As some of you may know, I am presenting a paper in about a month's time at the
New York Tolkien Conference. The paper will concern how we writers of Tolkien-based fanfic use the historical bias suggested in his books as an inspiration for our stories. Here is the abstract from the NYTC website:
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Abstract )
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1) I only tend to do this with LotR, and only to the extent that the Hobbits don't know everything and have a limited knowledge of the world outside of the Shire. As far as the Silm goes, I don't consider it at all except in the general "the victors write history" sense, and even that doesn't really affect my fic. So I don't have much of anything to say about this.
3) You have free rein to use my LACE meta.
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Bilbo is the actual writer, but Elrond is the most likely source of the information Bilbo used to write the Silm, so his biases are the ones conveyed (according to Lewis). Let me know if you want the article; I have it in PDF form.
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That makes a bit of sense-- though I tend to think Bilbo relied heavily on Elrond's library. I'd love to read the article! (Heh. Speaking about biases: I have my own dearly-held view about Maglor and Elrond's relationship that the article's likely arguing against.)
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Lewis for all the criticism he gets did depicts the Calmorleon culture as having positive traits, especially in Horse and his Boy. It might be interesting to draw some inspiration from there for telling a story from the POV of Rhun.
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The Fic I'm going to work on probably won't have much Historical Bias really, but it will deal with the idea that the works that make up the Published Sil and LOTR/Hobbit are 100% accurate.
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So, I wonder, if Frodo is the author of LOTR, what biases would he have? Frodo doesn't strike me as one to portray himself in an overly positive light, and certainly one would imagine that if he were doing so he might have come up with a "nobler" explanation for how his finger was amputated. I'm curious what others think might be Frodo's potential biases other than "hobbits are vital and important and good," which does (of course) make sense....
-Febobe :)
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I guess Bilbo never expecting his Memoirs be of much interest to his own kind. But after the Scouring Frodo knew The Shire would want to read the tale.
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They're an agrarian society, so it's likely they'd be biased toward the values of that society: hard work, community, simplicity, mother wit vs. book knowledge. Cultures that prioritize different values may be viewed negatively.
I'm no Hobbit expert and it's getting late, but that's just what popped first into my mind.
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Thank you for the link! That is exactly what I'm talking about. :)
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And unrelated to the project, but I totally agree and hope to cover the insignificant role certain groups of characters are assigned, for the reasons you give (and also that they were possibly not literate--or as literate--and so their histories would not have been as accessible to Bilbo, who was working in the Rivendell library).
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