Quotations and Literature Forum

hello again. I just want to learn your opinion about LotR. I think the J.R.R. Tolkien use alleghory, he told us the story of the second Vienna siege by using Elves, hobbits, dwarfs and Orcs. The think the Orcs are Turks, people of Rohan(who are great Horse riders) are hungarians,the Gondor is the Holy Roman Empire, Minas Trith is the Vienna, the Minas Morgul is Belgrade,Elves are Bavarians, the people of the east are the Crimean Tartars. If you think deeply about the book, you can easily realize that. For example, the Ottomans couldn't achieve the victory at the siege, because the way of crimean tartar reinforcements was blocked. At the book, the Haradrim's ships were captured by Aragorn's forces. More like this, can be found at the book, so i believe it is the story of the II.Vienna Siege ,by the Ottomans, but Tolkien rejected that, he said he didn't use alleghory... And, what do you think about that? Do you agree, or disagree?(I would explain my ideas better, but my eng. is not good enough to do that, sorry)

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"God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
Voltaire

i think that there many conclusions that can be drawn from this, however since tolkein didn't use allegory, it is entirely possible that he simply wrote the story for the story itself, and any similarity to historical events is mere coincidence.

that's not very likely, but it is a possibility.

Tolkien himself explicitly denied having used allegory in the Lord of the Rings on several occasions. He claimed that allegory was pretentious and never used it in his books about Middle Earth. So no. I would go with the 'no allegory in LoTR'.

che

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Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.

to what extent does 'unknown/unconscious/ non-deliberate' traits of plagiarism of real events occur in fictional works ?

Any Allegorical connections to be found in these books are merely the result of professors looking too hard.

something somewhere i found a long timg ago had something like that as a quote from Tolkein, i can't actually remember the whole thing, but i think that's close.

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Sanctuary: a small safe place in a troubling world

"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence."- Professor Tolkien

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As it was, then again it will be.
Though the course may change sometimes, rivers always reach the sea.