Why was Aragorn in exile and not in Gondor?

[Orcrist]

I have read the LOTR before but can't remember an important point. I'm rereading right now and am in book five. I can't stand it anymore and need to know the answer to this question: WHY IS ARAGORN IN EXILE?
any help will be greatly appreciated. if the answer is a spoiler please don't tell me.

 

[Alcuin]

Arvedui’s claim to Gondor’s throne was based in part upon his descent from Isildur. This is excerpted from Appendix A, “(iv) Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion”.

On the death of Ondoher and his sons, Arvedui of the North-kingdom claimed the crown of Gondor, as the direct descendant of Isildur, and as the husband of Fíriel, only surviving child of Ondoher. The claim was rejected. …

The Council of Gondor answered: “The crown and royalty of Gondor belongs solely to the heirs of Meneldil, son of Anárion, to whom Isildur relinquished this realm. In Gondor this heritage is reckoned through the sons only; and we have not heard that the law is otherwise in Arnor.”

To this Arvedui replied: “Elendil had two sons, of whom Isildur was the elder and the heir of his father. We have heard that the name of Elendil stands to this day at the head of the line of the Kings of Gondor, since he was accounted the high king of all the lands of the Dúnedain. While Elendil still lived, the conjoint rule in the South was committed to his sons; but when Elendil fell, Isildur departed to take up the high kingship of his father, and committed the rule in the South in like manner to the son of his brother. He did not relinquish his royalty in Gondor, nor intend that the realm of Elendil should be divided for ever.

“Moreover, in Númenor of old the sceptre descended to the eldest child of the king, whether man or woman. It is true that the law has not been observed in the lands of exile ever troubled by war; but such was the law of our people, to which we now refer, seeing that the sons of Ondoher died childless.”

To this Gondor made no answer. The crown was claimed by Eärnil, the victorious captain; and it was granted to him with the approval of all the Dúnedain in Gondor, since he was of the royal house. ... Arvedui did not press his claim; for he had neither the power nor the will to oppose the choice of the Dúnedain of Gondor; yet the claim was never forgotten by his descendants even when their kingship had passed away. ...

This is a most remarkable passage.

1. First, there are two bases of Arvedui’s claim:
   • He is the Heir of Isildur, the senior king – the High King (designated by the prefix Tar- in Quenya, as in Tar-Minyatur, and by Ar- in Sindarin, as in Ar-vedui and Ar-agorn) – and as High King was, as Tolkien wrote of Aragorn in Unfinished Tales, “The Palantíri”, “de jure … rightful King of both Gondor and Arnor, and could, if he willed, for just cause withdraw all previous grants to himself.”
   • Arvedui’s marriage to Fíriel, last surviving child of Ondoher, as a claim both on his wife’s behalf as Ruling Queen of Gondor and on his own as her spouse of royal lineage. And in this regard, Arvedui and the Council of Arnor reminded the Council of Gondor that in Númenor, there had been three Ruling Queens, and that law was never rescinded.
   (Note that the Council of Gondor’s claim that the kingship “is reckoned through the sons only” is the Salic Law the French kings of the House of Valois used as a legal defense against the claims of the English kings of the House of Plantagenet in the Hundred Years War when England claimed France as its own.)
2. He implicitly claimed the throne of Gondor as Heir of Elendil and so as High King of all the Númenóreans.
3. Gondor did not respond. They had no legitimate refutation to Arvedui’s and Fíriel’s claims, so they chose to say nothing and do as they preferred. This is reflected in the prophecy at his birth by Malbeth the Seer:

   Arvedui you shall call him, for he will be the last in Arthedain. Though a choice will come to the Dúnedain, and if they take the one that seems less hopeful, then your son will change his name and become king of a great realm. If not, then much sorrow and many lives of men shall pass, until the Dúnedain arise and are united again.

