An Interview with Janet Brennan Croft

As a living language English sometimes follows an odd turn or two in bringing words forward from its past.  One need not tell the dedicated J.R.R. Tolkien fan of the Professor’s lifelong love of philology.  He not only studied words, he invented them, borrowed them, revived them, and used them in imaginative ways that continue to resonate throughout academia and fandom today.  Hence Tolkien probably would have appreciated the fact that the word “scholar” once meant simply “student”, whereas today we associate it with one who is learned in a specific topic or area of interest.

The student has become the master – which is perhaps a philological pun of the type that Tolkien himself would have appreciated.  And yet “scholar” is too simple a word to describe the people who devote particular study to a given topic; we almost routinely divide our scholarly communities into “academic scholars” and “independent scholars”.   One is academic if one is, say, a Professor of English or History; one is independent if one is, say, an engineer or a librarian or a high school dropout.

The only barrier to scholarship in the field of Tolkien studies seems to be the self-imposed limits upon one’s own study of J.R.R. Tolkien’s life and works.  Of course, we still reserve a special place of honor for those who have “become published” either through the small number of journals that specialize in Tolkien or Inklings studies, or through more mainstream academic periodicals, or through editorially vetted book publication.

And yet, even among the ranks of the published we distinguish between, say, a David Day – who takes numerous liberties with his presentations – and a Douglas Anderson, who annotates every documentable change in a Tolkien book with great precision and eloquence.  The average enthusiastic reader may not be able to distinguish between David Day and Douglas Anderson, but the serious Tolkien scholar is expected to follow a standard of quality that is both unwritten and yet firmly engraved upon the soul of Tolkien scholarship.

So the question arises: who are the serious Tolkien scholars and how did they become such, whether academic or independent?  And should the average Tolkien reader be concerned with such distinctions?  In November 2003 Professor Michael Drout wrote on his blog: “It is an interesting fact that a great many of the very best contemporary Tolkien scholars are not professors: Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, Doug Anderson, David Bratman, Richard West, Carl Hostetter… many of these scholars have academic affiliations (at libraries, etc.), but they aren’t professors of English or history or cultural studies. Yet they are among the best. “

The bibliography of credible Tolkien scholarship has grown steadily over the past 50-60 years.  I remember being able to cite nearly all published Tolkien scholars in a couple of term papers when I was in college many years ago.  Now it would require a book to cite them all.  The field has grown, there can be no doubt about that.

The present series of articles introduces the reader to a small cadre of Tolkien scholars, some academic and some independent.  They have lived through the years of dearth and the years of plenty.  They have watched Tolkien scholarship blossom, in some cases have helped lead the way, and in a couple of cases act as wardens or stewards of Tolkien scholarship.  I begin with Janet Brennan Croft.  She is currently the editor of Mythlore (for which she complied a book-length annotated index, which will soon be available in an expanded edition including other Mythopoeic Society publications) and book review editor of Oklahoma Librarian, and serves on the board of the Mythopoeic Press, for which she has indexed and annotated several titles. Her latest book-length project is an edited collection of essays on science fiction and fantasy author Lois McMaster Bujold, due out from McFarland in 2012.  For more information on Janet’s career, see the biographical note at the end of this article or visit her Website.

MM: When did you begin reading Tolkien stories?  Did you discover Tolkien on your own or did someone introduce you to his books?  At that time, did you share your interest in Tolkien with other people?

JBC: I first read The Hobbit at about the age of 7 or 8. I’d initially encountered high fantasy in the Prydain Cycle of Lloyd Alexander, so it was natural I’d look for more like it.  I discovered that The Lord of the Rings actually existed at the age of 11 (I thought it was just a tease at the end of The Hobbit till then) and promptly figured out how to subvert the public library’s rules so I could check it out of the adult section. I don’t think I ran around forcing it on people, but I soon learned to recognize fellow enthusiasts and I did things like write my name in Elvish on my notebooks to make myself visible to other fans.

