Changing Styles of Presentation

After watching and listening to all the multimedia projects, one thing that stuck out to me was just how many different styles and methods we used to present the information about the stories, history, and life connections to Tolkien that we had discovered in our research. Some groups created podcast-esque presentations, others used a more formal bullet-points and associated speech, and others used imagery to emphasize points (of course, all projects contained aspects of more than just one of these categories). This made me wonder about the many ways Tolkien writes for his different literature.

The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth was written in a very “radio-drama” manner, while keeping many of the alliterative and rhyme aspects of the way the original poem was written.

The Hobbit, Farmer Giles of Ham, and Smith of Wootton Major all have aspects of “children’s bedtime story” to them, and the art styles for Farmer Giles and Smith of Wootton Major (as well as some of the drawings for The Hobbit) are created to have a very medieval feel.

The Silmarillion is meant to contain and provide history for Middle Earth, and both it and the Lord of the Rings begin with a history textbook-esque method of providing readers with information.

Each method Tolkien uses for his works provides a very specific feel for the works and changes how they behave as pieces in the wider world of literature. If the Silmarillion were written as a children’s bedtime story, the purpose of the stories would change drastically, as would the amount of information. If the story of Turin Turambar were told for children, Tolkien might have decided to leave out the three suicides and instead have a happier ending. If The Hobbit were meant to sound more like Beowulf, would Bilbo have been our hero? Or would Tolkien have chosen to follow Thorin, the King returning to claim his throne only to fall at the end of his journey?

We’ve played around with removing seemingly “unimportant” sections of Tolkien’s works, seeing how that might change his overall messages, but I think it would be interesting to look at changing the overall styles of his stories, and how that would impact the messages and themes overall.

“In a hole in the fabric of the universe there lived a god.

Now, this was not one of those minor gods of bedtime stories or petty wars for heaven; this was the One God, all-loving and all-knowing, who created the world – only he hadn’t created the world just yet, which is why he was sitting in a hole in the fabric of the universe.”

(Credit: Tumblr user "lintamande-reblogs")