4. Arvedui did not press his claim; for he had neither the power nor the will to oppose the choice of the Dúnedain of Gondor; yet the claim was never forgotten by his descendants even when their kingship had passed away. This is most remarkable! The Chieftains of the Dúnedain in the North were in fact the Kings of Arnor, but Arnor was lost; and elsewhere I have read (by Michael Martinez, I believe) that the Rangers of Arnor were in fact a military force, driving out, as Aragorn said in his (somewhat gentle) rebuke of Boromir, “dark things … from the houseless hills, or creep[ing] from sunless woods… What … safety would there be in … the homes of simple men at night, if the Dúnedain were … all gone into the grave?” The Rangers were what remained of the Army of Arnor.

To follow onto this, Tolkien suggests that Gondor was, in essence, ignoring the original intent of Isildur in establishing Meneldil’s reign in Osgiliath: In Unfinished Tales, “The Third Age”, in the essay “I. The Disaster of the Gladden Fields”, footnote 10 says that

Meneldil was the ... son of Isildur's younger brother Anárion... Isildur ... established Meneldil as King of Gondor. ... He was in fact well-pleased by the departure of Isildur..., and hoped that affairs in the North would keep them long occupied.

to which Christopher Tolkien adds,

Meneldil was the fourth child of Anárion, ... and ... was the last man to be born in Númenor. [This] is the only reference to his character.

When Valandil, Isildur’s only surviving son, came of age, he was in no position to challenge any of Meneldur’s decisions or his cousin’s authority; and so the rule of Gondor became, as Meneldur hoped, independent of that of Arnor.

Besides Arvedui’s latent claim to the throne of Gondor, three claims are placed by Aragorn and Elrond, who is essentially chief steward (both as keeper of the remaining royal regalia and in providing a home in which to nurture the young Chieftains) and senior advisor to Arnor.

1. The first is put politely but firmly by Elrond to Boromir. In diplomatic terms, there is no shade or misunderstanding in Elrond’s claim put forward on Aragorn’s behalf:

   He is Aragorn son of Arathorn, … and he is descended through many fathers from Isildur Elendil’s son of Minas Ithil. He is the Chief of the Dúnedain in the North…

   After which Aragorn, as he and Elrond together unravel the dream-riddle for Boromir, asks of Boromir, “Do you wish for the House of Elendil to return to the Land of Gondor?” Boromir’s response is immediate and in sharp contrast, starkly undiplomatic; then he steps back a bit, and adds, “Yet we are hard pressed, and the Sword of Elendil would be a help beyond our hope,” which instigates Bilbo’s recitation of All that is gold does not glitter. Remember, Bilbo knows who Aragorn is, and sees himself as Aragorn’s subject.
2. The second is put forward by Aragorn himself when he first enters Old Gondor, when Éomer and his éored confront the Three Hunters in Rohan, formerly the Gondorian province of Calenardhon, still legally part of Gondor until Aragorn as King confirms the gift to Éomer after the War:

   I am Aragorn son of Arathorn and am called Elessar, the Elfstone, Dúnadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil’s son of Gondor.

   And Legolas sees “a white flame flicker[ing] on the brows of Aragorn like a shining crown.” Éomer accepts this claim! Aragorn repeats this at the Stone of Erech after entering Gondor proper and Halbarad unfurls Arwen’s standard (which I suppose the Dead can see):

   I am Elessar, Isildur’s heir of Gondor.

3. And yet all of these claims are slightly flawed, or at least incomplete. pgt gets it right when he cites Faramir’s recitation of the full, and proper claim:

   [O]ne has come to claim the kingship again at last. Here is Aragorn son of Arathorn, chieftain of the Dúnedain of Arnor, Captain of the Host of the West, bearer of the Star of the North, wielder of the Sword Reforged, victorious in battle, whose hands bring healing, the Elfstone, Elessar of the line of Valandil, Isildur’s son, Elendil’s son of Númenor.

   The people of Gondor did not want just another Dúnadan of Middle-earth: they wanted one who claimed his Númenórean heritage, who reminded them of who they really were, even though they were all in exile from Númenor.

Add to that Ioreth’s statement that, “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known,” and Aragorn’s claim to Gondor is complete.

Aragorn is not alone in exile. All of Númenor is in exile. Gondor welcomed him as their Númenórean king.

 

[CirdanLinweilin]

Arvedui’s claim to Gondor’s throne was based in part upon his descent from Isildur. This is excerpted from Appendix A, “(iv) Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion”.This is a most remarkable passage.

