The Politics Of Gene Wolfe

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 19 Mar 2009, 19:27 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:27:43 -0700
Subject: (urth) The Politics Of Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <93d4039f0903191220o1922c44ar4729c6dfdcfb23e3 at mail.gmail.com>
References: <8974.67.142.130.34.1237464256.squirrel at brunians.org>
	<957682.511.qm at web50706.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	<93d4039f0903191220o1922c44ar4729c6dfdcfb23e3 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1f7617370903191227u7051c155r4ae48ab281d49baf at mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 12:20 PM, John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Agreed...but this is in the context of a discussion of Tolkien's work.
> Tolkien veers between a benign anarchism (The Shire) and divinely-appointed
> or at least divinely-sanctioned kings.? It seems then that "good government"
> is holy or ideal government--government by the best (in the sense of "most
> moral") people.

However, the point is made at least once (by Aragorn), and so Gene "I hate
it when they repeat things" Wolfe is bound to have noticed, that the "benign
anarchism" of the Shire is permitted to exist only because of the labors of
the Rangers, i.e., the King and his followers. Tolkien doesn't really "veer,"
he's definitely in the "divinely-appointed King" camp.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

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