MM: For your undergraduate degree you took a double major in Classical Civilization and English.  The English studies naturally have a connection to Tolkien analysis and criticism.  Do you find yourself drawing upon those Classical Civilization classes when writing about Tolkien?

JBC: I do, actually. It’s important to remember that both Tolkien and Lewis started out in Classics and had a solid grounding in Greek and Latin undergirding their later interests, so knowledge of Homer and Virgil and classical military history can’t help but increase one’s appreciation of what they’ve done. Since I concentrated on comparative mythology pretty intensely in my program, I also have a background in the history and theory of myth behind my reading and scholarship.

MM: In addition to writing about J.R.R. Tolkien’s work you provided annotations for the many “English” and otherwise obscure references in Dorothy Sayers’ “The Travelling Rug”.  Are you familiar with American critic Edmund Wilson’s (“Oo, those awlful Orcs!”) distaste for Sayers’ work?  Do you think there was anything similar in Sayers and Tolkien’s writing that might have put off Wilson’s personal interests?

JBC: No, I wasn’t aware that Wilson didn’t like Sayers either. But I can see that there’s a certain moral clarity and decisiveness to both of them that a critic like Wilson might read as absolutist and anti-modern, maybe even dictatorial and elitist. Both were very clear about what they believed and why they felt it was important. Tolkien, of course, mentioned in his letters that he enjoyed the Wimsey stories only up to the point of Gaudy Night, when Harriet Vane grew in importance and became the major point-of-view character; I don’t know if he ever came back to Sayers later and enjoyed her theological plays and essays or her Dante translations.

Edmund Wilson has been much reviled in Tolkien scholarship.  For at least 20 years after he wrote his unfavorable review of THE LORD OF THE RINGS virtually every Tolkien critic and apologist referred to his essay, often deriding it for its flaws and contemptible approach.  But Wilson was widely respected in his day and it could be argued that had he not flung down the gauntlet Tolkien’s literature might not have drawn the attention of so many passionate defenders who, moving past the urge to defend and protect the story’s quality, dug deeper and found many reasons to write about Tolkien’s literature. –MM

MM: You have studied and written about Tolkien’s military experiences, even analyzing British war manuals.  Do you find much support for this kind of analysis in Tolkien literary studies?  Is this area perhaps the specialty of only a few writers like you, maybe John Garth, and one or two others?

JBC: One thing I like about Tolkien studies is that it can lead the scholar, especially the one interested in biography, up these interesting and rewarding side alleys. I think this is actually pretty much welcomed in the field; for example, Kristine Larsen’s been doing a lot of work with how Tolkien’s knowledge of amateur astronomy may have influenced the astronomy and legends of Middle-earth. But as far as military experiences in particular, if you believe an author’s biography is reflected in his or her work and is of interest in understanding how that work developed, you can’t avoid looking at war experiences in particular; it’s such an influential event in the life of anyone who’s served. And it’s become something you see in every little news mention of Tolkien now: “Tolkien, who served in the Battle of the Somme…”

MM: Do you feel that fantasy is closely married to martial history?  Can we have interesting fantasy stories that are about things other than great wars and the conflicts between man and monster?  Is armed conflict an essential element for such a broad swath of literature?

JBC: Armed conflict certainly isn’t a necessary component of fantasy — but it is a human endeavor full of high drama which can reveal the best and worst elements of human nature. Therefore an author will find it a quite efficient way to reveal character, move action forward, and as Lois McMaster Bujold suggests, find the worst things you can do to your characters. Fantasy may also have a particular affinity for war and battle as a means of allegorizing great conflicts of concepts of good and evil, but there is plenty of fantasy that gets along quite well without it – think of the vast majority of the Discworld series, for example, or the early books of the Harry Potter series.

MM: In “The Dull Backwaters of the Art of Killing” you suggest that Tolkien drew upon some of his own modern military training to depict certain aspects of warfare in Middle-earth (such as the skill of Eomer’s Riders in executing a precision cavalry maneuver when they encircle Aragorn and his companions).  Are there other areas in Tolkien’s writing that you did not mention in that essay where you feel his modern army insights may have influenced his story-telling?

