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Curious
Half-elven
Feb 5 2009, 10:00pm
Post #126 of 183
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Wonderfully subversive, I meant.
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I hope I did not give offense. It's always hard to tell on the computer. But I trust you know that I like your subversive ideas, even when I don't agree with them. I hope that you elaborate, if not now then later, on what you see that leads you to believe Tolkien intended the appendices as a fiction within a fiction, filled with half-truths and outright lies, like Shakespeare's histories. It's a remarkable idea, and in many ways an appealing one, but I just don't see it.
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Curious
Half-elven
Feb 5 2009, 10:03pm
Post #127 of 183
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I like that theory, but do we have evidence to support it?
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Curious
Half-elven
Feb 5 2009, 10:09pm
Post #128 of 183
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we really don't have much choice, I judge. They know us intimately, and study us intently, and learn from what we do based on a lifetime of habits, not based on what we intend to do now that we are parents. They pick what they like and emulate it, and just as importantly pick what they don't like and do the opposite. And then they also learn a great deal, these days, from TV and peers. Probably the most important factor in what kind of parents we will be is the age at which we have children, which is determined as of birth, and will not change no matter how much we try to act older or younger than our age.
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Ghills
The Shire
Feb 5 2009, 10:26pm
Post #129 of 183
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The Black Numenoreans are in Umbar, not Harad. They fled to Umbar after the usurper whose name starts with a C. I'm not sure we get told where the men of Harad came from.
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Ghills
The Shire
Feb 5 2009, 10:38pm
Post #130 of 183
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For saying what I've been trying to say for this whole thread.
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simplyaven
Grey Havens
Feb 5 2009, 11:31pm
Post #131 of 183
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they learn from what they see and we do. What I intend to do is what I actually do because I've been raised the same way as I'm raising my child. I don't have to change or do anything deliberately. I offer only: music, home library, paintings. My son is not even one year old and he already likes listening to music and I haven't chosen the one he likes. I played everything from Mozart to Offspring or U2. He chose and the choice was pretty clear. That's the same way I will go with books or any form of art. I will read whatever I have available - he will decide. Children, even when not able to speak yet, have their ways to show what they like and dislike. I will have to disagree that they learn most from peers and TV. It depends on how much time their parents are willing to spend with them and I mean not watching TV togetehr but playing, talking, discussing, arguing, etc. Quality time. I know it first hand as all my friends loved eating burgers and the fast food culture was then popular while I went home for dinner - habit but also personal choice based on what I had seen my parents do. I haven't changed until now, I don't go to fast food places. This is just a simple example. And I believe we can certainly feel and behave younger if we are willing to keep our eyes open for everything. It's not about age, it's about perception. I walk with him in the park and I talk about Elves in the woods or the Pooh Bear behind a tree instead of discussing with him the community swimming pool. Fairy is where we want to see it. Tales are close to children because they offer accomodation for their amazing imagination. If as adults we will forget where we felt comfortable is up to us and doesn't depend on life outside of us. Some of the most remarkable dreamers I know have had terribly difficult lives and some have been spoiled by good fate, IMHO.
Culinary journey through Middle Earth continues! Join us on January 30 on the Main board for a visit at the "Prancing pony"! I believe
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Feb 5 2009, 11:54pm
Post #132 of 183
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...that Tolkien is a transitional writer and a transitional human being--someone on the cutting edge of his day, at the beginning of waking up from racism and classism. Not perfected, not arrived at the hoped-for destination, but headed there. And perhaps his literature should be studied for its transitional content, about how the dominant culture first began to explore an alternative way of thinking beyond the prejudices of the status quo. This debate keeps going back and forth as to whether he's a fish or a mammal, when in fact he's amphibious. And that's important. He shows us the first stages of how the human race wakes up. And we may need to know this, because we have no idea, right now, what we might be asleep to, in our own generation.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Feb 5 2009, 11:56pm
Post #133 of 183
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Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Feb 6 2009, 12:00am
Post #134 of 183
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That shows my ignorance. I thought that the monarchs of the modern world had no power anymore, that they were basically maintained as nationalized pet humans, complete with pedigrees, and I always felt rather sorry for them.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Feb 6 2009, 12:14am
Post #135 of 183
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And not just the dominant race.
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In fact, no race or group is immune from prejudice entirely. As a blue-eyed, mixed-blood American Indian, I get prejudice all the time from people as dark as myself. Some people go rabid at the sight of blue eyes in a dark-skinned face with obviously Indian bone structure. I've been told that I should never have been born more than a few times. It's a human condition, the temptation to generalize by instinct rather than to note distinctions by reason. I do not agree with an earlier poster saying that it is just how we make sense of the world, because it doesn't make sense of the modern age at all. It did serve our beastly forebears, to catalogue all lions as predators and all deer as prey, just from a quick glance at outward characteristics, but this does not serve us well in the subtle world of conscious will to which we have evolved. In the beastly state, creatures did not choose their natures, but we can and we do. In this world we have to daily make the decision to set instinct aside on any number of levels, and prejudice is one of those outdated instincts. Tolkien went further than his peers in beginning to realize that, God bless him! Not all the way, but further.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Feb 6 2009, 12:17am
Post #136 of 183
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I would like to point out "Farmer Giles of Ham" as Tolkien's delightful story of precisely that: a commoner who becomes a King. It is a later story, if I'm not mistaken, and shows to my mind a further stage in his evolution.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Feb 6 2009, 12:20am
Post #137 of 183
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...is, if I recall correctly, the name of a recent book which publishes a number of the stories from Grimm's Fairy Tales in their original, unbowdlerized forms.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Feb 6 2009, 12:33am
Post #138 of 183
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From faulty memory: Farmer Giles began as a story told to Tolkien's children, probably in the early 1930s, was complete enough to read aloud to the Lovelace Society by the end of that decade, and was published in 1948, before Tolkien had finished The Lord of the Rings.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> We're discussing The Lord of the Rings in the Reading Room, Oct. 15, 2007 - Mar. 22, 2009! Join us Feb. 2-8 for The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= How to find old Reading Room discussions.
