Reinventing Tolkien: Reinventing Genre (2/4)
Orion
---------------------------
It would be a mistake to assume The Lord of the Rings belongs to any
genre exclusively. It is, in fact, the product of a mixture of
conventions, motifs, and styles extending backwards to Homer and to as
recent as the 1940's. In each case, though, Tolkien alters these
genres in strategic ways in order to communicate his belief that we
live in a fallen world. In each case, he combines an old form with a
contemporary form, and creates a new one that is "Familiar but not too
familiar, strange but not too strange" (Kocher 2). This allows Rings
to act as a medium for his themes in a way that is accessible to the
contemporary reader. Specifically, Tolkien eliminates several
conventions of the Epic formula and emphasises one of them, he inverts
the medieval Quest, and he employs the Romantic love of nature in
conjunction with the awesome horror of the Gothic. The decision of his
publishers to package Rings in the form of a trilogy is another form
of reinvention. The fact that they did so despite Tolkien's
preferences to the contrary is an example of the kind of practical
imperfections that he associated with our fallen world.
To begin, then, we start with the genre that dominates Rings, the
Epic. The basic definition of it is: "An extended narrative poem,
exalted in style and heroic in theme" (Terms 68), but the most
commonly recognised indicator of the genre is the inclusion of epic
conventions:
The poet begins by… invoking the aid of a muse.
He then launches into his action in medias res,
in the middle of things (The preceding events
are narrated as some appropriate point later on.)
This action concerns a hero, a man of stature
and significance… In the course of the story
the hero performs many notable deeds, one of
which is to descend into the underworld. The
major characters are catalogued and described…
There are usually great battles in which the
gods themselves, who are regularly involved
in epic stories, take part. Finally, the epic
poet adopts a style, dignified, elaborate,
and exalted, suitable to this theme. (69)
Obviously, Rings does not employ all of these conventions. To begin
with, it is not in verse. However, it does include many short poems
that, though not integral to the plot, provide a vivid sense of the
history and culture of Middle-earth. Many of these poems are taken
from Tolkien's other book, The Silmarillion, which he wrote long
before The Hobbit or Rings, and originally intended to write as a
series of long poems in alliterative verse (Carpenter 84). Tolkien
also does not invoke a muse. He could be argued to have dedicated
Rings to his dead mother, his wife, or even to his country, but no
such explicit statement exists within the story itself.
Rings does, however, begin in medias res. By the opening of the book,
Bilbo already has the Ring, and the war is already in motion in Minas
Tirith. The opening chapter describes Bilbo and his place in hobbit
society. Admittedly, this expository material is mostly for the sake
of those readers who did not read The Hobbit, but it does not stop
there. Gandalf begins a long description of the history of Sauron and
the One Ring in A Shadow of the Past (Fellowship I 4), which is
finished in The Council of Elrond (II 2), along with the revelation of
the identity of the mysterious 'Strider', and the introduction of the
attendants of Elrond's council, three of whom (Boromir, Gimli, and
Legolas) will become members of the fellowship itself.
The story is full of heroic deeds, including a perilous journey
through the Old Forest (I 6), a narrow escape from the barrow-wights
(I 8), and an attack by the Black Riders (II 11), and that is just the
first book. There are several events that could be interpreted as
descents into the underworld, including: the aforementioned encounter
with the barrow-wights; the journey through the Mines of Moria (II
4-5); Aragorn's summoning of the long-dead knights of Dol Amroth
(Return II 2); Frodo, Sam, and Gollum's long march across Mordor
(Towers II 1-10, Return II 1-3), and their encounter with Shelob,
queen of the giant spiders (Towers II 9).
There is at least one grand battle in each book, most of which involve
supernatural powers of some kind, if not actual gods. In Fellowship
there is The Flight to the Ford (I 12), and The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm
(II 5). In both, Gandalf pits his magic against that of Sauron's
minions (the Ringwraiths and the Balrog, respectively). In Towers we
witness the ents (animate, intelligent trees) destroy Saruman's
citadel (Flotsam and Jetsam, I 9), and Sam battle Shelob (The Choices
of Master Samwise, II 10). In Return there is The Siege of Gondor (I
4), in which the Haradrim, invigorated by Sauron's dark powers, attack
Minas Tirith; The Battle of the Pelennor Fields (I 6), where Eowyn and
Pippin destroy the hitherto invincible Captain of the Ringwraiths; The
Field of Cormallen (II 4), in which the Ring is destroyed, and Sauron
with it; and, finally, The Scouring of the Shire (II 8), in which
Merry, Pippin, Sam and the rest of the hobbits rid themselves of
'Sharky' (a.k.a. Saruman) and his industrial machinery. Last but not
least, though not as exalted as Beowulf's alliterative verse or
Milton's iambic pentameter, it is interesting to note that Tolkien's
language becomes more elaborate and archaic as the story progresses
(Carpenter 196).