JBC: One area I looked at recently in an article in Tolkien Studies was Tolkien’s pre-military training in the Officer Training Corps at King Edward’s School.  You can see some of that culture of valuing early civilian military preparedness in the Shire-muster and the Hobbitry-in-arms, mentioned very briefly in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings but shown to have fallen into neglect, therefore leaving the Shire ripe for takeover by Sharkey’s ruffians. But as a stand-in for Edwardian England, the Shire shared that cultural background of civilian preparedness going back to medieval yeomanry that was there to be drawn upon when needed.

MM: There is not much soldierly banter in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.  Two conversations that are sometimes cited as examples of such grunt-level chat are the conversations between Mablung and Damrod (two Rangers of Ithilien whom Faramir left to guard Sam and Frodo) and between Gorbag and Shagrat (two Orc-captains whom Sam overhears talking after Frodo is captured by the Orcs of Mordor).  Do you have an opinion on why Tolkien didn’t use more soldier-like scenes and dialogue?  Why is a book about a great war so distanced from the mundane parts of life during war?

JBC: That wasn’t really the story he wanted to concentrate on – the important part was Sam and Frodo’s journey into Mordor. And there, I think, you do see an idealized relationship between an officer and his batman reflected in their dialogue; a sort of mutual respect in the officer’s acknowledgement of the batman’s service, but still plenty of the mundanity of war in the batman’s dedication to taking care of all the hum-drum details for his master. The simultaneous story about the great military movements leading up to the Black Gate tends not to concentrate on “other ranks” so much as the officers, but when you do get a glimpse of them, they seem to owe more to “The Battle of Maldon” than World War I – I’m thinking here in particular of the Rohirrim encampment at Dunharrow. And I think one of the interesting things about Tolkien’s great opus is exactly this contrast between medieval ways of war in the Aragorn-story and the more modern stresses and terrors of the Frodo-story.

Who is the “batman” Janet refers to?  Did British officers walk into battle with their own private superheroes by their sides?  Essentially, a batman was an officer’s personal servant.  The position evolved from the role of taking care of an officer’s pack horse.  The word is medieval in origin, going back to the 14^th century.  Sam perfectly fits this role, carrying most of the gear that he and Frodo took with them into Mordor. For more about Batmen and Batwomen, check out this article Janet recommended. –MM

MM: You edited a collection of essays on Shakespeare’s influence on Tolkien.  There are elements of Shakespeare’s play, “Cymbeline”, which resemble the drama between King Thingol, Beren, and Luthien.  Few if any Tolkien critics have referred to these similarities.  Do you think that Tolkien scholarship shuns the closer comparison of Tolkien to Shakespeare because of the widespread perception of Tolkien’s hostility toward Shakespeare?  In “Bid the Tree Unfix His Earth-Bound Root” you note that “Tolkien could not totally escape Shakespeare’s influence”, acknowledging Tom Shippey’s grudging concession that Tolkien may have been “guardedly respectful” of Shakespeare.  Do you sense that Tolkien perhaps owed more to Shakespeare than is accepted?

JBC: I think Shakespeare winds up in the bones of anyone who is reasonably literate, and Tolkien being more literate than most, the influence was there even if occasionally denied on the surface.  An interesting strand I’m just starting to see more broadly in Tolkien criticism is the idea that we shouldn’t trust everything Tolkien says about himself and his work, and this certainly applies to some of his statements about Shakespeare – some of which have been taken wildly out of context and granted far more importance than they are due.  But yes, your example of “Cymbeline” shows that there is still plenty of work to be done in this area. It may be as Michael D.C. Drout said in his Guest of Honor speech at Mythcon this summer (published in the Fall 2011 Mythlore) – because Tolkien said “hey, the monsters in Beowulf are actually very interesting and shouldn’t be dismissed so lightly,” later critics have tended to concentrate on nothing BUT the monsters. Similarly, “Tolkien hated Shakespeare” became such a shibboleth that people just didn’t look at it that closely. There’s no reason to shy away from the topic – perhaps that’s even all the more reason to look at it.

