A Comparison between “
(Michele Fry. J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia.
and three sources:
J.R.R.
Tolkien: A Biography (Humphrey Carpenter.
Tolkien and
C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship (Colin Duriez.
and “
Key
Similar phrases that appear in both works are in underlined
type.
Identical or nearly identical words within similar phrases in
both works are in bold type.
(Nearly identical words are those in which tense (e.g. threw / thrown) or number (e.g. depth
/ depths) changes.)
|
Fry, “ |
Source |
|
¶ 1 |
Wikipedia,
“University of Oxford”, heading for “Organization”: |
|
Explaining
the |
There are
39 colleges of The university itself conducts examinations and confers degrees. The passing of two sets of
examinations is a prerequisite for a first degree. The first, called either
Honour Moderations ("Mods") or Preliminary Examinations
("Prelims"), are usually held after the first (or sometimes second)
year. The second, the |
|
¶ 2 |
Wikipedia,
“University of Oxford”, heading for “Organization”: |
|
The
heads of the different colleges
are known by various titles, including provost, warden, principal,
president, or master; teaching
members of the university are
collectively known as dons. In addition to residential and dining
facilities, each college also offers social, cultural, and recreational activities to its members. |
The heads of |
|
¶ 3 |
Carpenter,
60-61: |
|
The
Undergraduate Tolkien began
his first term at |
Already as
the car bowled into [Two intervening
paragraphs on college life.] He had soon thrown himself wholeheartedly into university activities.
He played rugger, though he did not become a leading figure on the
college team. He did not row, for that sport above
all at |
|
¶ 4 |
Carpenter,
62-63, 64-65, 66: |
|
At |
He was
reading Classics, and he had to go to regular lectures and
tutorials, but Exeter College had no resident classical tutor in his first two terms, and by the time the post was filled
(by E.A. Barger, a good scholar but a dry teacher) Tolkien had got into slack
ways. By now he was bored
with Latin and Greek authors and was far more excited by Germanic literature. He had no interest in lectures on Cicero and Demosthenes and was glad to
escape to his rooms where he could go on working at his invented languages. Yet there was one area of the syllabus that interested him. For his special subject he had chose
Comparative Philology, and this meant that he attended classes and lectures
given by the extraordinary Joseph Wright. [Two
intervening paragraphs on Joseph Wright.] As a teacher, Wright communicated to
Tolkien his huge enthusiasm for philology, the subject that had raised him
from penniless
obscurity. Wright was always a
demanding teacher, which was just what
Tolkien needed. He had begun
to feel a little superior to his
fellow-classicists, with his wide-ranging knowledge of
linguistics. But here was somebody
who could tell him that he had a long way to go. At the same time Joe Wright encouraged him
to show initiative. Hearing that
Tolkien had an embryonic interest
in Welsh, he advised him to follow
it up – though he gave that advice in a characteristically Tolkien followed this advice, though not exactly in the way
that Joe Wright had intended. He
managed to find books of medieval Welsh, and he began to read the language that had fascinated him since he
saw a few words of it on coal-trucks.
He was not disappointed; indeed he was confirmed in all his
expectations of beauty. Beauty; that was what pleased him in
Welsh; the appearance and sound of the words almost irrespective of their
meaning. [Seven more sentences follow,
on Tolkien’s phonoaesthetics theory and infrequent travel abroad.] [Five
intervening paragraphs on vacations in 1911 and 1912.] He had done very little work and he was getting into lazy habits. At |
|
¶ 5 |
Carpenter,
66-67: |
|
At school, Tolkien had read the Kalevala in an English translation,
and it had awakened in him a desire to learn Finnish; then one day he found a Finnish grammar
text in the library of |
At about this time he discovered
Finnish. He had hoped to acquire some
knowledge of the language ever since he had read the Kalevala in English translation, and now in He
never learned Finnish well enough to do more than work through part
of the original Kalevala, but the
effect on his language-inventing was fundamental and remarkable. He
abandoned neo-Gothic and began to create a private language that
was heavily influenced by Finnish.
This was the language that would eventually emerge in his stories as
‘Quenya’ or High-elven. That would
not happen for many years: yet already a seed of what was to come was
germinating in his mind. He read a paper on the Kalevala to a college
society, and in it he began to talk about the importance of the type of mythology found in the Finnish poems. ‘These mythological ballads,’ he said, ‘are
full of that very primitive undergrowth that the literature of Europe has on
the whole been steadily cutting and reducing for many centuries with
different and earlier completeness among different people.’ And he added: ‘I would that we had more of
it left – something of the same sort that belonged to the English.’ An exciting notion; and perhaps he was
already thinking of creating that mythology for |
|
¶ 6 |
Carpenter,
65-66. |
|
During
his undergraduate days, Tolkien also developed his painting, drawing, and calligraphy
skills, becoming accomplished
in many manuscript styles and at sketching landscapes. During the summer vacation of 1912, Tolkien went on a walking holiday in |
During
his undergraduate days Tolkien developed his childhood interest in painting and drawing and
began to show some skill at it, chiefly in the sketching of landscapes. He also paid a great deal of attention to
handwriting and calligraphy, and became accomplished in many styles of manuscripts. This interest was a combination of his
enthusiasm for words and his artist’s eye, but it also reflected his
many-sided personality, for as someone who knew him during these years
remarked (with only slight exaggeration): ‘He had a different style of
handwriting for each of his friends.’ [Three
intervening paragraphs on 1911 winter vacation.] In the summer vacation of 1912 Tolkien went into camp for a
fortnight with King Edward’s Horse, a territorial cavalry regiment in which
he had recently enrolled. He enjoyed
the experience of galloping across the Kentish plains – the camp was near
Folkestone – but it was a wet and windy fortnight and the tents were often
blown down in the night. This taste of
life and horseback and under canvas was enough for him, and he resigned form
the regiment after a few months. When
the camp had concluded he went on a
walking holiday in |
|
¶ 7 |
Carpenter,
69-71: |
|
Five days after his twenty-first birthday,
Tolkien was reunited with Edith, and they became unofficially engaged, being
uncertain of how Edith’s family would react. However, Tolkien returned to |
She wrote to George and sent him back his
ring; and he, poor young man, was dreadfully upset at first and his family
was insulted and angry. But eventually
the matter ceased to be alluded to, and they all became friends once
more. Edith and Ronald did not
announce their engagement, being a little nervous of family reactions
and wanting to wait until Ronald’s prospects were more certain. But Ronald returned to his new term at [One
intervening paragraph on Fr. Francis.] Now that Ronald had been reunited with
Edith he had to turn his full attention to Honour Moderations, the first of the two examinations
that would earn him his degree in Classics. He tried to cram into six weeks the work
that he should have done during the previous four terms, but it was not
easy to break the habit of sitting
up late talking to friends, and he found it difficult to get up in the
morning – though like many others before him he blamed this on the damp
Oxford climate rather than on his own late hours. When Honour Moderations began at the end of February he was still poorly prepared for many
papers. On the whole he was relieved when he learnt
that he had at least managed to
achieve a Second Class. But he
knew that he ought to have done better. A
first in ‘Mods’ is not easy to achieve, but it is within the range
of an able undergraduate who devotes
himself to his work. Certainly
it is expected of someone who intends to follow an academic career, and
Tolkien already had such a career in mind.
However he had achieved a
‘pure alpha’, a practically faultless paper, in his special
subject, Comparative Philology.
This was partly a tribute to the excellence of Joe Wright’s teaching,
but it was also an indication that Tolkien’s greatest talents lay in this
field; and |
|
¶ 8 |
Carpenter,
71: |
|
When Tolkien joined the Honour School of
English Language and Literature, it was still a relatively new one, and it
was divided in two:
the medievalists and philologists on the language side believed that post-Chaucerian
literature was not challenging
enough for a degree-level syllabus, and the literature enthusiasts believed that philology
and the study of Old and Middle English were a waste of time. Tolkien was on the side of the medievalists
and philologists and would have preferred to ignore anything written after
Chaucer. |
The |
|
¶ 9 |
Carpenter,
71-72: |
|
Tolkien’s tutor was Kenneth Sisam, a
young man from Eala Earendel engla beorhtast Ofer middangeard monnum sended [Hail
Earendel, brightest of Angels Above the
Middle-earth sent unto men] |
There was no question as to which side of
the school would claim Tolkien. He
would specialise in linguistic studies, and it was arranged that his tutor
would be Kenneth Sisam, a young New Zealander who was acting as assistant to
A.S. Napier, the Professor of English Language and Literature. After meeting Sisam and surveying the
syllabus Tolkien was ‘seized with panic, because I cannot see how it is going
to provide me with honest labour for two
years and a term’. It all
seemed too easy and familiar: he was already well acquainted with many of
the texts he would have to read, and he even knew a certain amount of Old
Norse, which he was going to do as a special subject (under the Icelandic
expert W.A. Craigie). Moreover Sisam
did not at first appear to be an inspiring tutor. He was a quiet-spoken man only four years older than Tolkien,
certainly lacking the commanding presence of Joe Wright. But he was an accurate and painstaking
scholar, and Tolkien soon came to respect
and like him. As to the work, Tolkien
spent more time at his desk than
he had while studying Classics. It was not as easy as he had
expected, for the standard of the Oxford English School was very high;
but he was soon firmly in command of the syllabus and was writing lengthy
and intricate essays on ‘Problems of the dissemination of phonetic
change’, ‘The lengthening of vowels in Old and Middle English times’, and
‘The Anglo-Norman element in English’.
