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A random thought just occurred - and I welcome speculation. Do you/we think Lord of the Rings will have staying power in human history 1000 years from now or o

A random thought just occurred - and I welcome speculation. Do you/we think Lord of the Rings will have staying power in human history 1000 years from now or only last one century or so? Inherent assumptions: humans will survive 1000 years and so will books.

IlliOnato 4y ago
Homer's works have survived for far longer than that...
simonh 4y ago
I think it will be studied and valued indefinitely, if not for anything else, due to it's massive impact on literature and popular culture in this era, which shows no sign of waning. If anything in my lifetime it's influence has increase dramatically. Nobody in the future interested in the culture of the 20th and 21st century, and quite possibly well beyond, could ignore it. Having said that, will non-academics in that far future still read it for entertainment? That's harder to say because in large part it depends how much language evolves. We still read Shakespear, go to see the plays, and even go and see film productions of it in cinemas but it's language is only diverged from our by 400 years. A thousand years can allow for a lot more linguistic divergence. Chaucer from 900 years ago is hardly recognisable as English, but that's mainly due to a shift that occurred in only a few hundred years. If such a shift occurs again then today's fiction might become inaccessible, but we can't know that in advance.
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  > That's harder to say because in large part it depends how much language evolves. LoTR is interesting here because it explicitly contains examples of language change. In fact language change was one of Tolkien's original motivations for developing the history of Middle Earth - to provide a historical context for the evolution of Elvish. E.g. Elves being sundered during the First Age and then developing independent languages. Even Frodo is aware of 'high' Elvish. The language of the Rohirrim, to the hobbits, sounds something like Old English does to us. Tolkien himself uses archaic modes of English to describe some of the events near the end of the story, some of which might already be difficult to understand for modern readers. One example is when he states that some characters were 'in the van' meaning 'vanguard' rather than a road vehicle.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    Even if I am not a native English speaker, when I have read "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit", many decades ago, when I was young, one of the main reasons why I have enjoyed them very much has been the distinctive language in which they have been written. I cannot say what exactly made me believe this, but while reading them I thought that these books contain some of the most beautiful English language that I have ever read (and I have read many thousands of books). I have not changed my opinion later. The movies have been fine, but reading the books has been a much more powerful experience for me.
    - KineticLensman 4y ago
      Totally agree. There are a couple of places where the writing and language are lyrical and some of the best writing I've encountered. Examples are the battle of the Pelennor Fields, and in fact (coming back to the subject of the article), the description of the stories that Tom tells to the hobbits - e.g.: Suddenly Tom's talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream, over bubbling waterfalls, over pebbles and worn rocks and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies, wandering at last up to the Downs. They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords... I first read TLoTR in 1973 (50 years ago, next year) and it has had a special place in my heart ever since.
- kergonath 4y ago
  It seems you make the assumption that “reading Tolkien” means reading the original text in the English vernacular from the mid-20th century. But we still read texts from Latin authors who lived 2000 years ago, albeit translated. It’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but Virgil and Ovid are quite readable. Even today, a significant part of the readership of the Lord of the Rings already read it translated. Bearing that in mind, it’s not completely unreasonable to assume that a certain number of people will read it in a millenium.
Trasmatta 4y ago
I would argue it's the one piece of fiction from the last 100 years with the highest likelihood of staying power for the next 1000 years. If any piece of fiction from this period of time is still important in human culture in 1000 years (taking for granted that humans still exist), I think it would be Tolkien's work.
- intrasight 4y ago
  I will venture further out on the speculative limb, and predict that in 1000 years when virtual reality subsumes reality, that Middle Earth (and the larger Tolkien world) will become the dominant reality - as it doesn't and may never have any competition for that role.
  - yreg 4y ago
    Tolkien either defined or at least cemented what Elves, Orcs, Dwarfs and Halflings are like (including their culture, environments and architecture). Almost all of fantasy is keeping more or less close to those definitions. If this influence continues to hold, then the popular fantasy VR reality doesn't need to be Tolkien World. It can stand completely on its own and still generally look and feel like Middle Earth would.
    - intrasight 4y ago
      True, but my premise is that it will be anchored in Arda and the stories and characters of the world he created.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    You may be right, although a part of my heart wishes for Burrough's Barsoom.
nonameiguess 4y ago
1000 years is a pretty long time. Looking at literature from the 11 century, Beowulf is the only thing that stands out as still having any impact and continuing to be adapted and widely read today. Information storage and transmission over the next 1000 years should be quite a bit better, so more work will survive and have a shot at continuing relevance, and Lord of the Rings certainly has a shot, provided epic fantasy keeps its popularity as a genre. Being fairly foundational is likely to keep it important to the genre to the point that I think we're just asking if humans in that future will still care to experience these kinds of stories at all, but you are pushing the point at which all that tends to still be read that far into the future are national foundation myths and religious scripture. It'll definitely last more than a century, though. The Hobbit was published in 1937. A century is only another 15 years away.
- valarauko 4y ago
  > Looking at literature from the 11 century, Beowulf is the only thing that stands out as still having any impact and continuing to be adapted and widely read today. It's also complicated since Beowulf was essentially lost for most of that time period, and is attested from a single manuscript. It's unlikely to be the case with LotR, short of massive civilizational collapse.
- deltarholamda 4y ago
  >Information storage and transmission over the next 1000 years should be quite a bit better Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch to compare 1000 years ago to 1000 years from now. Things are radically different, and using the past to judge the future is rife with opportunities to make mistakes. Some people have suggested that it may actually be worse, in that so much of our current knowledge is contained in non-durable formats (digital instead of hard copy, for instance), which is an interesting idea. Here a comparison could be made to inscriptions on stone and clay vs. on papyrus. It may be that when the Walking Dead happens, rebuilding our knowledge will depend on the large numbers of libraries that will still exist, but are less than up-to-date, since so much of the modern knowledge isn't contained there, but instead in a PDF on some cloud server.
narag 4y ago
I bought the book a few years before the movies and couln't stand it the first time. Then someone advised me to read The Hobbit first. Good advice: not only I enjoyed The Hobbit immensely, but I was able to read The Lord later... but not comfortably. I found some parts boring and repetitive and read them diagonally. Anyway, I did finish the book and was moved by some parts, characters and themes. FWIW, it was a translation, so changes in the language along 1000 years could be a similar factor. I also agree with simonh in the influence factor: I chose the book because I was told that it was a centerpiece of geek culture. But I suspect that it's more a question of which books were read by kids at a certain time. Will it be a popular book in this category in a thousand years?
mongol 4y ago
I think stories that have that kind of staying power must say something about the time they originated, in order to stay relevant centuries after. It need not to be so explicit as describe the contemporary society, but some kind of link I think need to be there. Perhaps the Tolkien books have that, but I can't put my finger on it.

