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Home , Finn and Hengest, Fleming Rutledge, Leaf by Niggle

Jonathan G. Reinhardt

Language by Tolkien

n the late 1990s, the British writer and scholar conceptions of art is—how could it be other- I J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the wise?—nevertheless vital. Rings was polled “book of the century” by the published the hitherto unsurpassed authoritative English public on four different occasions. Soon biography Tolkien in 1977 (now HarperCollins, after, the 2001 movie version of the first part, The 2002), and offered ingress to the writer’s mind. Fellowship of the Ring, and the 2002 follow-up of Although born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, the second, , created an even and descended from a German family (“Tolkien” greater resurgence of mass appeal for the fantasy is a dialect variant of “tollkühn,” daftly un- epic which had first gained world-wide daunted), J. R. R. T. understood himself quintessen- readership in the 1960s. Despite consistent tially a rural Englishman. His mother’s family, the disparagement by some “serious” critics, Tolkien Suffields of Evesham, had inhabited the West Mid- stands firmly among the ubiquitous authors. lands for time immemorial. Similar to Tolkien’s For most of his lifetime, John Ronald Reuel somewhat-contemporary A. E. Housman’s poetic Tolkien (1892-1973) was known mainly as a affection for nearby Shropshire, it is from the gifted but obscure Oxford philologist and Old Warwick- and Worcestershire country that the English scholar who had rekindled interest in learned author drew his sense of identity: Tolkien important Old and Middle English texts such as told that his “halflings” were in a sense a reflec- . Originally a by-product of Tolkien’s love tion of the pleasant English peasantry. Moreover: for words and languages, the author’s story- “I am,” he wrote (from Tolkien’s Letters no. 213, wrighting—a craft he considered both amateur also ed. Carpenter, Houghton Mifflin, 2000), “in work and an expression of Divinity in fact a (in all but size). I like gardens, trees —inspired a new genre of literature. and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and Moreover, his essays on “fairy-stories” offered like good plain food (unrefrigerated). . . . I like and rousing assumptions about the meaning, scope, even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental and consequence of Christian art. waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which I. Life even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do While perhaps the least of the four avenues to an not travel much.” The ravaging of the ancient for- understanding of Tolkien the Author (biographi- ests of Fangorn in and the cal, scholarly, literary, theoretical), the importance lament of the tree-herd ents at the destruction of of the mythwright’s life in the formation of his the countryside by the evil reflect both MARS HILL AUDIO Resource Essay