He was particularly interested in extending his knowledge of the Among them was the Crist of Cynewulf, a
group of Anglo-Saxon religious poems. Two lines from it struck him
forcibly: Eala
Earendel engla beorhtast Ofer
middengeard monnum sended. |
|
¶ 10 |
Carpenter,
72: |
|
Whilst Earendel is interpreted by the Anglo-Saxon dictionary as “a
shining light, a ray,” Tolkien believed
that Earendel was originally
the name of Venus, the dawn star.
He recorded feeling a “curious thrill” when he encountered the
name, which he found moving and beautiful yet strange and remote. |
‘Hail
Earendel, brightest of angels / above the middle-earth sent unto men.’ Earendel is glossed by the Anglo-Saxon dictionary as ‘a shining light, ray’, but
here it clearly has some special meaning.
Tolkien himself interpreted it as referring to John the Baptist, but
he believed that ‘Earendel’
had originally been the name for
the star presaging the dawn, that is, Venus. He was strangely moved by its appearance in
the Cynewulf lines. ‘I felt a curious
thrill,’ he wrote long afterwards, ‘as if something had stirred in me,
half wakened from sleep. There was
something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if
I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.’ |
|
¶ 11 |
Carpenter,
72-73: |
|
He
found even more to stir his
imagination in his specialist subject of Old Norse. Tolkien already had some familiarity
with Norse, but now he began to study its literature in depth. He read the Poetic (Elder) Edda, the Prose (Younger) Edda, and the sagas,
finding the Völuspa (Prophecy of the Seeress) especially appealing to his
imagination, although all Norse literature that he read would have an
effect on his mythology, some of it in profound ways. |
He
found even more to excite his
imagination when he studied his special subject. Old Norse (or Old Icelandic: the names are
interchangeable) is the language that was brought to ‘The Elder Edda’ is the name given to a
collection of poems, some of them incomplete or textually corrupt, whose
principal manuscript dates from the thirteenth century . But many of the poems themselves are more
ancient, perhaps originating at a period earlier than the settlement of |
|
¶ 12 |
Carpenter,
75-76: |
|
At the start of the 1913 academic year,
Tolkien’s friend Geoffrey B. Smith arrived in Oxford with the result that
the TCBS was now represented
equally at |
In the autumn of 1913 his friend G.B.
Smith came up to Oxford from King Edward’s School to be an Exhibitioner
of Corpus Christi College where he was to read English. The
T.C.B.S. was now equally represented at Oxford and Cambridge, for
R.Q. Gilson and Christopher Wiseman were already at the latter university. The four friends occasionally met, but
Tolkien had never mentioned to them the existence of Edith Bratt. Now that the time was approaching for her
reception into the Catholic Church they had decided to be formally
betrothed, and he would have to tell his friends. He wrote to Gilson and Wiseman, very
uncertain as to what to say, and not even telling them his fiancée’s name;
clearly he felt that it all seemed to have little to do with the male
comradeship of the T.C.B.S. The others
congratulated him, though Gilson remarked with some insight: ‘I have no fear
at all that such a staunch T.C.B.S.-ite
as yourself will ever be anything else.’ [One
intervening paragraph on Edith’s religious instruction.] On 8 January 1914, Edith was received
into the Roman Catholic Church.
The date had been deliberately chosen by her and Ronald as it was the
first anniversary of their reunion.
Soon after her reception she and Ronald were officially betrothed in
church by Father Murphy. Edith made
her first confession and first communion, which she found to be ‘a great and
wonderful happiness’; and at first she continued in this state of mind,
attending mass regularly and often making her communion. But the Catholic Church at |
|
¶ 13 |
Carpenter,
77-78: |
|
Tolkien began another club, the
Chequers, with his friend Colin Cullis;
he was elected president of the influential Stapledon Club, Exeter’s
debating society; he played tennis and went punting; and by the
spring of 1914 he had worked hard enough to win the Skeat Prize for
English. He used the five-pound
prize money to buy several William Morris works and some books of medieval Welsh.
Although Morris was a former |
Ronald was becoming distinctly
stylish. He bought furniture and
Japanese prints for his rooms. He
ordered to tailor-made suits, which he found looked very well on him. He started another club with his friend Colin Cullis; it was
called the Chequers, and it met on Saturday nights to
have dinner in his or Cullis’s rooms. He
was elected president of the college debating society (an influential body at
Morris had himself been an undergraduate
at But that was the very reason that he now
found The House of the Wolfings
so absorbing. Morris’s
view of literature coincided with his own. In this book Morris had tried to recreate
the excitement he himself had found in the pages of early English and
Icelandic narratives. The House of the Wolfings is set in a
land which is threatened by an invading force of Romans. Written partly in prose and partly in
verse, it centres on a House or family-tribe that dwells by a great river in
a clearing of the forest named Mirkwood, a name taken from ancient Germanic
geography and legend. Many elements in the story seem to have impressed Tolkien. Its style is highly idiosyncratic, heavily laden with archaisms and
poetic inversions in an attempt to
recreate the aura of ancient legend.
Clearly Tolkien took note of this, and it would seem that he also
appreciated another facet of the writing: Morris’s aptitude, despite the
vagueness of time and place in which the story is set, for describing with
great precision the details of his imagined landscape. Tolkien himself was to follow Morris’s
example in later years. |
|
¶ 14 |
Carpenter
78-81 |
|
During
the summer vacation of 1914, Tolkien visited Edith, then |
His own eye for landscape received a
powerful stimulus during the summer
of 1914 when, after visiting Edith, he spent a holiday in [One
intervening paragraph on At the end of the long vacation he
travelled to Nottinghamshire to stay for a few days on the farm that his Aunt
Jane was running with the Brookes-Smiths and his brother Hilary. While at the farm he wrote a
poem. It was headed with the line from
Cynewulf’s Crist that had so
fascinated him: Eala Earendel engla
beorhtast! Its title was ‘The
Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star’, and it began as follows: [Eight
lines from poem.] The
succeeding versus describe the star-ship’s voyage across the firmament, a progress
that continues until the morning light blots all sight of it. This notion of the star mariner whose ship
leaps into the sky had grown from the reference to ‘Earendel’ in the Cynewulf
lines. But the poem that it produced
was entirely original. It was in fact the
beginning of Tolkien’s own mythology. [New
chapter.] By the time that Tolkien wrote ‘The Voyage of
Earendel’, in the late summer of 1914, At first he reported: ‘It is awful. I really don’t think I shall be able to go
on: work seems impossible. Not a
single man I know is up except Cullis.’
But he became more cheerful when he learnt of the existence of a scheme whereby he could train for the
army while at the University but defer
his call-up until after he had taken his degree. He signed on for it. Once he had decided what to do, life became
more pleasant. He had now moved
from his college rooms to ‘digs’ in A few days after the start of term he began to drill in the University
Parks with the Officers’ Training Corps.
This had to be combined with his normal academic work, but he found
that the double life suited him.
‘Drill is a godsend,’ he wrote to Edith. ‘I have been up a fortnight nearly, and
have not yet a touch even of the real |
|
¶ 15 |
Carpenter,
81-84: |
|
Following a TCBS meeting in London
during the Christmas vacation of 1914, Tolkien started to write poetry,
but he felt that his poems needed a connecting
theme, and early in 1915 he
turned back to his Earendel verses and began to work them into a
larger story. He had shown his original
poem, The Voyage of Earendel, to
Smith, who had expressed a liking for his Earendel verses, then asked Tolkien
what they meant. Tolkien
replied that he did not know, but he would try to find out, rather than invent a meaning; as a result of
his private language invention, he saw himself as discovering legends, not
inventing stories. Tolkien had been
working on his language Quenya for
some time, and it was now sufficiently
advanced for him to write poems in it.