1. First, there are two bases of Arvedui’s claim:
   • He is the Heir of Isildur, the senior king – the High King (designated by the prefix Tar- in Quenya, as in Tar-Minyatur, and by Ar- in Sindarin, as in Ar-vedui and Ar-agorn) – and as High King was, as Tolkien wrote of Aragorn in Unfinished Tales, “The Palantíri”, “de jure … rightful King of both Gondor and Arnor, and could, if he willed, for just cause withdraw all previous grants to himself.”
   • Arvedui’s marriage to Fíriel, last surviving child of Ondoher, as a claim both on his wife’s behalf as Ruling Queen of Gondor and on his own as her spouse of royal lineage. And in this regard, Arvedui and the Council of Arnor reminded the Council of Gondor that in Númenor, there had been three Ruling Queens, and that law was never rescinded.
2. He implicitly claimed the throne of Gondor as Heir of Elendil and so as High King of all the Númenóreans.
3. Gondor did not respond. They had no legitimate refutation to Arvedui’s and Fíriel’s claims, so they chose to say nothing and do as they preferred. This is reflected in the prophecy at his birth by Malbeth the Seer:
4. Arvedui did not press his claim; for he had neither the power nor the will to oppose the choice of the Dúnedain of Gondor; yet the claim was never forgotten by his descendants even when their kingship had passed away. This is most remarkable! The Chieftains of the Dúnedain in the North were in fact the Kings of Arnor, but Arnor was lost; and elsewhere I have read (by Michael Martinez, I believe) that the Rangers of Arnor were in fact a military force, driving out, as Aragorn said in his (somewhat gentle) rebuke of Boromir, “dark things … from the houseless hills, or creep[ing] from sunless woods… What … safety would there be in … the homes of simple men at night, if the Dúnedain were … all gone into the grave?” The Rangers were what remained of the Army of Arnor.

To follow onto this, Tolkien suggests that Gondor was, in essence, ignoring the original intent of Isildur in establishing Meneldil’s reign in Osgiliath: In Unfinished Tales, “The Third Age”, in the essay “I. The Disaster of the Gladden Fields”, footnote 10 says that to which Christopher Tolkien adds, When Valandil, Isildur’s only surviving son, came of age, he was in no position to challenge any of Meneldur’s decisions or his cousin’s authority; and so the rule of Gondor became, as Meneldur hoped, independent of that of Arnor.

Besides Arvedui’s latent claim to the throne of Gondor, three claims are placed by Aragorn and Elrond, who is essentially chief steward (both as keeper of the remaining royal regalia and in providing a home in which to nurture the young Chieftains) and senior advisor to Arnor.

1. The first is put politely but firmly by Elrond to Boromir. In diplomatic terms, there is no shade or misunderstanding in Elrond’s claim put forward on Aragorn’s behalf:After which Aragorn, as he and Elrond together unravel the dream-riddle, asks of Boromir, “Do you wish for the House of Elendil to return to the Land of Gondor?” Boromir’s response is immediate and, in contrast, undiplomatic; then he steps back a bit, and adds, “Yet we are hard pressed, and the Sword of Elendil would be a help beyond our hope,” which instigates Bilbo’s recitation of All that is gold does not glitter. Remember, Bilbo knows who Aragorn is, and sees himself as Aragorn’s subject.
2. The second is put forward by Aragorn himself when he first enters Old Gondor, when Éomer and his éored confront the Three Hunters in Rohan, formerly the Gondorian province of Calenardhon, still legally part of Gondor until Aragorn confirms the gift to Éomer after the War:And Legolas sees “a white flame flicker[ing] on the brows of Aragorn like a shining crown.” Éomer accepts this claim! Aragorn repeats this at the Stone of Erech after entering Gondor proper and Halbarad unfurls Arwen’s standard (which I suppose the Dead can see):
3. And yet all of these claims are slightly flawed, or at least incomplete. pgt gets it right when he cites Faramir’s recitation of the full, and proper claim:The people of Gondor did not want just another Dúnadan of Middle-earth: they wanted one who claimed his Númenórean heritage, who reminded them of who they really were, even though they were all in exile from Númenor.

