I think the burden of proof is on you Lesi. You are making accusations. There is a consesnus that Tolkien is a good writer, you have to give arguments first.
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Dragon Age: Origins PC Gamer preview out, tidbits...
- Thread starter buccaroobonzai
- Start date
We should ask Qwinn to post here.
hiver
Guest
I have a photo of Nixon shouting about how he will bomb Tim Cains commie ass back to China ready!
Lesifoere
Liturgist
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2007
- Messages
- 4,071
Serus said:
That'd be like saying that there's a consensus that Bioware is a great developer, so when you encounter Volourn, you need to give elaborate arguments. When the other party is stuck screaming "YOU ARE STUPID!!! WHY? YOU. JUST. ARRREEEE" in posts barely literate, it's hard to take him seriously--it's like he doesn't know any other insult. I can just imagine him typing those posts red-faced and salivating.
Also, what consensus? In academic circles, it's agreed that Tolkien was a great scholar (look to his non-fiction work: his essays are a lot more entertaining to read than LOTR--there at least he did something meaningful) and a great linguist. It's also generally held that, as a stylist of prose, he was--to put it charitably--lacking.
Are you worth wasting time typing out elaborate arguments for? Show me first that you're ready to engage at a level beyond hiver's.
Infernaeus
Novice
Serus said:
Well, she already presented a bunch of arguments, and they had no real merit.
You just assumed that the defenders have to bring arguments first Lesi. This is not the case IMHO.
Show me first. What is this, an argument between 5 years old ?
:shock:
Show me first. What is this, an argument between 5 years old ?
Infernaeus
Novice
Lesifoere said:
If it pleases the court, I would like to point out that at least two times now you have included all caps locked sentences and used several exclamation points, when I don't believe anyone else has. And you appear to be the only one with visions of red-faced slobbering people slapping away at their keyboards. Sounds like projection to me.
As far as academic circles go, I don't think any of them would be very welcoming to anyone on this forum, including yourself. That was certainly a desperate act to excuse yourself from having to make an argument with weight. You're acting like a pretentious child with some imagined high ground.
Infernaeus
Novice
Lesifoere said:
There aren't sides though. There is hiver, there is you, there is me. I quoted hiver's main decent point above. You seem to want to attack Tolkien, but you haven't said anything other than what you think of his writing. That's fine as far as it goes but in a debate its pointless unless you add something substantial behind it. Hiver pointed that out and quoted some people who have done proper criticisms of Tolkien. For this to carry on you should provide a real argument as to why Tolkien's prose is bad, or this is over.
Excellent.
Read the thread again, it's plain to see that hiver jumped on everyone who expressed a negative opinion of Tolkien, whether or not it had arguments for it, and started flinging insults. Not the kind of person I'd consider getting into a reasonable argument with.
ArcturusXIV
Cipher
You guys all need to calm down. You're not going to prove anything to each other through insults. This is about having an intellectual debate on the merits and pitfalls of Lord of the Rings, and learning from each other. I hate to be peacemaker (since they usually get shot), but I think this has gone beyond the point of intellectualism and into "your mom" insult territory.
Infernaeus
Novice
Gragt said:
The hiver issue is really inconsequential. I am not interested in how this started. At some point this became a debate, and if the parties involved are interested, I would appreciate it following the the established rules of such things so that I might join and participate in a very stimulating exchange of ideas. And it appears that I might be indulged.
Vaarna_Aarne
Notorious Internet Vandal
Peace? On MY Codex?
larpingdude16
Scholar
this game is gunna be awesome :D
ArcturusXIV
Cipher
Vaarna_Aarne said:
I don't mind matching wits, but this has degraded to the point where the argument is no longer using intelligence, instead resorting to petty insults and attacks on each others character. That, in itself, is a logical fallacy.
Infernaeus said:
It still does not address the point that it's not very stimulating to give arguments to someone who feels the need to insult everyone who does not share his vision of things. But then again this is the Codex so you can be sure it's on the menu.
ArcturusXIV said:
Still haven't had your Codex cherry popped?
Lesifoere said:
Do keep in mind that he supposedly wrote LOTR for the entertainment of his little son or grandson, so it's to be expected that the style and storytelling reflect as much.
