Posted: April 20, 2000 at 03:35:27: by pabbott
You make some interesting points, but just for the fun of it I think we should turn the question on its head. Instead of asking whether Tolkien is worthy of being taught as part of the modern canon, we might ask whether the modern canon is worthy of Tolkien. It would seem to me that the principal criteria used to determine whether a work of "literature" is taught at the college level today is just how dreary it is. Of course it helps if the work in question contains a great deal of overt Marxist, feminist, post-modernist, deconstructionist cant. Now I don't really care what Tolkien's politics were. No doubt he and I would have disagreed on a great many things. Certainly one can read into his stories just about whatever one wants to. The point is that Tolkien saw himself first and foremost as a story teller. Capturing and holding the reader's interest was his first responsibility. I think we can all agree that he did so magnificently. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the literary establishment were to ignore his works completely. The millions and millions of people around the world who have read his works and loved them say more about the enduring value of what he wrote than any college professor's blather can ever do.
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