The most important indicator of the epic for us, though, is one that
is often overlooked in formal definitions of the genre. Epics tend to
lament a world that is passing into myth and legend, a Golden Age that
will never come back. The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid all
involve the fall of Troy, but more to the point they depict an era of
great heroes (Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas), grand battles (the Fall of
Troy, the slaughter of the unlawful suitors, the struggle with
Latium), and divine intervention in human affairs. An era whose
excitement and wonder makes the present mundane by comparison. Beowulf
is the last gasp of the pre-Christian world of Anglo-Saxon mythology.
The most obvious example in later English literature is John Milton's
Paradise Lost, which depicts the Fall, the destruction of the world's
original state of grace.
It is important to understand that this same sense of epic loss also
permeated Tolkien's personal life, and, therefore, was a looming
presence in his writing. He strongly associated a pre-lapsarian
existence with his youth in the rural areas of England (39). When he
was twelve, and his mother died, he and his younger brother were
forced to move to the city (40). As a result, he transferred the grief
he felt for his mother's death (which he was strongly encouraged to
suppress) to the doctrine of the Fall from Grace (39). From this we
know that whenever he discusses or alludes to the Fall (which
constitutes the bulk of Rings), there is an intensely personal
component in it. After his mother's death he had a tendency to fall
into moods in which, "he had a deep sense of impending loss. Nothing
was safe. Nothing would last. No battle would be won for ever"(39).
His faith, which Carpenter believes took the place of his mother's
love (39), often pulled him out of such states of depression. "The
consolation that [religion] provided was emotional as well as
spiritual"(39). If his mother's death was the Fall from Grace, then he
could find hope in the Second Coming, in which she would rise from the
dead along with the rest of the faithful.
The role religion played in quelling Tolkien's grief parallels the
inverse property of the epic lament. Despite the tragic fall of one
world, the epic always looks forward to a new, glorious world to come.
In Paradise Lost, we see the twisted, malevolent realm of Hell, but
Milton also treats us to glimpses of a future state of redemption, of
the return of God to the world through his son, Jesus. Beowulf's fatal
fight with the dragon signifies the symbolic passing of the
Anglo-Saxon world, but it also implies an anticipation of Christian
Britain. The Aeneid predicts the rise of Rome and the eventual Pax
Romana. The Iliad and The Odyssey both look forward to Greek political
stability. In this way, the fall of one world indicates, even causes,
the rise of another. The death and resurrection of Jesus can be said
to enact this same literary convention [5].
The epic lament is one of the few generic conventions Tolkien does not
seem to want to reinvent. He leaves it more or less intact for the
simple reason that it serves his thematic purposes perfectly.
Middle-earth is supposed to be Europe at an earlier epoch in history.
The clues to this effect in the text itself are numerous, but mostly
found in information that is additional to the story. For example, the
Prologue to Rings is largely concerned with hobbits, stating that they
are:
an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more
numerous formerly than they are today… shy of
'the Big Folk', as they call us, and now they
avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to
find. (Prologue 19)
It is unclear to whom Tolkien is speaking, here. To the reader of the
story, obviously, but a reader living in 20th century England or one
living in the first reign of King Aragorn son of Arathorn? The
confusion arises primarily through the use of the first person plural
'us', which places the speaker in the world in which hobbits used to
live. Despite (or perhaps, because of) what one might think of the
mental status of an Oxford Don, it is almost impossible to determine
just exactly how facetious or serious Tolkien is in these quotations.
On some level, one suspects that he really did believe that hobbits
once inhabited the English country-side, or at the very least, that he
wanted them to. "They arose in my mind as 'given' things… always I had
the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of
'inventing'" (Carpenter 100) [6]. In fact, if we look closely at the
maps included in the text we notice that the Shire, the home of the
hobbits, is located in the north-west corner of Middle-earth, exactly
where England would be on a map of Europe. Middle-earth is an earlier
incarnation of the present world, and an idealised one at that. The
second half of this paper will explore the implications of this
symbolic recreation in much more detail. What is important for now is
to recognise that the fall of the Second Age of Middle-earth, though
extremely cathartic in its own right, is meant to direct the reader's
attention two ways. On the one hand, she should recognise the degraded
nature of the present world in comparison to Middle-earth. On the
other, she should rejoice in the rise of Christianity. Tolkien uses
epic lament to enact his sorrow at the Fall from Grace, but he also
uses its inverse property, what we might call epic anticipation, to
symbolically defeat that sorrow, both in his own mind and in his
readers. Next, we will look at how Tolkien reinvents the Quest in
order to depict another aspect of living in a fallen world.
