Great comments, Pearl. I want to point to this one just quickly:
One of the things that hooks me about Tolkien is the way he transforms archetypes. His characters aren't written to novelistic rules, they're players in an epic, and yes, they ARE archetypes. But they're three-dimensional ones.
This is so true. I never could quite fathom some of the vehement criticisms his novel got when it originally came out, especially the slams against the characters as being dull = unbelievable = too good to be true. They were very believable and recognizable -- and accessible -- or we wouldn't still be 'recognizing' and 'accessing' them like mad today.
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Date: 2006-05-16 03:21 pm (UTC)One of the things that hooks me about Tolkien is the way he transforms archetypes. His characters aren't written to novelistic rules, they're players in an epic, and yes, they ARE archetypes. But they're three-dimensional ones.
This is so true. I never could quite fathom some of the vehement criticisms his novel got when it originally came out, especially the slams against the characters as being dull = unbelievable = too good to be true. They were very believable and recognizable -- and accessible -- or we wouldn't still be 'recognizing' and 'accessing' them like mad today.