Some months ago, a teacher of English Literature wrote to gently chastize me for not exercising my considerable judgement in seeking the finer aspects of Tolkien’s works. I.e., I’m wasting my talents because I’m not examining the symbolism and deeper meaning of Tolkien’s works, which is of course where serious scholarship devotes its resources. Well, the compliments were (and are) indeed appreciated but the advice was not well received.
Not that I have ever called myself a scholar, but I have a real problem with Tolkien scholarship. I find it to be immensely boring and usually not very relevant to Tolkien. Tolkien scholarship takes three forms: literary criticism, linguistic analysis, and textual analysis. Literary criticism is pretentious and arrogant, and as everyone knows, I’m neither pretentious nor arrogant, so I’m hardly suited to the task. Worse, I’m totally dedicated to the literal interpretation of works so my opinions are hardly going to shed light on the deeper meanings of things.
Linguistic analysis is more of a delicate art than a science. Perhaps, though, we should call it linguistic extrusion. An attempt is underway to construct the dialects of the Tatyarin Avari, just as David Salo earlier this year constructed a dialect of Silvan Elvish. Perhaps because he is David Salo no one dared cry “Foul!” Or perhaps because the dialect was published in Other Hands few people were even aware of it. Either way, I get into trouble just trying to figure out how to pronounce “Silmarillion” so I’m hardly suited for linguistic analysis.
Textual analysis is the sort of thing I associate with translating ancient works into modern languages. It’s a sad statement on our educational system, I think, that we cannot agree on the uses of simile and metaphor. I wonder if that’s due to the conflict between transformational grammarians and traditionalists, or if it’s because most students are too busy doodling in their notebooks to pay attention in class. When I took Advanced Grammmar in college, Dr. Bergeron explained the purpose of the course on the first day of class. Most of my classmates were future teachers. They all literally breathed sighs of relief when the professor got to the part where he said, “You know all those fancy words we use? Gerunds, adverbials, participles? This is the class where you finally learn what they mean and how to use them.”
My Advanced Composition class made all those five-hundred word themes in the early classes seem like “mere essays in the craft”. Hm. I suppose they were. One of my advanced compositions took on the meaning of “truth”. What is truth? I had to use a lot of simile and metaphor to try and make my point. Dr. Barrier, my instructor, liked the effort but it was probably as clear to him as to me. That is, neither of us could really figure out what the “truth” was, and he was fortunately not saddled with teaching me Philosophy (I avoided Philosophy as I was getting so much of it from my fellow students after class anyway).
The most challenging class, however, was an advanced fiction course where there were only about seven of us to start with (yes, a couple of people dropped the course). The instructor, one of my favorite college teachers, decided to handle the class more like a master class. We embarked upon a journey of reading and writing fiction that was pretty intense. I remember Faulkner’s “Bear” story (well, the first half, which made sense) and Kafka’s stupid cockroach tale “The Metamorphosis” (I don’t like Kafka — neither did my classmates). In fact, I remember more stories from that class than from any of my literature classes.
The English faculty at my college (now a university) believed strongly in exposing their students to as many different types of stories as possible. And that was about the only thing that contentious lot could agree upon. It’s not like they were at each other’s throats day in and day out. Just when it came time to set up class schedules and decide on curriculum changes. Or when someone dared mention Dr. Greider’s Shakespeare class in the middle of a survey course. I never took the Shakespeare course, and but for that I would have had a degree in English Literature or something.
Well, all that has absolutely nothing to do with Tolkien and Middle-earth. But whenever I think of literary criticism, I think of my college days. I think of browsing the racks in the old library building looking for English literature journals which were written in comprehensible language. I think of sifting through microfilm and card catalogues. I think of the startled look on one professor’s face when he realized I wanted to do a paper on The Lord of the Rings and not The Lord of the Flies.
While doing research for my Lord of the Rings paper I found there had been quite a bit of critical discussion of the book in the 1950s and 1960s. But eventually the critics got tired of saying how right they were and how wrong Tolkien was. Or maybe they just got old and died off. Critics started getting friendlier to Tolkien in the 1970s, and in the 1980s they became almost reverential. Now, as we are about to enter a new millennium, it’s almost unthinkable that anyone should say anything bad about the author of the century.
Early Tolkien critics shared one thing in common: they were noticeably poorly read in Tolkien. The mis-citations and irrelevant analyses were vague foreshadowings of many Internet discussions. Nothing exasperates me more than to see someone post a message somewhere saying, “I haven’t read the book in ten years, but wasn’t Frodo the Christ-figure?” I wasn’t aware there was a Christ-figure in the book. Christ was a teacher (among other things) and he had disciples. Well, never mind. I don’t want to get into all that.
