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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34547 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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I just looked this up because I find this hard to believe. The mountain-dwelling, hairy, clannish, greedy dwarves check off more Scottish stereotypes than Jewish ones.

I found this link: https://www.timesofisrael.com/are-tolkiens-dwarves-an-allegory-for-the-jews/ saying that Tolkien didn't intend the Jewish-Dwarf analogue

In that article it does say

According to Tolkien scholar John Rateliff, author of a two-volume “Hobbit” history published in 2007, Tolkien drew inspiration from Hebrew texts and Jewish history when developing the dwarves. As craftsmen exiled from a bountiful homeland, the dwarves spoke both the language of their adopted nations and – among themselves – a Hebrew-influenced tongue developed by Tolkien.

I think it's just a bit of a disagreement over words, he didn't mean them as allegorically representing the Jews, he just was inspired by the Jews while writing them. In fact I think this is the article that I was remembering.

Tolkien in general spoke numerous times agains explicit ham-fisted allegories. He preferred to work in much more subtle manner and let the reader derive conclusions from the whole story in it's full richness rather than do primitive pattern-matching. E.g.:

"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

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