IlliOnato 4y ago

Homer's works have survived for far longer than that...

simonh 4y ago

I think it will be studied and valued indefinitely, if not for anything else, due to it's massive impact on literature and popular culture in this era, which shows no sign of waning. If anything in my lifetime it's influence has increase dramatically. Nobody in the future interested in the culture of the 20th and 21st century, and quite possibly well beyond, could ignore it. Having said that, will non-academics in that far future still read it for entertainment? That's harder to say because in large part it depends how much language evolves. We still read Shakespear, go to see the plays, and even go and see film productions of it in cinemas but it's language is only diverged from our by 400 years. A thousand years can allow for a lot more linguistic divergence. Chaucer from 900 years ago is hardly recognisable as English, but that's mainly due to a shift that occurred in only a few hundred years. If such a shift occurs again then today's fiction might become inaccessible, but we can't know that in advance.

KineticLensman 4y ago
> That's harder to say because in large part it depends how much language evolves. LoTR is interesting here because it explicitly contains examples of language change. In fact language change was one of Tolkien's original motivations for developing the history of Middle Earth - to provide a historical context for the evolution of Elvish. E.g. Elves being sundered during the First Age and then developing independent languages. Even Frodo is aware of 'high' Elvish. The language of the Rohirrim, to the hobbits, sounds something like Old English does to us. Tolkien himself uses archaic modes of English to describe some of the events near the end of the story, some of which might already be difficult to understand for modern readers. One example is when he states that some characters were 'in the van' meaning 'vanguard' rather than a road vehicle.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Even if I am not a native English speaker, when I have read "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit", many decades ago, when I was young, one of the main reasons why I have enjoyed them very much has been the distinctive language in which they have been written. I cannot say what exactly made me believe this, but while reading them I thought that these books contain some of the most beautiful English language that I have ever read (and I have read many thousands of books). I have not changed my opinion later. The movies have been fine, but reading the books has been a much more powerful experience for me.
  - KineticLensman 4y ago
    Totally agree. There are a couple of places where the writing and language are lyrical and some of the best writing I've encountered. Examples are the battle of the Pelennor Fields, and in fact (coming back to the subject of the article), the description of the stories that Tom tells to the hobbits - e.g.: Suddenly Tom's talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream, over bubbling waterfalls, over pebbles and worn rocks and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies, wandering at last up to the Downs. They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords... I first read TLoTR in 1973 (50 years ago, next year) and it has had a special place in my heart ever since.
kergonath 4y ago
It seems you make the assumption that “reading Tolkien” means reading the original text in the English vernacular from the mid-20th century. But we still read texts from Latin authors who lived 2000 years ago, albeit translated. It’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but Virgil and Ovid are quite readable. Even today, a significant part of the readership of the Lord of the Rings already read it translated. Bearing that in mind, it’s not completely unreasonable to assume that a certain number of people will read it in a millenium.

