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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) |
Professor of literature and English, who became famous with his novel The Lord of the Rings (1954-55). From the mid-1960s J.R.R. Tolkien's work started its world-wide triumph. At first his books appealed to young readers, but soon became popular among adults as well. Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis at University of Oxford also achieved fame as fantasy writer with his Narnia series. "Three rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born of British parents in Bloemfontein, South Africa. At the age of three he returned with his mother, Mabel Tolkien (née Suffield) and his brother Hilary to England; his father, Arthur Reuel died of severe brain haemorrhage in 1896 in Bloemfontein. His early education Tolkien received from his mother. She was a capable artist, and taught her son to draw and paint. By the time Tolkien was four, he could read. His favorite
lessons were those that concerned languages. Mabel Tolkien died of
acute diabetes in 1904, and the young John Ronald Reuel settled with
his brother to their aunt's home in Birmingham. From 1908 Tolkien studied at Oxford, where he was awarded First Class Honours degree in English Language and Literature. The Story of Kullervo, a tragic hero from Kalevala, which he wrote in 1915, was not published until 2015. "I was immensely attracted by something in the air of the Kalevala," he said in 1955 in a letter to W.H. Auden, "even in Kirby's poor translation. I never learned Finnish well enough to do more than plod through a bit of the original, like a schoolboy with Ovid . . . " (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, 1981, p. 214) In 1916 Tolkien married Edith Bratt, whom he had met in 1908. Like Tolkien, she was an orphan. Musically talented she hoped to become a piano teacher or to perform in concert halls someday. During WW I Tolkien served in the army as a second lieutenent in the Lancashire Fusiliers. He saw action on the Somme, where most of his battalion was killed and he caught a disease the soldiers called "trench fever", which was transmitted by the body lice. Because his symptoms did not ease, he was sent to a military hospital in Birmingham. While convalescing he began to study early forms of language and work on Silmarillion (published 1977), a collection of mythopoetic stories. Its setting was the Middle-earth, the name comes from the Norse legend of Midgard. For the rest of his life, Tolkien expanded the mythology of his fantasy world. In 1918 Tolkien joined the staff of New English Dictionaryand
in 1919 he was a freelance tutor in Oxford. He then worked as
a teacher and professor at the University of Leeds. In 1925 he became
Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. In 1945, he was
appointed Merton
Professor of English at Oxford in, retiring in 1959. Tolkien's
scholarly publications include studies on Chaucer (1934) and an edition
of Beowulf
(1937). He loved the power and energy of Old Norse
verse, but his own attempts to write poetry were mostly left unfiished.
These include The Lay of the Children of Húrin, on which he ceased to work on before he left the University of Leeds for Oxford, the Lay of Leithian, which he abandoned near the end of 1931, and The Fall of Arthur. Tolkien was also interested in the Finnish national epic Kalevala, from which he found ideas for his imaginary language Quenya
and which influenced several of his stories. At the age of nineteen, he read William Forsell Kirby's translation Kalevala: The Land of Heroes from 1907. Kirby made the translation from Finnish.