But he felt the language needed
a history to support it since, as far as Tolkien was concerned, it
was impossible to have a language
without a people to speak it. During 1915, he decided that Quenya was spoken by the Elves or fairies whom Earendel had encountered during his voyage, and
Tolkien began writing The Lay of
Earendel, a series of linked poems that would describe the
journeys made by Earendel the Mariner before his ship was turned into a star. |
Immediately following the weekend in [Four
intervening paragraphs and three intervening poems.] He soon came to feel that the
composition of occasional poems without a connecting theme was not what he wanted. Early
in 1915 he turned back to his original Earendel verses and began to work their theme into a larger story. He
had shown the original Earendel lines to G.B. Smith, who had said
that he liked them but asked what they were really about. Tolkien had replied: ‘I don’t know. I’ll try
to find out.’ Not try to
invent: try to find out. He did not see himself as an inventor of
story but as a discoverer of legend.
And this was really due to his private languages. He had been working for some time at the language that
was influenced by Finnish, and by 1915 he had developed it to a degree of
some complexity. He felt that it was
‘a mad hobby’, and he scarcely expected to find an audience for it. But he sometimes wrote poems in it,
and the more he worked at it the more he felt that it needed a ‘history’ to support it. In other words, you cannot have a language without a race of people to speak it. He was perfecting the language; now he had
to decide to whom it belonged. [One
intervening paragraph and poem.] During
1915 the picture became clear in Tolkien’s mind. This, he decided, was the language spoken
by the fairies or elves whom Earendel saw during
his strange voyage. He began
work on a ‘Lay of Earendel’ that described the mariner’s journeyings
across the world before his ship
became a star. The Lay was to be
divided into several poems, and the first of these, ‘The Shores of Faery’,
tells of the mysterious land Valinor, where Two Trees grow, one bearing
golden sun-apples and the other silver moon-apples. To this land comes Earendel. |
|
¶ 16 |
Carpenter,
85-86: |
|
Whilst the germs of his mythology were
occupying Tolkien’s mind, he was also preparing for |
While Tolkien’s mind was occupied with
the seeds of his mythology he was preparing himself for Schools, his final examination in English Language
and Literature. The examination began in the second week of June
1915, and Tolkien was triumphant, achieving
First Class Honours. He would in consequence be reasonably certain of getting an academic job
when the war was over; but in the meantime he had to take up his commission
as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. [Six sentences follow on military life.] [Two
intervening paragraphs on military training.] Embarkation for |
|
¶ 17 |
Carpenter,
106: |
|
Postwar,
Pre-Leeds Tolkien
did survive the war, largely as a consequence of suffering badly from trench
fever, and by the time he was discharged
from hospital in October 1918, the end of the war seemed to be in
sight, so he travelled to |
By October he had been discharged from hospital. Peace seemed a little nearer, and he
went to |
|
¶ 18 |
Carpenter,
107-108: |
|
Throughout his army career, Tolkien
had dreamed of returning to |
Tolkien
had long dreamt of returning to Oxford.
Throughout his war service he had suffered an ache of nostalgia
for his college, his friends,
and the way of life that he had led for four years. He was also
uncomfortably conscious of wasted time, for he was now twenty-seven and Edith
was thirty. But at last they could enjoy what they had hoped for: ‘Our home
together’. [Two
intervening paragraphs on Tolkien’s diary and the NED.] Tolkien enjoyed working at the
Dictionary, and liked his
colleagues, especially the accomplished C.T. Onions. For his first weeks he was given the job of
researching the etymology
of warm, wasp, water, wick (lamp), and winter. Some
indication of the skill that this required may be gathered from a
glance at the entry that was finally published for wasp. It is not
a particularly difficult word,
but the paragraph dealing with it cites comparable forms in Old Saxon, Middle
Dutch, Modern Dutch, Old High German, Middle Low German, Middle High German,
Modern German, Old Teutonic, primitive pre-Teutonic, Lithuanian, Old
Slavonic, Russian, and Latin. Not
surprisingly, Tolkien found that
this kind of work taught him a
good deal about languages, and he once said of the period 1919-20 when he
was working on the Dictionary: ‘I learned more in those two years than in
any other equal period of my life.’
He did his job remarkably well, even by the standards of the Dictionary, and Dr. Bradley reported of him:
‘His work gives evidence of an unusually thorough mastery of Anglo-Saxon and
of the facts and principles of the comparative grammar of the Germanic
languages. Indeed, I have no
hesitation in saying that I have never known a man of his age who was in
these respects his equal.’ |
|
¶ 19 |
Carpenter,
108-109: |
|
When he was not working at the New English Dictionary, Tolkien
supplemented his income by teaching
at the university. Having informed the colleges that he was
available to teach, they began to send him pupils, especially the women’s
colleges such as St. Hugh’s and Lady Margaret Hall, who had no one available to
teach Anglo-Saxon. Since
Tolkien was married, a chaperone for their young women was unnecessary, which
gave Tolkien an advantage over other potential tutors. Tolkien and Edith soon realised that they could afford to rent a small house, so they moved around
the corner into |
From the Dictionary it was only a short
walk home for lunch, and, not long after, for tea. Dr. Bradley was an undemanding taskmaster
as far as hours were concerned, and in any case the work was scarcely
supposed to occupy Tolkien’s entire day.
Like many others who were employed at the Dictionary he was expected
to fill out his time and his income
by teaching in the
University. He made it known
that he was willing to accept pupils, and one by one the colleges began to
respond – chiefly the women’s colleges, for Lady Margaret Hall and St. Hugh’s
badly needed someone to teach
Anglo-Saxon to their young ladies, and Tolkien had the advantage of
being married, which meant that a chaperon did not have to be sent to his
home when he was teaching them. Soon he and Edith decided that they could afford the rent of a small house, and they found a
suitable one just round the corner from their rooms, at Meanwhile he continued to write ‘The Book of Lost Tales’, and
one evening he read ‘The
Fall of Gondolin’ aloud to the Essay Club at |
|
¶ 20 |
Carpenter,
109, 114-115: |
|
In 1920, Tolkien applied for a post at
the |
Suddenly the family’s plans changed. Tolkien applied for the post of Reader
in English Language the University of [Most of
next chapter intervenes.] Meanwhile his career at [One
intervening paragraph about Christopher’s birth.] Early in 1925 came
word that the Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Kenneth Sisam was now in a senior
position at the Clarendon Press, and though he was not engaged in full-time scholarship he had a good reputation
in |
|
¶ 21 |
Carpenter
119, 147: |
|
Scholar At the beginning of 1926, the Tolkien family—Tolkien,
Edith, John, Michael (who was born in 1920), and Christopher (who was born in
1924)—travelled to |
[Six
sentences on [Three
chapters intervene.] On 11 May 1926 Tolkien attended a
meeting of the English Faculty at Merton College. Among the familiar faces a new arrival
stood out, a heavily-built man of twenty-seven in baggy clothes who had
recently been elected Fellow and Tutor in English Language and Literature
at |
|
¶ 22 |
Carpenter,
137-138: |
|
Tolkien proved to be a good teacher, although he was never at his best in a lecture room, where his
quick indistinct speech meant that his students had to concentrate hard to hear and understand him.
Nor was he always good at clearly explaining his ideas; he often found it difficult to recall that not everyone was as
knowledgeable as he about his subject.
However, Tolkien brought his subject to life and showed that it was important to him, which encouraged his
students to take an interest in it.
Among his students, the best remembered instance of his passion for
Anglo-Saxon was the opening of his Beowulf
lecture series. W.H. Auden
recalled that Tolkien would silently enter the lecture room, fix his attention on his students,
and then declaim in resounding tones, the opening lines of Beowulf, beginning with “Hwaet!, which many students took to be “Quiet!” It was less of a recitation than a dramatic performance,
and J.I.M. Stewart said that with Tolkien there, the lecture room became a
mead hall in which Tolkien was the bard.
His effectiveness as a
teacher was enhanced because he was a poet and writer, as well as
a philologist. He not only found poetry in the sounds of words
but also had a poet’s understanding
of the use of language, which meant
that he could not only show students what words meant but also explain why a particular form of expression had been used by an author and how it fitted his or her image scheme. In this way, Tolkien encouraged his students to see early
texts as literature that deserved serious
study and appreciation in its own
right, not merely as examples of a
developing language. |
At Leeds and later at The most celebrated example of this,
remembered by everyone who was taught by him, was the opening of his
series of lectures on Beowulf. He could come silently into the room, fix the audience with his gaze, and
suddenly begin to declaim in a resounding voice the opening lines of the poem in the original Anglo-Saxon,
commencing with a great cry of ‘Hwæt!’