Trasmatta 4y ago

I would argue it's the one piece of fiction from the last 100 years with the highest likelihood of staying power for the next 1000 years. If any piece of fiction from this period of time is still important in human culture in 1000 years (taking for granted that humans still exist), I think it would be Tolkien's work.

intrasight 4y ago
I will venture further out on the speculative limb, and predict that in 1000 years when virtual reality subsumes reality, that Middle Earth (and the larger Tolkien world) will become the dominant reality - as it doesn't and may never have any competition for that role.
- yreg 4y ago
  Tolkien either defined or at least cemented what Elves, Orcs, Dwarfs and Halflings are like (including their culture, environments and architecture). Almost all of fantasy is keeping more or less close to those definitions. If this influence continues to hold, then the popular fantasy VR reality doesn't need to be Tolkien World. It can stand completely on its own and still generally look and feel like Middle Earth would.
  - intrasight 4y ago
    True, but my premise is that it will be anchored in Arda and the stories and characters of the world he created.
- kbelder 4y ago
  You may be right, although a part of my heart wishes for Burrough's Barsoom.

nonameiguess 4y ago

1000 years is a pretty long time. Looking at literature from the 11 century, Beowulf is the only thing that stands out as still having any impact and continuing to be adapted and widely read today. Information storage and transmission over the next 1000 years should be quite a bit better, so more work will survive and have a shot at continuing relevance, and Lord of the Rings certainly has a shot, provided epic fantasy keeps its popularity as a genre. Being fairly foundational is likely to keep it important to the genre to the point that I think we're just asking if humans in that future will still care to experience these kinds of stories at all, but you are pushing the point at which all that tends to still be read that far into the future are national foundation myths and religious scripture. It'll definitely last more than a century, though. The Hobbit was published in 1937. A century is only another 15 years away.

valarauko 4y ago
> Looking at literature from the 11 century, Beowulf is the only thing that stands out as still having any impact and continuing to be adapted and widely read today. It's also complicated since Beowulf was essentially lost for most of that time period, and is attested from a single manuscript. It's unlikely to be the case with LotR, short of massive civilizational collapse.
deltarholamda 4y ago
>Information storage and transmission over the next 1000 years should be quite a bit better Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch to compare 1000 years ago to 1000 years from now. Things are radically different, and using the past to judge the future is rife with opportunities to make mistakes. Some people have suggested that it may actually be worse, in that so much of our current knowledge is contained in non-durable formats (digital instead of hard copy, for instance), which is an interesting idea. Here a comparison could be made to inscriptions on stone and clay vs. on papyrus. It may be that when the Walking Dead happens, rebuilding our knowledge will depend on the large numbers of libraries that will still exist, but are less than up-to-date, since so much of the modern knowledge isn't contained there, but instead in a PDF on some cloud server.

narag 4y ago

I bought the book a few years before the movies and couln't stand it the first time. Then someone advised me to read The Hobbit first. Good advice: not only I enjoyed The Hobbit immensely, but I was able to read The Lord later... but not comfortably. I found some parts boring and repetitive and read them diagonally. Anyway, I did finish the book and was moved by some parts, characters and themes. FWIW, it was a translation, so changes in the language along 1000 years could be a similar factor. I also agree with simonh in the influence factor: I chose the book because I was told that it was a centerpiece of geek culture. But I suspect that it's more a question of which books were read by kids at a certain time. Will it be a popular book in this category in a thousand years?

mongol 4y ago

I think stories that have that kind of staying power must say something about the time they originated, in order to stay relevant centuries after. It need not to be so explicit as describe the contemporary society, but some kind of link I think need to be there. Perhaps the Tolkien books have that, but I can't put my finger on it.