Noteworthy, Tolkien did not define it as a national epic, but a mass
of conceivably epic material. The tragic figure of Kullervo from Kalevala partly inspired Tolkien's posthumously published work, Children of Húrin (2007), in which Túrin Turambar, like Kullervo and Roland, speaks to his own sword. Most of the inhabitants of Tolkien's imaginary Middle-Earth were derived from English folklore and mythology, or from an idealized Anglo-Saxon past. In a letter from 1944, adressed to his son, Tolkien talked about Finnish, a "queer language," being "the original germ of the Silmarillion". He tought that Kirby's translation of the Kalevala is funnier than the original. ('The Kalevala as the Germ of Tolkien's Legendarium' by Richard C. West, in Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader, edited by Jane Chance, 2004) With C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other friends, Tolkien formed in the 1930s an informal literary group called The Inklings. They all had an interest in storytelling and their Tuesday lunchtime sessions in the Bird and Baby pub became well known part of Oxford social life. At their meetings the Inklings read aloud drafts of fiction and other work. Lewis and Tolkien agreed that they each would write a story: Lewis's to be a tale of space travel and Tolkien's a tale of time-travel Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet was finished in 1937, but Tolkien never completed his own side of the agreement, printed in 1987 in The Lost Road and Other Writings. Williams died in 1945 and the meetings faded out in 1949. Other members of the club included Owen Barfield and Tolkien's son Christopher. The Tolkiens moved in 1968 to Poole near Bournemouth but after the death of his wife in 1971, Tolkien returned to Oxford. In 1972 he received CBE from the Queen. J.R.R. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. In the mid-1960s American editions of The Lord of the Rings
started to gain cult fame. An unauthorized edition of the work,
published by an paperback firm, circulated widely against Tolkien's
wishes. While The Hobbit (1937) is was considered to be a book of fantasy for children – originally it was written to the author's children – the epic The Lord of the Rings offers a depth and complexity that fascinate adult readers. Its refers to
the evil Sauron, servant of the Morgoth. Sauron created the Rings of
Power, and the One Ring. It rules the other rings and thus makes him
the Lord of the Rings. Actually the story depicts different reactions
of its characters to
forces of darkness. Sauron manifests himself in the form of a lidless Eye, which sees nearly everything. It has been said many times that Tolkien's work is not an fantasy version of
WW II, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but more related to Milton's Paradise Lost. Moreover, the story fits well in Joseph Campbell's theory of the hero's journey. (Heroes of Middle-Earth: J. Campbell’s Monomyth in J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) by Tutta Kesti, pro gradu, 2007) Isaac Asimov read the novel as an
allegory of good and evil. "My own feeling is that the ring represents
modern technology. This corrupts and destroys society (in Tolkien's
view) and, yet, those societies who gain it and who are aware of its
evils simply cannot give it up." (Asimov's Galaxy: Reflections on Science Fiction by Isaac Asimov, 1981, p. 77) Although allegory played central role in the fantasy books of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien himself spoke of his dislake of one-to-one correspondences. The Lord of the Rings has no obvious Christian parallels and there is no mention of God. "Tolkien work is all the more deeply Christian for not being overtly Christian. He would have violated the integrity of his art . . . if he had written a 1,200 page novel to illustrate a set of ideas that he could have expressed apart from the story itself." (The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth by Ralph C. Wood, 2003, p. 4) It is known, that Tolkien attended Mass every morning. His biographer Humphrey Carpenter has said that after Mabel's death, the Church became Tolkien's new mother. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty,
wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a
dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it
was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." This is the famous opening paragraph of The Hobbit. The plot is simple: in order to save the world from the Dark Lord,
Sauron, a young hobbit called Frodo must return the mythical ring, a
kind of wedding ring between world and evil, to the Mount Doom, where
it was forged. A coalition is formed among the races of Middle-Earth to
help him and to battle the armies of Sauron. What becomes of sexual relationships between the characters of different races, Tolkien's world is nearly Victorian, typical for fantasy literature in general. Sometimes, like through the history of Ents, Tolkien dealt with gender roles. Ents are half men, half trees. Entwives loved the open lands where they might tend the fruit trees, flowers and grasses; the male Ents loved the trees of the forests. After the departure of Entwives, no new Entings were born. The Hobbit introduces Gandalf, a wandering wizard, Bilbo, a
brave hobit, Gollum, a small slimy creature, who likes goblin meat, and
other characters whom Tolkien developed further in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf has "a tall pointed
blue hat, a long cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard
hung down below his waist, and immense black boots." With his wisdom
and advices, he comes and goes, travels like an apostle. Gollum
represents in The Hobbit instincts, unconscious desires, he loves material things
excessively, not knowledge like Gandalf. "S-s-s-s-s," said Gollum more
upset than ever. He thought of all the things he kept in his own
pockets: fish-bones, goblins' teeth, wet shells, a bit of bat-wing, a
sharp stone to sharpen his fangs on, and other nasty things. He tried
to think what other people kept in their pockets." Tolkien was explicit that hobbits are not like rabbits, although the eagle carrying Bilbo says: "You need not be frightened like a rabbit, even if you look rather like one." In a letter to the Observer, he said that "my bobbit . . . was not furry, except about the feet. Nor indeed was he like a rabbit. . . . Calling him 'a nassty little rabbit' was a piece of vulgar trollery, just as 'descendant of rats' was a piece of dwarfish malice . . ." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter,1981, p. 30) The physical size of his character as other concrete details were important to Tolkien. The author himself was slightly less than the average height. Some reviewers have seen in The Lord of the Rings allegoric allusions to World War II, but Tolkien repeatedly rejected all this kind of explanations. "As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical," Tolkien said in the forword for the 1966 Allen & Unwin second edition. "It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted." "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision," Tolkien wrote in a letter in December 1953 to Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest. "That is why I have not put in, or have cut out practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and symbolism." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter,1981, p. 172) However, Tolkien's Catholicism does not come into the fore in the book. The Hobbits do not pray to God. Basically, the god of religion is replaced by myths and history. (Hegel's spirit itself (God) unfolds in history, but Tolkien had no connection with the ideas of this German philosopher.) Biblical use of language gives the text an archaic flavor. The Hobbit was published when the author was 45 years old. He developed further the history of Middle-Earth in The Lord of the Rings,
which he turned into a tale of power and obsession.