But at least people who haven’t read the book in ten years have read the book. Critics don’t so much read a book as trash or praise it. Reading is not really a part of the process. Skimming is more what they are expected to do. I remember an American Lit. class we were all supposed to take turns pulling out good phrases from various stories. Each day we were assigned several stories to read. Then someone would have to go through the stories and say, “I think this is a good passage” and “Look at the structure of this sentence”.
We took it all very seriously. Sadly, we were all saddled with other classes whose instructors also believed in homework. Even the Math professors expected us to actually read our textbooks. There were days when I wanted to interrupt Dr. Straley and tell her, “This is a particularly fine example of a quantitative exposition”. I’m sure she would have understood the deeper meaning instantly (she understood all sorts of things — she was a mother as well as a teacher).
One day, while we starving students were hastily underlining text in our Norton anthologies, Dr. Hinton (the English Professor) looked up and said, “Y’all need to learn the fine art of skimmin’!” (The dear lady spoke with a thick southern accent — she was great to listen to.) Naturally we were shocked and appalled. Someone worked up the nerve to ask, “You mean we aren’t supposed to read all these stories?” Well, yes, we were expected to read the stories, but the pace she had set for us was intended to give us a little nudge in the right direction. That is, we were supposed to be learning to pick out the highlights of the story.
So, from that day forward, everyone skimmed. And that seems to be the secret to literary criticism. The critics all practice the fine art of skimmin’. Well, when it comes to Tolkien, unless I’m reading “On Fairy-stories” or “Leaf by Niggle”, I’d prefer not to skim, thank you. There is more to a good story than its highlights. There are the details and subtle indications of character growth. One of my favorite quotes which never came from Tolkien was, “Well, Samwise, what do you think of the Elves now?” That’s a paraphrase of a question Frodo asks Sam two times in the story. Would a critic know what the question refers to? I doubt it. Would a critic understand the deeper meaning of the question? I doubt that very much as well.
Who are the Elves, and who is Samwise, that his opinion of them should matter to someone as important as Frodo? There is great applicability in the question. In college I had a couple of friends who were almost always involved in my various nefarious activities. I used to ask one of them, “Well, Samwise, what do you think of the Elves now?” whenever things looked darkest for us. After about two years of that, Daryl couldn’t stand it any more and asked me where I got the question from. He had read Tolkien in high school, but didn’t really appreciate the book.
Not that my friend is (or was) a shallow critic. He’s very good at reading people. He just wasn’t into Tolkien the way I was (or am). But I think there is something poignant and worthwhile in Frodo’s asking Sam about the Elves. Sam’s responses aren’t as important as the questions. Frodo is interested in learning something about Sam. He doesn’t really care whether Sam likes or dislikes the Elves. And Sam, for his part, understands that his personal feelings aren’t important to the Elves. “They seem a bit above my likes and dislikes, so to speak,” he says.
That’s the way critics are. They are a bit above my likes and dislikes. They have their own concerns and griefs to redress. Their personal vendettas against Tolkien or the previous generation of Tolkien critics don’t really mean anything to me. Nor do my delvings into Tolkien’s pseudo-history really mean anything to them. I’m just a hobbit from the Shire looking for some fun. I’m more of a Took than a Samwise in that respect.
I guess that makes me a black sheep among a generation of Tolkien researchers who have been looking for vindication of their favorite author. I might be able to help vindicate Tolkien in the literary world, but then, I never took that Shakespeare class. I can’t really revile the Bard with quite the authority of a Tolkien. Hence, I can’t compare Tolkien to Shakespeare or delve into his Anglo-Saxon roots the way Tom Shippey does.
And just as Shippey seems to lay everything Tolkien at the feet of the Anglo-Saxons, I’m afraid I’d lay everything at the feet of the Greeks. Tolkien seemed to have a great appreciation for the Greeks. I get the impression he didn’t think much of the Romans. But Greek literature had an impact on him. Tolkien noted in one of his letters that “Greek mythology depends far more on the marvellous aesthetic of its language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its content than people realize”. This was the point he used to illustrate his realization that “‘legends’ depend on the language to which they belong.”
