Smith of Wootton Major

Last updated

Smith of Wootton Major
JRRTolkien SmithOfWoottonMajor.jpg
First edition front cover; the illustration extends over the spine to the back cover.
Author J. R. R. Tolkien
Illustrator Pauline Baynes
LanguageEnglish
Genre Fantasy novella
Publisher George Allen & Unwin
Publication date
9 November 1967 [1]
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages224
Preceded by The Road Goes Ever On  
Followed by Bilbo's Last Song (posthumous) 

Smith of Wootton Major, first published in 1967, is a novella by J. R. R. Tolkien. It tells the tale of a Great Cake, baked for the once in twenty-four year Feast of Good Children. The Master Cook, Nokes, hides some trinkets in the cake for the children to find; one is a star he found in an old spice box. A boy, Smith, swallows the star. On his tenth birthday the star appears on his forehead, and he starts to roam the Land of Faery. After twenty-four years the Feast comes around again, and Smith surrenders the star to Alf, the new Master Cook. Alf bakes the star into a new Great Cake for another child to find.

Contents

Scholars have differed on whether the story is an allegory or is, less tightly, capable of various allegorical interpretations; and if so, what those interpretations might be. Suggestions have included autobiographical allusions such as to Tolkien's profession of philology, and religious interpretations such as that Alf is a figure of Christ. The American scholar Verlyn Flieger sees it instead as a story of Faërie in its own right.

This was Tolkien’s last major work published before his death in 1973.

Background

J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, a philologist and medievalist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. [T 1] [2]

Smith of Wootton Major began as an attempt to explain the meaning of Faery by means of a story about a cook and his cake, and Tolkien originally thought to call it The Great Cake. [3] It was intended to be part of a preface by Tolkien to George MacDonald's fairy story The Golden Key . [3]

Plot summary

The village of Wootton Major was well known around the countryside for its annual festivals, which were particularly famous for their culinary delights. The biggest festival of all was the Feast of Good Children. This festival was celebrated only once every twenty-four years: twenty-four children of the village were invited to a party, and the highlight of the party was the Great Cake, a career milestone by which Master Cooks were judged. In the year the story begins, the Master Cook was Nokes, who had landed the position more or less by default; he delegated much of the creative work to his apprentice Alf. Nokes crowned his Great Cake with a little doll jokingly representing the Queen of Faery. Various trinkets were hidden in the cake for the children to find; one of these was a star the Cook discovered in the old spice box.

The star was not found at the Feast, but was swallowed by a blacksmith's son. The boy did not feel its magical properties at once, but on the morning of his tenth birthday the star fixed itself on his forehead, and became his passport to Faery. The boy grew up to be a blacksmith like his father, but in his free time he roamed the Land of Faery. The star on his forehead protected him from many of the dangers threatening mortals in that land, and the Folk of Faery called him "Starbrow". The book describes his many travels in Faery, until at last he meets the true Queen of Faery. The identity of the King is also revealed.

The time came for another Feast of Good Children. Smith had possessed his gift for most of his life, and the time had come to pass it on to some other child. So he regretfully surrendered the star to Alf, and with it his adventures into Faery. Alf, who had become Master Cook long before, baked it into the festive cake once again for another child to find. After the feast, Alf retired and left the village; and Smith returned to his forge to teach his craft to his now-grown son.

Publication history

Black and white illustration, as requested by Tolkien, by Pauline Baynes of Smith and his family for the first edition, 1967. Smith and his family by Pauline Baynes.jpg
Black and white illustration, as requested by Tolkien, by Pauline Baynes of Smith and his family for the first edition, 1967.

The story was first published in the United Kingdom as a stand-alone book by George Allen & Unwin on 9 November 1967, with 11 black and white illustrations and a coloured jacket illustration by Pauline Baynes. [T 2] Tolkien had asked Baynes to limit her palette to black and white, as she had done for Farmer Giles of Ham ; he was pleased with the result. [4]

Smith of Wootton Major was first published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin the same year. [T 3] It was reprinted in 1969 by Ballantine together with Farmer Giles of Ham. [T 4]

The 2005 edition, edited by Verlyn Flieger, includes a previously unpublished essay by Tolkien, explaining the background and just why the elf-king spent so long in Wootton Major. It also explains how the story grew from this first idea into the published version. [T 2]

