Monday, April 04, 2022
Continuities
Tom Shippey, Roots and Branches. Selected Papers on Tolkien (Berne: Walking Tree Publishers, 2007), p. 18:
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In general, though, I think that the conclusion he drew from such continuities between ancient poetry and modern life is perfectly clear. He thought that the heroes of antiquity had not gone away. They were still there, in the landscape, in names, and probably in the gene-pool. They and the poetry about them and the concepts which that poetry had embodied might not be well-known or well-recognised any more, but the concepts at least were still a living force and very much part of his, Tolkien's, personal experience, and of other people's too if they would only realise it.
