[Bêthberry]

Hmmm. Hmmm. Parallels.

All of us as readers bring to texts our own unique reading history, our own knowledge of the world. This is what makes reading an infinitely fertile experience when it is shared.

However, one of the challenges of reading involves understanding how this relationship influences what we read--and what the influence of this precursor knowledge is on the text. The point is not so much simply to discover an antecedent parallel for the text, but to explain how this antecedent/parallel might help us understand the text.

So, when we see 'parallels' we can ask ourselves two things.

First, is there any evidence in the author's writings (letters, essays, the text explicitly itself) which sustains the parallel?

And second, how can we make sense of the parallel? How does it assist us in understanding the text? And how does it operate to create meaning in the text?

In the case of parallels with other mythological texts, with Old English literature, with philology, we can say that the parallels help us understand the nature of Tolkien's story, why it does what it does and why it says what it says, particularly since the 'points of intercession' (the similarities) are so prominent, extensive, and pregnant with new possibilities for understanding Tolkien's work. There is also extensive evidence in Tolkien's writings to suggest that these parallels are significant parts of the entire way in which, say, LOTR works together.

Is there any evidence that Tolkien intended to portray Elizabeth as Galadriel? No, not in his letters that I can recall and certainly not in his very strong rejections of the possibility that he consciously wrote using historical parallels. Authorial intention is not, of course, the sole arbitrator of interpretation, but it remains an important starting place for cautionary warnings about interpreting texts.

With all due respect, I am not sure we can make a similar claim for this kind of parallel with Elizabeth I's life. Does it provide us with any greater way of understanding or knowing Galadriel? I don't think so.

First, she is already a formidable leader and an enigmatic character who escapes our efforts to box her into a tidy interpretation. We don't need to know anything about Elizabeth to appreciate the Lady of Lorien as a leader.

Perhaps the other crucial quality about Galadriel is her relationship with Gimli. Like Sam's relationship with Frodo, it provides another example of the profound importance of human interconnectedness in LOTR, of how human relations are significant and central to the creation of human communities. It is Galadriel's and Gimli's relationship which breaks through to a new understanding between elves and dwarves; without this, Gimli and Legolas might not have come to their friendship.

I fail to see how any parallel with Good Queen Bess extends this. Mighty as Elizabeth was, none of her icons or symbols speak to this matter of feeling connection between people. In fact, Elizabeth might even be taken as a symbol which denies the heart in the human community--and it would be a long, arcane, post-modernist exploration of what is absent to make this a meaningful possibility and I doubt that is what is meant by suggesting the parallel initially.

My apologies for rambling on, but I think one of the topics which could be explored fruitfully on the Downs is just what is involved in reading and making associations between Tolkien's texts and other texts.

Humbly submitted,
Bethberry