THE JOURNAL OF INKLINGS STUDIES

Jason Fisher, ed., Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays Review by Faith Liu The Journal of Inklings Studies Vol. 5, No. 2, October 2015

Jason Fisher, ed. Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2011. 228 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7864-6482-1.

For those familiar with Sir George Dasent’s esoteric context would deprive one of the bones-and-soup analogy for source criticism, opportunity to appreciate Tolkien’s painstaking famously used in Tolkien’s ‘On Fairy-stories’,1 linguistic and literary genuineness. Shippey’s Jason Fisher offers an even more own brilliant bit of philological analysis, gastronomically exciting ripper: he cites Tolkien unpacking a surprising amount of depth behind comparing the source-hunting reader to a diner the humble name ‘Butterbur’, is proof enough who, after a meal, ‘uses an emetic, and sends of his abilities. E.L. Risden, seeking to declutter the results for chemical analysis’ (30). Given the and demystify the practice of source study as a acidity with which Tolkien treats the subject, it whole, asserts that, though the subject is indeed is little wonder that Fisher feels the need to nebulous, it has a long and reputable history in create an ‘apology for source criticism’ (2) in Biblical and Shakespearean studies, among gainsaying the author: in fact, he begins his others. His informative look into the methods collection with several valuable discussions of and intentions of source study conclude with a the range, limits, and methodology of the caveat: though finding sources is a largely discipline, much needed in an already inductive process, its results have value if – and burgeoning field that too often exceeds its only if – they meaningfully support a reading of bounds. The rest of this largely enjoyable the text. Fisher, too, is unflinching in weeding collection puts theory into practice, showcasing out the sloppy, pre-philological analyst, a variety of essays exploring, with a variety of something for which Tolkien would surely be results, the vast expanse of uncharted territory grateful. After making a rewarding comparison from which Tolkien may have drawn, from the between Tolkien’s and medieval authors’ habit depths of King Solomon’s Mines to the planets of being free with their treatment of sources, above. Fisher lays down the ‘ground rules’ for , perhaps the most fitting and establishing a source: firstly, a causal rather best equipped of all scholars to defend this than comparative relationship between the field, has authored the collection’s introduction; source and Tolkien’s text; and secondly, a together with essays by Fisher and by E.L. plausible argument as to how the source was Risden, they form a comprehensive argument used and why. for how to justify and subsequently judge As Fisher acknowledges, ‘most of the low- sources and source criticism. Shippey hanging fruit has long gone,’ and scholars such acknowledges the many roots behind Tolkien’s as those featured in his collection have since own distaste for source criticism, but contends ‘been looking to the higher branches in the that to divorce text from such rich and often Tree of Tales’ (37-38). ’s essay on Biblical and Mesopotamian 1 ‘We must be satisfied with the soup that is set mythology is on solid, if well-trodden, ground before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox analysing Tolkien’s ‘calque’ of the Biblical out of which it has been boiled.’ Introduction to Creation, Fall, and Flood in ; his Dasent’s Popular Tales from the Norse (xlvi), popularly speculations as to its Mesopotamian roots, on requoted by Tolkien in “On Fairy-stories” (39).

