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Durham E-Theses The religious aspects of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Armstrong, Darren Philip How to cite: Armstrong, Darren Philip (1994) The religious aspects of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien., Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1044/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk .;ý THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE WORKS OF T. R. R. TOLKIEN by DARREN PHILIP ARMSTRONG A thesis submitted for Ph.D to the University of Durham, (researched in the Departments of English and Theology); submitted in 1994. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. +c 27 JUL 1994 The religious aspects of the works of JRR Tolkien; a thesis by D.P. Armstrong. The Argument: This thesis maintains that no comprehensive assessment of the work of J. R.R. Tolkien can be made without giving due weight to him as a religious writer, in the senses that : (a) he maintained an esthetic that is intrinsically Christian, believing that certain kinds of fantasy can bring new insights of the fallen world; (b) that writing, or sub-creating, was for him an essentially religious activity, participating in the myth of Creation; (c) his major fantasy texts contain subtle, often subliminal allusions to the Judaeo-Christian scriptures, although stripped of any dogmatic content; and (d) his major texts assume a cultural authority, through an allusive use of imagery and imitation of scriptural syntax to operate as a quasi- scripture. I also consider Tolkien's treatment of major theological issues and assess how well suited the format of fantasy fiction is for the exploration of such themes. CONTENTS p. 1.......... Introduction. PART ONE 7a......... Chapter One: Fantasy as Heuresis 40......... Chapter Two: A Mythic Grammar 92........ Chapter Three: Mythic Consciousness and Sub-creation PART TWO 123........ Chapter Four: Tolkien and the Language of Scripture 156........ Chapter Five: A Light from the Shadows 210........ Chapter Six: The Existential Hobbit 277........ Chapter Seven: The Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth; Tolkien, the religious thinker. 294........ Appendix: The Major Publications of J. R. P. Tolkien 303........ Bibliography. The copyright of this thesis rests with the Author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study is to provide a perspective by which J, R, R, Tolkien may be evaluated as a religious writer, My contention is that, though he is many other things besides, an exhaustive assessment of his role in post-war English literature is not possible without fully recognising the importance of his contribution to religious fiction, Specifically I intend to explore the two-fold proposition that Tolkien is a religious writer in the senses that ; [a] the very act of writing was, for Tolkien, a religious act, and (b] Tolkien's fictional texts are capable of functioning as religious texts, The three chapters that comprise the first section of this study will address themselves to Proposition [a7, to the Tolkienian doctrine of sub-creation, beginning with a discussion of the three psychological processes he claims are brought about through the reading and writing of sub-created fantasy; Escape, Recovery and Consolation, An attempt is made to understand these phenomena as parts of an heuristic process, through which the subject can work towards a greater knowledge of God, through an analogy with the catholic systematic theology of Bernard Lonergan, Chapter Two describes the Romantic linguistic tradition to which Tolkien belonged, and explains how both it, and Tolkien's preoccupation with the problem of poetically recovering a pre-lapsarian language, resolve themselves into a question of the religious/mythic notion of the Fall, Tolkien's belief that through sub-created fantasy man can go some way towards transcending his fallen nature is examined with reference to his fictional works, The third chapter addresses the question of the mythic status of the act of sub-creation itself, -I- relating the mythic and the religious in their common concern to re-enact the cosmogonic moment, and also considers how the underlying psychological principles are both used by, and indeed compel, Tolkien in other aspects of his fiction, The second part of this study is concerned with, what I have designated above, Proposition Ib], ' in it, I attempt a detailed examination of Tolkien's fictional texts, paying particular attention to what I regard as his major achievements, Th' Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rinas, The argument underlying Chapters Four and Five is that these works aspire to the status of what I shall call a quasi- scripture. By this term, I mean that they not only function as scripture within the fictional universe that they describe, but also that they are both capable of operating on the reader through a subtle quality-by-association technique, ' subliminally evoking the feel, or ambiance of canonical scripture and thereby appropriating something of its immense cultural authority, and yet without ever actually referring directly to them in a manner that would prove intrusive within the context of the fictionality of Tolkien's works, Chapter Four concentrates on The Sllmarillion and its manipulation of the forms and language of the Old Testament, while Chapter Five is concerned with the use of reforged biblical imagery, which serves to increase the emotional depth of Fb Lc+rd of 1L°_R1t1ý: 4r attempt is also made, at this point, to assess Tolkien's understanding and use of archetypes, as described in the works of C, G,Sung, which underlie and account for much of the impact of not only Tolkien's own works, but all religious imagery in general, and that of the Bible in particular, Chapter Six tests the hypothesis of Tolkien's texts as quasi-scripture still further, by asking whether they would respond productively to a demythologising process similar to that to which Rudolf Bultmann has subjected parts of the New Testament, In attempting an existential interpretation of Tolkien's major fiction, specifically Tolkienian doctrines of theological issues such as the existence of evil, free will, temptation and sacrifice are uncovered, Time and again it will be found that religious issues, for Tolkien, resolve themselves into the sin of possessiveness, that state which St Paul describes as 'living in the flesh', and the opportunity afforded by sub- creation to transcend such a state, Before arguing this thesis proper, I shall take this opportunity to make a number of preliminary remarks, The first point I must stress is that my claim for the importance of seeing Tolkien as a writer concerned with religious issues in no -2- way invalidates the views of those who see him as primarily a mythic writer or a fantasy writer, He is both of these, but as I shall demonstrate, both these dimensions have a religious foundation for Tolkien, Similarly there is the scholarly view, encouraged by his own comments, that his works are the result of 'a philological game'; an attempt to provide a universe in which his beloved invented languages could be spoken, Again, there is a great deal of truth in this view, as Shippey's excellent study has shown,2 but as I hope to demonstrate in Chapter Two, even Tolkien's fascination with ancient languages was heavily informed by his pervasively religious Weltanschauung, The most often encountered objection to such an attempt to tie Tolkien's work to is that in The The Ynbbit a wider philosophy writing ýWnmarillivn. and The Larj of theRings, he was simply producing a fantasy romance such as he himself took pleasure in reading, This point is certainly part - but only part - of the truth; Tolkien and C, S, Lewis, dissatisfied with the availability of novels of the kind they both enjoyed, decided to write their own,3 The results were Lewis' Out of _týf Went Planet, and Tolkien's incomplete 4 which years later re- emerged transformed into the V allabMth of The Silmarillicn, But holders of the view that Tolkien's sole purpose was to entertain, either himself or others, should consider the following passage from the draft of a letter written by Tolkien to Peter Hastings in 1954; Since the whole matter from beginning to end is mainly concerned with the relation of Creation to making and Sub-creation (and subsidiarily with the related matter of 'mortality'), it must be clear that references to these things [i, e, to the 'mythic' past of Middle Earth] are not casual, but fundamental, ' The 'whole matter' in question is of course the Lard of the Rrrnýs, of which only the first two volumes had been published at this time, but Tolkien's comment immediately prior to this passage on the importance of considering the novel in conjunction with the "more mythical histories of the Cosmogony,First and Second Agesi6 make it clear that the above commentsrelate equally to ß jLU,! lL( to _I11.