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The 'Romantic Faëry': Keats, Tolkien, and the Perilous Realm

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The 'Romantic Faëry': Keats, Tolkien, and the Perilous Realm The ‘Romantic Faëry’: Keats, Tolkien, and the Perilous Realm f Submitted by William Sherwood to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Masters by Research English Studies in August 2019. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. (Signature) ………………………………………………… Abstract The scope of this thesis covers the influence of John Keats’s work on J. R. R. Tolkien’s tale of Beren and Lúthien, The Book of Lost Tales and The Lord of the Rings. It draws on Tolkien’s academic works: ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, On Fairy-stories and brings to light unpublished manuscripts from Tolkien’s undergraduate notebooks and 1930s lecture notes held at the Bodleian Library in the University of Oxford. Collectively they evidence his awareness and adoption of material by Keats and the forgers James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton. The thesis builds on what little scholarship exists on Tolkien, Keats, Chatterton and Macpherson by offering primary evidence and fresh insights into their shared interests into national history. The thesis argues that Keats and Tolkien share a conception of Faërie as the national heritage of England and Britain, as well as a debt to Macpherson and Chatterton, the early Romantic writers of the ‘Age of Forgery’ in the 1760s. Keats captured history and Faërie in a tapestry of pictures that afterwards inspired William Morris and the other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Morris subsequently influenced Tolkien’s work and the thesis will argue that the ‘perilous’, folkloric Faërie that Tolkien examined in On Fairy-stories is distilled to him through Keats and Morris in a chain of influence. It will argue that Tolkien initially adopted literary techniques and poetic diction from Keats in his first draft of his mythology in the 1910s. With the second draft in the 1920s, the thesis will argue that Tolkien’s maturity led him to critically rework Keats’s poems in ‘The Lay of Leithian’. The works of Macpherson, Chatterton, Keats and Tolkien reacted against the prevailing taste of their respective times by resurrecting a pre-imperial period of their nation’s past; they sought to engender a sense of nostalgia in their contemporaries and prompt a 1 revived interest in what had been lost. It will identify that Tolkien and Keats inherited two prime methods for authenticating or feigning history: the oral tradition and the written word. 2 Table of Contents Abstract p. 1 List of Illustrations p. 4 Acknowledgments p. 5 Note on Publications Referenced p. 7 Note on J. R. R. Tolkien’s Unpublished Manuscripts p. 8 Introduction: Tolkien, Romanticism, and Faërie p. 9 Chapter One: Reshaping Keats and the English Tradition p. 26 I – The T.C.B.S. and Romanticism p. 29 II – The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Keats’s Youth p. 36 IIII – Contextual Survey of Keats and Tolkien p. 46 IV – Addressing the English Literary Tradition: Hyperion and ‘La Belle’ p. 54 V – Addressing the English Literary Tradition: ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ p. 68 Chapter Two: Reviving the Lost Past p. 78 I – Tolkien’s Undergraduate Notebooks and Contextual Survey p. 83 II – Locating a Pre-Imperial Past p. 100 III – The Oral Tradition: Macpherson and Tolkien p. 113 IV – Proofing the Past: History’s Textual Transmission p. 124 Conclusion: Faërie as Heritage p. 140 Appendices p. 143 Appendix A: Keats in Tolkien Scholarship p. 143 Appendix B: Keats’s Poems Included in Poetry Anthologies p. 145 Appendix C: ‘The Horns of Ylmir’ p. 150 Bibliography J. R. R. Tolkien’s Unpublished Manuscripts and Other Works Cited p. 154 3 List of Illustrations 1. Synaesthesia in William Morris (by Stephen Ullmann) p. 65 2. The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro during the Drunkenness attending the Revelry (by William Holman Hunt) p. 72 4 Acknowledgements First and foremost I wish to thank Professor Nick Groom of the University of Exeter for his unwavering support. In 2010 I saw him lecture on ‘Tolkien and Cornwall’ at Fowey Town Hall. Much later, when I was trying to realise my dream of writing more sophisticated academic work on Tolkien, his enthusiastic encouragement inspired me to believe that I could complete a thesis on Tolkien. I would also like to thank Dr Christopher Stokes from the University of Exeter, whose feedback has been of tremendously help in constructing my most ambitious project to date. From the University of Oxford, my sincerest thanks are extended to Catherine McIlwaine, the Tolkien Archivist at the Bodleian Library, who has aided me in deciphering Tolkien’s undergraduate notebooks and has time and