1 the other hand, are both more intriguing and Venus and Mercury, drawing on her own more tenuous. While understanding that background as a physicist and astronomer. Tolkien’s words ‘Erech’ and ‘Uruk’ are also the Larsen traces the Ceyx and Alcyone myth Biblical and Mesopotamian names for the same through its various renditions in Ovid, city may add substantial nuance to their Chaucer, de Machaut, and Gower, most of significance, Birns can say only that Tolkien which Tolkien would have known and read; was possibly familiar with the Assyriology likewise, she follows the story of Eärendil and department at Oxford, and much of the rest of Elwing through the various drafts of The his analysis is comparative rather than provably Silmarillion and The History of Middle-earth, causal. unpacking the thematic and revisionary The same can be said about several of the intricacies of which details from the Greek collection’s later contributions. Judy Ann myth Tolkien retained and which he altered. Ford’s essay on William Caxton’s The Golden Tolkien’s acute interest in astronomy and Legend, a collection of medieval hagiographies, meteorology are also brought to light, as Larsen attempts to prove that Tolkien drew from reveals detail after detail pointing to his Christian tradition as well as pagan legendaria. incorporation of planetary and weather However, when the only known connection phenomena and superstition within his own between Tolkien and Caxton’s book is a single mythology. entry in The Oxford English Dictionary, and when Miryam Librán-Moreno’s essay requires the magical objects and events that Ford points little proof that Tolkien was familiar with to are generic enough to have come from Constantinople and its neighbours; her own sources outside of The Golden Legend (men who extensive knowledge of Byzantium’s political can control the weather, sending the dead into history, culture attitudes, and relationships with battle, etc.), a claim of ‘sufficiently parallel’ the surrounding peoples is put to good use as (139) is not enough. Mark T. Hooker’s essay on she lays out a dense, but enjoyably readable, the novels of John Buchan, one of Tolkien’s series of parallels pointing to Byzantium as an contemporaries, does somewhat better: inspiration for the city of . Although although Hooker seems to rely on the sheer the connections she draws do not necessarily number of parallels to make his point, and follow chronological order or a one-to-one although several of these parallels are easily correlation – Attila and Denethor, dismissed as coincidence of fact or of intent (a Charlemagne and Aragorn – the real histories mutual interest in pre-Roman Britain, giving form a library from which Tolkien drew to lend semantically resonant names to similarly depth and nuance to his own texts. Librán- employed minor characters), there are a few Moreno finds additional evidence in The Book of gems scattered about his work. The strongest Lost Tales and in a poem Tolkien wrote in of these is Huntingtower’s grocer-turned-burglar response to Charles Williams’ ‘The Vision of Dickson McCunn: though several scholars have the Empire’: in Tolkien’s poem, Constantinople already remarked upon his similarity to Bilbo represents corruption, worldliness, pride, and Baggins, Hooker’s eye for detail brings it into intolerance of other cultures, and in The Lord of full bloom. Beyond that, however, the works of the Rings, these elements are reincarnated in Buchan may elicit, as Hooker says, ‘a sense of Late Gondor. Librán-Moreno’s analysis, which déjà vu in the reader who has met Tolkien first’ identifies the Rohirrim as literary descendants (173), but not much more. of the Goths, is then drawn into Thomas Far more grounded are Kristine Larsen’s Honegger’s essay, which challenges Tolkien’s essay on the Classical roots of the story of disavowal of the Rohirrim as Anglo-Saxons. Eärendil and Elwing and Miryam Librán- While Honegger concedes that ’s Moreno’s study tackling narrative parallels historical relationship with Gondor and its between the history of Middle-Earth and the cultural attachment to horses is reminiscent of barbarian histories of Late Antiquity. Larsen the Goths, he argues that it is the rich literary not only draws eleven common threads tradition of the Anglo-Saxon warrior, rather between Eärendil and Elwing’s tale and the than the nearly vanished Gothic society and Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone, but also literature, which informs the culture of the identifies their counterparts in the planets Rohirrim. From Tolkien’s use of Old English

2 as the root of Rohan’s language, to the echoes It is refreshing to see, in what is already a of ’s arrival at Heorot in the arrival of thriving community, a discussion of why and Gandalf and company at Meduseld, the world how to go about Tolkienian source study, and of the Rohirrim is permeated with the literary rarely is it undertaken with such attention to Anglo-Saxon’s ‘northern heroic spirit’ (126). detail and demand for high standards. Though John D. Rateliff tackles H. Rider Haggard’s the collection could use a conclusion (one is She, one of the few childhood favourites that otherwise left with the melancholy aftertaste of Tolkien acknowledged by name, and whose Glyer and Long’s discussion of Smith of Wootton vivid characters and settings, Rateliff contends, Major), and more attractive cover design, Tolkien continued to admire and draw from in Tolkien and the Study of His Sources is, on the his adulthood. Many of the parallels Rateliff whole, a triumph: a collection accessible to finds – between She and Galadriel, between the both the enthusiast and the academic, with people of Kôr and the Númenóreans, between extensive footnotes and bibliographies each writer’s ideas of a ‘limited immortality’ – providing ample food for the reader seeking to are not only striking, but also ripe with go beyond. The work of these scholars is not thematic resonances. Similarly valuable is Diana chemical analysis of predigested dinners; rather, Pavlac Glyer and Josh B. Long’s look at it is the attempt to unlock the secrets of an old Tolkien’s own life in ‘Biography as Source: family recipe. Some attempts bring new insight Niggles and Notions’. As the title suggests, into a dish, while others indulge in more Glyer and Long pick at the low-hanging fruit of insubstantial speculation, but all serve to ‘’ and others of Tolkien’s more promote a greater appreciation for the personal literature, though in greater detail, and discipline, for the dish, and for the chef to greater effect, than usual. In meticulously himself. tracing Tolkien’s self-references chronologically through his body of work, from Alboin to Works Consulted Ramer to Niggle to Smith, Glyer and Long point to many of the one-to-one correlations Dasent, George Webbe. Popular Tales from the Norse. with people in Tolkien’s own life, some of Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 2nd ed., 1859. which dissolve as characters grow into their own, and others of which continue to yield Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien on Fairy-stories. Ed. and Douglas A. Anderson. London: piercing insights, from fiction to reality and HarperCollins, 2008. back again.

Faith Liu Hillsdale College

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