Rings both typifies and subverts the medieval genre of the Quest. The
quest is probably the most common form of heroism in Medieval
literature. It appears in Beowulf (quest: kill monsters, gather fame),
the legend of King Arthur (quest: find the Holy Grail), and Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight (quest: answer the Green Knight's challenge). It
is also appears in Classical narratives (Jason quests for the Golden
Fleece), and even the literature of Mesopotamia (Gilgamesh quests for
eternal life). Though Rings very much is a quest, Tolkien radically
alters the standard formation of the genre.
If we look closely we notice that Rings is, in fact, an inversion of
the quest. Instead of going in search of something, the fellowship
undertakes a journey to get rid of something. Instead of obtaining the
object of power that will allow the hero to defeat the villain, these
heroes seek to destroy an object of power that could be utilised by
the villain to defeat them. Note, also, that though the journey itself
is arduous, it does not emphasise the toughness, the ruggedness of the
heroes, but rather their frailty and their fragility. The quest (and
the epic, for that matter) both tend to emphasise the hero's courage
and fortitude in the face of adversity. Beowulf, for example, is able
to swim icy Danish waters in full armour with his sword while fighting
off sea-monsters, and still wins the contest (Beowulf Fitt IX-X).
Whereas, in Rings no one, not even Gandalf, can resist the will of
Sauron forever, let along an obscure country hobbit [7]. This is all,
of course, intimately related to how Tolkien manipulates the symbolic
value of the Ring by casting it in the role of an Anglo-Saxon
weregild.
We see rings throughout early Medieval heroic poetry, especially that
of the Britons and the peoples we now call Scandinavian (Danes,
Norwegians, Swedes, etc.). Their cultural significance is clear: rings
are symbols of wealth. In Beowulf Hrothgar is often referred to as
"breaker-of-rings" (Fitt I, II, IV, etc) and once as "giver of rings"
(Fitt XVII), as is Beowulf himself once he becomes king of the Geats
(Fitt XXXVI). In The Battle of Maldon the epithet "ring-giver" (L 290)
is used to refer to any chieftain, though ironically never to
Byrhtnoth himself. These kennings both actually mean the same thing. A
king or chieftain would break off pieces of a spiral ring made of gold
to reward his followers (Beowulf 6) [8]. It is a simple matter of
conceptual drift to go from these kinds of rings to the kind worn on
the finger. Obviously, there is much more than a simple literary motif
at work, here. The giving of rings-as-wealth in exchange for service
to the king has a deep cultural significance in the early British and
Scandinavian world. It symbolised the complex oath-bonds that held
warring nations together. Part of the King's duty was to gain wealth
and spread it around: "He [Hrothgar] broke not his pledge, he bestowed
bracelets and treasure at the banquet" (Fitt II, italics for
emphasis).
This is the reason that it is perfectly legitimate to raid a dragon's
lair and steal his hoard, as we see in both Beowulf, and (not
coincidentally) The Hobbit. By literally hoarding gold, dragons take
it out of circulation, and thus cripple not only the economy, but also
the King's ability to fulfil his oaths to his followers. A dragon's
hoard threatens basic political and social stability. This means that
all rings (even ones that are not magic) represent the rule of the
king, the importance of the oath, heroism in battle, and the spoils of
war. The Anglo-Saxon world was held together by rings. Tolkien is, of
course, entirely aware of this cultural signification. He even
emphasises the comparison by referring to the Ring as "weregild"
(Fellowship 320), monetary compensation for the death of close-kin.
The practise served to quell the need take violent revenge for the
death of one's father, brother, or comrade in arms. In this case,
Isildur takes it in recompense for the death of his father, who fell
defeating Morgoth the master and mentor of Sauron (319). Tolkien
insures that the Ring is not just symbolically related to the kinds of
oath-bonds and warrior's codes I have described, but that it is quite
literally taken as a part of them.
However, Tolkien believed in the inevitable corruption of the world.
He took the Fall seriously, literally, and personally because of the
emotional issues he had regarding his mother's death. Worldly power
was, for him, not just fleeting or unimportant, but a symbol of the
corruption of the world. Therefore, he could not regard an object that
represented such power (a ring, for example) without at least
suspicion, and at most disdain. To communicate that disdain he enacts
the traditional symbolic value of rings, and then subverts it. His
Ring is sought after by all, but it is imbued with an immeasurable
capacity to cause moral and physical decay in anyone who has it. Like
the hoarding of worldly goods, seeking possession of the Ring will
only degenerate the possessor, mind, body, and soul. This occurs over
and over again. Characters become obsessed with the Ring. It becomes
'precious', or even 'the precious', a turn of phrase that almost
magically intensifies the reader's sense of repulsion. This happens to
Gollum most obviously (even long after losing the Ring he still talks
to it in almost every scene in which he appears), but also to Bilbo
(who calls it 'precious' just before he leaves it to Frodo [Fellowship
59]), and to Frodo himself (who finally succumbs to its power at the
last minute before Gollum inadvertently destroys it [Return 274]).