(the first word of this and several other Old English poems), which some
undergraduates took to be ‘Quiet!’ It was not so much a recitation as a dramatic performance, an
impersonation of an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall, and it impressed
generations of students because it brought home to them that Beowulf was not just a set text to be
read for the purposes of an examination but a powerful piece of dramatic
poetry. As one former pupil, the
writer J.I.M. Stewart, expressed it: ‘He could turn
a lecture room into a mead hall in which he was the bard and we were the
feasting, listening guests.’ Another
who sat in the audience at these lectures was W.H. Auden, who wrote to
Tolkien many years later: ‘I don’t think I have ever told you what an
unforgettable experience it was for me as an undergraduate, hearing you
recite Beowulf. The voice was the voice of Gandalf.’ One reason for Tolkien’s effectiveness as a teacher was that
besides being a philologist he was a writer and a poet, a man who not
only studied words but who used them for poetic means. He could find poetry in the sound of the words themselves, as he had done
since childhood; but he also had a
poet’s understanding of how language is used. This was expressed in a memorable phrase in
The Times obituary of him
(undoubtedly written by C.S. Lewis long before Tolkien’s death) which talks
of his ‘unique insight at once into the language of poetry and into the
poetry of language’. In practical
terms this meant that he could
show a pupil not just what the words
meant, but why the author had
chosen that particular form of
expression and how it fitted
into his scheme of imagery. He thus encouraged students of early texts to treat them not as
mere exemplars of a developing
language but as literature deserving serious
appreciation and criticism. |
|
¶ 23 |
Carpenter,
140: |
|
In practical terms, what it meant to be the professor of Anglo-Saxon at
Oxford was
that Tolkien had to give a minimum
of 36 lectures or classes a year.
But Tolkien did not feel this was a sufficient number to cover
his subject, and during his second year after his election, he gave 136 lectures and classes. In part, this was a result of the war; there
were too few other tutors available to
lecture in Middle English and
Anglo-Saxon. After Charles
Wrenn was appointed to assist him,
Tolkien was able to cut back on his lectures, but he still gave more than
twice the expected minimum number of classes and lectures each year during
the 1930s. Preparing and giving
lectures took up a large proportion of
his time, and sometimes Tolkien found he had too little time to
prepare a course of lectures, so he cancelled it. This earned him the reputation around
the university of being ill prepared for his lectures, but almost the
reverse was true since Tolkien was so committed to his subject that he
was not ready to tackle it in
anything less than an exhaustive manner. This often
resulted in him being sidetracked
into considering the less important details so that he was unable to finish
treating the main subject. |
But
probably all this sounds like the scholar in his ivory tower. What did he do? What, in practical terms, did it mean to be the Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford? The simplest answer is that it meant a good
deal of hard work. The statutes
called upon Tolkien to give a minimum
of thirty-six lectures or classes a year, but he did not consider this to
be sufficient to cover the
subject, and in the second year after being elected Professor he gave one hundred and thirty-six
lectures and classes. This was
partly because there were comparatively few other people to lecture on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Later he managed to get another
philologist, an excellent if intimidating teacher named Charles Wrenn, appointed to assist him, and then
he was able to set himself a slightly less strenuous programme. But throughout the nineteen-thirties he
continued to give at least twice the statutory number of lectures and classes
each year, considerably more than most of his colleagues undertook. So lectures, and the preparation for
them, took up a very large proportion of his time. In fact this heavy teaching load was
sometimes more than he could manage efficiently, and occasionally he would
abandon a course of lectures because of insufficient time to prepare it. |
|
¶ 24 |
Carpenter,
141: |
|
Another time-consuming part of his job was
administration. Unlike professors
at other universities, |
A good deal of his attention was also
taken up by administration. It should
be understood than an |
|
¶ 25 |
Carpenter,
141-142: |
|
As professor he was also required to supervise postgraduate students and
to examine students within the
university. Since he had four
children by 1930, he also undertook a lot of “freelance” work as an examiner at other universities and marking School Certificate
examination papers (this examination was taken at the age of sixteen by
British schoolchildren). This
annual chore was tedious and dull, but it allowed Tolkien to supplement his
income whilst his own children were small.
He could have spent his time better in writing or doing research,
but he needed the money. Tolkien,
like any professor, was expected
to devote much of his time to research, and his contemporaries had high hopes of him
in this area since his glossary
to Sisam’s book of Middle English extracts (produced whilst Tolkien was
at Leeds), his coediting (with E.V. Gordon) of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and his article on the Ancrene
Wisse manuscripts had demonstrated
that he possessed a mastery of
the West Midlands dialect of early Middle English that was without equal. Everyone in the |
His job also required him to supervise post-graduate students, and
to examine within the University. In addition he undertook a good deal of ‘freelance’ work as an external examiner to other universities, for with four children to bring up he
needed to augment his income. During
the nineteen-thirties he made frequent visits to
many of the British universities as an examiner, and spent countless hours
marking papers. After the Second World
War he restricted this activity to examining regularly for various colleges
in [Three
intervening paragraphs on Besides being responsible for teaching and
administration, professors at |
|
¶ 26 |
Carpenter,
142-143, 144-145 |
|
One reason for this was Tolkien’s lack of time, since he had chosen to devote
such a large part of his working life
to teaching, which left him little time to spare for original
research. His time was also taken
up by family life, and then there was the problem of Tolkien’s
perfectionism, which was a consequence of his emotional commitment to his writing. This meant that he was incapable of treating
it in anything other than a deeply
serious manner; therefore, everything he wrote (whether philological
or fictional) had to be revised,
reconsidered, and refined before it could be published. However, what Tolkien did
publish during the 1930s proved to be a major contribution to scholarship; his paper on the dialects of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Reeve’s Tale”
and his lecture “Beowulf: The
Monsters and the Critics” were both significant. He planned to produce an edition of Exodus,
an Anglo-Saxon poem, a task he almost completed, but he was dissatisfied with
it. He also intended to
collaborate again with E.V. Gordon on new editions of the Anglo-Saxon elegies, The
Seafarer and The Wanderer, and
on Pearl, which would have
complemented their work on Gawain,
but the geographical distance (more than 120 miles) between the two men made
such collaboration difficult once Gordon had moved from Leeds, where he
had succeeded Tolkien, to Manchester University in 1931. Then, in the summer of 1938, aged just
forty-two, Gordon, after undergoing gall-bladder surgery, died from a
hitherto undiagnosed kidney disorder of the suprarenal glands. His death
robbed Tolkien not only of a close friend but also of an ideal collaborator. Tolkien did meet another philologist who
was a good collaborator; Simone d’Ardenne was a Belgian graduate who had
completed a B.Litt. at |
Lack
of time was one cause. He had chosen to devote the
major part of his working life at
Oxford to teaching,
and this in itself limited what he could do in the matter of original
research. The marking of
examination papers in order to provide necessary money also ate into his
time. But besides this there was
the matter of his perfectionism. Tolkien had a passion for perfection in
written work of any kind, whether it be philology or
stories. This grew from his emotional commitment to his work,
which did not permit him to treat it in any manner other than the deeply serious. Nothing was allowed to reach the printer until
it had been revised, reconsidered,
and polished – in which respect he was the opposite of C.S. Lewis, who
sent manuscripts off for publication with scarcely a second glance at
them. Lewis, well aware of this
difference between them, wrote of Tolkien: ‘His standard of self-criticism
was high and the mere suggestion of publication usually set him upon a
revision, in the course of which so many new ideas occurred to him that where
his friends had hoped for the final text of an old work they actually got the
first draft of a new one.’ This is the main reason why Tolkien only
allowed a small proportion of his work to reach the printed page. But what
he did publish during the
nineteen-thirties was a major
contribution to scholarship. His paper on the dialects of Chaucer’s
Reeve’s Tale is required
reading for anyone who wishes to understand the regional variations of
fourteenth-century English. (It was
read to the Philological Society in 1931 but not published until 1934, and
then with a typical Tolkienian apology for the lack of what the author
considered to be a necessary amount of revision and improvement.) And
his lecture Beowulf: the Monsters and
the Critics, delivered to the [Four
intervening paragraphs on Beowulf.] The Beowulf
lecture and the paper on the Reeve’s
Tale were the only major pieces of philological work published by Tolkien
in the nineteen-thirties. He planned
to do much more: besides his work on the Ancrene
Wisse he intended to produce an
edition of the Anglo-Saxon poem Exodus,
and indeed he nearly completed this task, but it was never finished to his
satisfaction. He also planned
further joint editions with E.V. Gordon, in particular of In the
summer of that year, Gordon went into hospital for an operation for gall-stones. It seemed to be successful, but his
condition suddenly deteriorated, and he died from a previously unsuspected
kidney disorder, at the age of forty-two. Gordon’s death robbed Tolkien not only of a close friend but also of the
ideal professional collaborator: and by now it was clear that he needed a collaborator, if only to make
him surrender any material to the printer.
