book #32- J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings edited by Harold Bloom
Modern Critical Interpretations is a series by Chelsea House Publishers. In this particular volume, Chelsea House handed the editorial and introductory reins over to the Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale, Harold Bloom, who from his introduction makes it quite plain that he does not think much of Tolkien's literary efforts. In this collection of previously published essays, one finds arguments for why LOR is not literature and was not meant to be, why LOR is an epic, why LOR was written to be a contemporary mythology (not hard to argue since Tolkien meant it to be), why LOR is "an adventure story in the Edwardian mode," and many other things. No where, however, did I get a good explanation of what literature is, or mythology, or genre writing, or an epic, all subjects about which I have become increasingly interested over the past couple of years and for which LOR poses some interesting questions.
Mostly, however, I am looking for leads on three things:
1.) I am interested in how Tolkien is a modern writer. By this I mean to say that Tolkien is modern in the same sense that fundamentalist Christians are modern because in their quest for a return to the root of their religious heritage, they have created something utterly new and incapable of existing in any previous age.
2.) I am interested in Tolkien as the modern literary obverse of James Joyce. Both of them labored to create a national myth and had a faith in the power and necessity of such myths. Both of them were inventors as well as craftsmen of language. Both believed in history, decay, renewal, and love. The two writers share many similar aims and means, and yet you would be hard-pressed to find two sensibilities or kinds of literary output which are further apart. I have some ideas about what and why and how all this is, but I want to learn a lot more about the subject.
3.) I am interested in how such poorly considered and indifferently written essays can find publishers who not only submit to but actually solicit their publication. (I mean, the book wasn't all about things like how the Ring is an "obvious" vaginal symbol and how Frodo is most potent when he takes possession it and then is symbolically castrated when Gollum bites off his finger. But there was enough of stuff like that for equal shares of laughs and irritated sighs)
So I'm going back to the library in search of better scholarship on the subject. My quest continues....