I do pretty specifically recall that he hated what Lewis had done.
He did, indeed. He thought it both juvenile (which, of course, it is) and superficial.
I think here we reach that point where allegory may lie in the eye of the beholder. It's hard, for example, to read TLotR and not see Tolkien's loathing of industrialization and enviromental degredation in Saruman's thoughtless destruction of forests. It's hard not to read much of the War of the Ring as an allegory for WWII. And so on. I could probably name a dozen ways we could perceive these works as allegorical, but that does not mean that Tolkien intentionally made them so. It also doesn't mean that unconscious allegory did not creep in.
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Date: 2006-12-05 08:20 pm (UTC)He did, indeed. He thought it both juvenile (which, of course, it is) and superficial.
I think here we reach that point where allegory may lie in the eye of the beholder. It's hard, for example, to read TLotR and not see Tolkien's loathing of industrialization and enviromental degredation in Saruman's thoughtless destruction of forests. It's hard not to read much of the War of the Ring as an allegory for WWII. And so on. I could probably name a dozen ways we could perceive these works as allegorical, but that does not mean that Tolkien intentionally made them so. It also doesn't mean that unconscious allegory did not creep in.