The Lord of the Rings discussion: Foreword and Prologue

[azalea]

Lord of the Rings discussion: Foreword and Prologue

This was certainly more difficult than I think the intros for the actual story chapters will be. It was impossible for me to follow my own given format when writing this, and it ended up being long due to all the information they contain. So I hope it will still allow for discussion. I tried to bring out the points that I felt were important, and I actually cut out a lot of the notes I had written while I read! Although I haven’t asked any questions for discussion, I’ve tried to bring up enough points of interest to get things started. I hope it’s sufficient. So here goes – enjoy J (and participate!)

In my book, which is a newer edition, there is also a note on the text, which I thought I’d include here as well. It was written in 1993 by Douglas A. Anderson, whom I guess was the head of Houghton Mifflin at the time. He starts out by giving some facts about the book and its publishing history. He mentions that Tolkien experienced errors in printing and intentional “corrections� of his usage of some words (dwarves, etc.). Wouldn’t you know that a philologist would be particularly perturbed by this, and you’d think they would have known to consult him. But then he wasn’t as well known at the time, and it would have taken too long by mail, I guess. So in later printings these were corrected. It was interesting to read how involved he was in the publishing process, right down to correcting typos. I wonder if authors still have that kind of involvement, but nowadays so many are published in such a short time. Plus the process is probably much more advanced now, in terms of technology. Interesting to note that so many different versions appeared, some including certain minor details, while they were left out of others unintentionally.
This is one thing that bothers me sometimes. I respect Tolkien’s need to revise, and am happy it added to the end result, but I also in some ways see it as a breach of contract with the reader. One would like to think that what he read originally was complete and accurate in the author’s mind, and for him to change details seems to be unfair to the first readers. ADDING new info, such as in the Appendices, is no problem, nor are corrections of typos and the like; it’s things within the text that are changed that I find to be problematic, which renders previous versions inaccurate. Furthermore, it caused discrepancies in the different editions, and no one could be sure if it was an author’s revision, or simply a printing error. Adding to this problem was that there were too many publishers, A&U, HM, and Ballantine. It would have been better to have had them all printed in the UK and exported, but that would have been too expensive and inefficient, esp. back then. Now that we are in the computer age, hopefully all the different editions will be aligned in terms of correct content.
The new edition put out in the US in the mid-sixties with a new foreword probably helped fuel its popularity in the counterculture.

Foreword

As he begins, he talks about “a war [the story] which it was my task to conduct [this being his acknowledgement of himself as the author], or at least to report [this being a reference to the device of his being the translator of an existing but forgotten history, or perhaps even a reference to a writer’s need to write a story that seemingly comes from no where – that “writes itself�].� He mentions his detractors calling LotR “boring, absurd, contemptible.� They of course have no precedent for reviewing an “adult fairy tale,� which is what a lot of fantasy is. Fantasy heretofore having been children’s literature or classic tales (such as Arthur), they saw this as a failed attempt at contemporary “literature.� Instead it was revolutionary. Tolkien then makes a dig at other genres – ha ha! He mentions his urge to revise it (curb it, man! ), and that it is too short – yes! J
Then comes his bit about allegory, and that any “inner� meaning found by the reader is not intended by the author. But that is not to say that there weren’t intended EXPLICIT meaning in it, and I think people go too far sometimes when they say there is no meaning, that it’s simply a story. There are obvious messages in it; that doesn’t make it an allegory, but it does make it a story where certain actions or character traits mean something. Saying that he has assigned value to things in the story doesn’t contradict his assertion that it’s not an allegory. It’s interesting that he then details how it would look if it HAD been allegorical, and in doing so in so many words he states his contempt for WWII, saying that there would have been no victory for the Hobbits. Did the Hobbits in this allegorical version lose the war indeed, if we are to assume Hobbits are the common folk?
Then his famous paragraph – “I prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to thought and experience of readers� – meaning freedom for the reader rather than a purpose set by the author. He’s saying, IOW, that LotR is art, not a tool. Furthermore, he admits that he cannot escape his experiences influencing him, but that one should not assume that because you (the reader) see something in it that speaks to a real life issue in your experience, that he has intended it to be that way.