not. Nemo/TheWikipedian

I think I recall reading that when LoTR was published, it won the Hugo award for "science fiction" or "science fiction/fantasy", in a year when many thought the award should go to Isaac Asimov for his Foundation series. Can anyone verify this? (now to go see if there's an entry for the Foundation series... oughtta be... mumble mumble...) Wesley

It was the other way around; Asimov beat out Tolkien. In 1966 a Hugo was given for best all-time science fiction series; the nominees were LOTR, Foundation, Simak's "City", Smith's "Lensman" and Heinlein's "Future History". Asimov won. (In Asimov's autobiographies, he says that he felt the intent was to give it to LOTR but that the voting surprised everyone.) RjLesch

Hi, I was thinking to move The Lord of the Rings/The Fellowship of the Ring (as well as add the plot summaries for the other two volumes, under the Wikipedia contains spoilers warning, naturally) to the main page The Lord of the Rings. What do you think of it? --Uriyan

Hum, I don't know. Yes, it is true that, as of today, the story The Lord of the Rings:The Fellowship of the Ring is most commonly known simply as The Lord of the Rings (maninly due to the movie). But the term The Lord of the Rings refers to the entire three part saga so there is an ambiguity issue that then arrises. This is similar to the ambiguity between Star Wars the movie vs Star Wars the the series of movies. In cases like these we should find valid alternate names for the lessor of the two usages, such as naming the movie most commonly called simply Star Wars, to A New Hope -- which is part of the official title and is therefore a valid alternative (can't use colons becasue the software does't allow it). I vote for keeping the content separate and if any move is made it should be from The Lord of the Rings/The Fellowship of the Ring to simply The Fellowship of the Ring -- in the same way as the Star Wars movies now are (all the blasted / pages there have been killed). --maveric149

That would hold true, were The Lord of the Rings a trilogy - but it's not. The book constitutes a single, inseparable work of art - even if printing (or screening) constraints meant it had to be bundled in three separate volumes. So the analogy to Star Wars does not hold --Uriyan

I see your point -- there really is not real beginning, middle or end to each of the volumes. However, I for one would still tend to go for keeping it chopped-up and having detailed descriptions on the pages for each volume and a general plot synopsis at simply The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings is already beginning to be longish for wikipedia articles and combining it with The Lord of the Rings/The Fellowship of the Ring, expanding that section, and then latter adding material from the other two volumes will make The Lord of the Rings article monstrously huge. Lets see what other people have to say. --maveric149

On the other hand, there is almost nothing about the books (three or six or whatever) in this article. Here is the entire description of the plot:

The hobbits of Tolkien's earlier tale become embroiled in great events that threaten their entire world, as Sauron, the embodiment of evil, attempts to regain the lost One Ring which will restore him to full potency.

This hardly seems to do the books justice, particularly when so much space is given to peripheral matters such as the matter of Ace books and the copyright. (And even that does not quote Tolkein's eloquent blurb about "courtesy to living authors".) The Fellowship of the Ring article is fairly complete, but surely there ought to be something about it in this "main" article, and the other two books have not been written about at all, either here or in separate articles. Ortolan88, Friday, July 19, 2002

Tolkien designed a complete mythology for his realm of Middle Earth, including genealogies of characters, languages, runes, calendars and histories.

From what I've read, he didn't design the languages for Middle Earth, but rather created Middle Earth and its races in order to have a ground for the languages he liked to create...anybody else read something similar? AstroNomer (how do you put the date also?) Three tildes for name, four tildes gets date too.Ortolan88, Friday, July 19, 2002

As interest in both the movies and the book grows, we might want to divide this article into two:

  • The Lord of the Rings (film)
  • The Lord of the Rings (book)

Does this make sense to anyone

Yes. But then I'd also like to see Lord of the Rings (plagiarised sources). But I suspect that Prof. Tolkien's hagiographers believe he thought it all up for himself, clever fellow. user:sjc
That'd be a good article (although "plagiarised" might be a bit harsh). Prof T. made no attempt to disguise the influence of the various epic mythos that inspired his work. -- User:GWO
Just me being sardonic, Gareth... user:sjc

Seriously, I've been re-reading the book, and trying to mentally pick out what came from where. I think the "Mythological sources for LotR" would be a fascinating section or article. For instance: the Elves and Dwarves are so obviously alfar and dvegar of Norse myth. The Halflings, though, bear a striking resemblance to the "wee folk" ubiquitous in Celtic folklore, down to the burrows in the ground and the references to a hole stuffed with "gold and jools."