The story was republished in 2021 together with Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil , and "Leaf by Niggle" as Tales from the Perilous Realm . [T 5]

Analysis

Allegory

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that "defeat hangs heavy" in the story, [6] while Tolkien called it "an old man's book", with presage of bereavement. [T 6] Shippey adds that when Tolkien presents images of himself in his writings, as with Niggle, the anti-hero of "Leaf by Niggle" and Smith, there is "a persistent streak of alienation". [7] While Tolkien had stated that the story was "not 'allegory'", he had immediately added "though it is capable of course of allegorical interpretation at certain points". [8] Shippey presents evidence in support of the claim. [8]

Tom Shippey's analysis of "Smith of Wootton Major" as an allegory [8]
Story elementAllegorical meaningEvidence
NokesUnsympathetic literary critic (as opposed to philologists like Tolkien) Noke, Oxfordshire, from Middle English *atten okes (at the oaks);
Nokes's family all with nunnated names, Nell, Nan, Ned for Ell[en], Ann, Ed[ward];
Tolkien had arranged teaching at the University of Leeds into an A-scheme (literature) and a B-scheme (philology);
for Tolkien, A meant Old English ac (oak), B meant beorc (birch)
Nokes's Great CakeLiterary study, offering "not much food for the imagination""no bigger than was needed ... nothing left over"
"Old books of recipes left behind by previous cooks"Old philology
Old CookPhilologist
The fay-star"Vision, receptiveness to fantasy, mythopoeic power"
SmithTolkien himselfSmith "never bakes a Great Cake"; Tolkien "never produced a major full-length work on medieval literature"
Alf Elf, reassuring guide to FaërieOld English ælf (elf); Alf is eventually revealed as King of Faërie
Wootton MajorThe "wood of the world" where people wander "bewildered"Old English wudu-tún ("town in the wood")

Capable of allegorical interpretation

Josh B. Long likens the Faery Queen with lilies to the Virgin Mary. Glazed terracotta plaque The Virgin of the Lilies, Della Robbia family workshop, 16th century Workshop of Della Robbia family - The Virgin of the Lilies - Walters 27217.jpg
Josh B. Long likens the Faery Queen with lilies to the Virgin Mary. Glazed terracotta plaque The Virgin of the Lilies, Della Robbia family workshop, 16th century

Josh B. Long, in Tolkien Studies , states that for Tolkien, "allegorical interpretation" was not the same as allegory, as interpretations come from a free interchange between text and reader, whereas allegory is imposed by the author. Long sees both religious "undertones" in the story, and autobiographical elements. He notes that the Catholic writer Joseph Pearce took the story as a parable, [9] [10] and that Flieger accepts "a level of allegory" but not the philological version proposed by Shippey. [9] [11] Instead, the Hall would be the church, Cook would be the parson, and cooking would be "personal religion". [9] Or, Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans suggest, Alf is a figure of Christ, the king of a heavenly realm who arrives as a child and grows to be a man. [9] Martin Sternberg sees the story as religious, with experiences of the numinous and "traditional mystical ideas and motifs". [9]

Long presents his own religious interpretation, likening the story's Faery Queen to the Virgin Mary, with the lilies "near the lawn" as her symbol; Alf as Christ; the Great Cake perhaps as a Twelfth-cake for Epiphany; Nokes as a fool or "a kind of anti-Tolkien"; Smith, a "lay Christian". [9]

In addition, Long sees Shippey's identification of birch and oak with philology and criticism as correct, but differs about what Tolkien wanted to say here. In Long's view, the birch "represents the sharp critique of most of his philological colleagues who supposed that Tolkien had squandered years of his life on a worthless piece of fantasy literature—a place he didn’t belong, or so they thought." In other words, he writes, the dispute was inside the philological community; far from fighting literary criticism, Tolkien had done much to heal the split between the critics and the philologists at Oxford. [9]

Visit to Faërie

Flieger opposes viewing Smith of Wootton Major as an allegory, instead seeking comparisons with Tolkien's other fantasies. [8] [12] She argues that the story had sufficient "bounce" that no allegorical explanation was necessary, and indeed that such explanation detracts from the story of travels in the land of "Faery" and the element of mystery. [12] She likens the "first Cook" to a whole series of "Tolkien's far-traveled characters", namely Alboin Errol, Edwin Lowdham, Frodo Baggins, Eärendil, Ælfwine-Eriol "and of course Tolkien himself—all the Elf-friends." [11]

