Question about The Lord Of The Rings : Fellowship Of The Ring (the book)?

Question

From whose point of view is the prologue told? In the book, the story refers the hobbits as "we" and "us". I thought the prologue was told from Tolkien's point of view...

Answer 1

Tolkien's

Answer 2

The prologue is from a neutral narrator.  Almost a Herodotus considering long-past histories, and quoting the (supposed) source of them: the Red Book of Westmarch, written by Bilbo and now ancient indeed.

Are you sure about the "we and us"?  I've just dipped into the "Fellowship" and it appears to have a third person narration, but with extensive passages of reported speech, naturally in the first person.

Answer 3

Tolkien doesn't refer to hobbits as “we” and “us” even in the story itself, except when quoting hobbits speaking, or possibly somewhere where quoting their writing.

The pretense is that the books “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings'' are a third person adaptation by a modern human of  first-person accounts by the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo of their adventures.

In the current Foreward, which was added in 1966, Tolkien instead speaks about his authorship of “The Lord of the Rings'' outside of the retelling pretense which is found elsewhere in the book. This new Foreward replaced an earlier Foreward in which Tolkien followed his normal pretense. He later decided that this was an error. that one normally should not confuse the doings of the pretended modern narrator of the story with his own real doings and his new Foreward discusses his own real doings and his respsonses to some comments about his book.

Answer 4

I think it is from Tolkien's view, and just for fun he is consdiering himself a Hobbit. To be honest, I never noticed this! Interesting! I'll give you a star.  

Answer 5

Yes, it's from the narrator (author) pov.