Shippey constructs a wonderful argument about how Tolkien sought roots for many of the things in The Lord of the Rings in Anglo-Saxon literature or words. But Tolkien was being very Greek about the process. Middle-earth is intrinsically woven from the charges of Alexander and the courage of Harold and Alfred. Homeric beauty mingles with the Gothic prestige of the Rohirrim. Tolkien just happens to use his beloved Anglo-Saxon language to portray the Rohirrim’s culture. But the Anglo-Saxons achieved nothing like the Rohirrim or the Greeks and Goths. They achieved their own greatness, and yet much of it was lost in 1066. So Tolkien borrowed from more ancient peoples whom he no doubt believed shared similar pathos for life and adventure.
There is an echo of Jason and the Argonauts in Earendil, of Hercules in Hurin, of Achilles in Turin. Troy sings to us from the fallen stones of Gondolin. Atlantis becomes Atalante, Numenor the Downfallen. These are not trivial comparisons. Tolkien might very well have been saying “Here is how Homer might have sung of the heroic Anglo-Saxons before the Normans came and took away all their legends”.
A modern author, wishing to construct (or reconstruct) English mythology, might turn to the Norse myths for inspiration. But this would be a mistake, and I can’t say I understand why Tolkien would regard it so, but I know why I say it’s a mistake. The Norse had their own culture and they weren’t really regarded as invaders like the Greeks and Anglo-Saxons. Greek culture had moved into Greece with a historical people, just as Anglo-Saxon culture had moved into Britain (England) with a historical people. The Scandinavians had their own waves of immigration, but those were so long ago there is now no memory of them in any legend or myth. The Norse myths are thus alien to Anglo-Saxon tradition.
The Anglo-Saxons remembered an older world, another land their forefathers once called “home”. Offa of Angel is a Continental hero of the Angles of Britain, a name brought west by their immigrant ancestors. All the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms resemble the ancient Greek city-states. The political geography of both countries passed through phases of consolidation, although the Greeks never achieved a full national statehood before the Macedonians imposed one on them. Invaders came and gradually took over land from older peoples, and eventually settled down beside them.
Tolkien was looking for the similarities in the heroic past of the peoples he used for models. The Norse myths are not founded on a migration period. The Bronze Age myths of the Greeks are raw and primitive like the Norse myths but they are the myths of tribes and nations, not of individual heroes. The Anglo-Saxons like the Greeks achieved something of a national identity despite all their differences. Or one can form the impression they did. Their name for their country, “Angle-land”, implies a unity of identification which didn’t really exist in Scandinavia. There were Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. When they sent out colonists these peoples became Faeroese, Icelanders, Greenlanders. They were northmen to the rest of the world but they were unique groups to themselves. And their legends and myths emphasized the individual over the nation. The Anglo-Saxons are remembered as Anglo-Saxons, not as Haestingas, Icings, Hwicce, etc.
Anglo-Saxon literature doesn’t resemble Greek literature in theme. “Beowulf” is an individualistic story, not a nationalistic one. It more resembles “The Odyssey” than “The Iliad”, but even “The Odyssey” spans a broad landscape which is touched by Greek culture and heritage. “Beowulf” is alien and foreign to Angle-land, and it looks back to an older time. What “Beowulf” shares with the Homeric epics is the form of a tribal memory, a national heritage common to more than one group (even if it is primarily an Anglian heritage, there were several Anglian kingdoms). And Beowulf himself was a Geat, not a Dane, but he came from the older world where all tribes shared the same heritage.
Perhaps the Christian influences on “Beowulf” reflect something inherited from the Greeks. We don’t really know what the original poem was like, or even if there was a single original “Beowulf” poem. Like the medieval Robin Hood legends, the “Beowulf” epic might have arisen as separate stories which someone eventually bound together as a whole.
Robin Hood and Beowulf both exhibit those heroic qualities Tolkien loved to find in his heroes, even the tragic ones. These were honorable men, facing unbeatable odds and coming away with some sort of victory. The Scandinavian myths don’t pit man against god or man against monster, but rather god against god and monster. The sagas do portray heroic men in action but they are flawed heroes. Turin is the most Norse-like character in Tolkien, but as I mentioned before, he also resembles Achilles in some respects: melancholy, quick to anger, brash in battle.
And so on and so forth. A study of Tolkien’s hero archetypes might be interesting to some folks but I lose interest after only a few paragraphs. I can’t imagine a book which explores the whole concept (let alone one which has much of a chance of covering all the relevant sources). Tolkien gets pigeonholed by every critic and scholar and all the rebuttals seem to spend half their resources trying to bail him out of prison. Tolkien seems to have looked down his nose at such attempts to define him, and I think he exercised good judgement in doing so.
