Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 10:42 am  

All my favourites in one thread.

Pratchett, Biggles, Lego, an acceptance that computer games aren't (all!) junk and a healthy disdain for Tolkeins 'masterpiece'.



Minty, will you marry me?

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 12:14 pm  

Scooter Nik wrote:

All my favourites in one thread.

Pratchett, Biggles, Lego, an acceptance that computer games aren't (all!) junk and a healthy disdain for Tolkeins 'masterpiece'.



Minty, will you marry me?

How much Lego have you actually got?

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 12:19 pm  

Mintball wrote:

How much Lego have you actually got?

Oooh discussing the dowry! I like it.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 12:23 pm  

It should be borne in mind that I also like Wagner.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 1:00 pm  

Mintball wrote:

It should be borne in mind that I also like Wagner.

Are you watching the Met performing the Ring? Recorded the first 2 so far, not yet viewed.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 1:05 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

Are you watching the Met performing the Ring? Recorded the first 2 so far, not yet viewed.

I missed the first part, so have got myself the Blu Ray of Rheingold. I'm going to give myself over to it this weekend while tb is off watching the Tigers in Perpignan.

There's the start of a series on BBC4 this evening, with the director of Covent Garden explaining the whole cycle.7.15pm, I think.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 1:51 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Ignoring the fact that you said "a bit of ..."

It's a major work of fantasy fiction and a jolly good romp. The creation of the languages was an extraordinary feat. Which doesn't stop it being, IMO, overrated.

It shares with the likes of John Betjeman a rather reactionary attitude toward industrial and urban Britain. The Shire is England's countryside; Mordor is the industrial England – in essence, then, the midlands and north.

He cribbed from other sources – not in itself a problem, but hilariously, JRR himself claimed that the only resemblance to Wagner's Ring cycle was that both included a ring and rings are round, although various literary scholars have pointed out that this is a tad disingenuous – not least in the fact that both were influenced by a range of source materials, including Volsunga and the Nibelungenlied, but also in that Wagner had imbued his ring with certain powers, which was not something that was in the original myths and legends.

But my point would be, in essence, that LOTR fails as 'great literature' because it is little more than what it is (and it's arguably over long and indulgent). That's not a snobbish comment on genre fiction, though: I'd rate Terry Pratchett far, far more highly than JRR – simply because the bulk of the Discworld novels go beyond straightforward fantasy tales and have something to actually tell us about the human condition. You don't have to read them like that, but the satire is most certainly there. They're also deceptively simply written, and yet can have you laughing on one page and crying on the next.

I agree on most of this although others have also said there are hints that the ring was the H-bomb and Sauron was just the embodyment of the German nation (Evil thought to be destroyed only to return).
Tolkien did whilst joking say himself that it was a major work of creating a mythical history of GB as ours was destroyed when the Romans then the Vikings and finally the French decided that we had rather nice land that they wanted to own.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 2:06 pm  

Anakin Skywalker wrote:

I agree on most of this although others have also said there are hints that the ring was the H-bomb and Sauron was just the embodyment of the German nation (Evil thought to be destroyed only to return) ...

Yet Tolkien himself objected to the anti-German rhetoric that the government used during the war, even though he was avowedly anti-Nazi: he didn't like the demonisation of a whole people and didn't consider it any better if it was doneby the UK than if it was done by Goebbels.

There are major religious themes in it – JRR being a very observant Catholic, who is said to be responsible to CS Lewis finding faith (although he was less impressed when Lewis opted for the good old CofE).

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Fri May 17, 2013 2:29 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Yet Tolkien himself objected to the anti-German rhetoric that the government used during the war, even though he was avowedly anti-Nazi: he didn't like the demonisation of a whole people and didn't consider it any better if it was doneby the UK than if it was done by Goebbels.

There are major religious themes in it – JRR being a very observant Catholic, who is said to be responsible to CS Lewis finding faith (although he was less impressed when Lewis opted for the good old CofE).

Indeed but as you say he said other influences were not true as well plus he didn't need to demonize the German nation himself to use the idea.
My point is that if you start pulling it apart there is an awful lot in it to find (It's influences obviously).

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Sat May 18, 2013 6:33 am  

Gove accused of bullying by NAHT I can only assume that the weasely little shit was himself bullied as a schoolboy and judging by the way he's playing around with sports funding, I reckon the closest he came to any physical exercise was as timekeeper for the school speedchess championships And in other education news: Academy group accused of funding extravagant jollies at taxpayer expense

Gove accused of bullying by NAHT I can only assume that the weasely little shit was himself bullied as a schoolboy and judging by the way he's playing around with sports funding, I reckon the closest he came to any physical exercise was as timekeeper for the school speedchess championships And in other education news: Academy group accused of funding extravagant jollies at taxpayer expense