cinco de mayo, and I'm stuck at work ;)

[rivendellrose]

I am so gods-damned easily amused right now. The usual "I'm at work and it's too early for my Anthro prof to have posted the readings for next week so I'm boooooooooooored" thing. Hopefully I will write fic later, but my mind has been obsessed by stupid Richie!angst all day, and I have no idea how to write that. At least not without getting karate-chopped by zinjadu as soon as I enter my basement this evening. And what with him being on a diet, my cat would probably help her.

On the thesis front, there is nothing more frustrating than trying to write about Tom frigging Bombadil. "He's... umm.... well, first you think he's a Hobbit, maybe, but he's not. And then you think maybe he's a Man. But no. And he's really old. Older than the Elves. And... umm... Tolkien never really explained him. But a lot of people think he was a Maiar or Valar, even though supposedly Tolkien said he wasn't. Yeah. And his purpose in the novel is... damn, hang on, I'm sure I had something intelligent to say about this. Lemme go check my notes. And no, I don't know what the fuck is up with all the rhyming."

Also, as regards my anthro term paper, articles on Viking women which are in German (or Icelandic, or Norwegian) do me no good. Neither do links that go nowhere. Articles in French might be helpful, but no - they're not really on my subject.

I love working on papers.

Comments

[ursula]

Bombadil is the reason why so much other epic fantasy fails: it reduces everything to Light and Dark, and forgets the rest of the world.

Bombadil and Galadriel and the Ents show a range of responses of the natural world to evil. I don't think the similarity between Goldberry & the descriptions of the Entwives is at all a coincidence.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Mmm, good point... I'd never thought of that before, except to chalk it up to a general trend in Tolkien's portrayals of women. You're right that if you add in the Entwives, there's a pretty fair continuum and a lot of similarities between Galadriel, Goldberry, and the Entwives.

Are you pinning Bombadil as "the rest of the world," in a way, then? Sort of... nature in complete freedom from human control or morality.

[ursula]

Precisely. There are restrictions on Bombadil, but they're not moral restrictions, they're restrictions of place.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

*Nods* Very true. I kind of like that about him, even though I've always been mostly just bemused by him, in general.

Honestly, despite occasional bitching, I think Tolkien did a good job of doing the whole "good versus evil" thing without doing it to the point of nausea. Yeah, the good folks are noticeably good and the bad folks the reverse, but they don't always agree, and they aren't perfect, and no given race is inherently good, if you really think about it.

[ursula]

Yeah, Tolkien is much subtler than most people (especially his fans, alas!) realize.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Very much with you on that one. Every time I think I've got him figured out, I catch something from a different angle and I realize that I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about, after all.

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

I always got the vibe Bombadil was fashioned after this guy, although I haven't really read anything on it. But I know Tolkien had read our national epic when he was writing his books.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Ooo... that's an interesting interpretation, and it's not exactly hurt by the similarity in names between Ilmatar and Iluvatar, is it? I knew Tolkien made a lot of use of Finnish in his writings, but looking at those names is just plain mind-boggling.

I really need to get around to reading the Kalevala. And will now restrain myself from jumping off on a random tangent about this in my essay.

[lokapala.livejournal.com]

I always thought that Bombadil was one of the Maiar wandering ME after the first Melkor-induced blackout. Like Osse and others. But unlike them, Tom never came back to Valinor. Where and when did Tolkien say that he wasn't a Maia?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I can't remember. I did a lot of reading when I was preparing for my thesis on Lord of the Rings, but I didn't take note of a lot of little details like that, since it was just pre-reading... stupid me, obviously I won't make that mistake again, as it's making the actual writing go a lot slower than it should.

If I ever find the citation, I'll be sure to post it. I might even just be misremembering it, but I thought I found something along those lines, and was kind of sad because that's what I thought, too.