It was published when Tolkien was over 60. The motivation for creating
a new mythical world arose from his fascination in myths and folklore:
"I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved
country: it had no stories of its own, not of the quality that I
sought, and found in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and
Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish, but nothing
English, save impoverished chapbook stuff." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter,1981, p. 144) Tolkien
rejected modern England; he rarely watched a film. He had a typewriter
but his drafts – now literary tresures – were usually written in pencil
(soft) and then in ink a top
the draft. On his spare time he busied himself
with the early English dialects of the West Midlands, and enjoyed the
company of other professors. In addition, he loved to draw, although he
was never good with realistic figures. Tolkien admired the portraits
of Frans Hals and Van Dyck, and was moved by the paintings of such
Italian artists as Fra Filippo Lippi, Giotto, and Botticelli. Tolkien's epic world is populated by elves, dwarves, magicians, and
evil monsters. He saw himself as a Hobbit: "I like gardens, trees and
unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food . . ." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter,1981, p. 288)
Tolkien made up languages for the races that inhabit his Middle-earth.
For the background of his fiction he created a complex history,
geography, and society. But he also wished, that the stories leave
scope for other minds to develop his ideas further. Since the
publication of The Lord of the Rings, a whole industry of
fantasy literature, computer games, and other by-products, have been
created around his oeuvre. Dome Karukoski's film Tolkien (2019) told of the author's life from his childhood to the moment he wrote the first words of The Hobbit:
"In a hole, there lived a Hobbit." Much of the film focused on
Tolkien's war experiences that take the form of hallucinations,
and friendship with Robert Gilson (d. 1916), Geoffrey Bache Smith (d.
1916), and Christopher Wiseman (d. 1987), who founded a small a
debating society called the T.C.B.S. (Tea Club, Barrovian Society) at
King Edward's School in Birmingham. For further reading: J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter (1977); The Tolkien Companion, by J.E.A. Tyler (1976); The Inklings, by Humphrey Carpenter (1979); The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (1981); The Road to Middle-Earth by T.A. Shippey (1982); J.R.R. Tolkien: This Far Land, ed. Robert Giddings (1983); J.R.R. Tolkien's Themes, Symbols, and Myths by David Harvey (1985); A Tolkien Thesaurus by Richard E. Blackwelder (1990); Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia, by David Day (1991); J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography by Wayne G. Hammond (1993); The Biography of J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth by Daniel Grotta (1996); Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity by Patrick Curry (1997); Tolkien: Man and Myth by Joseph Pearce (1998); J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, ed. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2000); Finding God in the Lord of the Rings by Kurt D. Bruner, Jim Ware (2001); J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey (2001); J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth by Bradley J. Birzer, Joseph Pearce (2002); J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Leslie Ellen Jones (2003); J. R. R. Tolkien by David R. Collins (2004); The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski (2015); An Encyclopedia of Tolkien: The History and Mythology that Inspired Tolkien's World by David Day (2019); The Mythopoetic Code of Tolkien: A Christian Platonic Reading of the Legendarium by Jyrki Korpua (2021); Tolkien ja Kalevala by Jyrki Korpua (2022); How to Misunderstand Tolkien: the Critics and the Fantasy Master by Bruno Bacelli (2022); J.R.R. Tolkien's Utopianism and the Classics by Hamish Williams (2023) - See also other fantasy worlds: Tove Jansson (The Moomintrolls), C.S. Lewis (Narnia). Selected works:
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