Tolkien’s love for trees and his sense of loss of other “traumatized authors” of the twentieth rural England, of which he felt he was voice and century such as Geo rg e Orw ell , Kurt Vonnegut, part. William Golding, and Tolkien’s friend C. S. Lewis , Tolkien lost both his parents at a very young who came to terms with their “bewilderment” of age: his father at three and his mother when he industrialized warfare through the medium of was twelve years old. His maternal wellspring, fantasy. Ship pey points out that Tolkien’s however, had instilled in her son a thirst for characters frequently find themselves literally foreign languages, and her Catholic faith. Both “bewildered” in the wild of Middle Earth, factors would become decisive in Tolkien’s life. disconnected and able to rely only on their own While in grammar school in Birmingham, Tolkien perseverance, and that the Evil of Mordor starkly privately studied relatively obscure languages resembles that of totalitarian states. Tolkien did such as Welsh, Finnish, and Gothic in addition to compose parts of while in the acquiring the required fluency in Latin, Greek, trenches in France. Publicist David Mills likewise and French. Soon, he also began inventing his places Tolkien’s work in the post-war tradition of own tongues, later resulting in several elvish reeling individuals in search of a tradition, similar dialects and fragments of at least half a dozen to the characters of T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, other languages. and Evelyn Waugh. As ward of the Catholic priest Francis Returned to England, Tolkien earned his M.A. Morgan, Ronald and his younger brother Hilary from Oxford in 1919, then proceeded to work as grew up devout faithful of Rome. Tolkien’s a private tutor, and with the Oxford English mythopoeic imagination and his sense of Dictionary. By 1920, he became reader, then religious duty clashed, perhaps for the only time, professor of English in Leeds. Oxford University when Morgan forbade the young man’s romance appointed him Professor of Anglo-Saxon in 1925, with Edith Bratt. A fellow orphan, Edith boarded and of English Language and Literature in 1945, a in the same house as the Tolkien brothers. Soon position he retained for fourteen years. During his enamoured, Edith inspired a pivotal character for years in Oxford, Tolkien became part of a group the body of mythology Ronald was creating as he of friendly scholars called “” aimed to give England stories resounding with (quintessentially portrayed in Humphrey the powerful Germanic spirit of Norse myth, the Carpenter’s Inklings, HarperCollins, 1997). The later Silmarillion. Tolkien described Edith, “Her fellowship included such men as C. S. Lewis , the hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes bright, and publicist Charles W illiams , and the literary critic she could sing—and dance” (she had once Owen Barfield, and provided a fertile and danced for Tolkien in the woods). In his stories, appreciative audience for many of Tolkien’s she became the elven princess Lúthien, whom works in progress. the mortal hero Béren first glimpses through After publication of in 1937, and trees, dancing among hemlock. They married more so after finishing the unlikely “sequel” The after Ronald had turned 21 and received his B.A. Lord of the Rings in 1955, Tolkien gained from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1915. increasing fame as a fantasy author. He retired The young scholar was immediately drafted from teaching in 1959. On behest of Edith the to serve at the Somme as a lieutenant with the Tolkiens left Oxford for the seaside town of Lancashire Fusiliers until 1918, when he came Bournemouth in 1968, where the author’s wife down with “trench fever.” Professor T o m died three years later. J. R. R. T., by now showered Shippey , philologist and author of J. R. R. Tolkien: with prizes, decorations, and honorary Author of the Century (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) doctorates, returned to Oxford. Cl y de S. K ilb y and The Road to Middle Earth (Houghton provides a portrait of the older Tolkien in Tolkien Mifflin, 2003), and others have suggested that and the Silmarillion (Lion, 1977). Tolkien’s war experience places him among

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Kilby joined the author to assist him in understand the regional dialects of fourteenth- editing his grand mythology, the Silmarillion, for century English.” The passionate philologist also publication while Tolkien became increasingly wrote on the Anglo-Saxon poem Exodus, on The irritated with his celebrity status and unwelcome Life and Passion of St. Juliene, and the Middle (and often insensitive) attention from his fans. So English Katerine. it was that the mythwright died in 1973, far from In 1936, Professor Tolkien delivered the hobbitish obscurity. Tolkien had had Edith’s pivotal lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the gravestone engraved with the name of his mythic Critics” to the British Academy. Tolkien asserted elven princess Lúthien. Buried next to her, his that this poem had generally been headstone bears that of her heroic mortal lover, misassessed by previous critics, and that it was Béren. crafted with high intricacy, with intentional use Tolkien’s life and work have been written of peripheral allusions, and precise reasons for about extensively. T o m Ship pey’s J. R. R. Tolkien: the occurrent monsters the hero battles. During Author of the Century (Houghton Mifflin, 2002; his remaining twenty-three years as chair of interview here ) and The Road to Middle-Earth Anglo-Saxon and of English Language and (Houghton Mifflin, 2003) are semi-biographical Literature at Oxford, Tolkien continued to evaluations of the author’s work and philosophy, contribute scholarship on a plethora of other Old as is J o sep h P ear ce’s Tolkien: Man and Myth and Middle English texts. (HarperCollins, 1999). The retired professor published the volume (HarperCollins, 2001) in 1964, II. Scholarship focusing more distinctly on composition theory. The book included the lecture “On Fairy-stories” Although by now most noted for his work as a he had given at St. Andrew’s in 1939, and “Leaf by creative writer, Tolkien’s scholarship in English Niggle,” a story originally published in The philology likewise remains influential. Among the Dublin Review in 1945. Later editions added the works he produced were the early Middle poem “.” English Vocabulary (Clarendon, 1922) and Among Tolkien’s posthumous scholarly publi- translations now included in Sir Gawain and the cations are and Hengest: The Fragment and Green Knight, and (Gawain the Episode, edited by Alan Bliss (now Harper- Clarendon 1925, now HarperCollins, 1991), much Collins, 1998), and his essay miscellany The Mon- of which were done while Tolkien was reader, sters and the Critics and Other Essays (now then professor of English in Leeds from 1920 to HarperCollins, 1991). Michael Drout is editor of a 1925. Tolkien translated Sir Gawain with his recently discovered, previously unpublished Leeds colleague E. V. Gordon, and would later revision by Tolkien, Beowulf and the Crit- collaborate with his former tutee on Pearl. ics—Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, After he was appointed to the chair of Anglo- Vol. 248 (Arizona Center for Medieval and Saxon at Oxford University in 1925, Tolkien Renaissance Studies, 2002). published comparatively little, mainly due to perfectionism. Among his output is an essay on III. Crafting Literature the Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (Oxford University Press, 1962) Wheaton College professor Cl yde S. K ilb y , a and a treatise on Hali Mei‘had (“Holy Virginity”), friend and collaborator of Tolkien’s, has remarked both of which he argued were taught, that the narrative-crafter best revealed his standardized texts in the Middle Ages. Carpenter creative process in “,” published in points out in Tolkien that “his paper on the Tree and Leaf (HarperCollins, 2001). The story dialects of Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale [in tells of the painter Niggle, who feels he is Transactions of the Philological Society, 1934] is somewhat of a failure for consistently required reading for anyone who wishes to overreaching his grasp. Rather than attempt to