Further, Flieger sees "thematic connections" between the story and the "dark power and ... echoes of a past too deep to forget" of his poem "The Sea-Bell" (1962, with a history going back to his 1934 "Looney"). The two works share a distinctive feature: a "prohibition against the return to Faërie." [11] She states, however, that the two works describe the prohibition in differing moods and at different times. "The Sea-Bell" was written at the beginning of Tolkien's career, "cry[ing] for lost beauty"; Smith of Wootton Major almost at its end, "an autumnal acceptance of things as they are". [11] She comments, too, that "The Sea-Bell" could be a "corrective" reply to J. M. Barrie's 1920 play Mary Rose ; and that Smith of Wootton Major could then be a reply, much later, to his own poem. [11] Whether or not that was the intention, she writes, Tolkien sought to "create a true fairy-tale quality without the use of a traditional fairy-tale plot." [11]

Notes

  1. ↑ Baynes presented the original illustration of Smith and his family to the Tolkien scholars Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull for their engagement. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leaf by Niggle</span> Short story by J. R. R. Tolkien

"Leaf by Niggle" is a short story written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1938–39 and first published in the Dublin Review in January 1945. It was reprinted in Tolkien's book Tree and Leaf, and in several later collections. Contrary to Tolkien's claim that he despised allegory in any form, the story is an allegory of Tolkien's own creative process, and, to an extent, of his own life, following the structure of Dante's Purgatorio. It also expresses his philosophy of divine creation and human sub-creation. The story came to him in a dream.

The Notion Club Papers is an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written in 1945 and published posthumously in Sauron Defeated, the 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth. It is a time travel story, written while The Lord of the Rings was being developed. The Notion Club is a fictionalization of Tolkien's own such club, the Inklings. Tolkien's mechanism for the exploration of time is through lucid dreams. These allow club members to experience events as far back as the destruction of the Atlantis-like island of Númenor, as narrated in The Silmarillion.

Ælfwine the mariner is a fictional character found in various early versions of J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium. Tolkien envisaged Ælfwine as an Anglo-Saxon who visited and befriended the Elves and acted as the source of later mythology. Thus, in the frame story, Ælfwine is the stated author of the various translations in Old English that appear in the twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth edited by Christopher Tolkien.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mythopoeic Awards</span> Literary award

The Mythopoeic Awards for literature and literary studies are given annually for outstanding works in the fields of myth, fantasy, and the scholarly study of these areas. Established by the Mythopoeic Society in 1971, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award is given for "fiction in the spirit of the Inklings", and the Scholarship Award for non-fiction work. The award is a statuette of a seated lion, with a plaque on the base. It has drawn resemblance to, and is often called, the "Aslan".

Mythopoeia, or mythopoesis, is a subgenre of speculative fiction, and a theme in modern literature and film, where an artificial or fictionalized mythology is created by the writer of prose, poetry, or other literary forms. The concept, which long preexisted him, was widely popularised by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1930s. The authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction. Mythopoeia is also the act of creating a mythology.

"Bagmē Blōma" by J. R. R. Tolkien is a poem in the 1936 Songs for the Philologists, and the only one ever written in the Gothic language. It was to be sung to the tune of "O Lazy Sheep!". Scholars have found the poem beautiful, and have debated its interpretation. Tom Shippey proposed that the Birch tree, praised in the poem, symbolises the 'B' scheme of English teaching, namely Tolkien's own subject, philology. Verlyn Flieger doubted the connection, writing that the Birch played a significant emotional role in Smith of Wootton Major, as in the poem, and that this was only diminished by seeking a further interpretation.

Verlyn Flieger is an author, editor, and Professor Emerita in the Department of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, where she taught courses in comparative mythology, medieval literature, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. She is well known as a Tolkien scholar, especially for her books Splintered Light, A Question of Time, and Interrupted Music. She has won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award four times for her work on Tolkien's Middle-earth writings.

J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, drew on a wide array of influences including language, Christianity, mythology, archaeology, ancient and modern literature, and personal experience. He was inspired primarily by his profession, philology; his work centred on the study of Old English literature, especially Beowulf, and he acknowledged its importance to his writings.