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Feb 6 2009, 12:39am
Post #139 of 183
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It merely got to my corner of the world later, I suppose.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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simplyaven
Grey Havens
Feb 6 2009, 2:16am
Post #140 of 183
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Thanks for this! I'll buy this book. //
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Culinary journey through Middle Earth continues! Join us on January 30 on the Main board for a visit at the "Prancing pony"! I believe
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Darkstone
Immortal
Feb 6 2009, 2:46am
Post #141 of 183
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A hundred years from now people will look back at us and shake their heads and wonder how we could have been so blindly bigoted and willfully ignorant. The problem is, we'd no doubt be very puzzled and surprised at what they found so objectionable.
****************************************** The audacious proposal stirred his heart. And the stirring became a song, and it mingled with the songs of Gil-galad and Celebrian, and with those of Feanor and Fingon. The song-weaving created a larger song, and then another, until suddenly it was as if a long forgotten memory woke and for one breathtaking moment the Music of the Ainur revealed itself in all glory. He opened his lips to sing and share this song. Then he realized that the others would not understand. Not even Mithrandir given his current state of mind. So he smiled and simply said "A diversion.”
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Beren IV
Gondor
Feb 6 2009, 2:57am
Post #142 of 183
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Has anybody told you that if it weren't illegal to kill you, they would have done so? Telling somebody that they should never have been born seems about the same to me... That's serious racism! I'm sorry you've been exposed to it!
The paleobotanist is back!
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sador
Half-elven
Feb 6 2009, 7:34am
Post #144 of 183
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But the King's Men sailed far away to the south; and the lordships and strongholds that they made have left many rumors in the legends of Men. Umbar was only the Northrenmost of the King's Men (Black Numenoreans) Havens, which was the reason Ar-Pharazon landed there. Castamir's sons fled there some fifteen generations later.
"We are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory" - Aragorn
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Ghills
The Shire
Feb 6 2009, 3:57pm
Post #145 of 183
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So the men in Harad could very well have Numenorean blood. That does put a bit of a different light on things. I wonder what Aragorn thought of his travels there.
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Feb 6 2009, 7:08pm
Post #146 of 183
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I was just listening to a radio discussion of Grimms' Fairy Tales today. It seems that the Grimms originally published the unbowdlerized versions of the folk tales, expecting them to be read by an adult audience. But they cleaned them up in later editions to make them into children's tales, when it became apparent that it was the aspirational middle class who wanted these tales for their children. According to the scholars taking part in the discussion, the idea of a national identity for Germany was new and exciting at the time, and these tales, supposedly the pure oral tradition of the German "Volk", were thought to be the perfect thing to introduce one's children to the new German sense of identity. Unfortunately, the pure oral tradition was immediately massaged and toned down to make it fit the preconceptions of the audience... It's ironic that the Grimms' attempt to pander to the political correctness of their own day now offends our sensibilities!
Farewell, friends! I hear the call. The ship’s beside the stony wall. Foam is white and waves are grey; beyond the sunset leads my way. Bilbo's Last Song
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Curious
Half-elven
Feb 6 2009, 7:37pm
Post #147 of 183
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I'm opting for the Annotated Grimm's
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Fairy Tales.
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simplyaven
Grey Havens
Feb 6 2009, 7:37pm
Post #148 of 183
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to not read them if they are offensive to him/her or to read them as I will do and I will buy the originals Dreamdeer talked about. After I personally read them I'll decide if they are suitable for my son now but in any case he will be offered to read them sooner or later, just the age would be different. It is my belief that tales won't do him any harm and are much better than movies and TV. But besides ironic, I find the facts you shared sad.
Culinary journey through Middle Earth continues! Join us on January 30 on the Main board for a visit at the "Prancing pony"! I believe
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Feb 6 2009, 8:39pm
Post #149 of 183
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The more things change, the more they stay the same. It always amuses me that the things for which Alexander the Great was called great in his day--ruthless conquest--is the thing that we most condemn him for today. Yet the things for which we admire him today--refusal to knuckle under to racism or xenophobia, equality under the law for all nationalities, championship of women's rights to an extent that in some ways is still ahead of its time, and a general sensitivity to and fascination with other cultures--was, in his day, called decadent and scandalous.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Jettorex
Lorien
Feb 6 2009, 9:28pm
Post #150 of 183
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very interesting you brought him up-an incredible and complex person; and what you say about him is true(ahead of his time in those regards you mentioned). While he was brutal and relentless before and during a battle, after victory was secure, he was known to be incredibly lenient and "easy" on the vanquished (against the practice of the day). Also, an interesting anecdote about him- If i remember correctly from what my professor said was that he was actually teased for the too few male lovers he had-i beleive he had one, Hephaestion (sp)?
Love, Truth, Honor, Adventure
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