- 3 - MARS HILL AUDIO Resource Essay paint another tree, which he longs to do, Niggle Houghton Mifflin, now 1991) first appeared in decides to focus on “a single leaf caught in the The Oxford Magazine in 1934. The poem drew wind.” His image grows, “sending out on the stories Tolkien invented for his children innumerable branches . . . . Strange birds came and during a vacation, based on a doll belonging to settled on the twigs and had to be attended to,” his son Michael. Its plot, too, already bears a until an entire country bursts forth. Niggle is strong resemblance to the Bombadil episode in dissatisfied in spite of the burgeoning magnitude The Lord of the Rings. of his painting, caught between its loveliness (to A collection of humorous poems, some in Old him) and his fear that it is fake. After his death, English, composed by Tolkien, E. V. Gordon, and however, he finds that his picture has become others for the Viking Club in Leeds were alive. “It is a gift,” he concludes. publicized in 1936 as Songs for the Philologists. Likewise, the creative work of J. R. R. Tolkien One year later—around the time Tolkien gave his is his intertwined desire to create a Norse-hued Beowulf lecture—George Allen & Unwin of myth for England and to grant the languages he London printed the children’s book The Hobbit: studied into being a feasible backdrop. Thus, most or There and Back Again. In it, the strange of his writing is in fact quite dissimilar to his best- wizard Gandalf interrupts the peaceful life of known books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Hobbiton in the peaceful rural utopia of the Rings. Tolkien began to compose the mythical Shire, enticing the complacent hobbit Bilbo stories of the later Silmarillion while he was still Baggins to join a troop of dwarves on an a teenager, both in verse and prose. Inspired by adventure. Hired as a “thief,” Bilbo tags along as Icelandic and “genuine” Celtic myth, by the word- the company makes its perilous way through chime of Welsh, and by the melancholic, heroic lonely and sometimes magical wilderness towards air of the Anglo-Saxon lays, young Ronald made the Lonely Mountain, where they successfully languages (among them, at least five related battle Smaug and reinstate the dialects of elvish, entish, dwarvish, the Black as King Under the Mountain. Speech, various human dialects, and fragments of C. S. Lewis reviewed The Hobbit for the Times an “angelic” tongue), a cosmogony, a cosmos both noting that “to the trained eye some characters metaphysical and mundane, an intricate will seem almost mythopoeic.” It was equally geography and anthropology complete with flora, enthusiastically received by the public, sold out fauna, various races and civilizations with within three months, and became an instant corresponding histories and literatures, all of classic. them found on the western coast of the The rather allegorical “Leaf by Niggle” in The continent he called, in the Norse tradition, Middle Dublin Review in 1945 and the children’s story Earth. “” in 1949 followed. Quite a The Silmarillion was not published until after contrast, then, was the scholar’s invented ending Tolkien’s death, but it provided the context for to the Old English “Battle of Maldon” titled “The almost all his adult fiction. Tolkien’s earliest Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” creative publications are more or less juvenile (1953). poems, albeit often already with a mythic tone Tolkien’s publishers had long petitioned the (“The Battle of the Eastern Fields”), or a child overly revision-prone perfectionist for a sequel to audience in mind (“Goblin Feet”). Both in Leeds the Hobbit set in Middle Earth and, contrary to and in Oxford, he wrote more poetry, some in the Silmarillion he offered them, featuring earlier forms of English, many of which would . The first and second parts of Tolkien’s resurface revised to various extents in The Lord outstanding centerpiece work The Lord of the of the Rings. “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two (later republished in The Adventures of Tom Towers appeared in 1954, quickly followed by the Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book, conclusion of the trilogy, ,