Likewise, the references to "Middle-Earth", heck, that's a direct translation of Norse Midgard; and the whole "passing of the age" has a strong Gottadamerung flavor. However, I can't think of any Norse analogue to Sauron, while there is a strong one in Welsh mythology - Arawn, lord of the dead in the Land of Shadows. (Sound familiar?) Add that to the Elves "sailing to the West", which is quite similar to Welsh myths, in which the legendary people "came over the sea" from the "Summer Country", and return to it at the end of the stories.

Just some notes of interest, which might be fun to write up eventually. -- April

I notice that although we no longer use subpages, there are still quite a few sitting around as redirects. Many of these (JRR Tolkien/Quenya, for example) have no links leading to them. I assume these can be deleted without offending even The Cunctator? -- General Wesc

No they need to stay since they were around for a long time and therefore have been indexed and bookmarked by external websites. Most of these also contain the original developement history of those articles and therefore is the only place where we can find out just who authored what text. Deleting this information would be a serious violation of the GFDL. --mav
Forgot about that. Oh well. Thanks. --General Wesc

Corrected error attributing 1980 Return of the King animated film to Bakshi; it was Rankin-Bass. Softened same paragraph to be description rather than review. --- User:Williamv1138

Some criticism of the Bakshi LOTR was added. Having seen the movie, I happen to agree with this criticism. But I felt that phrasing it in a more neutral way would be more appropriate to Wiki. So I rewrote it to still communicate what the work's problems were, but with a more sympathetic voice.

This then looked unbalanced, because the Rankin-Bass and Jackson works didn't have these mini-reviews, so I took a stab at adding them. --- User:Williamv1138

Expanded upon the assertion that LOTR can be taken as antimodernism. I think Tolkien would have had much sympathy for antimodernism. Although I mention the atomic energy/ring metaphor, Tolkien studiously avoided discussing metaphoric content in LOTR. I don't feel this invalidates the metaphor, see Intentional Fallacy. --- User:Williamv1138

Re: Indexes/Indices. The American Heritage Dictionary entry for index shows both indexes and indices as acceptable forms. Indices feels more scholarly and/or more british to me, so I like it better for this article. - Williamv1138 14:23, Aug 6, 2003 (UTC)

Re: Six-volume titles posthumous? See http://www.tolkien.co.uk/information/faq.asp#3; the six volumes were Tolkien's original idea. The three volume names were the publisher's suggestion - Williamv1138 15:02, Aug 7, 2003 (UTC)

The information contained there is just plain wrong. Tolkien's original plan was for it to be published in _one_ volume. From /Letters/ I quote -
  1. 135 (comentary) "Rayner Unwin visited Tolkien at Oxford on 19 September, and the manuscript of /The Lord of the Rings/ was given to him by Tolkien shortly afterwards. On 23 October, Rayner Unwin eported that, according to a printer's estimate, the book would have to be priced at £3.10s (at least) in order to recover its costs, and that the price would be even higher if it were divded into three volumes.
  1. 136 (commentary) "Allen and Unwin decided to publish /The Lord of the Rings/ in three volumes, priced at twenty-one shillings each.
(text) "P.S. I have given some thought to the manner of sub-titles for the volumes, which you thought was desirable. But I do not find it easy, as the 'books', though they must be grouped in pairs, are not really paired and the middle pair (III/IV) are not really related.
Would it not do if the 'book-titles' were used: e.g. "THe Lord of the Rings: Vol I The Ring Sets Out and the Ring Goes South"."
The work was never published in 7 volumes in his life, nor did he decided on titles for the Books, which were in all printings titled 'Book I', 'Book II'. The names were chosen from suggestions in /Letters/ posthumously, and used in the 7-volume set for the first time. - Morwen
Your info is clearly better than mine. You should either roll back to your edits, or expand on the subj with the info you have. - Williamv1138 14:20, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)

I'm thinking of moving the information on the 1981 BBC Radio version to a separate and expanded article, possibly titled The Lord of the Rings (1981 radio series) or similar. If I ever get around to it, which is the rub. - Lee M 17:18, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Just came across a useful magazine article from which I can nick research some info...heh, heh, heh...! Lee M 02:31, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I have now begun this article, moving some of the relevant text I wrote here across to there. Lee M 01:52, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
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