Saturday, December 4, 2010

Enlightenment v. Romanticism as seen in JRR Tolkien

I was readying a somewhat interesting but very lengthy review of the Lord of the Rings, particularly the Two Towers, when I came across this section (see below; view webpage here).  I think the author, David Brin, makes a good point: that in opposition to Feudalism/Monarchy rose Capitalism/Democracy with the Enlightenment leading the way.  Yet the sterile nature of industry, equal access, free markets, etc., led to a counter-rebellion, or the Romantic movement.  One may see these two sides continue to battle it out in our secular, postmodern culture, between those who see wonder in "harder" science and those who find wonder in "softer" myth. 

[...]almost from its birth, the Enlightenment Movement was confronted by an ironic counterrevolution, rejecting the very notion of progress. The Romantic Movement erupted as a rebellion against the rebellion.
In fairness, it didn't start out that way. The first Romantics stood with their Enlightenment predecessors against feudalism and clericalism and welcomed the French Revolution as a step toward a kind of utopian universal brotherhood. Even today, men like Thomas Jefferson stand as icons of both Enlightenment and Romanticism.
But this changed when the industrial revolution hit full stride. Suddenly, where once gentry and clergy ruled, there were arrogant new powers striding about. An entrepreneurial bourgeoisie. A new intellectual elite of science. And a clanking, noisome ruction of impudent machinery.
Even democracy began to seem less classically pure when it was taken off a pedestal to be practiced for real by farmers, shopkeepers and a rising middle class, all of them arguing, wheedling and conniving amid an incredible din.
Temblors began splitting a chasm between Romantics and Enlightenment pragmatists. The alliance that had been so formidable against feudalism began turning against itself. Trenches soon aligned along the most obvious fault line, down the middle -- between future and past.
In this conflict, J.R.R. Tolkien stood firmly for the past.
Calling the scientific worldview "soul-less," he joined Keats and Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Henry James and many European-trained philosophers in spurning the modern emphasis on pragmatic experimentation, production, universal literacy, progress, cooperative enterprise, democracy, city life and flattened social orders.
In contrast to these "sterile" pursuits, Romantics extolled the traditional, the personal, the particular, the subjective, the rural, the hierarchical and the metaphorical.
 The article/review is entitled J.R.R. Tolkien - Enemy of Progress, and goes at length to detail the ways in which Tolkien was a Romantic and used many literary cliches to entrench traditional story-telling, both in his day and now today with Peter Jackson's trilogy.  I still very much enjoy the movies, but am also seeing them in a more understanding and critical light.  

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