
Tolkien’s Mythic Plan for England - pseudolus
https://unherd.com/2020/06/is-this-tolkiens-vision-of-england/
======
macleginn
One fascinating aspect of Tolkien’s oeuvre is that his writings are, how to
put it, endlessly derivative. Not only did he use words from different
languages, motifs from different mythologies, and images from different
poetical traditions. He also mercilessly raided the writings of George
MacDonald for characters and plot elements (try reading ‘Phantastes’ or ‘The
Princess and the Goblin’ to appreciate just how freaking much he is indebted
to him). And still the end result feels somehow original and fresh. Perhaps,
one can say that Tolkien is 20th century‘s Shakespeare: a writer who invented
nothing but who was absolutely unrivaled in re-arranging things.

~~~
Cthulhu_
He did it so well that most "high" fantasy that came out after him felt
derivative of Tolkien.

I'd really like to see counter-examples though; I feel like I haven't dived
into the genre enough, in part because I'm turned off by the sheer volume of
some book (series) on the one hand, and the juvenile tropes (generic hero's
journey formula) on the other.

~~~
riffraff
I would think "high fantasy" to be _defined_ as "tolkienesque" (great evil to
defeat and save the world).

But there's a ton of fantasy where the other important tropes of Tolkien
(great lost past, the dark empire, all good on one side and all bad on the
other, the pure heroes) is missing. The first that come to mind are "the wheel
of time" and "the chronicles of Thomas covenant".

Also if you move from high fantasy there's a ton more interesting stuff, imvho
:)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> there's a ton of fantasy where the other important tropes of Tolkien (great
> lost past, the dark empire, all good on one side and all bad on the other,
> the pure heroes) is missing. The first that come to mind are "the wheel of
> time"

We must see different things. As I see the wheel of time:

\- Great lost past. This one's obvious; the Age of Legend is a huge focus of
the books.

\- The dark empire. Doesn't exist in the present, but it is a feature of the
great lost past.

\- All good on one side and all bad on the other: this seems to describe the
wheel of time well? The whole story arc is Rand fulfilling the separate
prophecies of every ethnic group in the world, bringing them all under the
same government (his), and taking them to battle the even more unified forces
of evil.

\- The pure heroes. Not sure what this means.

~~~
riffraff
Yes, the age of legends is the same trope, but I don't think the rest matches.

There is one Big Evil but the lesser ones are all scheming against each other.
In Tolkien there's just a bit with Saruman and the spiders, but you don't
really have factions amongst the ringwraiths, for example. It's all just a
battle between Sauron/everyone or Melkor/everyone.

The good ones in WoT don't simply start separated but actively hating and
fighting each other, Rand has to go to war with many nations and specific
groups within nations, and some of them just split and start killing each
other. This is not the same as Gondor and Rohan being on bad terms, or some
elven clans just standing on the sides.

In Tolkien's universe you 99% of the time know who is evil and who is not
(elf, dwarf, hobbit, ent, eagle, northern man = good; orc, goblin, troll,
dragon, great spiders, eastern man= bad).

Yes, a couple human characters are ambiguous, but it's a pretty small
minority.

In WoT you have a couple evil races and you, the reader, have a clear view of
who is good and who is bad.

But in-world people want to kill other people because each thinks the other is
evil: that looks a substantial difference to me.

Re: pure heroes, I meant that the main characters basically are all 100% good.
This is the same in both universes too, just not a constant in all high
fantasy. At least I think, I didn't finish the wheel of time ;)

~~~
thaumasiotes
Hmm.

In the wheel of time, good and evil are objective. (Well, evil is objective.)
Everyone, good or evil, agrees on what it means to be evil. By definition,
everyone evil ultimately reports to the same leader. Good is a little less
unified than that, but they likewise all agree that they're on the same side.
If one good person in the wheel of time wants to kill another good person for
being evil, that doesn't reflect different views of what evil is; it's just a
simple mistake of fact.

And that's pretty much what I understand by "all good on one side and all evil
on the other", I guess.

> The good ones in WoT don't simply start separated but actively hating and
> fighting each other, Rand has to go to war with many nations and specific
> groups within nations, and some of them just split and start killing each
> other. This is not the same as Gondor and Rohan being on bad terms

On the other hand, it is the same as e.g. the relationship between the
Mirkwood elves and the dwarves, as depicted in _The Hobbit_.