As it happened, he had made the acquaintance of another philologist
who proved to be a good working partner.
This was Simonne d’Ardenne, a Belgian graduate who studied Middle
English with him for an |
|
¶ 27 |
Duriez,
69-70, 71-72: |
|
On November 25, 1936, Tolkien gave a lecture to the |
Unlike
Lewis, Tolkien’s academic writings were sparing and rare. He gave great attention to his lecturing
and tutoring. On November 25, 1936,
however, he gave a lecture to the [One
intervening paragraph on earlier Beowulf
criticism.] It
was clear to Tolkien that the Beowulf
poet created, by art, an illusion of
historical truth and perspective.
The poet had an instinctive
historical sense that he used for artistic, poetic ends. [Two sentences follow citing Tolkien’s
comments on poetic worth of Beowulf.] In considering the monsters, which are so
pivotal to Beowulf, Tolkien
explained that this choice of theme actually accounts for the greatness of
the poem. The power comes from “the
mythical mode of the imagination.”
[Six sentences follow on difficulty in analyzing myth.] [Three
intervening paragraphs on blend of Christian and pagan.] There are a number of parallels between
the author of Beowulf, as
understood by Tolkien, and Tolkien himself.
Tolkien was a Christian storyteller looking back to an imagined
northern European past – his Middle-earth.
The Beowulf poet was a
Christian looking back at the imaginative resources of a pagan past. Both made use of dragons and other potent
symbols, symbols that unified their work.
Both were concerned more with symbolism than allegory. As with Beowulf,
what is important is not so much the sources but
what was made of them. Like the
ancient author, also, Tolkien created an impression
of real history and a sense of
depths of the past. |
|
¶ 28 |
Duriez,
72-73: |
|
Tolkien developed these ideas further in
his Andrew Lang lecture of 1939, given at |
In March 1939 Tolkien traveled by train up
to [One
intervening paragraph on man in God’s image.] The actual course of Tolkien’s lecture did
not so starkly highlight these two related links between God and mankind, but
they clearly underlie both this lecture and Tolkien’s fiction. The goal of “On Fairy Stories” was to rehabilitate for adults the idea of the fairy story, which had
been relegated to children’s literature, and
fantasy in general. Regarding fairy stories as trivial—suitable only for children—in his
view failed to do justice to both
fairy stories and children. Tolkien, who had by then written much of
the basic matter of The Silmarillion,
and published The Hobbit (in 1937),
attempted to set out a structure underlying good fairy tales and fantasies, a
structure that would demonstrate that
fairy tales were worthy of serious attention. Fairy tales, he pointed out, were stories
about faerie: “the realm or state where fairies have their being.” Listeners who had read his essay, “Beowulf:
The Monsters and the Critics,” may have noticed a similarity here with
Tolkien’s portrayal of the Old English poem.
Tolkien had spoken of the poet making his theme “incarnate in the
world of history and geography.” Fairy
tales, he told his audience at |
|
¶ 29 |
Duriez,
132-133 |
|
In 1945, Tolkien accepted the Merton Chair
of English Language and Literature, after twenty years as professor of
Anglo-Saxon. The Merton Chair gave
him responsibility for Middle English
up to AD 1500, and the move was a reflection of his wider
interests, in particular the language and literature of the |
Tolkien
had moved to the Merton Chair of English Language and Literature back in 1945. This involved special responsibility for Middle English up to
A.D. 1500. He had held the
Chair in Anglo-Saxon for twenty years.
The move reflected his wider interests, particularly the language
and literature of the West Midlands.
With the new Chair, as was the custom, he became a Fellow of |
|
¶ 30 |
Duriez,
163-164: |
|
Throughout
the 1950s, Tolkien continued to teach and explore the literature of the |
Throughout the 1950s, Tolkien
continued to
explore and teach the literature of
the |
|
¶ 31 |
Duriez,
43, 47-48:: |
|
Clubs
and Societies Shortly
before his first meeting with Lewis, Tolkien formed a club called the
Coal-biters (taken from the Icelandic Kolbitar,
one who sits so close to the fire in winter that they seem to bite the
coal). The club met regularly to read
Icelandic myths and sagas. Initially,
its membership was limited to dons with a fairly good knowledge of
Icelandic. After a while, however,
enthusiastic beginners started to join, one of whom was Lewis. It was within the context of this club that
the most important friendship of Tolkien’s life in |
Lewis had
been intrigued by Tolkien’s alluding to his linguistic and writing
hobbies. Soon he was attracted by Tolkien’s
invitation to come along to The Coalbiters, an informal reading club Tolkien
had initiated at [Two
intervening pages.] At this time it was their practice (common
then) to call each other by surname or nickname (Tolkien was “Tollers” and
Lewis was simply “Lewis”). Lewis
didn’t even known Tolkien’s first names other than “Ronald” as late as
1957. [Five sentences follow on
Tolkien and Lewis’s friendship.] He
also remembered: “In the early days of
our association Jack used to come to my house and I read aloud to him The Silmarillion so far as it had
then gone, including a very long poem: Beren and Luthien.” It was near the end of 1929 that Tolkien
decided to give the “Lay of Leithien” – the poetic version of the tale of
Beren and Luthien – to Lewis to read.
His friend read it during the evening of December 6. His response was enthusiastic – he wrote to
Tolkien the very next day: “I can
quite honestly say that it is ages since I have had an evening of such
delight: and the personal interest in reading a friend’s work had very little
to do with it…. The two things that came out clearly are the sense of reality in the
background and the mythical value:
the essence of a myth being that it should have no taint of allegory to the
maker and yet should suggest incipient allegories to the reader.” [Four sentences follow on Lewis’s further
comments.] |
|
¶ 32 |
Carpenter,
152-153: |
|
In
the early 1930s, the Kolbitars finished reading all of the key
Icelandic sagas, but Tolkien and Lewis continued to meet regularly,
together with Lewis’s brother Warren “Warnie” Lewis, Hugo Dyson (who was now
an English lecturer at Reading University), Lewis’s friend Owen Barfield
(when he could get away form his job in London as a solicitor), and R.E.
“Humphrey” Havard (who was Tolkien’s and Lewis’s doctor). Others also became regular or semiregular members
of the group, which appropriated the name of a now-defunct undergraduate
club, the Inklings. As a general rule,
the group met twice a week, usually on a Tuesday morning at the Eagle and
Child pub in St. Giles and on a Thursday evening in Lewis’s rooms at |
It began to form itself at about this time
(in the early nineteen-thirties)
when the Coalbiters ceased to meet, having fulfilled their aim of reading
all the principal Icelandic sagas and finally the Elder Edda. ‘The Inklings’ was originally the name of a
literary society founded in about 1931 by a University college undergraduate
named Tangye Lean. Lewis and Tolkien
both attended its meetings, at which unpublished compositions were read and
criticised. After Lean left [One
intervening paragraph on unorganized nature of Inklings, and names of primary
members .] It was a thoroughly casual business. One should not imagine that the same people
turned up week after week, or sent apologies if they were to be absent. Nevertheless there were certain invariable
elements. The group, or various
members of it, would meet on a weekday morning in a pub, generally on
Tuesdays in the Eagle and Child (known familiarly as ‘The Bird and Baby’);
though during the war when beer was short and pubs crowded with servicemen
their habits were more flexible. On
Thursday nights they would meet in Lewis’s big Magdalen sitting-room,
congregating some time after nine o’clock. Tea would be made and pipes lit,
and then Lewis would boom out: ‘Well, has nobody got anything to read
us?’ Someone would produce a
manuscript and begin to read it aloud – it might be a poem, or a story, or
a chapter. Then would come criticism: sometimes praise, sometimes censure, for
it was no mutual admiration society.
