@folatefangirl / folatefangirl.tumblr.com
Level of spite: C. S. Lewis putting a lamp post in Narnia (and making it a minor plot point in at least two of his books) just because Tolkien insisted no true fantasy series would have a lamp in it.
If your salt levels haven’t reached CS Lewis, you’re not doing it right.
So it’s widely known that J.R.R. Tolkien was extremely critical of/dissatisfied with the state of academia in his time, and he also believed that linguistics, history, and literature were three facets of the same discipline that lost important context if considered individually.
Well I finally got around to reading his valedictory address, and oh my god if it isn’t the saltiest thing ever written.
Tolkien on scientific linguistics: “ … forming what one might call our ‘hydroponic’ department.”
Tolkien on using undergrads as research assistants: “Whatever may have been found useful in other spheres, there is a distinction between accepting the willing labor of many humble persons in building an English house and the erection of a pyramid with the sweat of degree-slaves.”
Tolkien on the process of getting a degree: “… a 'planned economy’, under which so much research time is stuffed into more or less standard skins and turned out in sausages of a size and shape approved by our own little printed cookery book… . I should hesitate to accuse anyone of planning it with foresight.”
Tolkien on pop-culture studies: “We now have on our hands one thousand two hundred years of recorded English letters, a long unbroken line, indivisible, no part of which can without loss be ignored.”
Tolkien on student accommodation: “Meanwhile many of the better students wish to spend more time in a university; more time in learning things, in a place where that process is (or should be) approved and given facilities… . But alas! those with the more eager minds are not necessarily those who possess more money.”
