/lit/ - Literature

God forbid religion be a part of any published work. Someone call the Seculo-quisition!

>>2840549

OP here,

I'm not saying there's a problem with it. Just that denying there's religion and religious themes in LotR is fucking retarded.

>>2840558

Who was denying it, retard?

>>2840562

I got into an argument about this irl. Someone said LotR wasn't Christian.

Seeing as how broad the themes of catholicism are and how entrenched they are in the zeitgeist it's not surprising that a novel would have catholic themes.

>>2840564
i'm not sure how you expected /lit/ to be up to speed with an IRL debate you had with a girl, but i suppose that the argument could be posed contra Tolkein's explicit claims to despise allegory & to not be a writer of allegory.

seeing as LOTR can clearly be interpreted allegorically, i think he meant either/both of the following:

1. it's not a shallow allegory, where all the symbols have clear correlates in some parallel scenario, where everything basically fits together well. although parts can be seen allegorically, on the whole it isn't 'an allegory.'

2. allegorical elements are purely coincidental. to the extent that any are present, either something was operating on Tolkein's subconsious, and/or we are witnessing the simple fact that all stories will contain elements reminiscent of outside narratives

Tolkien was friends with C.S Lewis, He hated the kind of direct Allegory that C.S Lewis used in his work. That's not to say that Tolkien in any way changed LOTR in response to Narnia. That's just to say, we know how he felt about Allegory at the time of writing.
Tolkien was a christian and there are Christian themes scattered through the novel, but there's never a one to one allegory, and there are other themes involved, most obvious are his reaction to war and industrialization, technology and the natural world, and as a philologist, the use of language in story and stories in a language is everywhere.
Saying the whole work is Christian is a bit far, but you can definitely say that it is all compatible.
As for "What it's all really about?"
It's about a short person throwing a ring into a volcanic vent.

>>2840595
It's because people don't fully understand the concept of Allegory.
Something can be a reference or resonate with something else without being meant to stand in place of something.
I think the word they're reaching for is motif.
For example, Gandalf rises from the dead, but Gandalf is not Jesus,
RotK features the return of a righteous king, but Aragorn is not Christ,
Sauron tempts and corrupts and is a fallen being of power, but Sauron is not Satan.

It would be easy to claim it all as an Allegorical tale, but what would you do then, with the march of the Ents and Macbeth?

>>2840564

So finish your fucking stupid argument irl, dicktard. Nobody here was denying shit until some cunt rattled your cage.

You make me so angry I just literally vomited.

>>2840570

>how entrenched they are in the zeitgeist

Jesus, hark at this wanker.

>>2840661
I don't get it. What exactly did he do wrong?

It is not an allegory. It is a fundamentally Catholic work. There is nothing incompatible with those two statements. An allegory for Tolkien was a work where things stood as symbols in one-to-one relationships with symbolized: so for instance, in Narnia, where Aslan was Jesus. There's none of this symbolism here: Aragorn isn't Jesus. Neither is Frodo. It's still a fundamentally Catholic work, though, in its understanding of sin and forgiveness and grace and beauty, because it was written by a hardcore Catholic. Similarly, it was not an allegory for World War I, but it was hugely affected by World War I in many different ways that can be traced through the book. It's a good and a complex book.

like, i'm pretty sure anyone remotely intelligent "gets" this by now but i guess we have to say it agaain because people thinks it will shock the hell out of tolkien fans or something

>>2840570
Also that JRR Tolkien was a conservative, deeply devout English Catholic. And so he wrote a work that is very much in the tradition of English Catholics.

>>2841566
his weltanschauung had too much zeitgeist and not enough volksgeist

You are now aware that the dwarfs are Jews. You will see this in the Hobbit if you haven't already.

>>2841625
It goes deeper than that.

The dwarves were driven from the Lonely Mountain (Jerusalem) generations ago, leading to a diaspora. They've suffered at the hands of orcs and The Necromancer (Germany), and have appealed to Gandalf (the Allied forces) to help them reclaim their homeland from their ancient foe, Smaug (Palestinians).

As soon as they reclaim their home, they antagonize and are willing to war with every single one of their neighbors simultaneously.

If The Hobbit didn't predate WW2, people would have to call bullshit on the idea that Tolkien hated allegory.

>>2841672
How old is the motif of exile and diaspora and return, you fucking numbnuts

you could as easily say that it was about the babylonian exile

>>2840604
Who would've thought that a Protestant Irishman and a Catholic Englishman would be best buds?

My dad walked out on the first LOTR movie saying that it was a "catholic vision of hell". He liked the battle scenes in the second two though

you know it's Ironic that so many chistian fundamentalists shun fantasy work like harry potter when the godfather of all modern fantasy was about as die hard as they come