I luckily managed to read Gatsby myself before getting it in English class. English class also wasn't generally as bad as Danish, because some of the focus had to be on language and cultural differences.
There are a lot of ways to do that though. I had one year in high school with a Danish teacher who was brilliant. He actually found interesting material and was novel and adventurous about how to approach the texts. Not just the same schematic analysis, or minute inspection of a minor detail which the class has clearly been tired of since minute three. He kinda managed to save the concept of poetry for me.
This precisely. Mordor with its smoking chimneys is partly based on what happened to Salford during Tolkien’s lifetime. Going from rural in his childhood to heavily industrialized. His experiences in the First World War are obviously another motivation.
But once you understand *how* to analyse, you can apply that to other books. Often you'll start to recognise themes and symbolism without consciously thinking about them. And that can help you read the story on multiple different levels.
Just gonna leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Sigurdsson
This was definitely of his time, but - without having studied all the background material - I'd say this is closely tied to the "nature v. industry" theme.
Problem isn't the idea of teaching analysis. It's the way it's taught, and probably also that (at least here) they start doing it at an age where extremely few students really have the capacity. This means that by the time you get to a point where you maybe could actually apply some of this in a non-destructive way to something you actually want to read, you're conditioned to despise that entire way of thinking. Sometimes to despise entire branches of literature (that's where I'm at), or just reading in general.
I agree entirely (though I haven’t read the other works you mention). Tolkien seems to have bought into the medieval view that rulers were ordained by God and therefore godlike and different to the rest of us. And the linkage between the health / presence of Kings and the well-being of a land is very obvious.
From what I hear from friends and relatives with kids, there does seem to be a sense in which the joy of reading is sometimes suppressed by technical aspects of Language Arts. And many say that they start literary criticism way too early.
Yes yes, the fact that I have a different take on a book we both enjoy and that I had shitty teachers clearly makes me a lesser writer than you, I bow my head in shame at your greatness.
I don't know whether he personally bought into it - I suspect he might have been left quite disillusioned by his WWI experiences, but again, I've never bothered with all the background books - but it's definitely a deliberate theme in Middle Earth.
Maybe this thread is getting too serious. It's gone off the rails of fun and descended into a discussion about the craft!
Damn authors, always going on about authoring! They ruined Author's Hangout!
Back in my day, this used to be a place of zany fun and bitter arguments!
Yes - and Tolkien is a great example of where he was explicitly looking to create something that echoed The Elder Edda. A mythology for England as he said. And of course he embodied many of the earlier themes.
Yes yes, the fact that I have a different take on a book we both enjoy and that I had shitty teachers clearly makes me a lesser writer than you, I bow my head in shame at your greatness.
Edit: I will admit to probably being a lesser writer, but not for those reasons.
No harm, no foul.
I will limit myself to proposing you re-read what I posted if this is the only thing you took from it.
Now there is some literature!
Tolkien specifically was writing English mythology in an Anglo-Saxon tradition. And while the story is filled with great kings and their doings, the idealized state of the English people is a cooperative democracy. Yeah, they have a king... who leaves them well alone and is largely ceremonial. Civil authority is in the hands of an elected mayor, but that's also reasonably nominal, and is mostly devolved to respected burghers.