- 4 - MARS HILL AUDIO Resource Essay the year after (The Lord of the Rings first became ship between the two Inkling friends. The “clas- available in one volume in 1968). The work sic” Tolkien companion is, however, The Com- centers around a quest conducted by the hobbit plete Guide to Middle-earth (Ballantine, 1978) by Frodo and his gardener Sam Gamgee, aiming to Robert Foster. destroy the tool of ultimate evil power, the One Ring. Tolkien’s epic narrative places the rather IV. Theory undistinguished pair in the midst of overwhelming, violent, and heroic struggles With his increasing popularity in the 1960s, marking the end of one of the pre-Christian ages critics seized upon Tolkien’s work, usually in Middle Earth, drawing into it much of the focusing on either the question of fantasy Silmarillion mythology, and ending in a battle literature, on what many saw as allegorical social between the forces of freedom (elves, dwarves, criticism, or, increasingly, on his premises. ents, hobbits, men) and corruption (orcs, trolls, Tolkien’s most immediate influence on and other evil creatures headed by the horrific literature was in inciting what skeptical critics Black Riders, or Nazgul) in which the fate of the have derided as an escapist and simple-minded earth hangs in the balance between the dominion genre: fantasy. Tolkien’s legacy permeates much of the evil lord Sauron and the enchanted of the fantasy that is still being written, often epic loveliness of the peaceful. and in trilogy format, consistently in Tolkien’s After his masterpiece, Tolkien returned to many-stringed narrative technique, and not verse with the children’s poems “Once Upon a seldomly set in similar wooded, half-wild worlds Time” and “The Dragon’s Visit” in Winter’s Tales where elves, dwarves, orcs, and sorcerers who for Children in 1965. frequently bear what one of Tolkien’s early critics consisting of earlier essays and stories became (in his case, falsely) called “eye-splitting Celtic available in 1966, and , names” abound. somewhat of a children’s fairy tale pre-shadowing Tolkien’s characters serve as recurrent The Lord of the Rings in less distinctive terms, in archetypes—to an extent even in more divergent 1967. authors like the later Peter Beagle, Terry Many J. R. R. Tolkien by-products reached Pratchett, and Neil Gaiman: the not quite publication in the wake of the huge popularity of incarnate Dark Lord is ubiquitous; benign, witty Lord of the Rings on U. S. campuses in the 1960s. wizards are pitched against powerful treacherous They include a song book with melodies by ones; heroic men in search of, in ignorance, or in Donald Swann on which Tolkien collaborated and denial of their royal heritage (not infrequently to which he contributed remarkable calligraphy, attached to or descended from elven princesses) titled : A Song Cycle come into their own; stern-faced councils of (HarperCollins, now 1978) in 1967. Posthu- gandalf- and elrondesque near-immortals meet to mously, his son Christopher Tolkien oversaw the bequeath world-saving quests on diminutive- publication of much of the author’s art work, his seeming individuals; fellowships of diverse charming Father Christmas Letters in 1976, and, characters of different races traverse creative finally in 1977, The Silmarillion. Since then, most continents in quest for magical objects on which of Tolkien’s fragments and manuscripts have also the fate of the world hinges; battles of vast become available, beginning with Unfinished magnitude abound; and more specifically, while Tales in 1980. men differ, most twentieth century dwarfs are Various Tolkien companions are available, Tolkien’s dwarves essentially, and most elves his among them Colin Duriez’s J. R. R. Tolkien Hand- eldar. book (Baker, 1992)—Duriez, by the way, also Patrick Curry has written an apology against wrote Tolkien and C. S. Lewis (Paulist Press, the escapist “heresy,” Defending Middle-Earth 2003), an examination of the complex relation- (HarperCollins, 1998), and the essay collection Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R.

