![]() First edition, with painting The Gates of Morning by Ted Nasmith | |
Editor | Jane Chance |
---|---|
Author | see text |
Language | English |
Subject | Tolkien studies |
Genre | Scholarly essays |
Publisher | University Press of Kentucky |
Publication date | 2004 |
Media type | Paperback |
Pages | 340 |
ISBN | 978-0-8131-2301-1 |
Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader is a 2004 collection of scholarly essays on J. R. R. Tolkien's writings on Middle-earth, edited by Jane Chance. It has been warmly welcomed by critics, though some of the student contributions are less useful than the revised journal articles, conference papers and lectures by the more experienced essayists, who include the established Tolkien scholars Marjorie Burns, Michael D. C. Drout, Verlyn Flieger, Gergely Nagy, Tom Shippey, and Richard C. West.
Part | Author | Discipline | Title | Summary |
---|---|---|---|---|
Introduction | Jane Chance | Medievalist, Tolkien studies | A 'Mythology for England'? | The editor states that it is well known that Tolkien "yearned to create a 'mythology for England'" that would do what mythologies had done for other countries in Europe, but that he was not comfortable with Arthurian legend as it was contaminated by French notions of chivalry, which he "loathed", and it was uncertain "where he turned for models". Accordingly the collection examines his methodology, and then his classical, his Old Norse, his Old English, and his Finnish influences. |
Backgrounds: Folklore, Religion, Magic, and Language | Michaela Baltasar | Fiction | Tolkien and the rediscovery of myth | Baltasar explores Tolkien's belief in the power of language to create myth, as opposed to the theories of myth held by the folklorist Andrew Lang and the philologist Max Müller. |
Catherine Madsen | Novelist | Light from an invisible lamp: natural religion in The Lord of the Rings | Madsen explains how Tolkien creates a "religious feeling" and a sort of natural religion without directly mentioning Christianity. | |
Mary E. Zimmer | British literature | Creating and re-creating worlds with words: the religion and the magic of language in The Lord of the Rings | Zimmer discusses Tolkien's use of language to create the seemingly solid reality of Middle-earth. She discusses the use of names, including true names, with the implication that names and the things they denote are causally linked. | |
David Lyle Jeffrey | English | Tolkien as philologist | Jeffrey examines Tolkien's philological use of names, complete with guidance for translators and others, revealing how Tolkien understood language to work. | |
Tolkien and Ancient Greek and Classical and Medieval Latin | Gergely Nagy | Tolkien studies | Saving the myths : the re-creation of mythology in Plato and Tolkien | Nagy points up several parallels between how Plato and Tolkien viewed myth. Both wrote myths of their own as if they were real traditions, creating an impression of depth. |
Sandra Ballif Straubhaar | Germanic studies | Myth, late Roman history, and multiculturalism in Tolkien's Middle-Earth | Straubhaar examines the influence of late Roman history on Middle-earth, as seen in the relationship between the civilised Gondor and the barbarian Rohan, paralleling ancient Rome's growing admiration for its energetic barbarian neighbours, as seen in Tacitus's history. | |
Jen Stevens | Inklings | From catastrophe to eucatastrophe: J.R.R. Tolkien's transformation of Ovid's Mythic Pyramus and Thisbe into Beren and Lúthien | Stevens explores the parallels between the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses , and Tolkien's central story of Beren and Lúthien. | |
Kathleen E. Dubs | Humanities | Providence, fate, and chance: Boethian philosophy in The Lord of the Rings | Dubs relates Boethius's On the Consolation of Philosophy to Tolkien's presentation of luck, free will, and fate in The Lord of the Rings. | |
Tolkien and Old Norse | Tom Shippey | Philologist, Tolkien studies | Tolkien and the appeal of the pagan: Edda and Kalevala | Shippey explains how the Icelandic Prose Edda and the Finnish Kalevala served Tolkien as models of writings firmly "rooted" in the pagan mythologies of their times and places, complete with the Edda's "northern courage" and the Kalevala's sympathy and sadness. |
Marjorie J. Burns | Medievalist | Norse and Christian gods: the integrative theology of J.R.R. Tolkien | Burns explores parallels between the Norse gods and The Silmarillion 's Valar. The mapping is complex, as for instance Odin's dark side is inherited by Melkor, while his brighter aspects go to Manwë. | |
Andy Dimond | Tolkien studies | The twilight of the elves: Ragnarök and the end of the Third Age | Dimond relates the Norse Ragnarök to the War of the Ring. | |
Andrew Lazo | Inklings | Gathered round northern fires: the imaginative impact of the Kolbítar | Lazo explores the impact of Tolkien's Oxford Old Norse study group the Kolbítar on how Tolkien and C. S. Lewis developed. | |
