You know, I was originally rather intrigued by mentions of the "parody," but this review--despite its favorable stance towards Yeskov's work--seems to have put me off it altogether, because it makes the Russian book sound like it has a genuinely simplistic agenda, which is to prove Tolkien wrong. I don't know. Maybe I'm just more used to the sort of revisionism and reevaluation that happens in history circles, and there a "more nuanced view" isn't one that just goes out to prove the orthodoxy wrong on all counts, but to reexamine the evidence in order to see where the old consensus falls down _and where it still holds its own against more recent attempts at reexamination_. Seen this way, taking Tolkien's book and turning its morality _entirely_ upside-down just doesn't sound like presenting a more realistic or more complex view of Middle-Earth to me.
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Date: 20 Feb 2011 05:06 pm (UTC)