jorny

Like all nerds I have been thinking a lot about Tolkien. About the tension between the romanticism of early medieval warrior heroes and his obvious loathing of militarism and distaste for war.

#tolkien

Mar 17 at 7:29pmWeb
Show threadVirginicusMar 17
@jorny I often wonder if #Tolkien consciously put in all those tensions we can see today, or if the text is just a decent man trying to grasp an indecent world.
https://www.idiosophy.com/2023/05/othering-the-haradrim/
Othering the Haradrim

There’s a line in the “Battle of the Pelennor Fields” that sounds horribly racist to our ears. This is a speculation about what Tolkien’s purpose might have been in putting …

Idiosophy
Show threadjornyMar 18

@Virginicus
There is a lot to unpack in it for sure. I think the tension shows how deeply personal the work is. This is a man who loves and is steeped in early medieval literature and at the same time experienced the horrors of industrialised warfare in the trenches first hand.

Thanks for the link! Very interesting reading.