"The Sea-Bell" or "Frodos Dreme" is a poem with elaborate rhyme scheme and metre by J.R.R. Tolkien in his 1962 collection of verse The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. It was a revision of a 1934 poem called "Looney". The first-person narrative speaks of finding a white shell "like a sea-bell", and of being carried away to a strange and beautiful land.

The Song of Eärendil is the longest poem in The Lord of the Rings. In the fiction, it is sung and composed by the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the Elvish sanctuary of Rivendell. It tells how the mariner Eärendil tries to sail to a place of paradise, and acquires a Silmaril, a prized sun-jewel. Eventually he and his ship are set in the heavens to sail forever as the light of the Morning Star.

Christianity is a central theme in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional works about Middle-earth, but the specifics are always kept hidden. This allows for the books' meaning to be personally interpreted by the reader, instead of the author detailing a strict, set meaning.

"The Shadow of the Past" is the second chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in 1954–1955. Tolkien called it "the crucial chapter"; the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey labelled it "the vital chapter". This is because it represents both the moment that Tolkien devised the central plot of the book, and the point in the story where the protagonist, Frodo Baggins, and the reader realise that there will be a quest to destroy the Ring. A sketch of it was among the first parts of the book to be written, early in 1938; later that year, it was one of three chapters of the book that he drafted. In 1944, he returned to the chapter, adding descriptions of Gollum, the Ring, and the hunt for Gollum.

J. R. R. Tolkien, a fantasy author and professional philologist, drew on the Old English poem Beowulf for multiple aspects of his Middle-earth legendarium, alongside other influences. He used elements such as names, monsters, and the structure of society in a heroic age. He emulated its style, creating an impression of depth and adopting an elegiac tone. Tolkien admired the way that Beowulf, written by a Christian looking back at a pagan past, just as he was, embodied a "large symbolism" without ever becoming allegorical. He worked to echo the symbolism of life's road and individual heroism in The Lord of the Rings.

The philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien set out to explore time travel and distortions in the passage of time in his fiction in a variety of ways. The passage of time in The Lord of the Rings is uneven, seeming to run at differing speeds in the realms of Men and of Elves. In this, Tolkien was following medieval tradition in which time proceeds differently in Elfland. The whole work, too, following the theory he spelt out in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", is meant to transport the reader into another time. He built a process of decline and fall in Middle-earth into the story, echoing the sense of impending destruction of Norse mythology. The Elves attempt to delay this decline as far as possible in their realms of Rivendell and Lothlórien, using their Rings of Power to slow the passage of time. Elvish time, in The Lord of the Rings as in the medieval Thomas the Rhymer and the Danish Elvehøj, presents apparent contradictions. Both the story itself and scholarly interpretations offer varying attempts to resolve these; time may be flowing faster or more slowly, or perceptions may differ.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the bestselling fantasy The Lord of the Rings, was largely rejected by the literary establishment during his lifetime, but has since been accepted into the literary canon, if not as a modernist then certainly as a modern writer responding to his times. He fought in the First World War, and saw the rural England that he loved built over and industrialised. His Middle-earth fantasy writings, consisting largely of a legendarium which was not published until after his death, embodied his realism about the century's traumatic events, and his Christian hope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien and the medieval</span> J. R. R. Tolkiens use of medieval literature

J. R. R. Tolkien was attracted to medieval literature, and made use of it in his writings, both in his poetry, which contained numerous pastiches of medieval verse, and in his Middle-earth novels where he embodied a wide range of medieval concepts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Great War and Middle-earth</span> Effect of the First World War on Tolkiens fantasy writings

J. R. R. Tolkien took part in the First World War, known then as the Great War, and began his fantasy Middle-earth writings at that time. The Fall of Gondolin was the first prose work that he created after returning from the front, and it contains detailed descriptions of battle and streetfighting. He continued the dark tone in much of his legendarium, as seen in The Silmarillion. The Lord of the Rings, too, has been described as a war book.

