Does any one else wish to discuss Tolkien's Middle Earth?

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It does read like a nursery rhyme, it's completely dedicated to the message "Everything is good like it was, never change"

Where the hell do you get that?

See, I never read that, I got my impression by actually going through the three books.

I have also read all three novels (all around the age of ten) and even then I knew something was wrong with Tolkien's fantasy. Later as I started gaining the ability to take apart books and look at the metaphors the Technophobia and Hyper Romanticism floored me.

Perhaps it was written for people to enjoy, not impress English Literature professors.

I'm just an artistic teenager. Not a lit professor, it's only the most basic analysis of the work. A better trained art critic could provide deeper metaphors and more meanings.

I'm not able to give a professional comparison, as I've never read Dark Tower.

Also, just out of curiosity, have you seen the movies Flagg?

EDIT: Just for the sake of the thread, I personally feel that making a separate thread saying how you feel about Tolkien's work would be a better idea.

Also, I'd have to agree with you on the Elves; a bit to nancy-prancy for my tastes.

I was forced to attend the first, it was surprising empty of the books traditionist, romanticist message. I have not seen the other two.

Yeah, the movies don't follow a romanticist feeling, more of a war-like movie (and what do you mean by forced?). If you like battles, then the next two movies are for you (Return of the King is nearly half battles), although the elves are still a bit artsy as in the books, however love is only played out in the (relatively small amount of) flashbacks to Rivendell with Aragorn and Arwen (I hated those bits too).

Your definition of "Romanticism" seems a bit confused.

It's usually applied to art that pushes a message of tradition and conformity, emotion over logic.

Ah, okay. I didn't know what the word truly meant, I only had a vague understanding of the word.

Oh, the last 20 minutes of ROTK is mostly driven emotionally from all that had happened prior, there's not a lot of action going on then.

Aside from the discussion over Tolkien's sense of writing style, here's a Super Trailer for all three movies (found it on YouTube):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSJrd5qoECo[/youtube]

It's about 6 1/2 minutes long.

Don't you mean, "Why in Mordor do you not flee this place?"

I read all three volumes at primary school as well. Maybe I was not as astute as you at picking up the "something wrong". And the author had been at the Battle of the Somme in World War I(where he lost three friends) a perfectly valid reason for being disillusioned with the naive optimism of modernism. He was not a relativistic postmodernist though. It was rather amusing really; here was this quite conservative Catholic gentleman earning this huge fanbase amongst this bunch of hippies (who trampled on his garden :( - so much for flower power). I am surprised you did not target the racism or the sexism (you could do the former with Martin Luther and the latter with St Paul - bring it on!) Well on some issues he was not conservative - he opposed nuclear weapons and environmental degradation before either was fashionable. And while probably having a share of the latent racism of most in his generation, he was not jingoistic. He disliked questions like "Are the Orcs Nazis or Communists?" insisting that "we had a great number of Orcs on our own side". He was no friend of Hitler, though: "This ruddy little ignoramus Hitler, perverting, misapplying and making for ever accursed that noble, northern spirit!" (alright, a little jingoistic sounding; there was a shared love of Teutonic mythology going on). He was also not conservative in his habits of dangerous driving and running out in the streets and shouting in Old Norse or Anglo Saxon while wearing an Icelandic hearthrug with his face painted blue. Next you will be attacking him for smoking pipes of tobacco!

And I think C. S. Lewis worked through his racism and sexism (sorry fellow fans - you cannot really deny either as having existed). People change, in some ways for better, in some ways for the worse. Look at Charles Dickens (alright that is difficult without a TARDIS) he obviously became less anti-Semitic between writing Oliver Twist and writing Our Mutual Friend, but he also became more unfaithful. Now can we return to Middle Earth? Should we have a separate Narnia thread or keep them together?

What do you think of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy/Quartet including Tehanu, Flagg? I have not yet read the Discworld series, though I have read a number of modern (i.e. considerably more recent than Lewis) fantasy novels. I am surprised you did not attack the Christian element given your convictions, particularly in the Chronicles of Narnia. It's combined with a love of pagan (problematic term) mythology for both authors (Tolkien and Lewis).

Except the Hobbits are not encouraged to remain in the Shire all their lives, it is precisely in the dangerous world beyond in which they mature (despite, in human years, being quite old already). And the Shire is not exactly preserved as a haven inviolate from all intrusion: both the earlier chapters of Fellowship of the Ring and near the end of Return of the King make this abundantly clear. And both Frodo earlier in Fellowship of the Ring and Bilbo through the whole series, though not at the start of The Hobbit (when Bilbo's fairly bourgeois himself) have a frustration with the parochialism and humdrum nature of Shire life. It is certainly not entirely idealised. Of course experience of life is dangerous; I hardly think that Tolkien can justifiably be accused of denying that!