There might be more reading, but soon the proceedings would spill over
into talk of all kinds, sometimes heated debate, and would terminate at a
late hour. |
|
¶ 33 |
Source
unidentified; probably Dante Society archives. |
|
In 1945, Tolkien was elected a member of
The Dante Society, which met once a term at various colleges, each meeting
being hosted by a different member of the society. Lewis had been elected a member in 1937,
and when an opening came up—new members joined only when current members died
or resigned—in late 1944, Lewis put Tolkien’s name forward. Tolkien was elected on February 20, 1945,
and attended his first meeting in November 1945. He remained a member until February 1955,
although he only hosted a meeting occasionally and presented a paper only
once. |
|
|
¶ 34 |
Source
unidentified, but possibly Duriez, 155-156: |
|
The reading meetings of the Inklings ended
in 1949, and shortly after The Lord of
the Rings was published, Tolkien and Lewis’s friendship began to
wane. This was partly the consequence
of Lewis accepting a chair at |
The
long-desired security of an academic Chair for Lewis was a |
|
¶ 35 |
Carpenter,
161: |
|
Husband,
Father, and Storyteller While
Tolkien and Edith originally had little in common, their shared love for their children was a strong
bond between them, and it was clear to family and friends that they cared
deeply about each other. They each worried about the other’s health
to an almost ridiculous degree, and they chose and wrapped presents for each other with a
great deal of care and attention.
Their care for each other was also clear in Edith’s pride in
Tolkien’s later fame as an author
and in Tolkien’s decision to move to Bournemouth for Edith’s sake after he
retired from the |
Those friends and others who knew Ronald
and Edith Tolkien over the years never doubted that there was deep affection
between them. It was visible both in the small things, the almost absurd
degree to which each worried about the
other’s health, and the care with which they chose and wrapped each other’s birthday presents; and in
the large matters, the way in which Ronald willingly abandoned such a
large part of his life in retirement to give Edith the last years at
Bournemouth that he felt she deserved, and the degree to which she showed
pride in his fame as an author. A principal source of happiness to them
was their shared love for their
family. This bound them together
until the end of their lives, and it was perhaps the strongest force in the
marriage. They delighted to discuss
and mull over every detail in the lives of their children, and later of their
grandchildren. They were very proud
when Michael won the George Medal in the Second World War for his action as
an anti-aircraft gunner defending aerodromes in the Battle of Britain; and
they felt similar pride when John was ordained a priest in the Catholic
Church shortly after the war. Tolkien was immensely kind and understanding as a father, never shy
of kissing his sons in public even
when they were grown men, and never reserved in his display of warmth
and love. |
|
¶ 36 |
Carpenter,
162-163: |
|
The children remembered spending long
hours one summer digging up the old tennis
court at |
What else remained in the children’s
memories? Long summer hours digging up the asphalt of the old tennis-court at 20 Northmoor
Road to enlarge the vegetable-plot,
under the supervision of their father, who (like their mother) was an
enthusiastic gardener, though he
left much of the practical work of cultivating vegetables and pruning trees
to John, preferring to concentrate his own attention on the roses and on the
lawn, from which he would remove every possible weed. The early years at |
|
¶ 37 |
Carpenter,
165-166: |
|
The children also recalled the stories
their father told them, many of which later made their way into
print. One such story was Roverandom about a small toy dog
Michael lost on the beach during a family holiday to Filey. Another toy of Michael’s, a Dutch doll
named Tom Bombadil, which John hated and once stuffed down the toilet, became the hero of a poem called The
Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which appeared in Oxford Magazine in
1934. Another story, Mr. Bliss, evolved from Tolkien’s
purchase of, and subsequent
misadventures whilst driving, a Morris Crowley car in 1932. Tolkien lavishly illustrated the story in coloured pencil and ink,
and he wrote out the tale in a beautiful manuscript style. |
That was as far as the story ever reached
on paper, but Tom Bombadil was a well-known figure in the Tolkien family, for
the character was based on a Dutch doll that belonged to Michael. The doll looked very splendid with the feather
in its hat, but John did not like it and one day stuffed it down the lavatory.
Tom was rescued, and survived to become the hero of a poem by the children’s father, ‘The Adventures
of Tom Bombadil’, which was published in the Oxford Magazine in 1934. [Three sentences follow on the poem] The purchase of a car in 1932 and
Tolkien’s subsequent mishaps while
driving it led him to write another children’s story, ‘Mr Bliss’. This is the tale of tall thin man who lives
in a tall thin house, and who purchases a bright yellow automobile for five
shillings, with remarkable consequences (and a number of collisions). The story was lavishly illustrated by Tolkien in ink and coloured pencils,
and the text was written out by him in a fair hand, the whole being
bound in a small volume. [Five sentences
follow on Mr. Bliss.] |
|
¶ 38 |
Carpenter,
166-167: |
|
The lavish nature of Tolkien’s
illustrations for Mr. Bliss,
which is essentially a children’s book, demonstrated just how seriously Tolkien took the business of painting and drawing,
a skill that he had enjoyed as a child and continued to develop as an
adult. His storytelling and
illustrating talents were also combined in an annual letter
from Father Christmas; beginning in
1920, when John was just
three years old and the family was about to move to Leeds, Tolkien wrote
a letter in shaky handwriting signed
“Yr loving Fr Chr.” Although
Tolkien began simply enough, he soon expanded
his annual Father Christmas letter until a host of other characters were
included, such as Polar Bear, an Elf named Ilbereth, the Snow Man,
gnomes, snow elves, and even a horde of goblins who lived in caves beneath Father Christmas’s house. Tolkien
would write an account of recent events at the North Pole, often at the last minute before
Christmas; the letters were written in Father Christmas’s shaky handwriting, Ilbereth’s flowing script, or the rune-like capitals of Polar Bear. Tolkien would then add drawings, address
the envelope (often adding “By gnome-carrier.
Immediate haste!” to the envelope), paint and cut out a realistic North Pole stamp, then deliver
it. The simplest way of delivering it was by leaving it in the fireplace—he would make various odd
noises in the early morning and
leave a snowy footprint on the carpet
to “prove” the
letter had been left by Father Christmas.
Later, he involved the local
postman as his accomplice, and
the latter would deliver the letter with the rest of family mail. Each of Tolkien’s children went on believing the letters were
genuine until they reached adolescence
and found out, through deduction
or by accident, that their father wrote the letters,
but nothing was ever said so that the younger
children could continue believing the letters were real. |
The fact that ‘Mr Bliss’ was so lavishly
illustrated – was constructed indeed around the pictures – is an
indication of how seriously Tolkien
was taking the business of drawing and
painting. He had never
entirely abandoned this childhood hobby, and during his undergraduate days he
illustrated several of his own poems, using watercolours, coloured inks or
pencils, and beginning to develop a style that was suggestive of his
affection for Japanese prints and yet had an individual approach to line and
colour. [Three sentences follow on
Tolkien’s drawing.] [One
interceding paragraph on Tolkien’s drawing.] Tolkien’s talents as a storyteller and an illustrator were combined each December, when a
letter would arrive for the children from Father Christmas. In
1920 when John was three years old and the family was about to move to Leeds,
Tolkien had written a note to his son in shaky handwriting signed ‘Yr loving Fr. Chr.’. From then onwards he produced a similar
letter every Christmas. From simple
beginnings the ‘Father Christmas Letters’ expanded to include many additional characters such as the
Polar Bear who shares Father Christmas’s house, the Snow Man who is Father
Christmas’s gardener, an elf named Ilbereth who is his secretary, snow-elves,
gnomes, and in the caves beneath
Father Christmas’s house a host of troublesome goblins. Every Christmas, often at the last minute, Tolkien
would write out an account of
recent events at the North Pole in the shaky handwriting of Father Christmas, the rune-like capitals used by the Polar
Bear, or the flowing script of
Ilbereth. Then he would add drawings, write the address on the
envelope (labelling it with such superscriptions as ‘By gnome-carrier. Immediate haste!’) and
paint and cut out a highly realistic North Polar postage stamp. Finally he would deliver the letter. This was done in a variety of ways. The simplest
was to leave it in the fireplace
as if it had been brought down the chimney, and to cause strange noises to
be heard in the early morning,
which together with a snowy footprint
on the carpet indicated that Father Christmas himself had
called. Later the local postman became an accomplice and used to deliver the
letters himself, so how could the children not believe in them? Indeed they went on believing until each in turn reached adolescence and discovered by accident or deduction
that their father was the true
author of the letters. Even then, nothing
was said to destroy the illusion for the younger
children. |
|
¶ 39 |
Duriez, 89-90,
101-102, 103-104: |
|
The early Inklings meetings listened to at
least part of The Hobbit being read
aloud. Tolkien had begun this tale one
day whilst marking School Certificate examination papers. An examinee had left a blank page in the
paper, and on it Tolkien wrote, “In a hole in the ground there lived a
hobbit.” The story developed from
there, and Tolkien’s eldest sons,
John and Michael, remembered being told the story in an oral form
initially, like so many of Tolkien’s other stories that eventually found
their way into print. When The Hobbit was published on September 21, 1937 (complete with Tolkien’s own
illustrations), it had a print run of 1,500 copies; it sold well, and
his publisher, Stanley Unwin of George Allen & Unwin, promptly requested
a sequel. In the spring of the
previous year, Tolkien and Lewis had agreed that there was a need for more
stories like The Hobbit, and they
arranged that Lewis would write a space story whilst Tolkien wrote a
time-travel story. Tolkien began a
story called “The Lost Road,” in which a special father-and-son relationship is repeated throughout history, with
the pair being linked to Númenor, the Atlantis-like island of Middle-earth
that was destroyed and whose survivors went on to found Gondor and
Arnor. Tolkien abandoned the story after just four chapters,
although he had shown them to Unwin before abandoning them, offering the
story as a possible sequel to The
Hobbit. The early chapters were
almost certainly read aloud to the Inklings since Lewis misspells
Númenor as Numinor in his own stories Perelandra
and That Hideous Strength. About the same time that he was writing
“The |
The
Hobbit was eventually published
on September 21, 1937, complete with Tolkien’s own illustrations; the
initial printing was fifteen hundred copies. W.H. Auden, when he reviewed The Fellowship of the Ring for the New York
Times on October 31, 1954, wrote: “in my opinion, The Hobbit is one of the best children’s stories of this
century.” Though Tolkien probably began writing the
book in 1930, his eldest sons, John
and Michael, remembered the story being told to them before the
1930s. Perhaps various oral forms of
the story merged into the more finished written draft. What is significant from these indistinct
memories is that The Hobbit began as a tale told by a father to his
children. [Four sentences follow on
The Hobbit.] [Eleven
intervening pages.] The story Tolkien had begun writing
shortly after the challenge from Lewis was entitled “The Lost Road,”
and it explored the idea of an unusual father-and-son relationship that repeats itself at various times
in history. [Nine sentences follow
on the plot of “The Lost Road”.]
