Inklings Forever Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Article 6 Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends and The C.S. Lewis & The Inklings Society Conference 5-31-2012 Gandalf and Merlin, Aragorn and Arthur: Tolkien's Transmogrification of the Arthurian Tradition and Its Use as a Palimpsest for The Lord of the Rings Mark R. Hall Oral Roberts University Follow this and additional works at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Hall, Mark R. (2012) "Gandalf and Merlin, Aragorn and Arthur: Tolkien's Transmogrification of the Arthurian Tradition and Its Use as a Palimpsest for The Lord of the Rings," Inklings Forever: Vol. 8 , Article 6. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol8/iss1/6 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends at Pillars at Taylor University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inklings Forever by an authorized editor of Pillars at Taylor University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana Gandalf and Merlin, Aragorn and Arthur: Tolkien’s Transmogrification of the Arthurian Tradition and Its Use as a Palimpsest for The Lord of the Rings Mark R. Hall Oral Roberts University Hall, Mark R. “Gandalf and Merlin, Aragorn and Arthur: Tolkien’s Transmogrification of the Arthurian Tradition and Its Use as a Palimpsest for The Lord of the Rings.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis 1 Gandalf and Merlin, Aragorn and Arthur: Tolkien’s Transmogrification of the Arthurian Tradition and Its Use as a Palimpsest for The Lord of the Rings Mark R. Hall Oral Roberts University Certainly J. R. R. Tolkien was very context). Only at the point of this contact much aware of the Arthurian tradition that between texts does a light flash, illuminating existed during the medieval period and both the posterior and anterior, joining a even earlier, especially as depicted by given text to a dialogue” (66). Thus, a text Thomas Malory in Le Morte d’Arthur and cannot stand alone. Since the author of the La amon's Brut. The affinities of the text is also a reader of texts, he or she brings characters of Aragorn and Gandalf with to the created work numerous influences, and Arthurȝ and Merlin are too obvious not to the reader as well brings to any text being notice, yet transformed in such a way by read all of the other texts he or she has read Tolkien that they are infused with new before this one (Worton and Still, meaning and purpose. It is this trans- Introduction 1-2). mogrification that connects Tolkien’s work However, Tolkien’s story differs from with the past and provides the palimpsest for some of the conventional notions of the world he creates in his epic adventure intertextuality and seeks to transcend, depicted in The Lord of the Rings. An transform, and transmogrify the texts of King examination of the specific details of this Arthur and Merlin in such a way as to release process enlightens and invigorates the new meaning and re-envision his ideas for reader, and enlivens and exfoliates the text. subcreating the world of Middle Earth and By examining The Lord of the Rings in staging the ultimate conflict between the light of the Arthurian tradition that Tolkien forces of Power—good versus evil. The was immersed in, it becomes apparent essence of the tale may be ancient, but the how “texts produced by . precursors . retelling is indeed new—one that is often become palimpsests as they are applicable for past, present, and future appropriated by successive generations of generations. In fact, during the Victorian era, authors” (Harrison 1). This appropriation of Thomas Carlyle (1830) demanded that close texts of one author by another, often called attention be given to the past—to history. In intertextuality, occurs for various reasons: to his essay “On History” (1830), he says that express admiration, to appeal to the writer as meaning in the present and the future can be an authority figure, to engage the author in a known only as the past is studied. He writes, debate of ideas, or to confront and even “For though the whole meaning lies far oppose the basic contentions of the earlier beyond our ken; yet in that complex author (Harrison 1). Regarding inter- Manuscript covered over with formless textuality, Mikhail Bakhtin (1974) believes inextricably-entangled unknown characters, that a text can be understood only as the — nay which is a Palimpsest, and had once individual compares it with different texts; in prophetic writing, still dimly legible there,-- other