Editing Rivendell (section)

=== Cultural allusions ===
{{further|Poetry in The Lord of the Rings#Glimpses of another world}}

Shippey contrasts the versions of the ''[[The Old Walking Song|Old Walking Song]]'' sung by Bilbo and Frodo. Bilbo follows the "Road ... with eager feet", hoping to reach the peace of Rivendell, to retire and take his ease; whereas Frodo sings "with weary feet", hoping somehow to reach Mordor bearing the Ring, and to try to destroy it in the [[Cracks of Doom]]: diametrically opposed destinations and errands.{{sfn|Shippey|2005|p=213}} He notes that Rivendell was the home of Elvish song, and cites Tolkien's statement that the song that the Hobbits hear in Rivendell, ''[[A Elbereth Gilthoniel]]'' invoking the semi-divine [[Varda (Middle-earth)|Varda]], was a [[hymn]] [[Christianity in Middle-earth|suggestive of his own devout Catholicism]].{{sfn|Shippey|2005|p=230}} Shippey writes, too, that Tolkien had Bilbo write and sing the Song of [[Earendil]] in Rivendell, making use of [[Poetry in The Lord of the Rings#Song of Eärendil|multiple poetic devices]] – rhyme, internal half-rhyme, alliteration, alliterative assonance, and "a frequent if irregular variation of syntax" – to create a mysterious Elvish effect of "rich and continuous uncertainty, a pattern forever being glimpsed but never quite grasped."{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=218–219}} Rebecca Ankeny comments that Tolkien uses verse, too, to signal the horror of the Elves when Gandalf speaks the dark lord's [[rhyme of the Rings]] aloud, in the [[Black Speech]], threatening the end of Rivendell.<ref name="Ankeny 2005">{{cite journal |last=Ankeny |first=Rebecca |title=Poem as Sign in 'The Lord of the Rings' |journal=[[Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts]] |volume=16 |issue=2 (62) |year=2005 |pages=86–95 |jstor=43308763}}</ref>

The Tolkien scholar [[Gergely Nagy (scholar)|Gergely Nagy]] notes that Tolkien wanted to present the complex set of writings of ''[[The Silmarillion]]'' as a seemingly-genuine collection of tales and myths within the frame of his fictional Middle-earth; he modified ''The Lord of the Rings'' to ascribe the documents to Bilbo, supposedly written in the years he spent in Rivendell, and preserved in the fictitious ''[[Red Book of Westmarch]]'', its name alluding to the ''[[Red Book of Hergest]]''.{{sfn|Nagy|2020|pp=107–118}}

Burns writes that Rivendell, "the Last Homely House",<ref name="Many Meetings" group=T/> offers a welcoming home, repeating the pattern set in both ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' of "easy-going but tidy bachelor indulgence" from Bilbo's [[Bag End]] hobbit-hole onwards; despite Arwen, there is hardly anything "of the feminine".{{sfn|Burns|2005|pp=136–137}} Shippey states that Frodo has "to be dug out ... of no fewer than [[Frodo's five Homely Houses|five 'Homely Houses']]", of which Rivendell is the last.<ref>{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |title=[[J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century]] |date=2001 |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0261-10401-3 |page=65}}</ref>