Númenor’s fate plays an important role in the history of Middle-earth,
because the noble race of humans fleeing its destruction go on to found the
great kingdoms of Arnor in the north and Gondor in the south of Middle-earth. Tolkien
abandoned the story after writing only four chapters and some
notes on plot and development. [Five
sentences follow on Tolkien’s idea of the “lost road” to the West.] “The [Five
intervening paragraphs on Tolkien’s influence.] A further influence upon Lewis may have
been The Ainulindalë. Tolkien was reworking this beautiful
cosmological myth during the 1930s (probably including the time during
which he wrote “The |
|
¶ 40 |
Duriez,
106: |
|
By December 1937, Tolkien had begun to
write the sequel to The Hobbit,
although The Lord of the Rings took
another seventeen years to write and publish.
The Lord of the Rings is, to
a greater extent than The Hobbit, intimately
related to Tolkien’s work
teaching Old and Middle English. As a philologist, Tolkien was engaged in
constructing earlier forms of English words and in linking them to modern
forms. In a similar manner, Tolkien
created Quenya and Sindarin, the two Elvish languages. He felt that a language needed a people to
speak it, and he began to link the languages to the poems he had already
written, such a The Voyage of Earendel
the Evening Star, and the poem about Beren and Lúthien. Out of them developed the “Silmarillion”
material that told of the earlier ages of Middle-earth and led to the
development of the tale published as The
Lord of the Rings. |
As we have seen, Tolkien’s work teaching Early and Middle English
was intimately related to his construction of the languages, peoples,
and history of Middle-earth. From his
creation of Elven language he had gone on to invent a fantasy world as if it
were a forgotten world he had unearthed from the ancient past of northern |
|
¶ 41 |
Duriez,
63: |
|
Whilst Tolkien was writing the early
chapters of The Lord of the Rings, he
read a new story, Farmer Giles of Ham, rather than his promised academic paper on fairy stories (which
was not complete), to an
undergraduate society at Worcester College. Whilst Farmer
Giles of Ham is suitable for
children, it feels like an
adult story, which is probably why Tolkien considered it an adequate substitute for the unfinished academic paper. Farmer
Giles of Ham was not published until 1949 because Unwin did not
originally consider it long enough to publish on its
own, and Tolkien had nothing to go with it that was also written for
adults. The tale is fairly light
hearted and was received well by the Lovelace Society. It is subtitled “The Rise and Wonderful
Adventures of Farmer Giles, Lord of Tame, Count of Worminghall and King of
the Little Kingdom” and begins with a
pseudo-scholarly foreword about its
alleged authorship, its translation from the Latin, and an explanation of the extent of the “Little Kingdom,” in the dark period before the days of King
Arthur, in the valley of the Thames. |
Early in 1938 Tolkien read a new story, Farmer Giles of Ham, to
an undergraduate society at |
|
¶ 42 |
Duriez,
63: |
|
This story, though superficially different from the tales of Middle-earth,
is characteristically Tolkienian in
its themes. The inspiration for the story was linguistic—it provides a spoof explanation of the name of an east Oxfordshire
village, Worminghall, which Tolkien used to visit with his family when
they owned a car. There are similarities between the Little |
This humorous story, though on the
surface very different from the tales
of Middle-earth, is characteristic of Tolkien in its themes. The story’s
inspiration is linguistic: it provides a spoof explanation for the name of an actual village east of Oxford, a favorite of
Tolkien’s, called Worminghall, near Thame.
The Little Kingdom has similarities
with The Shire, particularly Farmer Giles’s
sheltered and homely life. He
is like a complacent hobbit, with unexpected
qualities. The humor – with its
mock scholarship – is similar to that in the book of hobbit verses, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, not published until 1962. |
|
¶ 43 |
Duriez,
121-122: |
|
As Tolkien laboured through the weary
years of the Second World War, worrying about his sons Michael and
Christopher, who were serving overseas, and struggling to manage on the
meager rations imposed on Britain, he occasionally found his progress on The Lord of the Rings halted. During
one such hiatus, he wrote an incredibly personal story; unusually, he wrote it as an allegory.
Published in the January 1945 issue of the Dublin Review, “Leaf by Niggle” is the tale of the painter,
Niggle, who must make a journey, and it suggests a link between reality
and artistic endeavour. It also
suggests that even in Heaven there
will be opportunities for the
artist to add a touch to the
created world. Niggle the painter
represents Tolkien the perfectionist, who niggled away at his work,
revising and polishing it to the extent that he was often reluctant to allow it
to be published.
The tale can apply to any artist who procrastinates over work. Once Leaf
by Niggle was written, Tolkien returned to working on The Lord of the Rings, further aided by the encouragement of Lewis. |
Sometimes in the long, weary war years,
progress halted on the writing of The
Lord of the Rings. During one such hiatus an
intensely personal story was born. Uncharacteristically, Tolkien wrote it as an allegory. Leaf
by Niggle was a purgatorial story, perhaps under the influence of Williams’s
fascination with Dante’s Purgatory. Williams’s novel Descent into Hell (1937) had a purgatorial theme, as had Lewis’s The Great Divorce and Williams’s All Hallows Eve, both written in the
war years. Leaf
by Niggle was published in January 1945 in The Dublin Review, but written some time before. Niggle, a little man and artist, knew that
he would one day have to make a Journey.
Many matters got in the way of his painting, such as the demands of
his neighbor, Mr. Parish, who had a lame leg. [Five
intervening paragraphs summarize story of Niggle.] Tolkien’s little story suggests the
link between art and reality. Even in heaven there will be room for the artist to add his or her own touch to the created world. The allegorical components could be
interpreted as follows, much as suggested by Tom Shippey in his
groundbreaking study, The Road to Middle-earth: Niggle’s journey represents
death. Niggle the painter stands for
Tolkien the fastidious writer. The
way he paints leaves rather than trees represents Tolkien’s perfectionism,
and his ability to be easily distracted.
[Thirteen sentences follow on allegorical interpretation.] This pattern of interpretation emphasizes
the autobiographical aspect of the story.
The tale has equal applicability to the artist in general,
however. In particular, there is
poignancy to the unfinished nature of Niggle’s work. This inability turned out to be true of
Tolkien’s own work on “The Silmarillion.”
