Enjoyable read. I find it hard to understand though how one can talk about the influences behind the writing of The Lord of the Rings and not recognize the deep influence of Tolkien’s Christian faith – how the ring was “meant” to come to Frodo, that “good and ill are not one thing among elves and another among dwarves”… but that is our job to discover the good, the theme of suffering leading to salvation, the celebration of the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love. This is a deeply Christian myth that borrows from the deep truths found in so many of the great myths of the world.
Another Christian link is that Sauron was defeated on March 25th, which became New Years Day. Until the 18th century New Years Day in England was the Feast of the Annunciation or “Lady Day”, which fell on March 25th, nine calendar months before Christmas.
Absolutely! And that is what some of the other commentators miss. Hear, hear!
Basil Chamberlain
3 years ago
A very enjoyable article by someone who is obviously enthusiastic about and committed to Tolkien’s project. I’ve always felt there’s someone rather ersatz about it myself. Straightforwardly, the notion of latterly inventing “a powerful and complex mythology that would bear comparison with those of any other country” is impossible, since the validity of a mythology depends on belief. Some people believe in God and the Devil; some people once believed in Norse and Greek gods (hence the abiding validity and vitality of the myths that belief created) no-one (including Tolkien himself) believes in Sauron. I find C.S. Lewis a much more admirable writer than Tolkien because he drew on a myth, or belief, that still did and does command widespread assent; the potency of Aslan as a figure depends on the fact that, for Lewis as for millions of people, he’s effectively real.
That notwithstanding, I do think there’s something rather decadent about even the best fantasy fiction. The decline of prose literature from the nineteenth-centuries peaks of such masters of realist fiction as Tolstoy and George Eliot (the latter also a magisterial chronicler of the industrialisation of the Midlands) to the twentieth-century choice between inward-looking modernism and mock-medieval fantasy strikes me as not only an aesthetic misfortune but also, to an extent, a moral one.
Your comment on belief is insightful. In college I took several classes on Tolkien and several on C. S. Lewis and not once did anyone mention or contemplate the role ‘belief’ played in their myths. I never considered it myself.
The teach Tolkein in college??!!! I know things were bad, but I didn’t know just how far they had sunk. Tolkein is enjoyable enough, but essentially it’s just just fantasy.
They still teach The Faerie Queene in (some) universities. Also “just fantasy”. (But I’m being provocative; I’d much prefer it personally if Tolkien wasn’t studied in college…).
Isn’t that the point to college, at least in the liberal arts subject matter; to broaden your horizons beyond your own interests to give a fuller understanding of the human condition and the world at large. There was plenty in college and high school that I had to study that i would rather not, and alot of authors i would really prefer not to read again…. Joyce comes to mind.
But i did have to because it is part of our culture and heritage. Tolkein, and fantasy at large, you can not deny the enormity of impact that he, and fantasy, has had on the world. If you did, you’d be either under a rock, or just flat out lying to yourself.
I am late to the party! Interesting this idea of ‘just fantasy’. Some would say the same about literature being ‘just literature’, in the sense that it doesn’t help you turn yourself into a productive unit in the global economic system. If you were referencing straightforward sword-and-sorcery fantasy, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But knowing something about what went into the creation of the Lord of the Rings, I find it hard to dismiss it as ‘just fantasy’. This is a highly receptive, highly trained, profoundly wise and informed Edwardian sensibility at work who understood from firsthand experience that the roots of myth are steeped in blood – or as we might say in today’s language, trauma. Growing up on a diet of Tolkien was good prep for Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, the War Poets and TS Eliot, and I find myself thinking that if the Waste Land was conceived in a Swiss sanatorium, Tolkien’s grand epic was properly conceived in the trenches on the Somme. Moreover, I remember it coming as no surprise whatsoever, when I was about sixteen at school in Italy, and had been wrongly accused the year before of plagiarism by my Italian and Latin teacher for having produced a fully rounded fantasy short-story during a writing exercise, to discover that in the meantime a new literature anthology had been adopted by her which included fantasy as a literary genre and, more specifically, passages of the Lord of the Rings translated into Italian. Just fantasy? Eliot was dismissed as a ‘lugubrious fellow’ by the Queen Mother… she had no idea…
Although isn’t Tolkein’s fantasy as much an outgrowth of 19th century fiction as anything else? Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe is often classed as historical fiction but in reality is far more a fantasy than about medieval England – and helped introduce many false tropes and myths about the era that have been hard to shake off – than a historically accurate and realistic portrayal of the period. And it was largely because of a similar set of concerns about industralisation and modernism. Specifically the desire for a more organic society idealised from that period by Catholics, the Oxford movement, neo-Gothic architects and romanticists in general as a reaction against industralisation along with a desire to produce art charged with trascendent symbolism beyond what was seen as mere plastic and materialist art from the renaissance onwards. This was a large part of what animated Tolkein too, remembering he was a prominent scholar of Old English with its highly symbolic and ritualised poetic forms.
