The sung word and dissonance in Ainulindalë: the dialogic conflict for the creation of Tolkien's mythological world

Abstract

This article proposes to analyze the tense dialogic struggle (BAKHTIN, 2017 [1970-1971]) that is formed between the main characters in the first moment of Ainulindalë, chapter from The Silmarillion (2019), a work by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien [1892- 1973]. We seek to do so by mobilizing the concept of utterance as proposed by Voloshinov (2017 [1929]; 2019 [1930]) and by Bakhtin (2011 [1952-1953]; 2017 [1970-1971]). As a result, the idea of ​​a tense dialogic struggle that we advocate, synthesized in the aforementioned concept, characterizes the relationship between those characters, being concretely realized through their responsive utterances, and is, jointly, the mark of the conflict that propels the development of the entire mythological universe of the English writer, as well as the indication of how art reflects and refracts (VOLÓCHINOV, 2017 [1929]) life by having the dialogical conflict characteristic of discursive communication as the center of constitution of a substantially important point of the literary text in question: the tensely dialogic relationship between the characters. With this work, we hope to clarify an important point regarding Tolkien's work and open a dialogic path so that future other responsive works can analyze it according to the principle of dialogism that characterizes Bakhtin's and Voloshinov's reflections.