The search for human relevance in literature is obviously important to a lot of people, but as I’ve said before I think they miss out on just enjoying the fun of the tale. Sam gets angry when, as Hobbits of the Shire awaken to historical scholarship, they credit three of the four who were responsible for saving them and leave Frodo out in the cold. It was Frodo, in Sam’s opinion, who achieved the most. But the Shire-folk were too concerned with the minutiae close to their own parochial agendae to see the bigger picture. We could borrow a page from Shippey and suggest that Tolkien was gently poking fun at his colleagues over their long-winded debates on the deeper meaning of literature.
Great literature entertains. Although it can, it doesn’t have to explore the depths of human tragedy. It doesn’t have to attach allegorical baggage to a classic event or person. In fact, I can’t think of any great literature which does this. Great literature is applicable to human experience but literature is pretentious if it seeks to comment on the human condition. Writers should just come out and say what they want to say rather than hide behand hand-puppets and shadows.
Story-telling is best left to the story-tellers. These are the people who can gently poke fun at their colloquial cousins without being offensive, or who can borrow from living controversy without making it the point of the story. The difference between story-tellers and lecturers is that lecturers have some point to make. Story-tellers just want to entertain the audience, and maybe make enough money to buy their dinner at the end of the day. At the very least someone should buy them a drink because telling tales is thirsty work.
Tolkien scholarship revels in the retelling of the story. Everything is explained away (or conveniently ignored) in pursuit of the Grand Tolkien Theory, which, I suppose, might someday win someone a Nobel or Pulitzer prize. Although I hope not. At its core, The Lord of the Rings is just an adventure tale about a handful of hobbits who try to find a way to save the world. It’s not a Christian apology or prosyletizing tract. It’s not even an homage to the long lost Anglo-Saxon literature Tolkien so wanted to bring back. It’s just a story.
Under the hands of his critics and scholars, Tolkien’s work takes on whole new shades and dimensions he undoubtedly was never aware of. People want so badly to be a part of the magic they will say or do anything to leave their mark on it. Critics are the graffiti artists of literature, though they are generally less skilled than the kids who have produced vibrant murals on the walls of abandoned buildings and subways. Tolkien critics devote a great deal of time to “proving” their points, but they would probably not last long in a trivia contest.
Worse yet, if you set a critic down amongst a group of die-hard readers, the critic might roll his eyes and scratch his head or try to change the subject as the readers go on about how Maglor is probably living on the shores of the Sea of Rhun. If a reader asks why Fram slew Scatha the Worm, the critic is likely to bring up Beowulf (who has absolutely nothing to do with Fram and Scatha, but “Beowulf” and Beowulf are the universal keys to Tolkien in some people’s eyes).
It’s not important to ask if the Elves frolicked on the shores of Belegaer, if they enjoyed wading through the waves, or just sitting in the sun and soaking up some rays. Tolkien scholars have to figure out what word the Elves would have used to describe “sun-bathing”, and why Tolkien was wrong to twist the Elven language in some fashion because he wasn’t following “the rules”. But the worst offenses of the critics are the treatments of The Lord of the Rings which render it into a methodical retelling of older legends. Smaug does not talk to Beowulf, he speaks with Bilbo Baggins. Morgoth imprisons Hurin on the mount, but he isn’t Hera striking out at Hercules.
The study of Tolkien’s works is really in its infancy because, quite frankly, the critics have been ignoring the Tolkien stories for decades. They’ve focused on whether Aragorn has all the qualities of a noble horse, whether the Orcs are stereotypical villains, or whether the Rohirrim were derived from the Anglo-Saxons. Do even one of these people understand what The Lord of the Rings is all about?
Tolkien said the story was about death and the search for deathlessness. But that is the simple explanation of its deeper meaning. It’s a hint that guides attentive critics (of which there seem to be all too few) in the right direction. In reality, the story isn’t trying to teach us about death and the search for deathlessness. It’s trying to entertain us.
In reality, it’s about Hobbits, and Elves, and Men…and Orcs. It’s just a story about Middle-earth. Nothing more, nothing less. And that’s why I like it. There are no Christ-like figures, Anglo-Saxons, or Beowulfs in Middle-earth. So I see no reason to write about them if I’m going to talk about Tolkien and Middle-earth. I just wanted to say that. And it really doesn’t matter if the critics (Tolkien’s or mine) get it or not.
This article was originally published on December 29, 2000.
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