“Cymbeline” tells the story of the British (Celtic) king Cunobelinus.  According to some older sources it is a tragedy; more recent scholarship argues that it is, in fact, a romance.    Shakespearean scholars trace the story back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, a controversial medieval writer who is credited with setting into motion the long Arthurian tradition.  The Shakespearean tale follows the unfolding drama as Cunobelinus discovers that his daughter Imogen is in love with Posthumous Leonatus, a common man who has grown up in the king’s court.  Shakespeare takes liberties with historical figures, facts, and follies.

The hero and heroine travel all over the countryside, face many perils, make strange friends, and all amid a Roman invasion of Britain, royal intrigues, and essentially every plot element one can find in “Quenta Silmarillion” (among many others not found in Tolkien’s imaginary epic history).  That is not to say that Tolkien based his Silmarillion on Shakespeare – rather, that there are many parallels between the stories which Tolkien might have grudgingly conceded (if pressed to comment upon them) would fall into the realm of what he termed “applicability”.  The reader may infer whatever he wishes. –MM

MM: Michael Drout once noted (see citation above) that many of the best Tolkien scholars are not professors of English literature.  Some of them are librarians, others may be collectors, a few are linguists, and some are engineers.  Do you feel Tolkien still faces an uphill challenge among the ranks of literary educators, the “purists” of the study of literature?  If so, what do you feel is the barrier to acceptance among such scholars?  If not, where do you feel the barrier came down?

JBC: I think he’s becoming more and more acceptable academically; in fact, Dr. Leslie Donovan has an MLA guide to teaching Tolkien in the works, and that’s a sign of respectability indeed. But this long history of marginalization has made the field, both historically and today, more welcoming to the less-traditional scholar – the librarians, the independent scholars, people working outside their main academic fields. I don’t think the scholarship is any less rigorous for it; in fact I think it has both helped it avoid some of the traps of academically insular fields that get all choked up in the tangle of the latest fashionable theory, and made it quite interestingly broad. But this lack of emphasis on “theory” may also scare away early-career academics who know they need to demonstrate how in tune they are with the current fashions in literary criticism in order to get tenure.

MM: As Editor of Mythlore, would you like to see more submissions from new Tolkien critics?  What advice would you give to people who want to embark upon publishing Tolkien and Inklings criticism?

JBC: I’m always delighted to see a new name cross my desk, and it gives me great pride to publish a promising new scholar! As far as advice, I’ll echo Drout’s Guest of Honor speech again: be aware of the critical history. Don’t think you’re the first person who ever thought of something; you need to dig into the past and see what other people have said and where you can go from there. There’s fifty-odd years of good things to read out there and no excuse not to find your way into it. Another thing I will mention – some advice given to me when I first became an editor was to apply the “so what?” test to submissions. If you read it and say “so what?”, it needs more work – it needs a hook of some sort to tell the reader that there’s something new here, something worth reading, some new insight to be gained. Look for what gets YOU enthusiastic about your research and pass that on to the reader.

Biographical Note

Janet Brennan Croft is Head of Access Services and Associate Professor of Bibliography at the University of Oklahoma libraries.  She earned her Master of Library Science degree at Indiana University in 1983, where she also earned her Bachelor of Arts in Classical Civilization and English (dual major) in 1982.  She is the author of War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Praeger, 2004; winner of the Mythopoeic Society Award for Inklings Studies) and several book chapters on the Peter Jackson films; has published articles on J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, and Terry Pratchett in Mythlore, Mallorn, Tolkien Studies, Seven, and elsewhere; and is editor of two collections of essays: Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (Mythopoeic Press, 2004) and Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language (McFarland, 2006).

She has also written on library issues, particularly copyright, for College and Undergraduate Libraries, Interlending and Document Supply, Journal of Access Services, Collection Building, and Journal of Interlibrary Loan and Document Supply, and is the author of Legal Solutions in Electronic Reserves and the Electronic Delivery of Interlibrary Loan (Haworth, 2004).

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