Add to that Ioreth’s statement that, “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known,” and Aragorn’s claim to Gondor is complete.

Aragorn is not alone in exile. All of Númenor is in exile; and Gondor welcomed him as their Númenórean king.

Well explained!!!!!


Funnily enough this whole discussion helps my own Heir to the Throne in my own High Fantasy.


Thanks everyone!


CL

 

[Grond]

What Hador said!!

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Oh, well. . .

So I may as well add to the pile.

As CL said -- a couple of years ago -- the "exile" is a common trope in Medieval Romance, but of course, is not limited to it; Aragorn is an exemplar of what the Encyclopedia of Fantasy calls a "Hidden Monarch". See the article here:

SF Encyclopedia Editorial Home

Welcome to the third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

sf-encyclopedia.uk

True to the type, though he is not exactly "lowly", he is unaware of his heritage until it is revealed to him by Elrond.

The "exile", if we want to call it that, is due to another structural element in the story of the hero I've mentioned elsewhere: he must be hidden from the false father who seeks his destruction. I'll say in passing that there's a parallel -- or at least an echo -- of this, in Frodo's story, as he embarks on his quest under an assumed name.

Interesting that Hador brings up the banner, as it does indeed signal Aragorn's transition from Romance to High Mimetic hero, to use Northop Frye's terminology. In his study on the symbols of fictional modes, he says that the Tree of Life of pure Myth becomes the Wizard's staff of Romance, which is then transmuted into the "fluttering royal banner" of the High Mimetic mode.

I hadn't considered the idea that the emblems on the banner would have been visible to the Dead at Erech, but it makes sense. That they would be "invisible" to the remaining members of the Fellowship present is appropriate, as they are following Aragorn through his "Night Journey" (to use another term from the Encyclopedia*), and though Erech marks the point at which his authority over the Dead is acknowledged, it's not quite over.

In fact, the transition is achieved by stages; Hador mentioned the Palantir, and I see Gandalf's handing over of it -- and his manner in doing so -- as presaging this. It certainly impressed the others present as something unusual and extraordinary.

* You can read the relevant article here:

SF Encyclopedia Editorial Home

Welcome to the third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

sf-encyclopedia.uk

 

[Olorgando]

... Aragorn's transition from Romance to High Mimetic hero, to use Northrop Frye's terminology. ...

Tom Shippey mentions Frye's 1957 book "An Anatomy of Criticism" in his "Author of the Century" from 2000. Frye defines five very general literary modes:

Myth (heroes are divine beings)
Romance (a term that seem clearly derived from French, with some older meaning compared to which our modern usage must be a very degraded version)
High Mimesis (tragedy or epic)
Low Mimesis (classical novel)
Irony (anti-heroes)

Shippey's main point is that one reason some critics may be antsy about LoTR is because it simply refuses to stay put in any of those above pigeon-holes.
He mentions Isengard and the meeting of Gandalf, Aragorn, Théoden, Merry and Pippin, where a character from each level is basically present - and they interact with one another.
Same can be said for single characters, with Aragorn ranging from Romance (his "natural" level) at least down to Low Mimesis, or from the point of view of Barliman Butterbur that obscure, ruffianly-looking "Strider" could very well fit an anti-hero cliché. Everything below his "natural level" would be disguise, and a function of his exile.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Yup -- "Anatomy of Criticism" is what I was referring to. Done it before; will no doubt do it again -- like it or not!

Seriously though, I found "Anatomy" the single best book for understanding Tolkien. Highly recommended.

 

[Olorgando]

Seriously though, I found "Anatomy" the single best book for understandingTolkien. Highly recommended.

Um, yes, ... but looking at its (original) publication year, 1957 … probably seriously out of print? 😞

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Actually, it was reprinted a number of times -- in the US, at least -- most recently in 2000, and is available from Amazon, for instance, although used copies are readily available from many sources.