Personally, I enjoyed The Silmarillion more than LOTR. While I'm no literature major to put the writing into proper perspective, I liked its archaic, somewhat formal style. Reminded me of the Bible. Epic stuff.
Vaarna_Aarne
Notorious Internet Vandal
And it's totally goddamn funny to watch, and a proud Codexian tradition. You are about to become a man boy!ArcturusXIV said:
ArcturusXIV
Cipher
Gragt said:
LOL, true. Seems to be a lot of hostility going on today. Seeing as we're all fans of some fairly decent RPGs, we should stop trying to eat other for breakfast.
Also, there was a point made earlier that good prose does not make a good book. I beg to differ. Good prose is one element of storytelling, and in fact, can surpass all others. Look to H.P. Lovecraft as an example. His characters and plot were paper-thin, all his stories ended the same way, and yet he is considered one of the best 19th century authors because of his use of descriptive language. Describing an orange is one thing, but describing it well is quite another. It is all in the delivery. I've read some books that have terrible prose, and I can't make it 10 pages into them before I have to drop the book. That is why one of the most important elements of writing, if you have an English professor, is "show, don't tell." You describe things in concrete terms, and in detail, rather than just shoving didactic ideas in people's faces. I'm not accusing Tolkien of this, all I'm saying is that delivery is very important. You can have the best idea in the world, and if you don't have the competency to describe it, you're never going to garner mainstream approval. Personally, being a bibliophile, I have a mental orgasm from good use of language and descriptive words. Tolkien told a story, sure, and his ideas were good, but his delivery was off. He really didn't make the world feel "alive" to me, in the sense that everything was concrete and detailed, down to the smallest speck of matter. Maybe that wasn't his intent--I don't know. But it hardly seems that Lord of the Rings was the second coming of Christ to me. Even if it did invent a new way of slicing the bread.
Lesifoere
Liturgist
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2007
- Messages
- 4,071
Okay, here we go.
People who defend Tolkien try to cite "product of his time" and "mythical epic style" as their bases, but this fabled time must be something rather different from the twentieth century I know of: writers who were his contemporaries--and even writers who lived and published and died before he--were perfectly capable of writing concise prose. Dismissing people who don't like Tolkien as simple whiners who want modern action-packed thrillers is nonsensical, polarizing and rather sad. Do you want to praise his precious landscape Romanticism? But it's been done before, and so much better, but even if not that's a strain of writing that's so inherently insipid that it parodies itself. It clashes intensely with the attempt to be epic and mythical. If anyone's read Old English or Old Norse texts, even in translation, you will notice a distinct lack of elaborate, wordy descriptions. I don't have my copy of The Poetic Edda with me, so you'll have to bear with a random translation of Atlakvida:
"Thou giver of swords, | of thy sons the hearts
All heavy with blood | in honey thou hast eaten;
Thou shalt stomach, thou hero, | the flesh of the slain,
To eat at thy feast, | and to send to thy followers.
"Thou shalt never call | to thy knees again
Erp or Eitil, | when merry with ale;
Thou shalt never see | in their seats again
The sharers of gold | their lances shaping,
(Clipping the manes | or minding their steeds.)"
...
With her sword she gave blood | for the bed to drink,
With her death-dealing hand, | and the hounds she loosed,
The thralls she awakened, | and a firebrand threw
In the door of the hall; | so vengeance she had.
Gudrun feeds her children's flesh to her husband before proceeding to murder him and burn his hall. She's not condemned for this: if anything, this is considered as right and dutiful, since as the last member of her family, it falls to her to take revenge, female or not. Next to her, Eowyn is a suckling babe.
Compare that to... well, anything from Tolkien. He draws from Norse and Old English sources, which are terse Germanic things, powerful and ruthlessly efficient in their scantness. In short, everything Tolkien's prose isn't. He tries to shoehorn Germanic warrior code into Rohan and even the grisliness of The Siege of Jerusalem (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you aren't as well-versed in this as you'd like to think you are, are you?) into the siege of Minas-Tirith. Except without the unapologetic brutality. He does what Disney does to fairytales: sanitize and water down until there remains only vapid family-safe sludge. Those things were already reinterpreted and refitted for Christian sensibilities by silly monks, and they hardly need a second dumbing-down to fit a bloodless, New Testament paradigm.
