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A Mythology? for England? CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by SWOSU Digital Commons (Southwestern Oklahoma State University) Volume 21 Number 2 Article 46 Winter 10-15-1996 A Mythology? For England? Anders Stenström Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Stenström, Anders (1996) "A Mythology? For England?," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 21 : No. 2 , Article 46. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/46 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: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico • Postponed to: July 30 – August 2, 2021 Abstract It is well known that J.R.R. Tolkien said that he wanted to make “a mythology for England”. Well known, but not true. This paper investigates how Tolkien really used the word mythology, and also looks at the relation with England. Additional Keywords Humphrey Carpenter's J.R.R. Tolkien: A biography; England; languages; legend; mythology 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/iss2/46 A Mythology? For England? Anders Stenstrom Abstract: It is well known that J.R.R. Tolkien said that he wanted to make “a mythology for England”. Well known, but not true. This paper investigates how Tolkien really used the word mythology, and also looks at the relation with England. Keywords: Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A biography, England, languages, legend, mythology For many years it has been a received truth that what Tolkien for England. One of the letters begins like this: wanted to make was (or was initially) “a mythology for Thank you very much for your kind and England”, a phrase which is always put within quotation encouraging letter. Having set myself a task, the marks and never provided with a source. As far as I have arrogance of which I fully recognised and trembled at: found, the true tale runs so: on p. 59 in J.R.R. Tolkien: A being precisely to restore to the English an epic biography Carpenter (1977) wrote of the young Tolkien’s tradition and present them with a mythology of their appreciation of the Kalevala, quoting his wish for “something own: it is a wonderful thing to be told that I have of the same sort that belonged to the English”, and succeeded, at least with those who have still the commented “perhaps he was already thinking of creating that undarkened heart and mind. mythology for England himself’. Evidently satisfied with his (Tolkien, 1981, number 180, paragraph 1) phrase, Carpenter titled Part Three of his book “1917-1925: The published text is a draft for a letter to an unidentified The making of a mythology” and opened it with stating Mr. Thompson, so Carpenter probably saw it while he Tolkien’s “desire to create a mythology for England” (p. 89) worked on the biography, and associated it with the (italics original). And thus it chanced that the phrase found “something . that belonged to the English” from its way into the biography’s Index, where under Tolkien, Tolkien’s Kalevala paper, and the dedication “to England” John Ronald Reuel (1892-1973)1 you find WRITINGS - from the Waldman letter, These clearly express comparable PRINCIPAL BOOKS, starting with The Silmarillion, which has a thoughts, but the Author actually spoke of different things: in secondary entry “a mythology for England”, within single the earliest instance it was the fruitful “primitive quotation marks (in the original) like the names from undergrowth” in language and tradition, in the second Tolkien’s works, and the one actual quotation (“out of the instance his own projected legendarium-, and the “successful leaf-mould of the mind”), to be found in the Index. This is mythology” in the Thompson letter was The Lord of the where the quotation marks come from. Rings, or elements of The Lord of the Rings. As the words In context, the desirable “something of the same sort” being precisely in the quotation above seem to show, it was refers to “that very primitive undergrowth” found in “[t]hese Mr. Thompson who had called it that; and that Tolkien, mythological ballads”, the Kalevala (Carpenter, 1977, p. 59). while accepting the term (cf. his acceptance in Tolkien, This does not exactly equal mythology, though it might be 1981, number 163, paragraph 1, answering W. H. Auden, difficult to find a one-word equivalent. It is more curious that another early admirer of The Lord of the Rings, of the term in the later passage (p. 89) Carpenter supports his statement Trilogy) explained in paragraph 4 that behind the success with a long quotation from the Waldman letter, where the there existed The Silmarillion, shows that Mr. Thompson had original project described by Tolkien is not to make a not been aware of the unpublished work. The Author’s mythology for England, but to make “a body of more or less account of his project and his usage of mythology will both connected legend” to be dedicated “to England; to my be examined below, but first I want to consider the critical country” (Tolkien, 1981, number 131, paragraph 5). Like the tradition built on Carpenter’s conflation a mythology for quotation marks, this spurious connection has fixed itself in England (a mythology probably from the Thompson letter, the mind of Tolkien students: during my search for the England from the Waldman letter, and for chosen to join source of the quotation I was repeatedly and unhesitatingly them), and his assertion that this was what Tolkien wished to referred to the Waldman letter. create. At last I have now found a probable derivation. There are a number of places where Tolkien uses mythology about his The word mythology certainly is capable of a wide sweep of own work, and in one of them he is not far from <2 mythology meanings. Used broadly it may mean nothing more specific That is the entry, despite the note at the head of the Index. A MYTHOLOGY? FOR ENGLAND? 311 than “a body of stories, epic corpus”. The Author for had not all got lost” (Shippey, 1992, p. 24), explicating: instance employs this meaning in his footnote to letter “Tolkien was trying to reach back to an old past, as it were number 211, paragraph 13, where “our ‘mythological’ the lost English equivalent of what had almost survived in Middle-Ages” means “the Middle-Ages as they are in our Norse. He was looking back to try and find what we might stories”. A little further on in the same letter (paragraph 22) call an asterisk-mythology” (Shippey, 1992, p. 26). The he mentions “the new and fascinating semi-scientific observation is true, but the explication only gets hold of what mythology of the ‘Prehistoric’”, using the word in a related Tolkien was doing when he “reconstructed”, not what broad sense, “a conceptual construction with imaginative Tolkien was doing. The painter may be using ochres, but that power”. Obviously Tolkien has indeed created a mythology is not what he his doing, he is painting his tree: if every in both these senses, and obviously the phrase a mythology concerned element, down to the last repercussion of the for England seems to say something more specific and Edda, of the mythological vestiges in English words and significant, and has commonly been taken to do so.2 At the names, and so on, in The Book of Lost Tales were listed, we same time, though many critics have piously spoken the would still get only a list of scattered points, by which the password it has not awarded much insight, though it might cycle as it is would not be comprehended.4 Important though make an introduction or conclusion more evocative. The some of the elements are, “reconstruction” is incidental to truth is of course that “a mythology” (in a more specific the work. Also, the reconstructive effort embraced not only sense than those mentioned) is not what Tolkien’s oeuvre is, mythological fragments like Earendel and Wade: the Man in and not what he set out to make. There is both “mythology” the Moon might perhaps pass as “mythological”, but not the and “a mythology” in The Book of Lost Tales, but itself is nursery-rhyme porridge served to him; it could have been neither “mythology” nor “a mythology”, if mythology is used “reconstructed” as mythology, but was not. What the Author in its central current sense, involving such notions as the was concerned to cultivate the remnants of was not primordial, the cosmic, the divine, the sacred, the patterns for “mythology” but the whole “primitive undergrowth” of life, society and nature. A painting of a tree may to a large tradition and language, ranging from the serious to the extent consist of painted sky, but this does not make it a curious.5 painting of sky. There is a distinction between the subject Most obviously, the asterisk-mythology view fails in that matter and the background.
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