[Download] "Tolkien and Dogs, Just Dogs: In Metaphor and Simile (J.R.R. Tolkien) (Critical Essay)" by Mythlore # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Tolkien and Dogs, Just Dogs: In Metaphor and Simile (J.R.R. Tolkien) (Critical Essay)
- Author : Mythlore
- Release Date : January 22, 2009
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 205 KB
Description
ONE CRITIC OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN, Sandra Miesel, concludes that the "identification of prototypes and analogies is, at best, a limited accomplishment" (43). And so it is with one of Tolkien's simple and favorite subjects--dogs. In a make-believe world, time, and place filled with fantastic creatures (some supernatural, some just plain bizarre), Tolkien depends on dogs to achieve a variety of literary goals. Dogs certainly appear as real dogs in the novels, but they also provide a basis for numerous analogies, both metaphor and simile. Understanding how extensively and for what explicit purpose(s) Tolkien employs dog references in The Lord of the Rings, perhaps the greatest fantasy-fiction work of the twentieth-century, will not only increase the appeal of the work and foster a greater appreciation of the author's writing skills, but will also allow readers to more easily grasp Tolkien's intent. Aware of the familiarity with and affection for dogs on the part of the people of the Middle Ages, as well as of his own contemporary reading audience, not to mention of himself and his children, Tolkien alludes to dogs several times. They help make a very long, grandiose six-book novel more palatable. Dogs play both literal and figurative roles. Literally, they open and close the story, thereby focusing reader-attention on the ordinary, everyday life in the rural communities of the Shire and Bree. Though dogs have only a minor physical presence in the medieval-like setting of The Lord of the Rings, they usher hobbits and readers alike into and back from the fantastical splendors of Rivendell and Lothlorien, lands of the Elves; and of Rohan and Gondor, lands of the horse-lords and kings of old. The juxtaposition of one of the lowliest and most commonplace creatures of everyday life against the fantastic, "outlandish" (The Lord of the Rings [LotR] I.1.24), "strange" and "queer" (I.2.43) denizens of a fictional world grounds readers in the mundane setting from which Frodo and Sam depart and to which they gratefully return. However, in the hands of Tolkien, the language-meister, figurative language involving dogs accomplishes much more.