That's a shame. Because sometimes it's a good thing.
Isaiah 24:4 ~ The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. Isaiah 40:8 ~ The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
Here is a transcript from an explanation that literary biographer Joseph Pearce gave as he introduced his talk on "Chivalry and Virtue in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (c.f., J.R.R. Tolkien's translation and scholastic notes on Anglo-Saxon literature) this summer at The Rockford Institute.
These introductory remarks, though very brief, bear great significance on the question raised by yesterday's post, and they illustrate quite soundly the concept of allegorical applicability in Tolkien's works.
Tolkien...was against formal allegory, formal (or crude) allegory. And what Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf are not is formal or crude allegory. And The Lord of the Rings is not formal or crude allegory. But Tolkien talks about applicability, and the word applicability is a key word for us to remember her