Ents, Elves, and Eriador Culture of the Land a Series in the New Agrarianism

Ents, Elves, and Eriador Culture of the Land A Series in the New Agrarianism is series is devoted to the exploration and articulation of a new agrarianism that considers the health of habitats and human communities together. It is intended to demonstrate how agrarian insights and responsibilities can be worked out in diverse fields of learning and living: history, science, art, politics, economics, literature, philosophy, religion, urban planning, edu- cation, and public policy. Agrarianism is a comprehensive worldview that appreciates the intimate and practical connections which exist between humans and the earth. It stands as our most promising alternative to the unsustainable and destructive ways of current global, industrial, and con- sumer culture. Series Editor Norman Wirzba, Georgetown College, Kentucky Advisory Board Wendell Berry, Port Royal, Kentucky Ellen Davis, Duke University, North Carolina Patrick Holden, Soil Association, United Kingdom Wes Jackson, Land Institute, Kansas Gene Logsdon, Upper Sandusky, Ohio Bill McKibben, Middlebury College, Vermont David Orr, Oberlin College, Ohio Michael Pollan, University of California at Berkeley, California Jennifer Sahn, Orion magazine, Massachusetts Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, India William Vitek, Clarkson University, New York Ents, Elves, and Eriador e Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans The฀University฀Press฀of฀Kentucky Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2006 by e University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, e Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Oces: e University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com 06 07 08 09 10 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dickerson, Matthew T., 1963- Ents, elves, and Eriador : the environmental vision of J.R.R. Tolkien / Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans. p. cm. — (Culture of the land) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-2418-6 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8131-2418-2 (alk. paper) 1. Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892-1973— Knowledge—Environmental sciences. 2. Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892-1973—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Ecology in literature. 4. Nature in literature. 5. Human ecology in literature. 6. Middle Earth (Imaginary place). 7. Environmentalism. 8. Ecocriticism. 9. Environmental literature—History and criticism. I. Evans, Jonathan D. (Jonathan Duane), 1954- II. Title. PR6039.O32Z636 2006 823.912—dc22 2006019174 is book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live aer may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule. —Gandalf to the Captains of the West (V/ix) This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword by John Elder ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xv Conventions and Abbreviations xxv P I. “e Tides of the World”: Gandalfian Stewardship and the Foundations of Tolkien’s Vision Chapter 1. Varda, Yavanna, and the Value of Creation 3 Chapter 2. Gandalf, Stewardship, and Tomorrow’s Weather 37 P II. “e Succour of ose Years Wherein We Are Set”: A Complex Ecology of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Feraculture Chapter 3. Hobbits and the Agrarian Society of the Shire 71 Chapter 4. Horticulture and the Aesthetic of the Elves 95 Chapter 5. Woods, Wildness, and the Feraculture of the Ents 119 Chapter 6. e Necessity of Margins in Middle-earth’s Mingled Ecologies 145 Chapter 7. e Ecology of Ham, Niggle’s Parish, and Wootton Major 163 P III. “Uprooting the Evil in the Fields at We Know”: Following the Vision, and the Consequences of Ignoring It Chapter 8. ree Faces of Mordor 185 Chapter 9. Rousing the Shire 215 viii Contents Chapter 10. Environmentalism, Transcendence, and Action 235 Conclusion: Some Practical Matters 259 Aerword by Tom Shippey 269 Appendix: Further Reading 273 Notes 277 Index 299 Foreword Over the past several decades, a form of literary scholarship has evolved that is now commonly referred to as ecocriticism. is approach to the dialogue between literature and the natural world seems, in retrospect, to have tracked fairly closely with certain phases in the environmental movement. It grew originally out of the study of “nature writing”— oreauvian nonfiction in which solitude amid wild landscapes was one central theme. Authors such as John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Edward Abbey came to be prized not only because of their tangy voices but also because of their strong advocacy for preserving wilderness. e work of these writers and others like them strongly influenced the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Readers of Rachel Carson were similarly influenced by her courage in decrying the toxicity in our manufactur- ing and agricultural practices and by the relevance of her writing to the formation of such regulatory agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency and to such legislation as the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. More recently, Native American writers like Leslie Marmon Silko and Joseph Bruchac have powerfully conveyed indigenous perspectives on nature to a broad audience. eir work has called into question some of the assumptions of the wilderness movement, as well as contributed to a growing emphasis on racial equity and environmental justice within the discourse of ecocriticism. Beyond these key instances in which literature and activism have become intertwined, there are a couple of emerging developments that are well represented in Ents, Elves, and Eriador. Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans’s admirable study of J. R. R. Tolkien participates in an extension of the ecocritical inquiry to literature that has not been closely associated with the environmental movement and that may, in fact, have considerably predated it. Scholars are returning to such canonical authors as William Shakespeare, John Milton, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson in poetry, and George Eliot and ix x Foreword omas Hardy in fiction, to investigate the natural themes and images that deepen the other meanings of their texts. ey are comparing earlier twentieth-century writers like D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens with such contemporaries as Gary Snyder and Mary Oliver, who are more overtly connected with environmental themes. ey are inves- tigating the ways in which classics from without the Anglo-American canon—including Dante, Cervantes, and such great non-Western writers as Basho and his followers in Japan’s haiku tradition—can now illu- minate the ecotone between nature and culture. In focusing on the environmental vision of Tolkien, Dickerson and Evans identify promising terrain for such a project of mapping and reevaluation. Not only was Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy one of the most widely read and best-loved works of the twentieth century, but Peter Jackson’s celebrated film adaptation has done much to consoli- date and extend that already vast audience. As Terry Eagleton argues in his books Literary eory and Beyond eory, we have arrived at a moment when criticism must speak directly to the larger challenges of social transformation. A literary study that articulates Tolkien’s emphasis on restraining our individual appetites, defending beloved landscapes against the ethical and technological challenges symbolized by Mordor, and fostering sustainability in our communities can amplify that author’s potential for exercising an impact on present-day values and practices. is timely study also echoes a renewed emphasis, in ecocriticism and environmentalism alike, on the old-fashioned language of stewardship. It is a concept strongly associated with Tolkien’s vision of the Shire. Raymond Williams and others have found nostalgia and sentimentality in this depiction—based on a Worcestershire village from Tolkien’s boy- hood that had long since been incorporated into the industrial sprawl around Birmingham. Indeed, if the landscape around Hobbiton were to be valued primarily for its thatched roofs and home-brewed beer, it might well be dismissed as no more than an appealing anachronism. But it is in fact presented as one distinctive region within a carefully graduated range of locales in Middle-earth. e rolling downs of Rohan, the deep woods of the Ents and Huorns, and the damaged but resilient gardens of Gondor oer the broader context in which to appreciate the specific importance of the Shire. As Dickerson and Evans show, the Foreword xi landscapes around Isengard that have been blighted by Saruman speak to the true value of the Hobbits’ home country. In relation to their small, undramatic rural community, Tolkien evokes the old-fashioned value of stewardship—a concept that eventually comes to enclose the whole saga in its arc and to define the missions of both Gandalf and Aragorn. Just as the Shire could be dismissed as provincial or sentimental by one not relating it to the broader framework of Tolkien’s trilogy, so too the ideal of stewardship might be considered irrelevant because of its association with lordly structures of authority that are distant from our present democratic institutions. And in a figure like Denethor, the domineering steward of Gondor, all those aristocratic and authoritarian connotations are strongly sounded.

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