/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1771636]

>The question of racist or racialist elements in Tolkien's views and works has been the matter of some scholarly debate.[94] Christine Chism[95] distinguishes accusations as falling into three categories: intentional racism,[96] unconscious Eurocentric bias, and an evolution from latent racism in Tolkien's early work to a conscious rejection of racist tendencies in his late work.

>Tolkien expressed disgust at what he acknowledged as racism and once wrote of racial segregation in South Africa, "The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain."[97]

[Anonymous No.1771645]

>>1771636
>Tolkien vocally opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party prior to the Second World War. In 1938, the publishing house Rütten & Loening Verlag was preparing to release The Hobbit in Nazi Germany. To Tolkien's outrage, he was asked beforehand whether he was of Aryan origin. In a letter to his British publisher Stanley Unwin, he condemned Nazi "race-doctrine" as "wholly pernicious and unscientific". He added that he had many Jewish friends and was considering, "letting a German translation go hang".[98] He provided two letters to Rütten & Loening and instructed Unwin to send whichever he preferred. The more tactful letter was sent and was lost during the later bombing of Germany. In the unsent letter, Tolkien makes the point that "Aryan" is a linguistic term, denoting speakers of Indo-Iranian languages. He continued,

[Anonymous No.1771652]

>>1771645
>But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.[99]

[Anonymous No.1771657]

>>1771652
>In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, he expressed his resentment at the distortion of Germanic history in "Nordicism":

>You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil. But no one ever calls on me to 'broadcast' or do a postscript. Yet I suppose I know better than most what is the truth about this 'Nordic' nonsense. Anyway, I have in this war a burning private grudge... against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler ... Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized.[100]

[Anonymous No.1771660]

>>1771657
>In 1968, he objected to a description of Middle-earth as "Nordic", a term he said he disliked because of its association with racialist theories.[101]

[Anonymous No.1771663]

Is there a point to this?

[Anonymous No.1771673]

>>1771663
Yes, Tolkien wasn't the venom-spewing racist trolls like to portray him as.

Quite the opposite actually.

[Anonymous No.1771679]

>One occasional charge is that Tolkien was anti-semitic, presumably because he occasionally compared his Dwarves to Jews. Those comparisons seem to focus on history and language, however: in Letter #176 he says, "I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue.....". And he seems to have had a very positive view of the Jewish people in general. For example, when discussing the origins of the name "Tolkien" in the final footnote to Letter #325, he says, "It is not Jewish in origin, though I should consider it an honour if it were." He made very similar comments in a draft of a letter (#30) to a publisher in Nazi Germany who asked about his race, and in Letter #29 he introduced that draft and told his publisher, "I should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine."

http://tolkien.slimy.com/faq/External.html#Racist

[Anonymous No.1771696]

so... what do you guys think of Ted Nasmith

[Anonymous No.1771701]

Why are all the bad guys black then??

[Anonymous No.1771704]

[Anonymous No.1771721]

[Anonymous No.1771723]

these are some cute illustrations that I just found

[Anonymous No.1771728]

[Anonymous No.1771730]

[Anonymous No.1771731]

[Anonymous No.1771733]

[Anonymous No.1771735]

[Anonymous No.1771736]

[Anonymous No.1771741]

[Anonymous No.1771744]

BUT WAIT!
AUTHORIAL INTENT DOESN'T MATTER!

[Anonymous No.1771745]

[Anonymous No.1771756]

these are by Klaus Ensikat by the way

he illustrated the second German edition of The Hobbit in 1971

[Anonymous No.1771766]

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[Anonymous No.1771783]

[Anonymous No.1771812]

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[Anonymous No.1771828]

[Anonymous No.1771839]

[Anonymous No.1771842]

[Anonymous No.1771846]

[Anonymous No.1771850]

[Anonymous No.1771855]

[Anonymous No.1771858]

[Anonymous No.1771859]

[Anonymous No.1771863]

As a Slavic speaker, I feel he was unfamiliar and perhaps hostile to the poetics of Slavic languages. We were classed as the "swarthy men", the ones who sided with Morgoth.

Well fuck you John, I think Slavic languages, especially my own of course, are beautiful in their radical difference from Germanic languages in both phonology and morphology. We make excellent poetry.

[Anonymous No.1771867]

>>1771863

go to hui

[Anonymous No.1771873]

this was from a mug

[Anonymous No.1771880]

>>1771867
what is hui?

[Anonymous No.1771885]

>>1771863
>We were classed as the "swarthy men", the ones who sided with Morgoth.

actually the Easterlings were, not the Slavs

and don't you try to tell me that just because the Easterlings lived in the east they were meant to be Eastern Europeans

also Tolkien was a philologist, so he had to have known something about your languages

here, why don't you have another cup

[Anonymous No.1771890]

>>1771880

idi na chui bljad

[Anonymous No.1771894]

cups for everyone!

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1771896]

lol why didn't sauron just gas the jews

[Anonymous No.1771897]

>>1771880

Inferior slav detected

[Anonymous No.1771899]

[Anonymous No.1771900]

>>1771867
Hui is like Russian rude street language for dick.

[Anonymous No.1771907]

>>1771701
Evil is associated with darkness, shadows, and death. Don't be dense.

