Hammond ou Scull a écrit :On peut remarquer, en guise de mesure (certes peu scientifique) de l'attention apportée à l'essai de Tolkien, que dans la copie de l'exemplaire de 1936 des Proceedings of the British Academy conservé dans la Upper Reading Room de la bibliothèque bodléienne d'Oxford, Beowulf : Les Monstres et les Critiques a été lu jusqu'à l'épuisement. Il est couvert de marques au crayon et de taches d'encre, alors que le reste du volume est relativement propre.

(09.09.2011, 17:12)Meneldur a écrit : C'est dans l'introduction du recueil Tales Before Tolkien. Je n'arrive pas à trouver de version en ligne de la lettre anglo-saxonne.

Citation :Tolkien est le kyste sur le cul de la littérature fantasy. Son oeuvre est massive et contagieuse : vous ne pouvez l'ignorer, n'essayez donc même pas. Le mieux que vous puissiez faire, c'est d’essayer de crever l'abcès. Car il y a beaucoup à exécrer : sa suffisance wagnérienne, ses aventures bellicistes en culotte courte, son amour étriqué et réactionnaire pour les statu quo hiérarchiques, sa croyance en une moralité absolue qui confond morale et complexité politique. Les clichés de Tolkien (elfes, nains et anneaux magiques) se sont répandus comme des virus. Il a écrit que le rôle de la fantasy était de "réconforter", créant ainsi l'obligation pour l'écrivain de fantasy de dorloter le lecteur.

Citation :Il qualifie son travail de weird fiction (la fiction d'horreur du début du XXe siècle qui mélange pulp et horreur, à l'instar des œuvres de Howard Phillips Lovecraft) et appartient à un groupe d'auteurs parfois surnommé new weird qui tente de faire sortir le mouvement fantasy des clichés commerciaux imposés par les successeurs de John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

Citation :Miéville a explicitement souhaité que la fantasy s'éloigne de l'influence de J. R. R. Tolkien qu'il a critiqué comme étant réactionnaire et abêtissant. Dans une contribution au Socialist Review10, il déplore le manichéisme et le conservatisme présents dans Le Seigneur des anneaux.

Citation :Q: Tolkien -- Middle Earth meets Middle England: This article did not sit well with many readers, many of whom claim that you came out as pompous in that text. Some wonder how you could make such claims about Tolkien's writing and the clichés it has spawned, while Michael Moorcock's novels suffer from the very same issues. What would you respond to such postulations?

You're right, plenty of people hated that article (which had a life of its own that startled me - that's the internet effect. It was written, don't forget, intended as a humorous polemical critique for a relatively small audience) and there are at least two reasons. One is that they disagree: the other is that they didn't like the tone. Of course I don't like it if people think I'm pompous, partly just because I don't relish that idea, and partly because it can mean that the actual arguments don't even get addressed. If people ever do want to argue about it, I think it's very important to establish which of those two criticisms - or both - is being levelled. To criticise the piece on grounds of pomposity, for example, because someone disagrees with the specific claims, which has sometimes happened, seems to me something of a category error.

But in fact I prefer not to rehash that ground. I've said my piece, my opinions haven't changed and they're very easy to find, but I also blush rather at some of my earlier formulations and think that my critique of Tolkien is neither new nor particularly interesting, and there's not much point reiterating it, so (for reasons similar to those in my answer to question 9), I don't like going over that - I've already done so far too many times. It's hardly radical to criticise him these days.

Much more interesting to me recently is the question of which elements of Tolkien's work, criticisms notwithstanding, I admire and/or find interesting: his obsessiveness; his tragedianism; his pathological relationship to war; and above all his hostility to allegory. These seem to me very fecund areas for consideration, even perhaps inspiration.

(One thing I would add parenthetically is that I don't understand the point about Moorcock, whose novels seem to me predicated on extremely different moral, political and aesthetic foundations than Tolkien's. Apologies for not understanding.)

Citation :His second daughter was named Írien and her mother-name was Lalwendë (laughing maiden). By this name, or in shortened form Lalwen, she was generally known. She went into exile with her brother Fingolfin, who was most dear to her of all her kin; but her name was not changed, since Lalwen fitted the style of Sindarin well enough. 29
[...]
29 But the true equivalent in Sindarin was Glaðwen (Common Eldarin stem g-lada- > Quenya lala-, Telerin glada, Sindarin glað-).