Volume 18 Number 1 Article 8 Fall 10-15-1991 Tolkien and Campbell Compared Chris Seeman Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Seeman, Chris (1991) "Tolkien and Campbell Compared," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 18 : No. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol18/iss1/8 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 Compares Tolkien’s and Campbell’s “thinking about myth.” Identifies three themes they share and traces their aesthetic vision in this context. Additional Keywords Aesthetics of myth; Campbell, Joseph; Myth, theories of; Social order in myth; Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy- stories” 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/vol18/iss1/8 CPyTHLORC Issue 67 - Aurumn 1991 Page 43 ChRi8 Seeman I. Comparing Tolkien and Campbell concept of the creative imagination, which Tolkien in­ The present occasion of a conference devoted to the herited through a long and hallowed tradition of British discussion of archetypes in fantasy literature invites a aesthetic thought and Campbell through various strands broader comparison of the work of Joseph Campbell with of Orientalism and transcendental philosophy. that of the Mythopoeic Trinity of Tolkien, Lewis and Although most often associated with the nascent dis­ Williams. What follows is an exploration of some key course of aesthetics, the creative imagination was by no dimensions of Tolkien and Campbell's thinking about means limited to esoteric discussions of art. It was as much myth which might serve as a basis for further reflection on at home in the writings of Locke, Addison and Hobbes as their commonalities and differences. Joseph Campbell and in the meditations of Kant, Shaftsbury and Coleridge. J.R.R. Tolkien share the ambiguous status of having exer­ Throughout the Romantic period the idea of the imagina­ cised an immense popular appeal, both posthumously and tion played a central role in ethics, literary criticism, during their own lifetimes, while often receiving only psychology, empirical philosophy and even political marginal recognition by the academic communities in rhetoric. Its prominence, one might argue, resides in its which they worked. Yet beyond these biographical location of creative or productive power in human agency similarities, their respective writings about myth address and will. The breakup of divinely-ordained feudal or themselves to at least three significant themes on which I monarchic social relationships, facilitated by the rise of would like to elaborate. Briefly stated, these may be char­ capitalist production, contained on the one hand an im­ acterized as a preoccupation with: 1) the creative role of perative to undermine the ideology of God as the Creator the artist in modem society, 2) the comparative study of of that particular social order, and on the other hand a need mythology as a source of cultural critique, and 3) myth and to take over that discourse of creative power in the service the problem of social order. Although notalways explicitly of legitimating a new set of social arrangements. It is invoked, these themes are nevertheless present therefore by no means fortuitous that, the narrative of throughout the work of Campbell, as well as in Tolkien's Romanticism should, from the outset, contain an internal essay "On Fairy-stories." They are interwoven by the proximity to theological categories. And as art was for the unifying thread of an aesthetic vision; that is, by their Romantic period the paradigm of imaginative creation, it conscious use of art as the reference point for the ultimate is not surprising that the artist should become the central significance of mythology. In the course of this paper I icon of the Humane. shall attempt to trace the principal aspects of Tolkien and Campbell's aesthetic visions in the context of these three Tolkien's concept of subcreation, that "we make still themes, and will offer a few suggestions regarding the by the law in which we're made" (QFS: 51), supplies for broader cultural significance of an aesthetics of myth. him an anthropological foundation for this transfer of power. If we are made in the image of God, then it is from II. The Creative Role of the Artist God that we receive the capacity to image things in our in Modem Society own right. The validity of our imaginative creation stems The cultural shift from the Enlightenment to Roman­ precisely from the fact that they are in accord with a "law" ticism makes up the intellectual milieu in which Campbell — the divine law which is identical to our own created and Tolkien are to be understood. The Romantic tradition nature. But the idea of subcreation also contains the nuance emerged as a critique of the excesses of eighteenth century that while the necessary starting point for the artist is the rationalism, empiricism and certain mechanistic concep­ created world, the obJect of art is not simply to reproduce tions of history. Its response was an attempt to forge a new what is given but rather to actively exercise the human will kind of human subJect whose Enlightenment faculties upon those materials so as to change, modify, transform, would be united to an organic vision of humanity and the and rearrange them into a new creation according to our world. As the monarchial and ecclesial institutions of the desires. For Tolkien, then, the artist is the metonym for ancien regime were shaken to their roots, so too traditional human nature and activity as a whole. conceptions of human agency were rendered obsolescent; Subcreation is Tolkien's particular inflection of the and as Europe underwent revolutionary change at the Romantic tradition. His distinction between the imagina­ hands of the emerging bourgeoisie, so too a new ex­ tive faculty in general — the ability to reproduce in the perience of the productive powers of humanity was mind the world as it is presented to the senses— and what foregrounded, demanding recognition. The intersection of he chooses to call "fantasy"; that is, the active reordering these transformations found articulation in the Romantic of those images, places Tolkien in a well-worn Romantic Page 44 Issue 67 - Autumn 1991 CPyTHLORC track of assigning different levels to the operations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than today, was imagination (cf. Engell). The distinction between the pas­ the fact of their both being what might be called "active" sive reproduction and active production of images (a dis­ cultural discourses. That is to say, the comparative study tinction, one might add, closely intertwined with sexual of religion and of language contained a conscious (and imagery) was initially affirmed in reaction to the positivist sometimes volatile) element of cultural critique. Whether psychology of the Enlightenment which sought to limit the this gesture involved an open commitment to Fascism as faculties of the mind to the mechanistic replication of the with Eliade or a more liberal response to the moral material world. The recovery of the imagination from its bankruptcy of industrialism and Western claims to cul­ pejorative associations within this positivist model served tural hegemony, much was at stake in the act of interrogat­ then to assert the self-transgressive capacity of human ing the structures of myth and language. Tolkien's own desire to make something of that which made it. Tolkien's work on Beowulf, for example, sustained an internal most obvious ancestor in this regard seems to have been dialogue signified by the encounter of southern Christen­ Coleridge, whose "primary" and "secondary" imagina­ dom with the northern Germanic ethic of feudal loyalty tion bear a striking resemblance to Tolkien's own iden­ and heroic resignation in the face of immanent destruction. tification of subcreation as the making of a "secondary Tolkien viewed this as a mutually enriching dialogue world" to which "secondary belief" is ascribed. which served as an historical precedent and paradigm for While his discussions of myth do not always focus on his own fiction. He also saw such Anglo-Saxon literature the role of the artist, it is apparent from the sheer size of as the source for an organic English identity to be placed Creative Mythology, the fourth and final volume of The in opposition to the "Ugly Fact" of industrial Britain. In a Masks of God, that this is where Joseph Campbell's ultimate similar way, he explored the broader realm of Fairy-stories concerns lie. Having been released from social, cultural, in an effort to bring their mythic resources into accord with and historical limitations, it is the individual artist who for a Christian salvation history, centered upon the Incarna­ Campbell most fully signifies the source of mythic power tion. In this scenario, subereative art performs a mimetic for the future.