words, “the text lives only by coming some letters, some words, may be de- into contact with another text (with ciphered” (56, author’s emphasis). Certainly 2 Gandalf and Merlin, Aragorn and Arthur Mark R. Hall • the Arthurian tradition is legible as an urtext Malory’s Morte d’Arthur,” especially the in Tolkien’s magnum opus The Lord of the legend of the Holy Grail and the Knights of the Rings—one that can definitely be uncovered. Round Table (Grotta 65). Later, as a student Claus Uhlig concurs with Carlyle and at King Edward’s, along with his brother maintains that in the intertext, which he Hilary, he “turned back to Middle English and likens to the palimpsest, “historically discovered Sir Gawain and the Green conditioned tensions come to the fore: Knight” (Carpenter 35). According to tensions not only between calendar time and Humphrey Carpenter, this “was another intraliterary time but also between the poem to fire his imagination: the medieval author’s intention and the relative autonomy tale of an Arthurian knight and his search for of a text, or between the old and the new in the mysterious giant who is to deal him a general (502). The presence of the past terrible axe-blow. Tolkien was delighted by coexists with the text; thus, “any text will the the poem and also by its language, for he more inevitably take on the characteristics of realised that its dialect was approximately a palimpsest the more openly it allows the that which had been spoken by his mother’s voices of the dead to speak, thus—-in a West Midland ancestors” (35). In 1925 literary transcription of our cultural Tolkien and E.V. Gordon published the text heritage—-bringing about a consciousness of of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that the presentness of the past” (Uhlig became a standard in the field, and in 1967 502). Uhlig thus concludes that the goal of Tolkien translated this particular edition of the critic is to determine “to what extent the the poem into new English (Grotta 66). present is indeed based upon the past During the 1930s, Tolkien began to (palingenesis), nay up to a point even write a non-rhyming alliterative poem determined by it (ananke)—-a dependence entitled “The Fall of Arthur,” which which is most clearly reflected in the Humphrey Carpenter describes as “Tolkien’s multilayered structure of works only imaginative incursion into the Arthurian or texts saturated with history (palimpsest)” cycle, whose legends had pleased him since (503). Deciphering the present moment of childhood” (168). In this work, “he did not the text as it relates to many past moments touch on the Grail but began an individual reveals the intertextual meaning the text rendering of the Morte d’Arthur, in which the seeks to convey and the critic to king and Gawain go to war in ‘Saxon uncover.1 Thus, for the present study, the lands’ but are summoned home by news of ancient personages of Arthur and Merlin and Mordred’s treachery” (168). Although their literary, cultural, and religious Tolkien intended to finish the work as late as background provide the palimpsest for much June 1955 (Letters 218-219), it exists only as of the material that frames the characters of a fragment. His fellow scholars, E. V. Gordon Aragorn and Gandalf in Tolkien’s The Lord of and R. W. Chambers, read the poem and the Rings. praised it (Carpenter 168). His connection of As a child, Tolkien learned to love Arthur and Merlin with the world of fairy is myth and story, for his mother, who was his made clear in his 1939 essay “On Fairy first teacher, began to assign him storybooks Stories” when Tolkien writes that “the good to read that included Andrew Lang’s Red and evil story of Arthur’s court is a ‘fairy Fairy Book, where he learned to love dragons story’” (41), for “the land of Merlin and (“I desired dragons with a profound Arthur,” what Tolkien calls “an Other- desire” [“On Fairy Stories” 63]) and George world,” “was better than” his “relatively safe MacDonald’s “Curdie” books that depicted world,” the world without dragons (63). evil goblins that lived under the mountains T. A. Shippey points out that Tolkien (Carpenter 22-23). Tolkien was also very was influenced by "Brut, an Arthurian enthusiastic about Arthurian myths Chronicle-epic by one La amon. Tolkien (Carpenter 22), “devour[ing] Sir Thomas certainly valued this as a repository of past ȝ 3 Gandalf and Merlin, Aragorn and Arthur Mark R. Hall • tradition, borrowing from it, for instance, "once prophetic writing [is] still dimly legible Éowyn's word ‘dwimmerlaik’.