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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3970 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 21, 2023

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I'm wondering if this could be some of the cause of the stilted dialogue, as you put it. Tolkien is not trying to write the way that we talk. If he were, he would be wretchedly failing. I think he is trying to make it poetic instead, and to give the right feel.

@Soriek I would definitely underscore this point. When he wrote LOTR, Tolkien was very consciously trying to create an English epic. He wanted something that was comparable to the epics from antiquity he studied, but written in a way that evoked his own country. So if the dialogue seems stilted, I'd say it's because he is deliberately trying to match that tone.

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