The Riddles of the Hobbit
“The mentality that can engage with the sense of the literal statement and with the implicit and ‘truer’ import of the concealed meaning is a mentality alert to symbolism and allegory; and not surprisingly techniques of the riddle may be traced in poetry of other genres where ambiguity and systematic symbolism or allegory are deliberately cultivated.1 Anglo-Saxon was a riddling culture. By this I do not just mean that the Norse, the Icelanders and the Old English loved riddles—although they cert...ainly did. Old English culture was threaded through with riddles, cryptograms, gnomic verses, charms and riddling modes of speech such as litotes, just as Modern English culture is (if you will forgive me) riddled with jokes and catch-phrases, crosswords and quizzes, irony and sarcasm. But there is more to it than that. I mean that the orientation of the Anglo-Saxons towards their world was ironic, often wittily or sardonically so. They were more minded than moderns to view life as a puzzle and a mystery.MoreLess
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