amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
This is from a couple weeks back, but I wonder if we were making this section too complicated (heaven forbid!).
We made a great deal of fuss about "of"s and especially about no "of" in front of "the gentle fall" and what that does to the parallelism of the items joined by commas. I think it might have been too much fuss. I think instead it is a list, and then a sublist, and then a continuation of the initial list.
Take the sublist of fair things, "of the Elves, of the stars, of trees", and excise it from the sentence.
What you're left with still makes sense, and the missing "of" doesn't jump out quite as much (although now that I get to the end of my post, there is still an "of" missing that could go in there... have I maybe talked myself out of the position I started from?).
"They spoke no more of the small news of the Shire far away, nor of the dark shadows and perils that encompassed them, but of the fair things they had seen in the world together, of the Elves, of the stars, of trees, and the gentle fall of the bright year in the woods."
We made a great deal of fuss about "of"s and especially about no "of" in front of "the gentle fall" and what that does to the parallelism of the items joined by commas. I think it might have been too much fuss. I think instead it is a list, and then a sublist, and then a continuation of the initial list.
Take the sublist of fair things, "of the Elves, of the stars, of trees", and excise it from the sentence.
"They spoke no more of the small news of the Shire far away, nor of the dark shadows and perils that encompassed them, but of the fair things they had seen in the world together, ... and the gentle fall of the bright year in the woods."
What you're left with still makes sense, and the missing "of" doesn't jump out quite as much (although now that I get to the end of my post, there is still an "of" missing that could go in there... have I maybe talked myself out of the position I started from?).