the lord of the rings
by John at 3/02/2004 11:02:00 AM
This article from salon.com discusses the changing relevance of the Lord of the Rings to popular culture. (You'll have to watch a commercial to get in).
Though he detested these interpretations, Tolkien offered a truce by drawing a line between "allegory," which placed responsibility on the author, and "applicability," which left readers free to find parallels of their own without pretending to read the author's mind. However, the worldwide success of Peter Jackson's film version of "The Lord of the Rings" has produced a whole new generation of mind readers claiming to understand Tolkien's motives, and opened up another front in the culture war that has long simmered around Middle-earth's frontiers.
These letters dispute the author's findings.
