tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2874877056919928739.post2019832112074964891..comments2024-03-27T23:21:21.555-07:00Comments on Oldenhammer in Toronto: Reading along with the Lord of the Rings: The Old Forestmatthewjksullivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08126108200355039621noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2874877056919928739.post-74822357338352062552015-09-09T15:54:09.549-07:002015-09-09T15:54:09.549-07:00Fascinating comments. I think Miekd is quite right...Fascinating comments. I think Miekd is quite right that plagiarism is probably not the right word. Self-cannibalism is also a little derogatory (although perhaps not entirely inaccurate if Zhu is right about Tolkien "using up" all his good ideas. In some ways, maybe the LOTR really just is The Hobbit for grownups. Well, perhaps. I always like reading the LOTR with The Hobbit in mind, because I think it's "childishness" adds a breeziness to Middle-earth that is indispensable.matthewjksullivanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08126108200355039621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2874877056919928739.post-50293493220396512382015-09-05T21:28:29.558-07:002015-09-05T21:28:29.558-07:00The Old Forest is also much more developed and sin...The Old Forest is also much more developed and sinister than Mirkwood. And it prepares the reader for Fangorn Forest and Treebeard.<br />Tolkien also had a thing for trees and wanted the reader to be aware of an older world, older even than the elves, Sauron and the Ring.Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14996350912869829140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2874877056919928739.post-13421480547487075942015-09-05T16:52:06.015-07:002015-09-05T16:52:06.015-07:00This is more a question of style more than plagiar...This is more a question of style more than plagiarism. Think back to John Fogherty, from CCR, who got sued by his fromer record company when he recorded his solo music in the 80's They claimed that his music sounded too much like CCR and that he stole the sound from his former self. The case got thrown out by a judge.They said it was a case of creative style that is insrtinsically his own. Same thing for writers. Examples such as you site can be found in many authors like Stephen King and others. It is their own style that they are repeating.miekdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13009392198783310073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2874877056919928739.post-36436512753037028362015-09-05T09:51:00.175-07:002015-09-05T09:51:00.175-07:00In all honesty, Tolkien says in Letters to Unwin t...In all honesty, Tolkien says in Letters to Unwin that he'd used all his best ideas in The Hobbit, and we have to just conceed that on one level he'd just run out of things to say. On another level, we have this 'fantastical' intertextuality going on, which specifically involves the patterning of Myth into Fairy-Tale (the figure of The Man in The Moon, who Frodo will sing of in Bree features through Tilion of the Silmarillion, to Roverandom and into Nursery Rhyme) the telling and retelling of the same underlaying story through different voices.<br /><br />Then we have the centrality of the Forest in medieval European imaginative, from Mallory's Forest Perilous to Morris's Mirkwood of the Wolfings and his The Wood Beyond the World to C.S. Lewis Wood Between the Worlds. The great dark European Forest is a space between worlds, the borderlands. So steeped in such material, how could a history written by Hobbits possibly not include an episode (or two!) of getting lost in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xik-y0xlpZ0" rel="nofollow">A Forest</a>? Zhu Bajieehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13945636483237344750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2874877056919928739.post-68679939541284344232015-09-05T02:57:08.500-07:002015-09-05T02:57:08.500-07:00FRom what I understand the Hobbit in it's firs...FRom what I understand the Hobbit in it's first version was more of a children's book that Tolkien revised when he wrote the LoTR later on and meshed the two together. An example of the later revisions is the necromancer - in the Hobbit he is really mentioned in passing whilst in the LoTRs it is made clear he is Sauron who is the major enemy of the piece. The re-drafting also explains the common ground - the former in it's first version is aimed at a different audience and as such it doesn't matter so much if the author goes over some familiar ground in each as each book/series is written for different audiences. As such he can use some of the material again in the longer story. It if fine by me as both books make from wonderful reading. Firthy 74https://www.blogger.com/profile/17104155948966037030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2874877056919928739.post-85420341049474814742015-09-04T19:35:41.104-07:002015-09-04T19:35:41.104-07:00You've done a nice job ticking off the overlap...You've done a nice job ticking off the overlapping themes and events of the Hobbit and LotR. Personally, I think of the Hobbit as a kid's book (shorter, simpler and much more digestible) and LotR as the grown up version. So, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "same story, told two very different ways".Tiny Basement Warshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18177114264084517734noreply@blogger.com