Another point is something most Codexers won't see anything wrong with: Tolkien's an ethnocentric bore. Notice that I don't use the word "racist" because I'm sure he held no active, conscious opinion of non-English people, let alone participated in bigotry (whatever else people might shout about "orcs are black but humans and elves are white!"). It's not so much that I find his setting unoriginal because I've already read other fantasy; it's that I see absolutely nothing in the so-called beauty of Middle-earth. It's dead to me. I have no patience for a dead white man lamenting the tragic loss of gray, insipid countryside in the most self-indulgent way possible. It's so hilariously, incredibly privileged (let all know their places, let Sam always call Frodo "master" because we can't have servants and country gentry be equals, and shall we get started on his attitude toward industrialization and progress?) that I can't take it one bit seriously. And Tolkien takes his work terribly, awfully seriously--apart from the flashes of weak humor here and there, it's all a long parade of serious business written in absolute earnest. There's no room for anything else but this grim march toward trumpeting epicness. You're either swept along, or you're left feeling nothing at all because the melodrama just doesn't work for you.
People who defend Tolkien try to cite "product of his time" and "mythical epic style" as their bases, but this fabled time must be something rather different from the twentieth century I know of: writers who were his contemporaries--and even writers who lived and published and died before he--were perfectly capable of writing concise prose. Dismissing people who don't like Tolkien as simple whiners who want modern action-packed thrillers is nonsensical, polarizing and rather sad. Do you want to praise his precious landscape Romanticism? But it's been done before, and so much better, but even if not that's a strain of writing that's so inherently insipid that it parodies itself. It clashes intensely with the attempt to be epic and mythical. If anyone's read Old English or Old Norse texts, even in translation, you will notice a distinct lack of elaborate, wordy descriptions. I don't have my copy of The Poetic Edda with me, so you'll have to bear with a random translation of Atlakvida:
"Thou giver of swords, | of thy sons the hearts
All heavy with blood | in honey thou hast eaten;
Thou shalt stomach, thou hero, | the flesh of the slain,
To eat at thy feast, | and to send to thy followers.
"Thou shalt never call | to thy knees again
Erp or Eitil, | when merry with ale;
Thou shalt never see | in their seats again
The sharers of gold | their lances shaping,
(Clipping the manes | or minding their steeds.)"
...
With her sword she gave blood | for the bed to drink,
With her death-dealing hand, | and the hounds she loosed,
The thralls she awakened, | and a firebrand threw
In the door of the hall; | so vengeance she had.
Gudrun feeds her children's flesh to her husband before proceeding to murder him and burn his hall. She's not condemned for this: if anything, this is considered as right and dutiful, since as the last member of her family, it falls to her to take revenge, female or not. Next to her, Eowyn is a suckling babe.
Compare that to... well, anything from Tolkien. He draws from Norse and Old English sources, which are terse Germanic things, powerful and ruthlessly efficient in their scantness. In short, everything Tolkien's prose isn't. He tries to shoehorn Germanic warrior code into Rohan and even the grisliness of The Siege of Jerusalem (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you aren't as well-versed in this as you'd like to think you are, are you?) into the siege of Minas-Tirith. Except without the unapologetic brutality. He does what Disney does to fairytales: sanitize and water down until there remains only vapid family-safe sludge. Those things were already reinterpreted and refitted for Christian sensibilities by silly monks, and they hardly need a second dumbing-down to fit a bloodless, New Testament paradigm.
