For Steph

[changeling]

There is another way of explaining the appeal of both Harry and Frodo, and that is as a retreat from the wreckage of modernism. The argument is neatly summed up by Patrick Curry, in a short but pungent book called Defending Middle-earth - Tolkien: Myth and Modernity. Curry sees Tolkien as a backlash against modernity, 'a world-view that began in late 17th century Europe, became self-conscious in the 18th century enlightenment and was exported all over the world, with extreme self-confidence, in the 19th. It culminated in the massive attempts at material and social engineering of our own day. Modernity is thus characterised by the combination of modern science, a global capitalist economy and the political power of the nation-state.'

Post-modernity, then, questions all these things, and restores to the world what modernity tried to take away. Post-modern theorist Zygmunt Bauman sets forth the argument in his book, Postmodern Ethics: 'Post-modernity brings re-enchantment of the world after the protracted and earnest, though in the end inconclusive, modern struggle to disenchant it. The post-modern world is one in which mystery is no more a barely tolerated alien awaiting a deportation order... We learn to live with events and acts that are not only not yet explained but inexplicable. We learn to respect ambiguity, to feel regard for human emotions, to appreciate actions without purpose and calculable rewards.'

In Patrick Curry's analysis, Sauron is a modernist gone mad, a technological power aiming to enslave. Frodo is pre-modern, able to accept the strange magic of Middle-earth, and heroic in his simplicity and doggedness. The hippies who made Lord of the Rings a cult book in the 1960's instinctively recognised Tolkien's anti-modernism, ignoring, if they ever knew, that its author was a conservative Catholic Oxford don who wore tweeds.

--"Speak of the Devil, here's Harry", Sydney Morning Herald

Comments

[rincemaj.livejournal.com]

There's been a lot of stuff written on the fact that Tolkien was very much a romantic, and that the book was a romanticism vs modernity clash, wherein Tolkien bemoaned the rise of modernity but ultimately acknowledged its inevitability.

Basically he was one of that generation of English who pined for the days of country squires, powerful royalty, and the little people 'knowing their place'.