Last edited 3 years ago by Ferrusian Gambit
Richard Bell
3 years ago
Thanks you Niall …… I had already just purchased John Garths book and had it next to me as I read your article. Looking forward to getting into it. As an Englishman living in California it strikes me that the USA is lacking its pre-history stories ( native Indian’s aside ). This country is made up so much of other people, created by incomers from around the world. The United States is such a young country in comparison to its worldly owners. Having now lived here for not far of twenty years I can see how misunderstood it is. Like a high speed dragster it has sped from nothing to going to the moon in a few hundred years !!!
Growing up in the US, I was always fascinated with places where kids were surrounded by ruins thousands of years old. Yes, the lack of history and millenia old myth is felt and very apparent.
cererean
3 years ago
I wonder if, perhaps, there is room for someone to forge an English mythology that acknowledges, as we now know the be the case, that the English people are descended both from the Anglo-Saxon settlers and the pre-existing Celtic inhabitants? Our cultural inheritance by rights is both Brythonic and Germanic (and there are points of commonality in both of those – elven-like beings, for example, can be found in either).
Still, despite that vast inheritance, we have only one truly English folk hero, an outlaw insurgent fighting against the Norman yoke. Who of course got co-opted by the aristocracy into being one of them fighting for the “rightful king”. Blech.
Michael Upton
3 years ago
Thank you for this perceptive and thought-provoking article. There are Anglo-Saxon worlds outwith England which someone so talented could use as imaginatively; I am thinking of southern, unCeltic Scotland.
Enjoyable read. I find it hard to understand though how one can talk about the influences behind the writing of The Lord of the Rings and not recognize the deep influence of Tolkien’s Christian faith – how the ring was “meant” to come to Frodo, that “good and ill are not one thing among elves and another among dwarves”… but that is our job to discover the good, the theme of suffering leading to salvation, the celebration of the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love. This is a deeply Christian myth that borrows from the deep truths found in so many of the great myths of the world.
Another Christian link is that Sauron was defeated on March 25th, which became New Years Day. Until the 18th century New Years Day in England was the Feast of the Annunciation or “Lady Day”, which fell on March 25th, nine calendar months before Christmas.
Absolutely! And that is what some of the other commentators miss. Hear, hear!
A very enjoyable article by someone who is obviously enthusiastic about and committed to Tolkien’s project. I’ve always felt there’s someone rather ersatz about it myself. Straightforwardly, the notion of latterly inventing “a powerful and complex mythology that would bear comparison with those of any other country” is impossible, since the validity of a mythology depends on belief. Some people believe in God and the Devil; some people once believed in Norse and Greek gods (hence the abiding validity and vitality of the myths that belief created) no-one (including Tolkien himself) believes in Sauron. I find C.S. Lewis a much more admirable writer than Tolkien because he drew on a myth, or belief, that still did and does command widespread assent; the potency of Aslan as a figure depends on the fact that, for Lewis as for millions of people, he’s effectively real.
That notwithstanding, I do think there’s something rather decadent about even the best fantasy fiction. The decline of prose literature from the nineteenth-centuries peaks of such masters of realist fiction as Tolstoy and George Eliot (the latter also a magisterial chronicler of the industrialisation of the Midlands) to the twentieth-century choice between inward-looking modernism and mock-medieval fantasy strikes me as not only an aesthetic misfortune but also, to an extent, a moral one.
Your comment on belief is insightful. In college I took several classes on Tolkien and several on C. S. Lewis and not once did anyone mention or contemplate the role ‘belief’ played in their myths. I never considered it myself.
How wonderful.
The teach Tolkein in college??!!! I know things were bad, but I didn’t know just how far they had sunk. Tolkein is enjoyable enough, but essentially it’s just just fantasy.
