To give you another option for responding to my posts, I am putting this one from today's freewrite here:
Discuss in a blog post any idea raised in class today by one of your classmates or that you discussed in your freewrite, but did not discuss in class. If doing so would compromise your pseudonym, feel free to email yours to Dr. Donovan who will post it for you.
3 comments:
In my freewrite, I talked about "Mythopoeia" being an argument about purpose. Since Tolkien wrote this poem with Lewis in mind, I think he wanted to argue the overarching idea that life has purpose because of the Creator of life. And this purpose for life as a whole is necessary for us to find purpose in sub-creation and mythmaking. If mythology is a fantastical reflection of reality, and if reality has no purpose, then why would there be a purpose for mythology? It would be a waste of time; and yet we find ourselves getting lost in Middle-earth, feeling content that it reflects our lives in some ways. By addressing something that Lewis already cared about, Tolkien was able to relate his side of the religious argument more effectively.
Something that was brought up in the discussion that I didn't think too much about in my free-write was why "Mythopoeia" was written as a poem. I really liked how people pointed out that poems are easier to take straight into our hearts and minds because they come directly from other's hearts. I think that when we analyze work, we often try to get to the root of why or how someone did something and we try to pull everything apart until we understand all of the components. But I think that the use of the poem was meant to not be pulled apart. I think it was supposed to be taken at face value so that as we go about our day, we are reminded of pieces of the poem and understand them on a deeper level than we might if we just analyzed it. On occasion, I think that analyzing certain pieces of work leads us down the wrong direction. Since reading "Mythopoeia" and just letting my mind wander from it, I have seen and felt different elements in the poem in moments that have surprised me. And I think that those mini-epiphanies of moments of being awestruck are why it is important that Tolkien wrote "Mythopoeia" as a poem.
Mythopoeia is definitely a poem you must read a couple times in order to understand it better. One thing I wanted to mention is the tone in the first stanza. Tolkien says ¨You look at trees and label them just so…” I felt that Tolkien is a sardonic in this stanza. He says you almost as if he is calling out C.S Lewis, then while he grants him that trees are trees in his latter stanza he writes that they are made by God and uses descriptive language for the trees as if saying they are not just trees. I felt that this tone is uncommon in most of his books but not so uncommon in his essays, possibly because he is arguing his point or maybe a sign of insecurity. Regardless I find it very amusing to think of Tolkien as a fickle and sometimes petty man, It goes to show that while he was a literary genius he was still a man.
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