The Rhetoric of Middle-earth

The Superversive: The Rhetoric of Middle-earth (An excerpt from Writing Down the Dragon)

Many critics have claimed that Tolkien is a bad prose stylist. Does this mean that The Lord of the Rings is a ‘good bad book’, merely an entertaining melodrama? To answer the question, we need to define the difference between melodrama and drama. I am indebted to Stephen R. Donaldson for this partial but useful definition: Where melodrama is about a Villain, a Victim, and a Rescuer, drama is about how those three characters exchange roles.

Gollum is an excellent example. When we meet him in The Two Towers, he appears to be a pure villain, with Frodo and Sam as his intended victims. But Frodo tames him, for a while, just enough so that Gollum can play the rescuer in the Dead Marshes. Captured by Faramir, he becomes a victim, and Frodo rescues him. He is victimized in another way by Sam, who fails to see how Gollum is struggling towards the good, and inadvertently pushes him back into his evil habits. Then Gollum becomes the villain once more, betraying the Hobbits to Shelob; but in the end, at Mount Doom itself, he turns (despite his worst intentions) into the final rescuer who saves the Quest from catastrophe.

Whatever The Lord of the Rings is, it is not a melodrama, any more than Hamlet or the Iliad. It contains several dramas, interlaced in a complex pattern, and each told in a style appropriate to the incidents and the characters. But none of these styles are the default style of the modern ‘literary’ novel. There are no showpiece sentences for the critics to make much of; there is no stock vocabulary of symbolism, Freudian, Marxist, or what not, by which to decode the text.

Why One Dimensional RINOs Lose

Bob Pasrks: Why One Dimensional RINOs Lose

Cherterton's Fence

The Superversive: Cherterton's Fence

'Another Irony Alert'

Barry Arrington (at Uncommon Descent): Another Irony Alert -- Of course, the *real* irony will be lost on that fool Arrington.

You see, there was a time that Mr Barrington let slip the truth that Elizabeth Liddle is intellectually dishonest. Then, following her passive-aggressive and I'm-a-poor-little-woman-why-are-you-picking-on-me-you-mean-old-man whinge, he "apologized".

His "apology" was one of those pseudo-apologies. You know, the "I'm sorry IF" gambit. And, if you know me, then you know how greatly the dishonesty of those pseudo-apologies disgusts me.

So, I pointed out -- and would not stop pointing out -- that:
1) Elizabeth Liddle is, in fact, intellectually dishonest;
2) Barry Arrington had, in fact, said that Elizabeth Liddle is intellectually dishonest;
3) Mr Arrington's "apology" was nothing of the sort, and was, in fact, itself an example of intellectual dishonesty.

That is, while I strongly disagreed with his act of (pretending to) apologize to her for having spoken the truth about her, I insisted that IF he was going to claim to apologize to her for having spoken the truth about her, that he must, in fact, apologize, rather than offering up one of those "I'm sorry IF" pseudo-apologies.

Now, do not think I did this unawares. I *knew* that he would ban me from UD for my insistence upon intellectual honesty, even toward "the enemy". I was putting him to the test, and he failed, as I expected he would. He showed himself to be a fool, and I want nothing to do with fools.

One simply cannot cannot compromise with he who seeks one's death and still be a living man. Likewise, one simply cannot compromise between truth and non-truth and still be an honest man.

Allen West Won… For Now

Bob Parks: Allen West Won… For Now -- the commentor RoseRRR links to a .PDF of the Saint Lucie County election results. She says: "I’ve only looked at the first two pages, but it seems to report a voter turnout of OVER 100% in every one of the 94 jurisdictions except for one, resulting in an average turnout of 141.10%.

I’ve never reviewed elections reports before, but I am mystified by these results. If something is so off here, what must be going on in the OTHER counties in Florida? And by extension, what about the rest of the country?

I have never been one to engage in conspiracy theories, and I acknowledge my personal grief over Tuesday’s results leaves me looking for answers, but WTF is going on?"

What's going on is Demorcatic Party election fraud -- as has been going on at least since when Kennedy stole the Presidential election from Nixon ... and Nixon, knowing full well that his "defeat" was a fraud, kept quiet about it "for the good of the country".

All that is different is that the Democrats are more open about it now, and are doing it on a more massive scale.


Edit:
I understand why Nixon kept quiet, "for the good of the country", about the Democratic Party (and Mafia) vote fraud which gave the "win" to Kennedy. I understand why he reasoned that it would be worse for the nation if the citizenry-as-a-whole were to understand just how easily the Democrats could steal a national election than for him personally to not become President.

Yet, the fact remains, we are here today -- where Democrats openly solicit and accept illegal foreign campaign contributions, where Democrats openly count the "votes" of non-citizens, where Democrats openly practice voter intimidation against actual US citizens, where Democrats openly boast of having "voted" multiple times, where Democrats openly manufacture "votes" -- in large part because Nixon chose not to expose and fight Democratic election fraud then.

Edit2:
The Ninety-Nine Percent

Edit3:
West challenges results as Florida declares vote-tally over amid recounts and irregularities

Citizen, are you willing to submit to Islam?

Or, to put the question another way, "Are you a citizen, or are you a subject?"

Lawrence Auster: Obama makes good on his pledge in Cairo: maker of “Innocence of Muslims” video is sentenced to a year in prison

I am her equal

"...I am her equal" ... by which the poor pussy whipped shlubb really means, "She is my superior" (h/t Mark Richardson)

The conflation trap

The conflation trap -- "It is not only mainstream libertarians (and of course, to a far greater extent, conservatives) that tend to conflate the results of crony corporatism with those of free markets; such conflationism is all too common on the traditional left as well. The difference is that the evaluations are reversed; where the right-wing version of conflationism treats the virtues of free markets as reason to defend the fruits of corporatism, the left-wing version of conflationism treats the objectionable fruits of corporatism as reason to condemn free markets."

Ann Coulter Loses It

Ann Coulter (with whom I have increasingly less patience, and this comes close to being the proverbial straw): DON'T BLAME ROMNEY

Finding his voice

Laura Rosen Cohen: Miracles -- I'm verklempt