Those characters who have merely heard of or viewed the Ring can also
become corrupted. Boromir betrays the fellowship and attacks Frodo
(Fellowship 517) after glimpsing it briefly at The Counsel of Elrond
(350), and again at Tol Brandir (515). Saruman the White, the leader
of the great and noble Wizards' Counsel, and Denethor, the Lord of
Minas Tirith, both become obsessed with it without ever having seen
it. It is in this way that the complete inversion of the quest takes
place. The inherent value of rings is both emphasised and debased by
making the Ring seductive and destructive. Thus, the objective of the
quest is not to gain power, wealth, or the ability to destroy the
enemy, but to abandon it in favour of moral purity.
Rings juxtaposes 18th century Romanticism with 19th century Gothic to
praise nature and denounce the modern machine. Tolkien employs (or is
at least in agreement with) William Wordsworth's love of nature [9],
and makes much use of the supernatural imagery of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. The influence of, for example, "Lines Written a Few Miles
Above Tintern Abbey" is more than clear in the following passage, the
first description of Lothlòrien, the oldest Elven forest left on
Middle-earth:
Frodo looked up, and caught his breath.
They were standing in an open space. To
the left stood a great mound, covered with
a sward of grass as green as Spring-time in
the Elder days. Upon it, as a double crown,
grew two circles of trees: the outer had
bark of snowy white, and were leafless but
beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the
inner were mallorn-trees of great height,
still arrayed in pale gold. High amid the
branches of the towering tree that stood in
the centre of all there gleamed a white flet
[platform]. At the feet of the trees, and all
about the green hillsides, the grass was
studded with small golden flowers shaped like
stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks,
were other flowers, white and palest green:
they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of
the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the
sun of afternoon, glowed upon the hill and
cast long green shadows beneath the trees.
'Behold! You are come to Cerin Amroth,'
said Haldir. (Fellowship 454) [10]
Despite the presence of dozens of people (the rest of the fellowship
and a squadron of elves) in this scene, the narration (clearly written
from Frodo's point of view) does not mention anyone else until Haldir
speaks. The sense of calmness and seclusion is remarkably
Wordsworthian:
-Once
again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky. (Tintern
Abbey L 4-8).
Obviously, both Tolkien and Wordsworth had a deep appreciation for
nature.
To find more obvious associations of Nature and God we must look in
Tolkien's other writing. In "Leaf by Niggle," probably his most
obscure work of fiction, Heaven is a lush, forested landscape. In "On
Fairy Stories", he posits the communion with nature in fairy-stories
as a substitute for communion with God (17). For Tolkien, the creation
of fairy-stories is an inherently Christian act because it is part of
the human desire (conscious or not) to emulate God's act of creation
(65). This is why in the Epilogue he proclaims: "God is the Lord, of
angels, and of men - and of elves" (66), whom, from the above passage,
we know he intimately associated with trees, with forests, and with
nature itself. Aside from belonging to two different churches, Tolkien
and Wordsworth would have had much to talk about, had they ever met.
Tolkien evokes the fantastic/horrific language of Coleridge to serve
as a link between the Romantic and the Gothic, and to depict nature
gone wrong. Frodo, Sam, and Gollum crawl through the marshes of
Mordor. In the water they see the faces of men, elves, and orcs who
died in an unnamed battle in the distant past. Frodo describes them:
They lie in all the pools, pale faces,
deep deep under the dark water. I saw
them: grim faces and evil, and noble
faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair,
and weeds in their silver hair. But all
foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light
is on them. (Towers 297)
These words and images are reminiscent of Coleridge's "Rime of the
Ancient Mariner" in which "The very deep [the sea] did rot" (L123),
and the corpses of the dead serve as a grim reminder of past sins:
"But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men"(L253-256,
gloss). The hidden couplet in the third sentence is particularly
reminiscent of the "flashing eyes" and "floating hair" from "Kubla
Kahn" (L 50).
As a corollary to this love of nature, Tolkien also possessed a fierce
anti-technological, anti-modern [11] streak. To convey this, he uses
what (to my mind) is the corollary to Romanticism, the Gothic. If we
compare the description of Lothlòrien to that of Isengard, Saruman's
citadel, we see the central image of Gothic literature, the Gothic
cathedral from which it derives its name:
… in the moonlight the Ring of Isengard
looked like a graveyard of unquiet dead.
