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.
Maybe so, but please don't post cheap dyspeptic internet dismissals to HN. We're trying for at least a notch better than that here, and we've had to ask you about this multiple times in the past.
I don't think this quote refutes the author's point. Tolkien was vehemently denying that his works were allegorical, in the sense that one should not look for deeper, hidden meaning in the LOTR or any other tale set in Middle-Earth. But this article simply describes how Tolkien (allegedly) tried to compose a stronger English mythology, then eventually abandoned the idea and settled for the purely fictional setting that Middle-Earth is. Don't know if this description is factual, but if it is, it wouldn't mean that Tolkien's work is allegorical.
The fact that Tolkien wanted to create the equivalent of Nordic mythology for England is very well documented. I don’t have the link off hand, but there are several of his letters on the subject. It is transparent in his drafts from the Book of Lost Tales as well. I don’t think he gave up on that, he was just lost in his sprawling creation. Interestingly, Leaf by Niggle is a perfect allegory for that.
Tolkien rejected the idea to compare Sauron and Hitler. He rejected that LOTR was his way to handle his war trauma. His biggest argument is that most ideas existed before WW2.
> Mordor makes one think of trenches and devilish factories.
Tolkien hates you now!
But seriously, he was open about how WWI influenced his writing. I think his rant against allegories is more about direct allegorical reading like "Mordor is supposed to symbolize WWI trenches etc."
I totally agree here. I think there's a difference between recognizing where Tolkien's inspiration came from vs saying that an element which took inspiration from elsewhere was necessarily meant to specifically represent that thing in his work.
Maybe, but Lord of the Rings is still basically a 1000 pages metaphor about experiencing "The War" and homesick. If is is so good is because all is mounted over a frame of reality that makes all to fall in place and supports the action
A few examples can be seen when characters walking for days start walking by the grass at the borders of the path, or to describe fields without cattle in wartime.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Gandalf "dying", fighting demons in the underworld, and returning as "Gandalf the White" is also a pretty clear parallel though. But arguably Tolkien is a better writer so it doesn't seem so on-the-nose.
Just read the creation myth in the first chapters in Silmarillion. It's basically Paradise Lost with more diacritics. What other mythologies have angels anyway? The Tolkien mythology is monotheistic and morally dualistic (good vs evil), which is fundamentally different from the pagan cultures he is otherwise inspired by.
I actually think this is key to his success: He takes a lot of cool stuff from pagan mythologies and legends, but he frames it in a simplified "good versus evil" dualism which is easier to understand for modern readers with this background.
Yes, the creation of the Tolkien universe most certainly has the most direct inspiration from Christian myth, but to say the entire thing is based on it is a much stronger statement. Once the earth is formed to the point of the arrival of the elves, most of those stories afterward have very little comparison to anything in Christianity. Beren and Luthien, the creation of the rings, the wars over the Silmarils...perhaps I was just misunderstanding what you meant by the "whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology". As I mention in another comment, there is certainly a lot of Christian inspiration in the framework of the world, and you do see that in how it is all set up in the first few chapters. The stories themselves (built within that framework) seem no more related to Christianity than any of the other places they draw inspiration from.
Tolkien also contradicts himself by hinting at more direct allegories e.g. the dwarves as Jews during the later years of his life. Combined with his open lament for the Nazi appropriation of Norse mythology, it's hard to see how his fictional Eddaic / Judaic nexus is not among the most stereotypically prescriptive combination of metaphor, allegory, and moral. (Not intended as a negative criticism, because I think it justifies itself at every level.)
Authors don't always know what their work is about, especially as they're writing it.
I think the quote is just Tolkien getting really annoyed that people read LoTR as an allegory for WWII.
If I understand the quote correctly, he is rejecting the form of allegory where the reader is supposed to "get it" and use the allegory to "decode the message". But Tolkien wasn't trying to say anything about the Jewish people through the vehicle of Dwarwes, he was just drawing on some inspiration.
But - really? You don't think he was saying anything about the Jewish people when he had a friendship between a dwarf and elf succeed over timeless racial antipathy? Or by having the plight of the dwarves be what ultimately moves a member of the extremely comfortable hobbit gentry to direct action? Or even by the simple mixing of the unquestioned Norse "supreme contribution to Europe" with Jewish mythology, he wasn't hinting that, maybe, also, the Jewish people had contributed in the same way?
I agree you can't just read Middle Earth as "alternate Europe" (and especially not the War of the Ring as a WW2 allegory) and a lot of people unfortunately do. But if Tolkien had nothing to say, he would not have written anything; and having written something, he cannot help but say something.
> Or by having the plight of the dwarves be what ultimately moves a member of the extremely comfortable hobbit gentry to direct action?
I curious what you think he was trying to say with this?
> Or even by the simple mixing of the unquestioned Norse "supreme contribution to Europe" with Jewish mythology, he wasn't hinting that, maybe, also, the Jewish people had contributed in the same way?
Jewish mythology was by far more well known than Norse, through the Old Testament and its influence on Christianity. So I don't see why Tolkien would want to make that a point of that.
Yeah, this author is off on a few points, sometimes grossly so. Also:
> a land of enchantment and possibility and freedom, with a powerful and complex mythology that would bear comparison with those of any other country.
No, they wouldn't bare comparison with just any other country. Tolkien was writing about his own country, which was England. The English countryside and culture is unique. The Shire, its jokes, its traditions, its lore, is just so obviously an adaption of the early 20th century English-countryside. Sure, there are some vague similarities between other Western countries, but it is so unmistakably English, that trying to make a feel-good statement like this at the end seems horribly forced.
You seem to be interpreting “bear comparison” as “bear resemblance”? The author is saying that the mythology would be of a comparable complexity and caliber (which can be achieved while still being unmistakably English), not that it would resemble European folklore thematically.
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.