<i>Tolkiens Art: A Mythology for England</i> 1979 book by Jane Chance

Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England' is a 1979 book of Tolkien scholarship by Jane Chance, writing then as Jane Chance Nitzsche. The book looks in turn at Tolkien's essays "On Fairy-Stories" and "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"; The Hobbit; the fairy-stories "Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith of Wootton Major"; the minor works "Lay of Autrou and Itroun", "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth", "Imram", and Farmer Giles of Ham; The Lord of the Rings; and very briefly in the concluding section, The Silmarillion. In 2001, a second edition extended all the chapters but still treated The Silmarillion, that Tolkien worked on throughout his life, as a sort of coda.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A mythology for England</span> Literary analysis of Tolkien

The English author J. R. R. Tolkien has often been supposed to have spoken of wishing to create "a mythology for England". It seems he never used the actual phrase, but various commentators have found his biographer Humphrey Carpenter's phrase appropriate as a description of much of his approach in creating Middle-earth, and the legendarium behind The Silmarillion.

<i>A Question of Time</i> (book) Book of Tolkien scholarship

A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie is a 1997 book of literary analysis by Verlyn Flieger of J. R. R. Tolkien's explorations of the nature of time in his Middle-earth writings, interpreted in the light of J. W. Dunne's 1927 theory of time, and Dunne's view that dreams gave access to all dimensions of time. Tolkien read Dunne's book carefully and annotated his copy with his views of the theory. A Question of Time examines in particular Tolkien's two unfinished time-travel novels, The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers, and the time-travel aspects of The Lord of the Rings. These encompass Frodo's dreams and the land of the Elves, Lothlórien.

References

Primary

  1. ↑ Carpenter 2023 , #131 to Milton Waldman, late 1951
  2. 1 2 Tolkien, J. R. R.; Flieger, Verlyn (2005). Smith of Wootton Major. HarperCollins. p. Jacket. ISBN   978-0-00-720247-8.
  3. ↑ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1967). Smith of Wootton Major. Houghton Mifflin. OCLC   849891109.
  4. ↑ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1969). Smith of Wootton Major: and Farmer Giles of Ham. Ballantine Books. ISBN   978-0-3453-3606-4. OCLC   2949056.
  5. ↑ Tolkien, J. R. R. (2021). Tales from the Perilous Realm. Mariner Books. ISBN   978-0-3586-5296-0.
  6. ↑ Carpenter 2023 , Letter 299 to Roger Lancelyn Green , 12 December 1967

Secondary

  1. ↑ Scull, Christina; Hammond, Wayne G. (2006). The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide . Vol. Chronology. HarperCollins. p. 711. ISBN   978-0-618-39113-4.
  2. ↑ Shippey 2005, pp. 146–149.
  3. 1 2 Carpenter 1977, p. 244 "Headington".
  4. 1 2 Hasirci, Baris (2021). "An Examination of Fantasy Illustration and the Illustrations of Pauline Baynes and John Howe Through the Writings of J. R. R. Tolkien" (PDF). Journal of Social Research and Behavioral Sciences. 7 (14): 44. doi:10.52096/jsrbs.7.14.3. ISSN   2149-178X.
  5. ↑ Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (9 September 2012). "Our Collections: Pauline Baynes". Too Many Books and Never Enough. Archived from the original on 2 June 2015. Retrieved 25 July 2023.
  6. ↑ Shippey 2005, p. 315 "On the Cold Hill's Side".
  7. ↑ Shippey, Tom (2004). "Tolkien and the Appeal of the Pagan: Edda and Kalevala". In Chance, Jane (ed.). Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 163–178. ISBN   0-8131-2301-1.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Shippey 2005, pp. 309–319 "On the Cold Hill's Side".
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Long, Josh B. (2021). "Faery, Faith, and Self-Portrayal: An Allegorical Interpretation of Smith of Wootton Major". Tolkien Studies. 18: 93–129. doi:10.1353/tks.2021.0007.
  10. ↑ Pearce, Joseph (1998). Tolkien: Man and Myth. Ignatius Press. p. 170.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Flieger, Verlyn (2001). "Pitfalls in Faërie". A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie. Kent State University Press. pp. 227–253. ISBN   0-87338-699-X.
  12. 1 2 Flieger, Verlyn; Shippey, Tom (2001). "Allegory Versus Bounce: Tolkien's 'Smith of Wootton Major'". Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts . 12 (2 (46)): 186–200. JSTOR   43308514.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.