For the ground trembled. The shafts ran
down by many slopes and spiral stairs to
caverns far under; there Saruman had treasuries,
store-houses, armouries, smithies and great
furnaces. Iron wheels revolved there endlessly,
and hammers thudded. At night plumes of vapour
steamed from the vents, lit from beneath with
red light, or blue, or venomous green. (Fellowship
203-4)
Here, the heavenly and the hellish are in direct juxtaposition,
specifically the "small golden flowers shaped like stars" in contrast
with light that glows from below the vents. One is represented by
nature, the other by technology. The use of the loaded word 'ring' is
particularly telling. It associates Isengard with the One Ring.
Capitalising it turns the obvious into the explicit.
While the elves live "High amid the branches of the towering tree",
Saruman's tower is constructed of iron and dark stone "riven from the
bones of the earth", with spires "sharp as the points of spears,
keen-edged as knives"(204). It is a nightmarish presentation of a
Gothic cathedral. In this case, then, Tolkien employs two pre-existing
genres, the Romantic and the Gothic, and makes both all the more
intense through juxtaposition. The result is an unapologetically
anti-modern, anti-industrial effect. Now that we have explored
Tolkien's deliberate reinvention of genre, I would like to look at a
generic reinvention that was completely out of his control, the
transformation of Rings from a serial epic to a pseudo-trilogy.
Rings can just barely be considered a trilogy, and only because of a
practical editorial decision rather than as a matter of intent on the
part of Tolkien himself. The sequel to The Hobbit that would
eventually become Rings began as a continuous story that he had always
intended to publish in a single volume (Carpenter 'The new Hobbit' Ch
V, Pt. 2). As it became longer and longer Tolkien divided it into six
books, all of which are dependant on one another for their plot and
character development. This is obviously not the structure of a
trilogy, which is easily identifiable by it three-part structure of
introduction, complication, and resolution. However, the entire story
in one book would be just over 1,500 pages, and half a million words
(215). To make matters worse, Tolkien insisted that Allen and Unwin,
his publishers, package Rings with The Silmarillion (Carpenter
213-214), a book that detailed the history and mythology of
Middle-earth and that Tolkien had begun writing in 1917, around the
end of The Great War [12] (97). He told his publishers, Allen and
Unwin:
Ridiculous and tiresome as you may think me,
I want to publish them both - The Silmarillion
and The Lord of the Rings. That is what I should
like. Or I will let it be. (213)
He also told them that, when completed, Sil would be about the same
length as Rings [13] (213).
His publishers were understandably reluctant to produce a book that
"was bulky, unconventional, and did not appeal to any one 'market',
being neither a children's book nor an adult novel"(219) [14]. To make
matters worse, World War II had ended only five years prior and
Britain was still in the midst of a paper shortage (212). Allen and
Unwin suggested that it would be prudent to divide the story into
"three or four… self-contained volumes"(213). Tolkien, who had already
begun negotiations with Collis Books to publish Rings and Sil, flatly
refused [15]. After two years of further negotiations with Collis,
during which time they also asked him to cut Rings and Sil down to a
manageable size, he returned to Allen and Unwin, with his proverbial
hat in his hands. He wrote a letter to them stating:
As for The Lord of the Rings and The
Silmarillion they are where they were. The
one finished, the other still unfinished (or
unreviesd), and both gathering dust. I have
rather modified my views. Better something
than nothing! Although to me all are one, and
The Lord of the Rings would be better by far
(and eased) as part of the whole, I would gladly
consider the publication of any part of the stuff.
Years are becoming precious. What about The Lord
of the Rings? Can anything be done about that,
to unlock gates I slammed myself? (216)
As it turned out, they were more than willing, in the words of Stanley
Unwin, "to have the privilege of being connected with it" (215), by
which he was referring to Rings [16]. All they asked was to separate
it into three volumes and release it over the course of two years so
that it would not completely overwhelm its potential readers. After
some wrangling over the names of the volumes ("Tolkien really
preferred 'The War of the Ring' for the third volume, as it gave away
less of the story" [Carpenter 220]) Fellowship was finally published
in the Summer of 1954, followed by Towers, and Return in the next year
(221).
There are two reasons why I have told the rather complicated story of
how Rings was finally published, and under what circumstances. The
first is to show that generic reinvention was happening even without
Tolkien's express intent. By presenting Rings in three parts Allen and
Unwin made it appear to be a trilogy, despite the manifest fact that
it was (and is) not written in the form of a trilogy. However, because
it appeared like one, its readers interpreted it is as one. Its three
volumes look a lot like introduction, complication, and resolution.