My own original paperback copy from, I guess, the 80's is falling apart from many rereadings, and is covered with underlining and notes, some so small and smeared that I can no longer make them out. I was fortunate to find a hardback first printing a few years ago, but can't bring myself to mark it up.
I might mention that the 2000 printing is a "2nd, revised edition", though from looking through it in a bookstore, the only "revision" I could see was the inclusion of an introduction by the critic Harold Bloom, which struck me as conveying quite a bit of the tone of damning with faint praise; not surprising, given that Frye failed to gush sufficiently over Bloom's pet theory of literary Darwinism: "When I started talking about the Anxiety of Influence, he stopped listening". I'd recommend finding one of the earlier reprints-- IIRC, they were larger in size, too, so easier on the eyes.

I suppose Bloom was chosen because of his critical prestige; that seems to have been a factor in using him as editor for the "Modern Critical Interpretations" series of books -- although I don't know all the ins and outs of that project. In any event, his introduction to the volume of essays on LOTR (2008)shows him to be deeply unsympathetic to Tolkien, as well as uninterested in finding any sort of recent work on him; I was dissapointed to discover "modern" meant nothing later than the early 80's, and in fact go back to the 60's, reprinting essays first collected in "Tolkien and the Critics". Still, it's useful to have some of those old studies in print again.

One final thing: though I called "Anatomy" the "best single book for understanding Tolkien" above, I don't want to lead anyone astray, so I'll add a cautionary note: the book, being from 1957, doesn't mention him; in fact, I doubt Frye had even heard of him at that point (I'm quite sure that, as a professor of literature in the 60's, he heard plenty later, from students thrusting LOTR at him and shouting "this is just what you've been talking about!").

Here's the cover or the paperback edition I commonly see in US secondhand bookstores:

And here's the original hardback edition, should you be lucky enough to find one:

$500 at Abe Books -- yikes!

 

[Alcuin]

..."Anatomy" [is] the "best single book for understanding Tolkien"... I don't want to lead anyone astray, so I'll add a cautionary note: the book, being from 1957, doesn't mention him; in fact, I doubt Frye had even heard of him at that point (I'm quite sure that, as a professor of literature in the 60's, he heard plenty later, from students thrusting LOTR at him and shouting "this is just what you've been talking about!").

Here's the cover or the paperback edition I commonly see in US secondhand bookstores:
View attachment 6005

I used this edition as a freshman English text over 40 years ago. It is a magnificent piece of work: Derrida and Foucault are raw sewage in comparison. But if you consider matters, that is no great accomplishment, regardless of Frye’s exquisite scholarship: Derrida and Foucault are just raw sewage.

 

[Gothmog]

I will have to look for that book and check it out. As for "Critics" I am always reminded of a Robert Heinlein quote:

A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. The is logic in this; he is unbiased - he hates all creative people equally.

from Time Enough for Love: More from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

I take little note of critics as too often they claim that "The Author" put This or That into a book despite the statements of said author while at the very same time ignoring what they as readers bring to the book themselves.

 

[Alcuin]

I will have to look for that book and check it out. As for "Critics" I am always reminded of a Robert Heinlein quote:

A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. The is logic in this; he is unbiased - he hates all creative people equally.

from Time Enough for Love: More from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

I take little note of critics as too often they claim that "The Author" put This or That into a book despite the statements of said author while at the very same time ignoring what they as readers bring to the book themselves.

Northrup Frye is well worth the price of a second-hand college textbook, and since there are usually a lot of them in circulation, that should be fairly cheap. Frye’s work, however, is rich in insight and depth, opening a work of literature to see its deeper meanings and the themes that connect it to other works over the centuries. It is marvelous, enjoyable, profoundly useful material you will never regret learning. Squint-eyed Southerner refers to it often!

Derrida and Foucault are infested carbuncles on the rump of Western intellectualism, directly responsible for much of the institutional septicemia and Gramscian damage that is killing academia. Their method of Critical Analysis is just that: Criticism without constructive purpose, without intellectual foundations, based upon raw emotion and scatological infantilism; distortions, perversions, even absence of logic; and twisted reason worthy of a madhouse, which is what it has produced on university campuses. Using the pestilent practices of these two escapes of the infernal Abyss, their followers empty a sound text of all its meaning and insert into it instead the vile regurgitations of their febrile imaginings.

