2 They have traditionally been received as such (see Stroda, Kelly, Drout, Phelpstead, "With Chunks," Forest-Hill "Poetic Form"). are all dramatic: they do not express the poor old professor's soul-searchings, but are fitted in style and contents to the characters in the story that sing or recite them, and to the situations in it" ( Letters 396). As he himself wrote to his son, "the verses in The L.R. Tolkien deliberately eschewed the lyric or autobiographical poetry in vogue in his day instead, his verses contribute to character and racial development. The poems and songs in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings demonstrate the worth of out-of-date, nontrendy, de-valued poetic forms-medieval and traditional forms which may no longer glitter, but which are still gold (Russom 53 Shippey, "Indexing" 238). Far from being mere "insertions" 1 into the real story, the poetry of The Lord of the Rings makes a claim about the value of older poetic forms, as well as their content and subject-matter. In this article, I will argue that Tolkien's recuperative and regenerative project extended to his poetry as well. Tolkien's endeavor, in large part, was to show that themes, values, and stories which had fallen out of fashion were still exciting and worthwhile. Old values, too, are recuperated and resurrected in the books-honor, valor, friendship, loyalty, tradition though they are interwoven with a post-WWI awareness that other values-mercy, humility, pacifism, ordinariness-are equally important. Tolkien, in his Middle-earth writings, is making a claim for the worth of old myths and legends, re-forged into new and exciting forms (Shippey, Road 181–82 Kraus 146 Chance and Siewers 2 Nagy 30). The Lord of the Rings is, in many ways, a manifesto: an argument for the value of old things.
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