Excellent essay, Kelsey! Shippey does have a great sense of humor. Lydia Fish October 16, 2008, at 08:04 AM
I knew most of the autobiographical information that was in the Foreword which we read, including Tolkien’s earlier years and his experiences with war. One of the things which I found most interesting and informative was the discussion of the opinion polls on The Lord of the Rings. It was amusing that so many critics of the book were amazed and upset that the book kept receiving so many votes for greatest books of the century. It was funny that it made number 2 for one poll, but in that one (the Mori poll for Nestle), the top spot was taken by the Bible, which didn’t even fit into the twentieth-century competition which began these sequence of polls.
I enjoyed how Shippey poked fun at a few of the critics and showed how they were not as smart and elite as they thought, for example: “She meant, surely, ‘two or three literati,’ unless the literati talk only to themselves (a thought that does occur)…” when speaking of Susan Jeffreys of the Sunday Times. It is in these somewhat mocking ways which Shippey points out the absurdities of complete denial of Tolkien as a credible and talented author. One other case of this is on page xxxiii, when a debator who had been convincingly against Tolkien’s works admitted to Shippey that he had never read The Lord of the Rings. There are probably people out there who do not recognize the value of Tolkien’s work simply because they have preconcieved and illinformed notions about it.
The other interesing part of this foreward was the extent to which Tolkien has influenced other writers. He always hoped that this would happen, but then called this idea “absurd” because he had no idea how influencial and widespread his book would come to be. He deeply affected the entire culture of forthcoming authors, especially “the fantastic.” I am looking forward to reading more about this in the coming chapters.
Kelsey Till October 08, 2008, at 02:05 PM
Kelsey Till October 24, 2008, at 01:40 PM