As Treebeard so eloquently put it, “There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men bad enough for such treachery.” Derrida and Foucault are the twin Sarumans of the academic world, and all their followers little Orcs wantonly hewing and burning the structure of Western civilization with the deliberate and stated intention of bringing it down. They are termites of the mind, causing more damage than would the return of the Black Death.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Alcuin, you simply have to stop mincing words, and tell us what you really think!

Gothmog, on the subject of critics and criticism, there's a difference between criticism as value-judgement, which Heinlein, among thousands of other authors, rail against, and criticism as a study of literature. Frye argues against the former being the goal of "criticism", and in fact begins his book with what he calls a "Polemical Introduction", in which he makes his case for the latter.

He expresses his attitude, in part, this way (I'm paraphrasing): "just as there is an order of nature, which is the task of the scientist to discover, so there may be an order of words, which is the job of the critic to work out".

As to the commonly raised objection that critics find things in a writer's work that he never "intended", Frye addresses that too; you can read it for yourself, so I'll just say here that the creation of a literary work, as opposed, say, to a piece of scientific or assertive writing, is in part -- often in large part -- an unconscious process, and elements emerge from the author's unconscious mind that his "conscious" mind is unaware of. To give a very minor example, Dickens was horrified when it was pointed out to him that he had given many of his characters names with initials that were variations on his own. That was something he certainly never "intended", but is nevertheless there -- as is much else that escaped from his unconscious mind. The same can be found in Shakespeare, and in many other writers. And I think we can find the process at work in Tolkien too -- especially as we now have so many of his precious drafts available for study.

Boy -- I seem to have really run this thread off the rails!

Oh, BTW, Alcuin -- I see Anatomy on ebay and elsewhere for as little four or five bucks. I can well believe it's been 40 years since you bought a college textbook -- new or secondhand!

 

[Olorgando]

Ah, we’ve gone OT, in astronomical terms, beyond the orbit of Neptune (that chunk of material discovered in 1930, later discovered two be actually two (and now more) chunks, the smaller “moon” being given the name “Charon”, was downgraded to minor planet designation in 2006; Earth has a huge moon compared to the biggies Jupiter and Saturn, whose largest moons exceed Mercury in diameter if not in mass, but for our moon to be equivalent it would need to be almost the diameter of Mars!)

What was the original OT question?

Oh right, Northrop Frye's 1957 book "An Anatomy of Criticism".

The Wikipedia article on him mentions “the … deconstructivist criticism and other expressions of postmodernism [that] came to prominence in American academia circa 1980s.”

Just off the top of my head, the critics that lambasted JRRT were all considered to be “modernists” (the term “Bloomsbury Group” pops into mind unbidden – though it included John Maynard Keynes, not the worst of economists, whose tenets have only been applied by the parasite set of any western country extremely selectively). Felt themselves to be oh so avant-garde. Problem is, for these people (or any people, probably), that they age, and become “conservative” about their cherished beliefs – once considered “radical”. Problem for them (and I do not exclude myself from this recurring phenomenon of human history), (some of) the next generation take this “radical” position as a starting-point to “progress” further. So, the “postmodernists” consider the “modernists” to be stuffy old codgers.

But in my “library” (definitely exceeding 1000 books, perhaps again half as many as per definition) I have a fairly complete collection of the writings of Richard Dawkins. And what I remember most clearly (evolution and natural selection are not much, if at all, less complicated than astrophysics and related fields – possibly more so, as they can’t do without statistics and probability) is one statement of his:

“Any “cultural relativist" (by definition "postmodernist") sitting in a jet at 33000 feet moving at well above 600 mph is a flaming hypocrite.”

Eom.

(P.S. I may now have made it about to Proxima Centauri in my OT deviations, as per my above astronomical babblings.)

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Frye gave a response to criticisms of his method in a talk in the 80's. I found it hilarious. I'm away from my library, but I'll insert it later, if this thread is still creeping around out of its grave.