------
osullivj
Good to see Worcestershire mentioned. To be more specific, it's the Malvern
Hills in West Worcs, on the Herefordshire border [1]. CS Lewis [2], Elgar [3]
and Evelyn Waugh [4] were also inspired by the Malverns. Worcestershire is a
sleepy, rural corner of England often overlooked by Londoners in favour of
more "fashionable" counties like Dorset & Cornwall.

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
england-29787528](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29787528) [2]
[https://www.malvernbeacon.com/home/gas-lamps-cs-lewis-and-
jr...](https://www.malvernbeacon.com/home/gas-lamps-cs-lewis-and-jrr-tolkien)
[3] [https://www.malvernbeacon.com/home/elgar-and-the-malvern-
hil...](https://www.malvernbeacon.com/home/elgar-and-the-malvern-hills) [4]
[https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/06/real-
brideshead-m...](https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/06/real-brideshead-
madresfield)

------
sevensor
The article makes an interesting connection to the gap in England's mythology,
between the earliest tales and the present day. I have just finished reading
_Howard 's End_, and Forster makes a similar observation -- England has
witches and fairies, but no grand mythology. Forster was Tolkien's
contemporary; although their subject matter could hardly be more different,
it's interesting to see how modernity is a big problem for both of them.
_Howard 's End_ meditates on conflict and reconciliation between the Yeoman
and the Imperialist, while _Lord of the Rings_ is clearly of the Yeoman's
party. And yet, both works need a third force to bring resolution -- LOTR has
kingly Aragorn, while _Howard 's End_ has Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox. It
highlights their differences in worldview, that Tolkien's resolution is about
righteous violence, while Forster's is about mediating a connection between
opposed forces.

Maybe this is down to a difference in time as well. Forster, writing before
the Great War, could believe in the power of recognizing the connectedness of
people to one another, and Tolkein perhaps could not.

------
Causality1
Tolkien utterly detested people like the author of this article.

 _As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author
none. It is neither allegorical nor topical.... Other arrangements could be
devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical
reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and
always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. _

~~~
goto11
I don't see the connection between the quote and the article.

Tolkien is rejecting allegorical reading like "the ring symbolize the
coronavirus, Saruman represent Trump" etc.

The article is not about allegory though but about the intentions and
influences of Tolkien. Tolkien was open about his influences and at times they
are pretty blatant, like directly taking the names of dwarwes from the Edda.
Also the whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology, but he
didn't consider that allegory but more like a retelling.

~~~
eredengrin
> Also the whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology

That sounds like a pretty big stretch to me, could you elaborate? I agree
there are most certainly elements from Christianity in it, but claiming the
entire thing is based directly on it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me,
nor does that seem to be how Tolkien viewed it, at least as far as I can tell.
For example, in one particular quote in the preface of the Silmarillion (as
part of a letter Tolkien wrote to Milton Waldman), Tolkien says

"In the cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say. Though
quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth. These tales are
'new', they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they
must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or
elements...There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are
ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and
have them."

I suspect the tendency to lump Tolkien's works together with Christianity may
be more due to both his own association with Christianity as well as the
general cultural knowledge of Christianity, whereas other myths he may be
deriving from are not as widely known.

~~~
notahacker
He apparently said 'the Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally
religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the
revision.'

But what he didn't like were crude 'Saruman represents Judas' type
comparisons, not least because he'd criticised his friend CS Lewis for being
as explicit as to incorporate Jesus as a talking Lion who is resurrected into
his novels and said he found their symbolism heavy handed [it's interesting
Lewis himself rejected the idea of his books as allegory, but not the idea
that Aslan was supposed to be that world's Jesus or that respective books in
the series were supposed to have Creation/Crucifixion/Antichrist themes.
Perhaps they both viewed the term allegory as an accusation the scope of their
work was too narrow]

LOTR is Christian inasmuch as it has very explicit concepts of good and evil
and temptation, but it's also a book involving more explicit anti-
industrialization messaging and Tom Bombadil.

~~~
eredengrin
Yeah that quote does sound familiar, but I'd say that's a bit different than
"the whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology". I think the
moral framework of his world certainly has strong roots in the Christian
tradition and I expect that is what Tolkien was referring to in that quote,
but the stories themselves are generally quite distinct from anything you'd
find in Christianity. I think this is pretty much what you are saying as well,
so I think we're mostly in agreement here.