Another point is something most Codexers won't see anything wrong with: Tolkien's an ethnocentric bore. Notice that I don't use the word "racist" because I'm sure he held no active, conscious opinion of non-English people, let alone participated in bigotry (whatever else people might shout about "orcs are black but humans and elves are white!"). It's not so much that I find his setting unoriginal because I've already read other fantasy; it's that I see absolutely nothing in the so-called beauty of Middle-earth. It's dead to me. I have no patience for a dead white man lamenting the tragic loss of gray, insipid countryside in the most self-indulgent way possible. It's so hilariously, incredibly privileged (let all know their places, let Sam always call Frodo "master" because we can't have servants and country gentry be equals, and shall we get started on his attitude toward industrialization and progress?) that I can't take it one bit seriously. And Tolkien takes his work terribly, awfully seriously--apart from the flashes of weak humor here and there, it's all a long parade of serious business written in absolute earnest. There's no room for anything else but this grim march toward trumpeting epicness. You're either swept along, or you're left feeling nothing at all because the melodrama just doesn't work for you.
Thank you Lesi. I started to think you are only trolling but then... surprise, you try to give some real arguments. I have some questions tough:
Whats inherently wrong with Tolkien's attitude toward progress and industrialization ? He was a conservative - you suggest it is something wrong per se. Maybe this is not to your liking, maybe your political views are different but that is NOT an argument.
"Tolkien takes his work seriously" - it is wrong because... ? Dostoievski was deadly serious too - it makes him a bad writer how exactly ?
Whats inherently wrong with Tolkien's attitude toward progress and industrialization ? He was a conservative - you suggest it is something wrong per se. Maybe this is not to your liking, maybe your political views are different but that is NOT an argument.
"Tolkien takes his work seriously" - it is wrong because... ? Dostoievski was deadly serious too - it makes him a bad writer how exactly ?
ArcturusXIV
Cipher
Lesifoere said:
*claps hands*
hiver
Guest
I dont feel such a need gragt. Dont strawman me please.
I did respond to a few first posts about Tolkien with some berserkerness i felt appropriate as a response to arrogantly stating ridiculous opinions as fact.
In my view they didnt deserve anything better as a response.
And even then it was done in slightly humorous way.
Arcturus was the only one that gave some arguments for his opinion so in next post i explained to him i included his quote as fun, thinking apology is not necessary because of the apparent humorous nature of :kickintheballs: comment.
Now despite Lesifoere attempt to weasel out of this and to maybe score a few points by accusing me of hysteria and other laughable crap you could maybe think for yourself, maybe?
I think i responded to arcturus normal posts in quite a normal way, didnt I? Even if we disagree on some things.
:adjusts monocle:
Thats where i disagree with you most vehemently dear fellow poster. All parts of writing must work together to form a cohesive whole or in this case a good book.
Funnily that you took Lovecraft as an example since his prose was very tiring for me to read, especially because he abused the hell out of "tell - dont show" technique often describing and talking about how something was terrifying and scary which of course had the completely opposite effect on the reader. At least today. Maybe in those times actually telling people something is scary worked.
Lovecraft?
This seems as some rather personal weird point of view since thats the most appraised part of Tolkiens works. If you complained about not enough characterization i could understand, but this?
What relevance does the "smallest speck of matter" have in this discussion?
No! Really? If i called you a dumbass now would you take it as a serious and undeserved insult?
(looks over shoulder to see gragt arms crossed, tapping his foot) Alright, alright damn it! Friggin peace loving robots..mumble..cant leave me ... mumble... insult everyone... mumble...
Qwinn
Scholar
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2008
- Messages
- 666
Oh, I've just been watching in amusement for a while. But this is too good now.
Personally, I love Tolkien, and that -would- put me on Hiver's side, except for one thing.
Lesifoere has just finally offered us a true, honest opinion of why she doesn't like Tolkien - he's not "progressive" enough. He's a "dead white male" talking about "privilege". He was obviously an unabashed admirer of Western Civilization, and paid homage to it in a truly beautiful way, which must annoy the committed leftist no end.
I am thoroughly enjoying what must be an explosion of cognitive dissonance in hiver's mind. He must now be realizing that Lesifoere is right... Hiver just never noticed before that the things I stand for (and God knows hiver considers me the epitome of all that is evil) are also the things Tolkien, someone whose writing he's always admired, stands for. I can feel the neurons sizzling from here.
Hiver has strayed from the groupthink. He will struggle in pain with it for a while, but he will soon realize he's in need of reeducation. I fully predict that in 2 year's time, hiver will hate Tolkien with every bit as much passion as he's defended it in this thread.
Qwinn
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