 

[Alcuin]

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

JRR Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, “Foreword to the Second Edition”

But in this case I am not complaining about people who don’t like the book: my granddaughter doesn’t like it. That’s their prerogative, and there is no accounting for taste. Nor am I berating “modernists” who prefer noir fiction, or brutalist literature (e.g., Clockwork Orange or Fight Club). I am speaking of people who have no purpose but destruction: intellectual vandals whose sole purpose is to pull apart the thin veneer of civilization, in the deluded belief (one hopes) that what replaces it will be some utopian dreamworld rather than an incredibly violent, miserable, tyrannical society (or lack thereof) more akin to what replaced the Western Roman Empire, “the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

“And [men] as miserable slaves would please [them] far more than [men] happy and free. There is such a thing as malice…”

Alcuin, you simply have to stop mincing words, and tell us what you really think!

Lest there be any doubt, I seek to remove it. Plain speaking is best: “speaking Truth to Power,” is that not the phrase they like to use? But only their “truth,” and Heaven help you if you dare question their abuse of power.

I can well believe it's been 40 years since you bought a college textbook -- new or secondhand!

I’ve a house full of them. Bibliophilia. We had about 6500 in our old house; only about 1800 now.

Frye gave a response to criticisms of his method in a talk in the 80's. I found it hilarious. I'm away from my library, but I'll insert it later, if this thread is still creeping around out of its grave.

Please do.

Problem is, for these people (or any people, probably), that they age, and become “conservative” about their cherished beliefs – once considered “radical”. Problem for them (and I do not exclude myself from this recurring phenomenon of human history), (some of) the next generation take this “radical” position as a starting-point to “progress” further. So, the “postmodernists” consider the “modernists” to be stuffy old codgers.
...
“Any “cultural relativist" (by definition "postmodernist") sitting in a jet at 33000 feet moving at well above 600 mph is a flaming hypocrite.”

But these are not new ideas! They are old ideas that have been tried – and failed! – over and over. Was Soviet Russia a success? The Holodomor? Everyone knows Hitler was a murderous maniacal monster, but Stalin killed more Russians than the Germans. What of Mao? Was the Cultural Revolution a success? Mao killed between 60 and 100 million Chinese. Pol Pot, Mao’s student and protégé, slaughtered one in three Cambodians. These post-modernists are just another stripe of Marxists.

I’ll stop now. This is a Tolkien board.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Well, that's a lot of them, all right -- but have you priced new or (current) secondhand ones recently?

I recall one of my professors, back in the 80's, cringing when informed by me that a paperback he'd ordered for the class went for $11. The horror! I wonder what he'd think of the $150-$200 charged by the gougers these days?

And this is not to mention that university libraries are forced to cut back on book purchases because those other gougers, the publishers of academic journals, are now charging $20,000-$40,000 for an annual subscription.

 

[Alcuin]

In Massachusetts, I frequented several used bookstores. There are fewer in Tennessee, and those more widely scattered. Yes, I have priced them recently. My collection is slowly growing again.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Well, that's good.

I must confess necessity forces me to limit my book buying to the 1 to 2 dollar range.

 

[Gothmog]

As to the commonly raised objection that critics find things in a writer's work that he never "intended", Frye addresses that too; you can read it for yourself, so I'll just say here that the creation of a literary work, as opposed, say, to a piece of scientific or assertive writing, is in part -- often in large part -- an unconscious process, and elements emerge from the author's unconscious mind that his "conscious" mind is unaware of.

This is very true and most authors would agree without complaint (though sometimes with surprise). It is when a critic finds something and claims that it was the intention of the author to say This in spite of what the author has said on the matter that I have a problem with. It is the difference between, as Tolkien stated, Allegory and applicability.

‘I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse “applicability! With “allegory”; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in purposed domination of the author.’

from Humphrey Carpenter's JRR Tolkien, a Biography.

 

[Olorgando]

*sound of screeching, skidding tires*
Um, I guess we'd agree that Aragorn was neither "modernist" nor "postmodernist".
But the power that caused him to be in exile, would that be either?
I'd think "postmodernism" might be out of the question, as it seems to have raised its (mostly) ugly head about a decade after JRRT's death.
Modernism would fit quite well, perhaps, as per a definition I've read that Hitler, Stalin and Mao were basically modernism run totally amok.
Lots of Sauron / Saruman there.