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Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (U. Notre Dame, philology, and his confluence with co-Inkling 1968) gives some insights into early receptions of Owen Barfield. J o se p h P ear ce edited Tolkien: A The Lord of the Rings among literati. Another less Celebration (Ignatius, 2001), in which fourteen religiously motivated examination of Tolkien’s Tolkien scholars, among them George Sayer and work is ’s Tolkien’s Art: “A Walter Hooper (C. S. Lewis’s biographer), Stephen Mythology for England” (Macmillan, 1979). Lawhead, Tolkien’s friend Robert Murray, and Tolkien always denied The Lord of the Rings Kevin Aldrich (on time in The Lord of the Rings), was meant allegorically for anything (he disliked write about the author’s literary legacy and C. S. Lewi s’s Narnia books exactly for that spiritual values. Brad ley Birzer authored J. R. R. reason), or that they were to be read primarily as Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding social or political criticism. Rather, he intended Middle-earth (ISI Books, 2003), which he the narrative to be illustrative. Tolkien was discusses in an interview . profoundly Catholic, and his idea that myth (or Mark Eddy Smith has authored a very fanciful and seemingly unrealistic fiction) would approachable work, T olkien’s Ordinary Virtues convey profound truths is rooted in the Christian (InterVarsity, 2002), in which he examines the concepts of Divine revelation and human co- moral example of Tolkien’s characters. regency. In his int erview with MARS HILL AUDIO, Two works with a theological slant are J o sep h P ear ce , author of Tolkien: Man and Myth, forthcoming: In The Gospel According to Tolkien explains how Tolkien’s theory of creative writing (Westminster John Knox, 2003), Ralph Wood centers around sub-creation, and points to “Leaf examines how the essentially Christian cosmic by Niggle” as an example. structure of Middle-Earth, including a moral one, Tolkien wrote the poem “Mythopoeia” (also surfaces throughout the pre-Christian narrative of in Tree and Leaf) to reiterate that sub-creation is The Lord of the Rings; and a necessary human act of worship for the then- examines Tolkien’s religious allusions and motifs skeptic C. S. Lewis: “man, sub-creator, the in The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine refracted light / through whom is splintered from Design in The Lord of the Rings (Eerdmans, a single White / to many hues, and endlessly 2003). combined / in living shapes that move from mind to mind.” In “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien explains, V. Links “The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are The most extensive bibliographical listing in our world coeval. . . . In such ‘fantasy,’ as it is available can be found at T h e T o lkien So ciety called, new forms are made; Faërie begins; Man w eb pag e . The official web site of Th e Lor d of the becomes a sub-creator.” Ring s mo vies can be found here . Ard alambio n is a Rolland Hein places Tolkien amidst other rather comprehensive site on Tolkien’s languages. near-contemporary Christian mythophili such as C. S. Lewis, Chesterton, L’Engle, MacDonald (and even Dante) in Christian Mythmakers Jonathan G. Reinhardt is a senior at Harding University (Cornerstone, 2002). ’s Splintered and worked as an editorial intern for MARS HILL AUDIO Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s Work in the summer of 2003. This article was written in August (Kent State U., 2002) focuses closely on Tolkien’s of that year. idea of co-creation, his creative devotion to

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