Tolkien and Old English | Michael D. C. Drout | English, Tolkien studies | A mythology for Anglo-Saxon England | Drout sets out how Tolkien's study of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture was related to his "pseudohistory", which "solved a number of historical and literary puzzles and was in itself aesthetically pleasing", even though Tolkien did not actually believe it. Drout suggests that Tolkien then deliberately covered over the links between Middle-earth and Anglo-Saxon history. |
John R. Holmes | English | Oaths and oathbreaking: analogues of Old English Comitatus in Tolkien's myth | Holmes studies Tolkien's use of sworn oaths in Middle-earth, relating this to Germanic and Anglo-Saxon culture. | |
Alexandra Bolintineanu | Medievalist | On the borders of old stories: enacting the past in Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings | Bolintineanu compares the purpose of the Beowulf poet's use of embedded stories with Tolkien's in The Lord of the Rings. The old tales can offer moral guidance, comfort, and a doomed grandeur. | |
Tolkien and Finnish | Verlyn Flieger | Medievalist Tolkien studies | A mythology for Finland: Elias Lönnrot and J.R.R. Tolkien as mythmakers | Flieger explores why Tolkien should have decided to create a mythology for England, though his would be fictional. She proposes that the inspiration of Lönnrot, and the resulting Kalevala, were both important to Tolkien. She suggests further that Tolkien liked the response of artists to the Kalevala, and stated that he hoped artists would respond to his own mythology. |
Richard C. West | Tolkien studies | Setting the rocket off in story: the Kalevala as the germ of Tolkien's legendarium | West too looks at the Kalevala, describing how the Finnish language nfluenced his Elvish language of Quenya, and how the mythology seeped into "his mind-set". One concrete similarity is the tragic tale of Túrin, whose character is developed from that of Kullervo. | |
David Elton Gay | Folklore | J.R.R. Tolkien and the Kalevala : some thoughts on the Finnish origins of Tom Bombadil and Treebeard | Gay argues that the character Väinämöinen in the Kalevala influenced both the spirit of place Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest, and the tree-giant, the Ent Treebeard, in Fangorn Forest. |
Chad Engbers writes in The Lion and the Unicorn that the essay authors include "the usual suspects", a small number of well-known Tolkien scholars – here "Nagy, Shippey, Burns, Drout, Flieger, and West", who write knowledgeably in a style "more expository than polemical". A second category, the weakest in Engbers's view, comprises the junior scholars such as Baltasar, Dimond, and Lazo. He finds Baltasar's essay "like a very respectable graduate paper", whereas Dimond says "too little" and Lazo "says too much". A third category is of scholars and authors with established reputations outside Tolkien studies. Jeffrey writes freshly and well on philology, while the novelist Madsen writes an "incisive and honest" assessment of Christianity in The Lord of the Rings. Engbers concludes that while not all the essays are specially useful, "the volume's virtues outnumber its vices". [2]
Carol Leibiger in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts writes that the essays, by medievalists, Tolkien scholars, and students, are based on a mix of conference papers, lectures by Shippey and Drout, and older articles by Madsen, Zimmer, and Jeffrey from as far back as 1980. In her view, Drout "elegantly and convincingly" shows Tolkien's way of linking to the Anglo-Saxon period, spanning its culture, history, and language, so as to construct a "pseudohistorical mythology" for England. She finds Nagy's comparison of Tolkien's use of myth with Plato's "fascinating", whereas she feels that Straubhaar's use of two "rabid and uni[n]formed" critics (for her discussion of Tolkien and race) spoils her essay. Of the student essays, Lazo is "long-winded", full of self-references, and mistakes. Leibiger concludes that the volume assembles numerous "important studies of the sources of Tolkien's legendarium". [3]
Margaret Sinex writes in Tolkien Studies that this is the second in a series of three essay collections on Tolkien, the other two being the 2003 Tolkien the Medievalist and the 2005 Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages. Four old journal papers are revised for this collection. She finds "appealing" Zimmer's essay on Tolkien's "verbal magic"; it explores incantations or "word magic"; two types of "name magic", involving a taboo on the use of proper names, and the changing of a name when a person's nature changes; and the "true name" which causes what it names. Straubhaar's essay is in Sinex's view "convincing" in its argument that the dynastic marriages between Gondor and Rohan reflect the later Roman Empire's "gradual acceptance of mixed marriages with barbarian tribes on their empire's distant borders." [4] Sinex calls the volume "a superb collection of essays that illuminates Tolkien's own understanding of the nature and function of myth and his process of mythmaking." In her view, it helps the reader to grasp "Tolkien's belief in the creative, generative potency of language". [4]
"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.
