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The scholar Jennifer Culver states that Tolkien based his account of gifting and exchange on the Germanic gifting tradition, as described in medieval works such as Beowulf, familiar to Tolkien. There, a lord could "broaden his reach" by giving gifts, while the visible exchange of gifts defined the relative status of the people involved.
A divine ‘punishment’ is also a divine ‘gift’, if accepted, since its object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will make ‘punishments’ (that is changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to be attained: a ‘mortal’ Man has probably (an Elf would say) a higher if unrevealed destiny than a longeval one.
Sep 29, 2014 · The reception of gifts, Tolkien elaborates, is “the older custom” (Letters 291). The roots of this tradition lie in hobbits’ fidelity to kinship. The gift received, therefore, served more as a recognition, a ceremonial token of that hobbit’s “incorporation” in his specific house or clan (Letters 291).
As Tom Shippey rightly states, J.R.R. Tolkien was a noted expert on Beowulf and his literary work was often inspired by the medieval literature he studied. In both LOTR and Beowulf, gift giving plays an important role; however, the function of gift exchange in the medieval poem somewhat differs from Tolkien’s work.
Jul 8, 2014 · For more about this I'd recommend reading the full essay. For a survey of everything Tolkien has said elsewhere about free will, and of the various critical works that have been written by others on the nature of free will in his writings, I'd recommend reading the "Fate and free will" entry in Hammond and Scull's J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and ...
The Chapter starts by analysing the centrality of gift and gift-exchange in both Tolkien and Jackson’s work as an alternative basis for relationality and sociality. These themes present a contrast between the theological primacy of reciprocity and gift-exchange on the one hand, and a modern emphasis on unilateral ‘free’ gift and self-interested contract on the other.
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The real point of the remark (in response to what Gimli says about it) is what a rare and incredibly generous gift the mithril shirt was. The sense of what he is saying is: "if one were to attempt to place a monetary value on such a rare and valuable object, it would be more than the monetary value of a small, prosperous, but not especially wealthy country".
