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For Tuesday: Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapters 3-6 (at least--feel free to go further or stop for rest a bit sooner)

Edward Burne-Jones, The Love Song (1868-77)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Colin Wilson, in his article on Tolkien (quoted in the handout I gave you on Thursday), writes that "[Tolkien] dislikes the modern world, and like Eliot or Yeats, is allowing this negative feeling to trigger a creative response…In fact, like The Waste Land, it is at once an attack on the modern world and a credo, a manifesto." Where do we see this through Chapter 6 of the book? How is Tolkien creating a sort of 'credo' to the natural world, as opposed to the more orderly, mechanical world of man (or even, in a sense, the mundane world of the hobbits)?

Q2: When asked about the elves, Sam responds that "They are quite different from what I expected--so old and young, and so gay and sad, as it were" (Ch.4). How does Tolkien depict the elves in these early chapters, and how does he contrast them to the hobbits? Related to this, why couldn't he have told the story through the eyes of one of the elves, such as Gildor? 

Q3: In the movies of LOTR, Merry and Pippin are comic foils, the 'silly' hobbits next to the more serious and heroic Frodo and Sam. How does the book contradict this characterization, and what makes them interesting--and ultimately, more complex--characters than their initial 'roundness' would suggest? (remember our discussion of complex vs. round characters on Thursday). 

Q4: A more controversial aspect of the book is Tolkien's use of songs and poetry, which many critics regard with distaste, finding them bad or even doggerel poetry. And yet, if we take them at face value, what do they add to the book, and to the experience of Middle Earth? How might we regard them less as useless additions than scholarly footnotes? 

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