Matthew Henry John Bartlett

+64 27 211 3455
email me

Tuesday 27 April, 02004

JRR Tolkien in Tree and Leaf

by Matthew Bartlett @ 7:56 pm

Probably every writer making a secondary world …every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality; hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world …are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.

One response to “JRR Tolkien in Tree and Leaf

  1. aaron says:

    Now THAT’S exactly why Tolkien’s LoTR must be read as a re-created reality, even if he did not mean it to allegorise anything in particular. Re-creation and allegory are not the same. In re-creation Tolkien gives his characters decisions and problems that are intelligible to us, that make sense to us; we can judge them as wise or foolish, noble or base. Allegory is meant to reconstruct a specific situation in our world and offer commentary on it.

    So, insofar as Tolkien shows certain characteristics (like faithfulness, self-sacrifice, commitment to duty & service etc), as desirable, as honourable, as *worth doing*, he is saying that these things are *good*, that they are the representation of God’s character in his fantasy world.

Leave a Reply