Yet there was hope for him in recognizing that this is part of the
human condition, brought about by an ancient fall. After completing Leaf by Niggle, Tolkien was able to resume his work on The Lord of the Rings, aided by Lewis’s fervent encouragement. |
|
¶ 44 |
Duriez,
125-126: |
|
There was another hiatus in the writing
of The Lord of the Rings in
1946; the story had stalled at the
end of what would become The
Two Towers. Tolkien used the
pause to begin writing another time-travel story, “The Notion Club Papers,”
which had the following light-hearted
title: Beyond Lewis or Out of the Talkative Planet Being a fragment of an apocryphal Inkings’ saga, Made some by some imitator at some time in the 1980s |
The writing of The Lord of the Rings had temporarily dried up after reaching
the end of what became The Two Towers, the second volume
of the trilogy. He had returned to the
challenge set long before by Lewis of writing a story of time travel, and he
called it The Notion Club Papers. Beyond
Lewis Or Out of the
Talkative Planet Being a
fragment of an apocryphal Inklings’ saga, made by
some imitator at some time in the 1980s. |
|
¶ 45 |
Duriez,
129: |
|
Christopher Tolkien, in Sauron Defeated, suggests that the
story was intended as a mock commentary on Lewis’s work, much as Lewis
himself had produced a mock commentary on The
Lay of Leithian many years earlier.
Unsurprisingly, “The Notion Club Papers,” which used material from the
unfinished story, “The Lost Road,” was never finished, as Tolkien went back
to working on The Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, Tolkien’s reading of
chapters of The Lord of the Rings came to an end in the spring of 1947, when Hugo Dyson
began to veto further readings.
Tolkien was, therefore, obliged to put it aside if Dyson was at a
meeting or meet separately with Lewis (and occasionally his brother Warren,
Charles Williams, or both) to continue the readings. |
It is clear from Tolkien’s Letters that the Inklings provided
valuable and much-needed encouragement as he struggled to compose The Lord of the Rings. This sadly came to an end when, around the spring of 1947, Dyson started exercising a veto against the
reading of further installments (though Tolkien continued to read when
Dyson was absent). |
|
¶ 46 |
Duriez,
139-142: |
|
The
Lord of the Rings was completed by the autumn of 1949, with much of the final writing and
revision being completed whilst Tolkien was staying at the |
As Narnia
came into being, The Lord of the Rings
drew near to its completion, to Tolkien’s great satisfaction. It had proved a long, painstaking task. The
writing and overall revision for internal coherence was completed by the
fall of 1949. Only the extensive
appendices remained. [Five sentences
follow on Tolkien’s recollections of finishing LotR in BBC interview.] Much of the final writing and
revision for consistency was accomplished in the tranquility of the Oratory
School in Berkshire, which had moved from its original location in Publication by George Allen & Unwin
had to be delayed for a number of years for complex reasons. The main reason was Tolkien’s wish to
publish the still unfinished “The Silmarillion”
at the same time. Late in 1949 Tolkien had
sent Milton Waldman at William Collins a large manuscript, much of it
hand-written, of the unfinished work.
In February the next year Waldman expressed an interest in “The
Silmarillion,” but later Collins changed its mind when the full
implications of trying to publish the vast work became clearer. Perhaps the only benefit of this
unfortunate delay was that in 1951 Tolkien wrote a ten-thousand-word letter
to Waldman explaining “The Silmarillion,” a document that is one of the best
keys to the work. Eventually, on June 22, 1952, Tolkien offered The Lord of the Rings unconditionally
to George Allen & Unwin – who were enthusiastic and sent Raynor
Unwin, Stanley Unwin’s son, to [Three
intervening paragraphs on Tolkien’s recordings from LotR and on Lewis’s cover
blurb.] Both
Tolkien and his publisher feared that using Lewis was a risk, especially with
his arcane reference to Ariosto, alluding to his Orlando Furioso, and they were not surprised at the reaction of
some reviewers to the first two volumes.
In a letter to Raynor Unwin on September 9, 1954, Tolkien spoke about
the remarkable animosity, as he saw it, that Lewis excited “in certain
quarters.” Lewis, he said, had warned
him many years before that his support might do Tolkien as much harm as
good. He had not taken this point
until now. However, he told his
publisher, he wished to be associated with Lewis despite any negative
reaction to his endorsement. It was
only because of Lewis’s friendship and support that he struggled to the end
of the labor of writing The Lord of the
Rings. Tolkien remarked that many reviewers had preferred lampooning Lewis’s endorsement or his review in Time and Tide to reading the book. The Lewis review began enthusiastically,
“This book is like lightning from a clear sky.” It was, Lewis added, “the conquest o new
territory.” |
|
¶ 47 |
Duriez,
164, 170: |
|
In
1959, at the age of sixty-seven, Tolkien retired from his university duties. Since he had never given the traditional
inaugural lecture as Merton Chair of English Language and Literature, he
delivered instead a valedictory address on June 5, 1959. In it he mentioned how much he disliked
the separation of language and
literature. Tolkien went back
to working on the “Silmarillion” material, and in the 1960s he was aided by Clyde |
A new phase of his life started with his
retirement in 1959, at the age of
sixty-seven, from his university
duties. He had not given an
inaugural lecture for his Merton Chair.
Instead, on June 5, 1959, he delivered a “Valedictory Address” as the
departing Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. He said, “Philology is the foundation of
humane letters.” Referred to his birth
in [Five
intervening pages.] [Following
seven sentences on Letters to Malcolm: ]
He was more receptive to an anthology of quotations from Lewis’s work,
arranged thematically, sent to him by its compiler, Clyde |
|
¶ 48 |
Duriez,
170-171: |
|
In 1967, Tolkien wrote his last short story published during his lifetime: Smith of Wootton Major.
This short story
traces the relationship between the
primary world and the world of
Faery, and, as a result, complements
Tolkien’s 1939 lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” At
first, Smith of Wootton
Major appears deceptively simple,
but whilst children can enjoy it, it
is not intended as a children’s
story. Tolkien described it as the book of an old man already weighed down
by omens of bereavement. The
story, and Tolkien’s comments, seems to indicate that he expected his imagination to dry up and his ideas to
run out. Smith of Wootton Major, like
Farmer Giles of Ham, has an undefined medieval setting,
and the villages of Wootton Minor and
Major appear to have been transplanted directly from the Shire,
although they are representative of the Oxfordshire and |
Around this time Tolkien wrote his last story published during his life,
Smith of Wootton Major
(1967). This short story complements
his essay “On Fairy Stories” in tracing the
relationship between the world of
Faery and the primary world we
experience. The story seems deceptively simple at first, but, though children can enjoy it, it is not a
children’s story. Tolkien described it as “an old man’s
book, already weighted with the presage of ‘bereavement.’” It was
as if, like Smith in the story of the Elven star, Tolkien expected his imagination to
come to an end; it was a time of self-doubt for him. In a review, Tolkien’s friend and fellow
Inkling, Roger Lancelyn Green, wrote of the small book: “To seek for the
meaning is to cut open the ball in search of its bounce.” Like
Farmer Giles of Ham, the
story has an undefined medieval
setting. The villages of Wootton Major and Minor could have come straight
out of the hobbits’ Shire. [Seven
sentences follow on plot of Smith.] |
|
¶ 49 |
Carpenter,
253, 255, 257: |
|
In 1968, partly in an attempt to escape
the attentions of increasing numbers of fans of The Lord of the Rings and partly to make life easier for Edith,
who was by now suffering from severe arthritis, Tolkien and Edith moved to |
Yet on other days he was distressed that
time was leaking away so fast with the book still unfinished. And at the end of 1971 the [Five intervening
paragraphs on life after Edith.] These two years of Tolkien’s life were
made happy by the honours that were conferred upon him. He received a number of invitations to
visit American universities and receive
doctorates, but he did not feel that he could face the journey. There were also many honours within his
homeland. In June 1973 he visited [Five
intervening paragraphs and one intervening letter.] Three days after writing this letter, on
Tuesday 28 August, he travelled
down to The end was swift. On the Thursday he joined in celebrations
to mark Mrs Tolhurst’s birthday, but he did not feel well and would not eat
much, though he drank a little champagne.
During the night he was in pain, and next morning he was taken to a
private hospital where an acute
bleeding gastric ulcer was diagnosed.
It so happened that Michael was on holiday in Switzerland and
Christopher in France, and neither could have reached his bedside in time,
but John and Priscilla were able to come down to Bournemouth to be with
him. At first reports on his
condition were optimistic, but by Saturday a chest infection had
developed, and early on the Sunday morning, 2 September 1973, he died,
aged eighty-one. |
|
¶ 50 |
Source
unidentified. |
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Whilst it seems likely that Tolkien would
have continued to create his private mythology whether he had moved to Michele Fry |
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[Further Reading and See also lists not copied here.] |
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