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The One Ring Forums:
Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
Gosh, various points to answer!:
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noWizardme
Gondolin
May 9 2025, 6:51pm
Views: 16932
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Gosh, various points to answer!
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How 'establishment' are Oxford Professors (or Professors elsewhere in British higher education)?
Not as much as one might think, I'd say. Yes, they are senior in one of the country's long-established institutions. But they are clever rather than (necessarily) old money chaps who went to the same school as you. And then there's the problem that Professors tend to be clever. The Established establishment don't trust clever.
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[Tolkien] seems to pay homage to his personal past more than his present, and it may be a tangent (in the Reading Room? Heavens!) that Frodo/Bilbo are Tolkien's youth, while Gandalf/Elrond are his present: masters of lore, responsible for the world and not just a school locker, thinking Big while Little people think small, helping youth to catch up with maturity. A delightful tension exists between B/F and G/E that pulses with more camaraderie than conflict, but their world and moral views are distinctly different.
I do love a good tangent (such as this one). I also see a good dash of Bombadil in Tolkien Present.
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As for Frodo's newness as a character: didn't the crazy Tolkien appreciate the business value of a franchise?!?!?!? Bilbo vs. Smaug's Daughter, A Much-Expected (re-)Adventure, Volume VIII. C'mon, sell it, Professor! *sigh* Another missed opportunity. Anyway, Bilbo exhibited a definite growth arc in The Hobbit, so that vein was mined, and starting fresh with Frodo awarded Tolkien all kinds of writer opportunities to explore, removing any shackles that would have lingered had Bilbo remained the hero.
Yes, I think things might have been very different had Tolkien been a professional writier (in thr strict sense of needing publishers cheques to put dinner on the table). And 'back then' Unwins was willing to be enormously patient, and ultimately to accept a masterpiece that wasn't all that much like teh book to whcih it is supposed to be a sequel.By comparison I think modern publishing conglomerates are more likely to demand a multi-book series which ticks a long list of boxes about market-suitability, all before the first one is even published.
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on May 9 2025, 6:53pm)
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Post edited by noWizardme
(Gondolin) on May 9 2025, 6:53pm
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