Rinon : en ce qui concerne le public que Tolkien visait avec son premier ouvrage, je peux en revanche t'assurer du bien-fondé de mes propos. J'ai à mon crédit les paroles même du Professeur pour appuyer mon point de vue sur la place "légitime" du Hobbit dans son grand-oeuvre. On peut sans aucun doute critiquer son style "enfantin", mais certainement pas son appartenance au Légendaire.
Lettre 165 : « My work did not "evolve" into a serious work. It started like that. The so-called "children's story" was a fragment, torn out of an already existing mythology. In so far as it was dressed up as "for children", in style or manner, I regret it. So do the children. I am a philologist, and all my work is philological. »
Lettre 215 : « When I published the Hobbit — hurriedly and without due consideration — I was still influenced by the convention that "fairy stories" are naturally directed to children. And I had children of my own. But the desire to address children, as such, had nothing to do with the story as such in itself or the urge to write it. But it had some unfortunate effects on the mode of expression and narrative method, which if I had not been rushed, I should have corrected. [...] I am not specially interested in children, and certainly not in writing for them. [...] I write things that might be classified as fairy stories not because I wish to address children, but because I wish to write this kind of story and no other. »
Lettre 131 : « Some of the details of tone and treatment are, I now think, mistaken. But I should not wish to change much. For in effect this is a study of simple ordinary man, neither artistic nor noble and heroic (but not without the undeveloped seeds of these things) against a high setting — and in fact (as a critic has perceived) the tone and style change with this Hobbit's development, passing from fairy-tale to the noble and high, and relapsing with the return. »
Arrêtez-moi si je me trompe, mais c'est l'essence même du Seigneur des Anneaux...
Judge Patt.