An Anthropologist in Middle-Earth

Volume 21 Number 2 Article 11 Winter 10-15-1996 An Anthropologist in Middle-earth Virginia Luling Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Luling, Virginia (1996) "An Anthropologist in Middle-earth," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 21 : No. 2 , Article 11. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract The author is an anthropologist who works as a campaigner for indigenous people’s rights. From this perspective she has some thoughts about Tolkien’s work as a vision of an unwesternized Europe, and on the re-enchantment of the world. Additional Keywords anthropology; disenchantment; Drúedain; Drûg; Easterlings; re-enchantment; Southrons; wild men; Woodwose This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/11 An Anthropologist in Middle-earth Virginia Luling Abstract: The author is an anthropologist who works as a campaigner for indigenous people’s rights. From this perspective she has some thoughts about Tolkien’s work as a vision of an unwesternized Europe, and on the re-enchantment of the world. Keywords: anthropology, disenchantment, Druedain, Drug, Easterlings, re-enchantment, Southrons, wild men, Woodwose We are all human beings, but the fact of our being single-handed”, and indeed he clearly often felt desperately human does not manifest itself in abstraction but in the alone in his work. But of course his was not the only attempt, particularity of real living human beings in different and this indeed is one of the recurrent themes in European climes and races. We can talk of the human capacity for literature over the last two hundred years.) language, but the capacity manifests itself in real The re-enchantment, not just of any part of the world, but concrete languages as spoken by different peoples of his own part, “the north-west corner of the old world”, and the earth. that simply because it was his own: “. if you want to (Ngugi Wa Thiongo, 1993, p. 26) write a tale of this sort you must consult your roots, and a man of the North-west of the Old World will set his heart I and the action of his tale in an imaginary world of that air, An African tribesman, many years ago, discussing with a and that situation” (Tolkien, 1981, p. 212). In his earliest British anthropologist the idea that particular clans among conceptions, it was the island of Britain itself that had once his people were specially related to certain plants, animals or been the elves’ country, and it was from there that they took objects, jokingly suggested that his guest’s symbols should ship. His work is, as Tom Shippey rightly, says, “ethnic”. He be “paper” and “lorry”, since it was these things that had wanted to celebrate his native country, not as the birthplace always chiefly helped his people. (“Paper” to this man would of science, commerce and the industrial revolution, but as the have meant not literature but official forms - probably tax final home of enchantment. He stands, so to speak, for a forms - or accounts.) He was summarising the view of most Europe that has not been “Europeanised”. people in the modem world of what it means to be His England, the country that he loved and for whose “European” — in the sense that includes American, and origins his imagination groped among the clues of legend Western culture generally. Bureaucracy and the machine. and language, was not the England that became a “Europeanisation”, “westernisation” and “modernisation” are commercial Empire, not a conquering but a conquered nation synonymous. “Sarumanisation” would be a fair enough term. - conquered by “1066 and all that”. (“All that” being the This is often linked with the “rationalisation” which sees “Whig view of history” that is cheerfully mocked in the the world more and more in terms of impersonal cause and Sellars and Yeatman book.) So with that other island nation, effect rather than personal forces — what the wise and Numenor: the time when its people became conquerors of melancholy sociologist Max Weber, quoting Schiller, liked “lesser men”, the age of their greatest outward power and to call the “disenchantment of the world” (das Entzauberung wealth, was also the time of their inward corruption when der Welt).' The gods and fairies disappear, and with them a they began to worship Sauron.1 2 way of experience. “They are sailing, sailing westward over But such is the identification of Europe with modernity, the sea and leaving us . In Tolkien’s work it is the that people today who look for a not-yet-disenchanted world elves who have departed, leaving only scattered and generally find it, or think they find it, among the peoples of incoherent traditions behind them as clues in the the “third world”, or even more in that “fourth world” of disenchanted present day, the time of “the dominion of indigenous minorities who have been called the “victims of Men”. What Tolkien audaciously embarked upon was the progress” (Bradley, 1975). As an anthropologist by training, “re-enchantment of the world”. (I nearly wrote “embarked I have studied peoples of that kind, and my job at present is 1 Weber, placed by fate in the opposite camp to Tolkien in more than one sense, believed that this emptiness and impersonality was a destiny that had to be faced, and that only cowardice would make one deny it. 2 The relation between this and Tolkien’s English Catholicism — the embattled faith of a minority with memories of persecution — is naturally obscure both to the mainstream English, who still tend to see the Roman Church as foreign and somewhat creepy, and to people from other countries where it is synonymous with power and establishment. 54 J. R. R. TOLKIEN CENTENARY CONFERENCE with an organisation that campaigns on their behalf when, as native tradition on the other - the same struggle that still frequently happens, they are dispossessed or persecuted. My goes on in many consciences all over the world today. hope is that by bringing these two preoccupations of mine Tolkien, the sincere Christian who decided that what his together, I can provide a slightly unusual angle on Tolkien’s nation needed was a “pagan” mythology, stood with the work. Beowulf poet in defending the old heroic tales against their I suggest that Tolkien’s imagination brings him close to narrow and fanatical suppressors (narrowness and fanaticism such peoples, even though they are geographically distant are perennial and come in many forms). So, too, his work by and different in “temper” from those whom he created. An implication stands with the Filipino Datu, and the old men alternative way of approaching this theme would be to recall who fear their stories will be laughed at by the school- another centenary that was commemorated in 1992, that of educated young. Columbus’ discovery of America, and the clash between Also, perhaps, as a celebrator of trees, with one small and those who glorify that event and what it symbolises, and not yet articulate representative of an unassuming people: those who mourn it. I claim that Tolkien’s work puts him “. As he came to a towering, smooth tree, he among the mourners, though some of the latter might not placed his hands against the trunk to steady himself, readily recognise him as an ally. This is not the place even to drew back his head, and stared up at the tree, all the touch on the tortuous issues of actual power in the primary way up to the leafy kingdom of its crown spread out world - I am concerned only with the imperialism of the against the sky. He stood that way for ten minutes, now imagination. and again gently patting the tree.” This was Baja, a For instance, it is a common experience in such traditional motherless toddler from the Aka Pygmies in central societies, that old people fear to tell their legends to the Africa, whose community was being wiped out by Western investigator or the young man who has been to disease until they moved back into their forest. “I school, for fear of being snubbed or laughed at. When I was carried Baja out to his tree every day for a week . doing research in a small town in Somalia, there were those At first I had no hope that he would live, but like the who did not want me to write down legends like the one rest of us he had been through the worst. He, too, was a about how their town was covered in mist which hid the sun, survivor.” until a miraculous boy was made their ruler, and became the (Samo, 1993) ancestor of a dynasty which still continues, or the one about another ancestor who became the unwilling guest of a water- II spirit at the bottom of the river, and then was set free with So far I have looked at the general stance of Tolkien’s work; magical gifts — for fear I would publish them and so make now I want to enter Middle-earth and look at some of its their community look ridiculous.

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