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.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy The Lord of the Rings, Harad is the immense land south of Gondor and Mordor. Its main port is Umbar, the base of the Corsairs of Umbar whose ships serve as the Dark Lord Sauron's fleet. Its people are the dark-skinned Haradrim or Southrons; their warriors wear scarlet and gold, and are armed with swords and round shields; some ride gigantic elephants called mûmakil.
Thomas Alan Shippey is a British medievalist, a retired scholar of Middle and Old English literature as well as of modern fantasy and science fiction. He is considered one of the world's leading academic experts on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien about whom he has written several books and many scholarly papers. His book The Road to Middle-Earth has been called "the single best thing written on Tolkien".
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.
The Tolkien Reader is an anthology of works by J. R. R. Tolkien. It includes a variety of short stories, poems, a play and some non-fiction. It compiles material previously published as three separate shorter books, together with one additional piece and introductory material. It was published in 1966 by Ballantine Books in the USA.
Scholars and critics have identified many themes of The Lord of the Rings, a major fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, including a reversed quest, the struggle of good and evil, death and immortality, fate and free will, the danger of power, and various aspects of Christianity such as the presence of three Christ figures, for prophet, priest, and king, as well as elements like hope and redemptive suffering. There is also a strong thread throughout the work of language, its sound, and its relationship to peoples and places, along with moralisation from descriptions of landscape. Out of these, Tolkien stated that the central theme is death and immortality.
Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings, and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth. The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps, and inventing languages and names as a private project to create a mythology for England. The earliest story, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star", is from 1914; he revised and rewrote the legendarium stories for most of his adult life.
The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, edited by Michael D. C. Drout, was published by Routledge in 2006. A team of 127 Tolkien scholars on 720 pages cover topics of Tolkien's fiction, his academic works, his intellectual and spiritual influences, and his biography. Co-editors were Douglas A. Anderson, Verlyn Flieger, Marjorie Burns and Tom Shippey.
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 Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" is a story within the Appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It narrates the love of the mortal Man Aragorn and the immortal Elf-maiden Arwen, telling the story of their first meeting, their eventual betrothal and marriage, and the circumstances of their deaths. Tolkien called the tale "really essential to the story". In contrast to the non-narrative appendices it extends the main story of the book to cover events both before and after it, one reason it would not fit in the main text. Tolkien gave another reason for its exclusion, namely that the main text is told from the hobbits' point of view.
The poetry in The Lord of the Rings consists of the poems and songs written by J. R. R. Tolkien, interspersed with the prose of his high fantasy novel of Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings. The book contains over 60 pieces of verse of many kinds; some poems related to the book were published separately. Seven of Tolkien's songs, all but one from The Lord of the Rings, were made into a song-cycle, The Road Goes Ever On, set to music by Donald Swann. All the poems in The Lord of the Rings were set to music and published on CDs by The Tolkien Ensemble.
The impression of depth in The Lord of the Rings is an aesthetic effect deliberately sought by its author, J. R. R. Tolkien. It was intended to give the reader the feeling that the work had "deep roots in the past", and hence that it was attractively authentic.
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.
Richard Carroll West was an American librarian and one of the first Tolkien scholars. He is best known for his 1975 essay on the interlace structure of The Lord of the Rings, for which he won the 1976 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies.
Gergely Nagy is a Hungarian medievalist and a well-known Tolkien scholar.
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.
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.
Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy is a 2011 collection of essays on Peter Jackson's 2001–2003 film representation of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1954–1955 fantasy, The Lord of the Rings. It is edited by Janice M. Bogstad and Philip E. Kaveny.
Tolkien's ambiguity, in his Middle-earth fiction, in his literary analysis of fantasy, and in his personal statements about his fantasy, has attracted the attention of critics, who have drawn conflicting conclusions about his intentions and the quality of his work, and of scholars, who have examined the nature of that ambiguity.