Fellowship describes the history and geography of Middle-earth, which
includes the impetus for the plot; Towers ends with Frodo captured by
Sauron's orcs, and Sam alone in Mordor; finally, in Return, Aragorn
wins the battle of the Pelennor Fields, and Sauron dies when the ring
is destroyed. Furthermore, the form of Rings as a trilogy has become
ingrained in the minds of its readers. To this day, it is almost
always published in three volumes. The upcoming Hollywood production
will be three separate movies, using the same titles with which the
audience is already familiar. Allen and Unwin effectively turned
Tolkien's original text, a serial narrative, into a trilogy merely by
making it look like one, thereby making the audience read it like one.
If it had been left as a single book Rings would probably have had a
very different history. To Allen and Unwin's credit, far fewer people
would have read it. It is a challenge to finish at nearly 500 pages
per volume [17], but the separation at least gives one a place to
pause for breath. 1,500 pages all at once would probably be too much
of a challenge for the average reader. It would probably not have been
published by Ace Books, whose paper-back edition was significantly
cheaper [18] and became an instant hit among American college students
(230). By the same token, Ace was "already known as publishers of
science fiction"(230), a genre that did not have a great deal of
critical respect at the time. If it had been published in one volume,
despite being less popular and earning less money, Rings might have
been more accepted as a work of genuine literature. To this day,
despite the amount of critical attention that has been paid to it,
Rings is still ignored by many British academics (Century 1). There
can be no doubt, then, that Allen and Unwin's reinvention of Rings as
a trilogy had a demonstrable effect on how it was read, by whom, and
by how many.
The second and more important reason for telling the story of Rings'
publication is that it is a perfect example of the kinds of practical
difficulties that made Tolkien believe in the truth of the Fall. In a
pre-lapsarian world Rings would have been published in one volume, and
no one would have read it without first reading Sil. In a perfect
world all of the artistic nuances he added would have been printed
exactly as he envisioned them, like the red ink for the
"'fire-letters' which appear on the Ring"(220), the "facsimile Tolkien
had made of 'The book of Mazarbul', a burnt and tattered volume that
(in the story) is found in the Mines of Moria"(220), or the expanded
maps, which were eventually drawn his son, Christopher (221). One has
only to look at the deflated, resigned attitude Tolkien displays in
his letter to Allen and Unwin to see how personally distressed he was
that circumstances were not working out the way he felt they ought to.
"I have rather modified my views." Which is to say, he is forced to
once again face the fact that the world is not perfect, that original
sin has cursed us with flaws, something that genuinely and personally
offended him. "Years are becoming precious." Death, God's ultimate
curse, is on its way and there is no escaping it.
Tolkien most eloquently and clearly expresses this frustration with
the mundane necessities of life in "Leaf by Niggle":
Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful
one, partly because he had many other things
to do. Most of these things he thought were a
nuisance; but he did them fairly well, when he
could not get out of them: which (in his opinion)
was far to often. (Niggle 75)
His resentment of the Fall is not an all-consuming anger, not a loud,
vitriolic railing against God, but a resignation to circumstances
beyond his control. He is like a man in hand-cuffs who does not bother
to struggle because he knows he could never escape them. The fact that
Allen and Unwin could not publish Rings in exact accordance to
Tolkien's vision was just another in a series of petty annoyances that
confirmed Tolkien's fervent belief in the doctrine of the Fall.
Tolkien's style of story-telling "reveals not only the capacious
literary ragbag that was his mind, but also his genius for
organization and redeployment" (McLeish 136). His formula is quite
similar to the dialectic. He combines thesis (old genre) with
antithesis (contemporary genre) in order to create synthesis (new
genre). Which is to say, in his hands, everything old is new again.
Furthermore, he does this specifically to maximise the ideological
implications of his own narrative.
First, he uses the conventions of the epic to create a sense of
enormous scale and importance. Because of the cultural significance of
the epic formula, this gains and holds our attention. Once he has it,
he invokes the epic lament, inspiring us to weep over the passing of a
world that we never knew existed. Once we have sufficiently grieved
for Middle-earth, he provides us with a glimpse of the rise of another
world to take its place, our own.
Second, he inverts the formula of the Quest to serve as a cautionary
tale against the lust for power. He ties the ultimate symbol of power
(the One Ring) to a symbol of wealth (Scandinavian rings). Thus,
instead of seeking a Holy Grail, or other such divine boon, his heroes
risk their lives to rid themselves of an object of immeasurable
malevolence, possessing the ability to degenerate the strongest man.
Third, Tolkien alternates between Romantic language and Gothic
language. Using Wordworth's language, he glorifies the beauty of
nature and ties it to the glory of God. With Coleridge's language he
invokes the horror of sin. He then juxtaposes those images with Gothic
images that demonise technology and industry, and all of them are
intensified by the comparison.