again guided me in the right direction during my research trips. Significant thanks to Natasha Kennedy and Gareth Jones for supporting my research at Oxford. Many thanks to Simon Bailey from the Bodleian Library Archives and Dr Charlotte Berry of Magdalen’s Archives for their insight into Oxford during the early twentieth century. I am obliged to The Tolkien Estate for allowing me to quote from Tolkien’s unpublished manuscripts and fully replicate ‘The Horns of Ylmir’ in this thesis, and particularly to Cathleen Blackburn, the solicitor for the Estate, who handled my requests. To archivist Alison Wheatley and teacher Simon Stacey at King Edward’s School, Birmingham I offer my generous thanks for their guidance with the school’s archives and help in finding relevant materials. Additional thanks to Wayne Dixon at Sarehole Mill for meeting with me to talk about Tolkien’s Birmingham. A special thank you to Alan Lee for granting me permission to use ‘yet now did he see Tinúviel dancing in the twilight’ from Beren and Lúthien as my thesis cover. 5 Thanks also to Professor Verlyn Flieger for her insights into the ‘Smith of Wootton Major essay’, John Garth for his notes on the texts Tolkien studied at King Edward’s, and John D. Rateliff for allowing me to read and discuss his unfinished work on Tolkien and Macpherson. A special thank you to Oronzo Cilli for allowing me to read Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist before its publication, it is a splendid achievement and gave me great insight into Tolkien’s years at the University of Leeds. Thanks also to Sarah Richardson from Laing Art Gallery and Laura Schmidt from The Marion E. Wade Center for answering my questions on the history of Pre- Raphaelite paintings and C. S. Lewis’s edition of Thomas Chatterton’s poetry. I am especially thankful to Douglas A. Anderson, Dr Andrew Higgins and Will Cooper for reading my thesis and offering invaluable advice. Finally, I wish to thank my family, Samantha Rowe, Matt McKenzie, Laura Shipley and Charlotte Copper who have supported my studies in more ways than they may acknowledge. My family have endured my Tolkien obsession since I first dozed by an open fire at the age of five, the dwarves’ singing and the narration of Bilbo gazing into his own fire playing from the tape-player. The effect was a life-long enchantment. Samantha, Matt and Laura have individually helped with the thesis; whether they have let me talk through my ideas with them, given me hope in times when the thesis felt light years away from completion or taken my mind off of Tolkien with a cup of tea and biscuits. In the middle of my studies Charlotte convinced me to undertake a pilgrimage to New Zealand to explore the scenery that had captured my imagination since Peter Jackson’s adaptions in 2001 – 2003. I will never forget standing on top of Mount Sunday (Edoras). 6 Note on Publications Referenced As the thesis maps out the scholarship during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, quotations will be taken from editions either of this period or earlier editions that J. R. R. Tolkien could have consulted in Exeter College’s library or the Bodleian Library within the University of Oxford. All quotations from John Keats’s poems or letters come from Harry Buxton Forman’s The Complete Works of John Keats (1900 – 1901) in five volumes. Or Ernest de Sélincourt’s The Poems of John Keats (1905). Both were available from the Bodleian Library. All quotations from James Macpherson come from The Poems of Ossian in two volumes (1807). Or Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1917). Both editions were available from Exeter College’s library. All quotations from Thomas Chatterton come from Thomas Tyrwhitt’s original Poems (1778), which was available from the Bodleian Library. 7 Note on J. R. R. Tolkien’s Unpublished Manuscripts In reproducing the original text found in J. R. R. Tolkien’s original manuscripts in this thesis, a specific set of editorial conventions have been followed. The layout, text, punctuation, symbols, underlining, spacing and other markings have been laid out exactly as they appear on the original unpublished manuscripts. Where words have been crossed out by Tolkien, a line has been put through them. Symbols such as , and all exist on the unpublished manuscripts and are correctly placed. Where editorial interpolations have been used to flesh out the words that Tolkien abbreviated, angle brackets < > have been used. 8 Introduction – Tolkien, Romanticism, and Faërie ‘Romantic fairies are the imagination’s powerful voices, and they can speak of “unheard” things that cannot be spoken of in other ways openly’ (Warner, 2014, pp. 9 – 11). John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s stubborn defiance against post-Medieval influence is well known and documented.
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