03-24-2009, 12:56 PM | #21 | |
Swan-Knight of Dol Amroth
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Quote:
As a matter of fact, I do think that Gollum was a proto-Hobbit, but much ink and more pixels have been devoted to the other side.
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"What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions are not beyond conjecture." - Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial. |
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03-24-2009, 01:26 PM | #22 | |
Lady of the Ulairi
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I think Gandalf's words are another of the cases where the reminders of earlier conceptions were not removed or corrected in the beginning of LOTR. FOTR has a lot of them, in fact, and TT has a few.
The final clearer conceptions can be found in the Tale of Years, which was written about 10 years later than FOTR. Quote:
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03-24-2009, 01:51 PM | #23 | |
Elf Lord
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Quote:
By the way, without taking the thread off on a tangent, where do you stand on the shining eyes of the Elves?
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03-24-2009, 03:28 PM | #24 |
Enting
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I'm not sure what quote you're referring to on the elves eyes. But, without even reading it, I assume they had large eyes. Large to human standards, but not abnormally large to human standers (within physical human norm).
In which case you're right as we don't take this elf quote as a literal translation... However... if thats the case, I think we stumlbed upon another "balrogs wings" debate Last edited by Tinman : 03-24-2009 at 03:34 PM. |
03-24-2009, 03:56 PM | #25 | ||
Elf Lord
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From the Silmarillion:
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Seems to me that they're all figurative. I'll try to post some quotes later on. I have a meeting...
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03-24-2009, 04:56 PM | #26 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Elf Lord
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The quotes below all come before we even arrive at the Council of Elrond. Few, if any, are literal. How do we know that those describing Gollum are literal or figurative?
Apologies for the apparent overkill, but maybe the complete list will prove useful in research for someone. That said, this isn't every occurrence of the word "eyes" but just the ones with some mention of shining, glowing, glinting, etc. that I thought relevant. There are a handful of other occurrences that I did not include because they were either about Gollum or they were only marginally relevant, in my opinion. Quote:
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~The DPR "Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning." |
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03-24-2009, 05:31 PM | #27 | ||||
Enting
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My support:
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Last edited by Tinman : 03-24-2009 at 05:36 PM. |
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03-24-2009, 10:42 PM | #28 |
Enting
Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 68
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Also, doesn't physical corruption fit in with the concepts of the decent to malkor. Kinda like the theory that orcs are corrupt men/elves (Not that i wanna start that argument, but you get the point)
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03-25-2009, 12:14 PM | #29 |
Swan-Knight of Dol Amroth
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As I said, these are all literary tropes: cf. "a twinkle in her eye."
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"What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions are not beyond conjecture." - Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial. |
03-25-2009, 12:51 PM | #30 |
Enting
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Since when has the changing of eye color been concidered a literary trope
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03-25-2009, 01:00 PM | #31 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Mar 2008
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The problem, Tinman, is that if Gollum's eyes do in fact change in light and color, the question arises about Aragorn, Frodo, Gandalf, Arwen, Glofrindel, Samwise, the Nazgul, and all the other people Tolkien uses the same sorts of phrasing for.
It isn't that it's impossible to write figuratively about some people and literally about others, but if an author does so, there has to be some way to tell the difference and thus far I can't see any. Tolkien describes the eyes of all sorts of people as flashing, glinting, shining, dimming, etc. and we have no mechanism for determining when he's being figurative and when it's literal. Absent some sort of clear difference between the literal and figurative descriptions, and logically knowing they can't all be literal, we simply can't say if any are literal.
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03-25-2009, 05:08 PM | #32 |
The Black Númenórean
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*Pokes head in*
This is true, especially since he used such descriptions like "The Tallest", "The Fairest", "The Strongest", etc. for just about every damn elf he cared to introduce. Which of said descriptions "eyes glinted" and so on applied to a character, do you think he meant literally, and when does he give an example of that? If ever? Because Tolkien's rather hap-hazard way of adding these physical descriptions, especially in conjuction with "evil" characters always confounded me.
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03-25-2009, 05:21 PM | #33 | ||
Lady of the Ulairi
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There is a good theory that the objects that emit light in the world of Shadow are visible even in the World of Light. Elendilmir was such a thing:
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Meet the Nazgul by ~The-Black-Panther |
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03-26-2009, 11:11 AM | #34 | ||
Swan-Knight of Dol Amroth
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Quote:
Edit to add, from Ellis Peters' The Holy Thief: Quote:
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"What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions are not beyond conjecture." - Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial. Last edited by Attalus : 03-30-2009 at 10:34 AM. Reason: additional example |
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