Lastly, Allen and Unwin packaged Rings in the form of a trilogy,
despite Tolkien's desire to publish it in one volume with Sil. His
editors reinvented Rings itself through this purely practical
decision, and they created the possibility for it to be released to
the readers who would become its most dedicated fans. However, the
logistical problems associated with publishing were, for Tolkien,
obvious proof of the theme that runs through all his fiction, the Fall
of Man.
All of these generic reinventions centre on the belief that we now
live in a Fallen world, that our lives are inherently inferior to what
they could be if it were not for original sin, and they all subtly
hint at what Tolkien believed was the one and only solution to the
problem of sin: faith in the Christian God, and the pursuit of his
forgiveness. In the next section, I will explore the symbolic
enactment of this same theme.
[End of Part One. Next is Part Two: Reinventing History]
Endnotes
--------
5 It is interesting to ponder the possibility that the Bible itself
might be a kind of epic. It contains most of the epic conventions, and
it certainly enacts the epic lament. I regret that this is not the
place to discuss the issue, and that I do not have the knowledge to do
so with any authority.
6 Please note that since British standards regarding quotation marks
are different I have changed single quotes to double quotes, and
vice-versa, where ever it seems necessary for the sake of clarity.
7 Though 'obscure, country hobbits' seem to be able to resist for far
longer than anyone else!
8 This information is included in the footnotes to the Harvard
Classics edition of Beowulf, as opposed to the Dover Thrift edition
from which I have taken all other quotations, and on which I have
based my references to Fitt numbers and the events depicted therein.
9 Tolkien was a born tree-hugger. As a child he used to have long
conversations with them, and was genuinely surprised to find out that
other people did not feel the same way about them. (Carpenter 30).
10 I apologise for the excessive length of this quotation. The
long-windedness is part of the effect.
11 In Defending Middle-earth Patrick Curry interprets this
anti-Modernism as Post-Modernism (25). This may seem like a wild claim
but it is not altogether unfounded. Certainly, Tolkien lacks the
'play' with linear narrative that is associated with Post-Modernism,
but he does employ the self-referentiality that is also associated
with it. The confusion over the subject position of the speaker in his
Forward is a perfect example (see "Epic").
12 At the time, he titled it The Book of Lost Tales, but it was
essentially the same text (Carpenter 97).
13 He was wrong about that length, but his publishers had not seen a
complete manuscript of Sil, so they only had his estimate to go by
(Carpenter 215).
14 It is ironic that Rings actually succeeded in creating the market
niche in which it now resides.
15 Milton Waldman, Tolkien's contact at Collis, was far more
enthusiastic about Sil than anyone at Allen and Unwin. Tolkien was
further motivated by the fact that Waldman was a fellow Catholic
(Carpenter 211).
16 Carpenter is unclear as to whether or not Allen and Unwin were, at
that time, interested in publishing Sil at all. In either event, they
did not do so it until 1977, four years after Tolkien passed away
(Carpenter 266).
17 I can recall being in highschool when one could boast about having
read the whole thing.
18 It was also entirely illegal. Ironically, Ace Books did not pay any
royalties until shamed into doing so by Tolkien's American fans, which
they helped to create (Carpenter 232).
-Orion
"I write of things that I have neither seen nor
learned from another, things which are not and
never could have been, and therefore my readers
should by not means beleive them.
-L. Sprague de Campe
Russ
writes:
>As a result, he transferred the grief
>he felt for his mother's death (which he was strongly encouraged to
>suppress) to the doctrine of the Fall from Grace (39).
?
Russ
Russ
>What is important for now is
>to recognise that the fall of the Second Age of Middle-earth, though
>extremely cathartic in its own right, is meant to direct the reader's
>attention two ways. On the one hand, she should recognise the degraded
>nature of the present world in comparison to Middle-earth. On the
>other, she should rejoice in the rise of Christianity. Tolkien uses
>epic lament to enact his sorrow at the Fall from Grace, but he also
>uses its inverse property, what we might call epic anticipation, to
>symbolically defeat that sorrow, both in his own mind and in his
>readers.
Could you explain this one?
Russ
Conrad Dunkerson
news:3b8420e6...@newsserver.sfu.ca...
> Aragorn's summoning of the long-dead knights of Dol Amroth
> (Return II 2)
Eh.... nope. The dead weren't knights and they weren't from
Dol Amroth.
> The Field of Cormallen (II 4), in which the Ring is destroyed
This is a little strange as you include it in a list of battles
while technically, the Field of Cormallen was the location of the
celebration held AFTER the Ring was destroyed... however, as it
is also the title of the chapter in which this event is described
that might be the source of your reference.
> As a result, he transferred the grief he felt for his mother's
> death (which he was strongly encouraged to suppress) to the
> doctrine of the Fall from Grace (39). From this we know that
> whenever he discusses or alludes to the Fall (which constitutes
> the bulk of Rings), there is an intensely personal component in
> it.
