Subject:
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Re: LoTR # 1 on IMDB, Beowulf on NYTimes bestseller list
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.fun
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Date:
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Sun, 23 Dec 2001 03:20:20 GMT
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Viewed:
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537 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Richard Marchetti writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Erik Olson writes:
> > I meant to ask you who and when is being rehashed.
>
> Eh? I am not sure what this means...
Your remark 'rehash of Northern European mythology', could you elaborate?
> > I was also going to bring up earlier that Tolkien is the guy who put Beowulf
> > in the 20th-century curriculum.
>
> I don't know anything about Tolkien -- was he a university professor? In
> what way did he put Beowulf on the map?
Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon (and other languages.) Maybe I am
overstating this, but I just looked in the new Beowulf that was on the NY
Times bestseller list recently (it's in train stations and airport shops)
and it credits Tolkien's 'groundbreaking paper' with making the poem
relevant again. I've never seen this paper (out of print) only the comments
on it in biographies and such.
> I am not sure that people have really ever forgotten their myths and
> folklore, although major popular interest may be more cyclic. A resurgence
> in occultism during the early parts of last century are surely a part of
> this, as are the psychological investigations of Carl Jung and maybe the
> cultural obsessions of the Nazis. In what way can Tolkien be asserted as
> prime mover here?
Forget? It's a question of how much is forgotten. Anyway Tolkien's role in a
professional capacity was to take myth seriously: the bromide of his day was
"myth is a disease of language", an embarassing artifact to be consigned to
reference works where people look up usages or connotations. You can find
part of this debate in the book _Poetic Diction_ by Tolkien's mentor Owen
Barfield. (Tolkien fans who go on to read the academic publications of his
circle are few.) Nowadays when Edith Hamilton and Joseph Campbell are
everywhere, it's taken for granted that reading mythology is good for you.
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Message has 2 Replies:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: LoTR # 1 on IMDB
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| (...) Eh? I am not sure what this means... (...) I don't know anything about Tolkien -- was he a university professor? In what way did he put Beowulf on the map? I am not sure that people have really ever forgotten their myths and folklore, although (...) (23 years ago, 22-Dec-01, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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