[Anonymous No.1771914]

>>1771907
Oh look, whitey trying to bring a man down again.

[Anonymous No.1771915]

>>1771890
>idi na chui bljad

had to google this, and in my language, it would write "pojdi v kurac, kurba (kurbir?)"

[Anonymous No.1771929]

>>1771915

might be, I only know russian and some polish( in which this sentence would certainly include "kurwa")

[Anonymous No.1771931]

>>1771915
That's Czech or something?

[Anonymous No.1771930]

[Anonymous No.1771934]

>>1771931
po Slovensko

[Anonymous No.1771936]

HI HO MERRY OH

[Anonymous No.1771937]

>>1771934
that's actually gramatically incorrect, we don't capitalize ethnonyms when declinating in Slovene.

[Anonymous No.1771940]

WE'RE GONNA MARCH ALL DAY ALL DAY ALL DAY

[Anonymous No.1771941]

>>1771934
So close...

[Anonymous No.1771946]

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[Anonymous No.1771972]

>>1771663
Surely you've heard it before. Some assume, since the trilogy takes place on a continent nearly devoid of non-whites, that Tolkien wished to live in a world devoid of anything but white people.

[Anonymous No.1771976]

hrmmmm was the Battle of Sudden Flame when Smaug attacked Esgaroth or when Glaurung first appeared?

cuz Glaurung didn't have wings

[Anonymous No.1771978]

hrmmmm was the Battle of Sudden Flame when Smaug attacked Esgaroth or when Glaurung first appeared?

cuz Glaurung didn't have wings

[Anonymous No.1771991]

....I fail to see the point.

[Anonymous No.1771992]

[Anonymous No.1771993]

>>1771991
of what silly goose

[Anonymous No.1772000]

[Anonymous No.1772010]

[Anonymous No.1772017]

[Anonymous No.1772024]

know what really rustles my jimmies?

people using "Uruk-hai" and "half-orc" interchangeably

[Anonymous No.1772025]

>>1771993
Of this fucking thread.

[Anonymous No.1772031]

dem dorfs man, dem fuckin dorfs

[Anonymous No.1772034]

>>1772025
to dump pretty pictures, mostly

don't you like them?

[Anonymous No.1772040]

[Anonymous No.1772041]

[Anonymous No.1772042]

[Anonymous No.1772093]

HEY GUYS

DOWNLOAD THESE PICTURES AND MORE AT http://www.mediafire.com/?aolbs1z293f19a6

[Anonymous No.1772104]

Fuck me for watching the movies and with it destroying my will of reading the books.

[Anonymous No.1772105]

>>1772104
D:

why would watching the films do that to you?

did you not read the books first?

at least read The Hobbit before that movie comes out anon

[Anonymous No.1772109]

>>1772105
>did you not read the books first?
Nope, now I know the whole fucking story and shit also the ugly cast is burned into my head.

[Anonymous No.1772112]

These pictures all make me sad I read the books after the films came out, and so I pictured pretty much everything in the books as their film equivalents

[Anonymous No.1772127]

>>1772109
>>1772112
it's alright anons!

I'm sure that if you read the books, you'll be able to form your own images of what middle-earth is like.

[Anonymous No.1772131]

>>1772127
But I fucking know the story and shit already, it will not unfold slowly and I already know the characters.

[Anonymous No.1772147]

>>1772131
DON'T BELIEVE IN YOURSELF ANON

BELIEVE IN ME WHO BELIEVES IN YOU

[Anonymous No.1772160]

>>1772131
don't worry about it, the books were overwritten garbage by a man who thought it more important to detail the leaves and roots of a tree than the battle of helm's deep.

[Anonymous No.1772166]

>>1772160
please, share these descriptions of plants written into the middle of heated battle scenes

I don't think I recall any of them

[Anonymous No.1772176]

>>1772160

I HATE YOU.

[Anonymous No.1772179]

>>1772166
not in the middle of it, silly, in the first and second book he spends a fucking shitload of goddamn time describing trees to the point of detail where I just give up and go read someone who doesn't think it's so fucking important that I know every single eccentricity of the canopy of every god damn tree in the shire. It's especially frustrating when he skates over Helm's Deep so idly I had to go look at concept art of it to picture what was going on.

[Anonymous No.1772184]

>>1772179
Tolkien liked trees dude.

[Anonymous No.1772189]

>>1772184
I know, I read the books, he REALLY likes trees.

[Anonymous No.1772200]

>>1772189
can you fault a man for loving nature?

[Anonymous No.1772205]

>>1772200
goddamn bombadil, took me three entire months to get past that section 'cause I just fell asleep and started nervously vomiting every time I tried to battle through that fucking literary molasses.

[Anonymous No.1772207]

I wonder what Harold Bloom would have to say about this.

[Anonymous No.1772229]

[Anonymous No.1772810]

I was looking for some Tolkien arts the other day and google images kept getting results from stormfront.

fucking skinheads

[Anonymous No.1772817]

FOR FUCKS SAKE PEOPLE! ORCS AREN"T BLACK PEOPLE!

[Anonymous No.1772832]

>>1772817
which should be obvious because their skin color varies, and is usually described as yellowish