How can you possible make such sweeping statements about the
fundamental nature of the man?
> It is unclear to whom Tolkien is speaking, here. To the reader
> of the story, obviously, but a reader living in 20th century
> England or one living in the first reign of King Aragorn son of
> Arathorn? The confusion arises primarily through the use of the
> first person plural 'us', which places the speaker in the world
> in which hobbits used to live. Despite (or perhaps, because of)
> what one might think of the mental status of an Oxford Don, it
> is almost impossible to determine just exactly how facetious or
> serious Tolkien is in these quotations.
Tolkien is here speaking to the modern reader... just as he did
in The Hobbit and the appendices. This can be seen by his
reference to the publication of The Hobbit, the modern calendar,
the relationship between English and A-S as compared to Westron
and Rohirric, and so forth. There are numerous elements outside
the realm of a resident of Middle Earth... and this sort of
exposition began in The Hobbit, which was not originally intended
to be part of Middle Earth at all.
> On the other, she should rejoice in the rise of Christianity.
<?> Christianity was still FAR off at the fall of the Second,
and even the THIRD age.
> This is all, of course, intimately related to how Tolkien
> manipulates the symbolic value of the Ring by casting it in the
> role of an Anglo-Saxon weregild.
> By literally hoarding gold, dragons take it out of circulation,
> and thus cripple not only the economy, but also the King's
> ability to fulfil his oaths to his followers. A dragon's hoard
> threatens basic political and social stability. This means that
> all rings (even ones that are not magic) represent the rule of
> the king, the importance of the oath, heroism in battle, and the
> spoils of war. The Anglo-Saxon world was held together by rings.
> Tolkien is, of course, entirely aware of this cultural
> signification. He even emphasises the comparison by referring to
> the Ring as "weregild" (Fellowship 320), monetary compensation
> for the death of close-kin.
Ok, this is where we get into that 'overinterpretation' thing
again. Yeesh, but this is tenuous. Isildur calls the Ring
'weregild for his father and brother'. This is ancient history
to the plotline of LotR and specifically relates to the fact that
they had just died in battle. It does not mean that the Ring
represented the rule of the King, the importance of the oath, or
heroism in battle (I'll grant that there is some basis for spoils
of war).
> It becomes 'precious', or even 'the precious', a turn of phrase
> that almost magically intensifies the reader's sense of
> repulsion. This happens to Gollum most obviously (even long
> after losing the Ring he still talks to it in almost every scene
> in which he appears), but also to Bilbo (who calls it 'precious'
> just before he leaves it to Frodo [Fellowship 59]), and to Frodo
> himself (who finally succumbs to its power at the last minute
> before Gollum inadvertently destroys it [Return 274]).
Also to Isildur, who used the term in the account that Gandalf
found in Gondor's library.
> Boromir betrays the fellowship and attacks Frodo (Fellowship
> 517) after glimpsing it briefly at The Counsel of Elrond (350),
> and again at Tol Brandir (515).
Boromir didn't see the Ring at Tol Brandir until after he had
attacked Frodo - Frodo took it out and put it on to escape him.
> The influence of, for example, "Lines Written a Few Miles Above
> Tintern Abbey" is more than clear in the following passage, the
> first description of Lothlòrien, the oldest Elven forest left on
> Middle-earth:
Mirkwood would be just as old, and Thranduil's halls therein might
well predate the 'realm' of Lothlorien.
> One has only to look at the deflated, resigned attitude Tolkien
> displays in his letter to Allen and Unwin to see how personally
> distressed he was that circumstances were not working out the
> way he felt they ought to. "I have rather modified my views."
> Which is to say, he is forced to once again face the fact that
> the world is not perfect, that original sin has cursed us with
> flaws
Or, perhaps that his deal with Collins had fallen through, that he
no longer had another option, and that he needed the money?
> 9 Tolkien was a born tree-hugger.
Rather a perjorative term.
PS: Will have to review the rest tomorrow. I'll say that overall
the paper has been fairly good (though a bit overblown to my
tastes) thus far apart from a few minor factual inaccuracies and
a tendency to (in my view) over-extrapolate and draw connections
that MIGHT be involved, but certainly aren't stated or even
implied in some cases.
Russ
"Conrad Dunkerson" <conrad.d...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>> As a result, he transferred the grief he felt for his mother's
>> death (which he was strongly encouraged to suppress) to the
>> doctrine of the Fall from Grace (39). From this we know that
>> whenever he discusses or alludes to the Fall (which constitutes
>> the bulk of Rings), there is an intensely personal component in
>> it.
>
>How can you possible make such sweeping statements about the
>fundamental nature of the man?
That was an eye-opener for me too.
Russ