“Just fantasy”?
Yes, in the way that Homer was just epic poetry and Plato was just philosophy.
They still teach The Faerie Queene in (some) universities. Also “just fantasy”. (But I’m being provocative; I’d much prefer it personally if Tolkien wasn’t studied in college…).
Isn’t that the point to college, at least in the liberal arts subject matter; to broaden your horizons beyond your own interests to give a fuller understanding of the human condition and the world at large. There was plenty in college and high school that I had to study that i would rather not, and alot of authors i would really prefer not to read again…. Joyce comes to mind.
But i did have to because it is part of our culture and heritage. Tolkein, and fantasy at large, you can not deny the enormity of impact that he, and fantasy, has had on the world. If you did, you’d be either under a rock, or just flat out lying to yourself.
Some still teach Theology! How mad is that? In fact it has always been a ‘backdoor’ for Oxbridge entry.
I am late to the party! Interesting this idea of ‘just fantasy’. Some would say the same about literature being ‘just literature’, in the sense that it doesn’t help you turn yourself into a productive unit in the global economic system. If you were referencing straightforward sword-and-sorcery fantasy, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But knowing something about what went into the creation of the Lord of the Rings, I find it hard to dismiss it as ‘just fantasy’. This is a highly receptive, highly trained, profoundly wise and informed Edwardian sensibility at work who understood from firsthand experience that the roots of myth are steeped in blood – or as we might say in today’s language, trauma. Growing up on a diet of Tolkien was good prep for Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, the War Poets and TS Eliot, and I find myself thinking that if the Waste Land was conceived in a Swiss sanatorium, Tolkien’s grand epic was properly conceived in the trenches on the Somme. Moreover, I remember it coming as no surprise whatsoever, when I was about sixteen at school in Italy, and had been wrongly accused the year before of plagiarism by my Italian and Latin teacher for having produced a fully rounded fantasy short-story during a writing exercise, to discover that in the meantime a new literature anthology had been adopted by her which included fantasy as a literary genre and, more specifically, passages of the Lord of the Rings translated into Italian. Just fantasy? Eliot was dismissed as a ‘lugubrious fellow’ by the Queen Mother… she had no idea…
I’m late to the party as well. They also teach Gargantua and Pantagruel in college.
Although isn’t Tolkein’s fantasy as much an outgrowth of 19th century fiction as anything else? Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe is often classed as historical fiction but in reality is far more a fantasy than about medieval England – and helped introduce many false tropes and myths about the era that have been hard to shake off – than a historically accurate and realistic portrayal of the period. And it was largely because of a similar set of concerns about industralisation and modernism. Specifically the desire for a more organic society idealised from that period by Catholics, the Oxford movement, neo-Gothic architects and romanticists in general as a reaction against industralisation along with a desire to produce art charged with trascendent symbolism beyond what was seen as mere plastic and materialist art from the renaissance onwards. This was a large part of what animated Tolkein too, remembering he was a prominent scholar of Old English with its highly symbolic and ritualised poetic forms.
Thanks you Niall …… I had already just purchased John Garths book and had it next to me as I read your article. Looking forward to getting into it. As an Englishman living in California it strikes me that the USA is lacking its pre-history stories ( native Indian’s aside ). This country is made up so much of other people, created by incomers from around the world. The United States is such a young country in comparison to its worldly owners. Having now lived here for not far of twenty years I can see how misunderstood it is. Like a high speed dragster it has sped from nothing to going to the moon in a few hundred years !!!
Growing up in the US, I was always fascinated with places where kids were surrounded by ruins thousands of years old. Yes, the lack of history and millenia old myth is felt and very apparent.
I wonder if, perhaps, there is room for someone to forge an English mythology that acknowledges, as we now know the be the case, that the English people are descended both from the Anglo-Saxon settlers and the pre-existing Celtic inhabitants? Our cultural inheritance by rights is both Brythonic and Germanic (and there are points of commonality in both of those – elven-like beings, for example, can be found in either).
Still, despite that vast inheritance, we have only one truly English folk hero, an outlaw insurgent fighting against the Norman yoke. Who of course got co-opted by the aristocracy into being one of them fighting for the “rightful king”. Blech.
Thank you for this perceptive and thought-provoking article. There are Anglo-Saxon worlds outwith England which someone so talented could use as imaginatively; I am thinking of southern, unCeltic Scotland.