[davem]

Originally Posted by Child

For example, you cite Shippey's study (don't think I saw this -- where is it?) in which he shows how English characters are psychically linked to the past vis a vis the Lost Road and The Notion Club papers as an instance of Tolkien trying to link things to an actual past.

It wasn't Shippey, it was Verlyn Flieger. The essay is 'Do the Atlantis story & abandon Eriol Saga' in vol 1 of Tolkien Studies (just published). Her thesis is that Tolkien was experimenting with the idea of linking the past to the present by having a pair of characters, in some form of 'father/son' relationship, linking back through time, through known history, & back through mythic pre-history to Middle earth. The Eriol saga depended on written transmission of the mythic past via the Golden Book, whereas in the time travel stories the link is psychic, passing downd through some kind of dna/reincarnatory transmission - a point I tried to introduce into the discussion on the Fog on the Barrow Downs chapter, where Merry awakens with intense memories of being killed by the men of Carn Dum. So, the past is in a sense inherited, providing a living connection with what had been. The past is accessible through dream & memory to English people - perhaps explainin g Tolkien's own sense of not having created the mythology, but rather 'discovered' it.

I have to say that this idea of the effect of WW2 on Tolkien was inspired, as I mentioned in the Barrow Downs chapter which first sparked off my PM debate with Aiwendil, is an essay in Tolkien the Medievalist by Christine Chism: Middle earth, the Middle Ages, & the Aryan Nation: Myth & History in WWII.

The Lord of the Rings is a tale of the renunciation of mythology & the willed return to history. The Ring - that wierdly empty, wierdly powerful object around which the narrative assembles itself - interrogates the imaginative capacity for world creation itself. Middle earth unfolds, grows more intricate, more peopled, more culturally diverse, more deep as we wander through it, but it blooms forth only in the shadow of its own imminent destruction. The loss of the Ring consignes Middle earth to the joys & depridations of history - & this consignment to history is costly. It is no accident that the loss of the Ring maims Frodo forever & disenchants Middle earth - it is also, possibly, no accident that the Lord of the Rings is the last long narrative that the author completed. And, finally, I argue, it is no accident that teh writing of this renunciatory narrative occuoies dark night after dark night, during a time when Germany was mobilising & recasting heroic "'Germanic' ideals" to articulate & impose its own terrifying new world.

(She goes on to note)
However, I think that Tolkien's construction of Englishness in his characterisation of the Shire is to be distinguished from Hitler's Nordic nationalism, chiefly by its self-positioning as always already tiny, precarious & half lost. It emerges in teh shadow of a destruction so inexorable that nothing could recover it - neither a triumphant political, cultural, & military nationalist program (which would destroy it further as Saruman shows) nor a past-sanctifying politics of heritage. The Red Book that Frodo bequeaths to Sam ends in blank pages open to subsequent narration. We are continually reminded that the Shire is a part of Middle earth & that the parochialism of Hobbits is both delusory & idiotic. An open-bordered country, an open-ended history book, & a need to open the minds of parochail inhabitants to the larger world they inhabit - all offer interesting resistances to traditional nationalisms.

Christine Chism

In letter 234 Tolkien writes:

I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture & disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor & the Ring & present us with the practical problems of hinest men of good will broken down into apostates & traitors.

I do take on board Fordim's points

Originally Posted by Fordim

The War to End Wars, the dawning recognition among Englishmen of the essentially totalitarian and despotic nature of their Empire, the breakdown of communal faith, class revolution and consciousness, mechanisation, industrialisation, urbanisation – all of these stresses had been operative for a long time, and resulted in what we now rather inaccurately call the Modernist Crisis.

Yet, as I said, Tolkien's desire to create a mythology for England grew out of this situation, & was Tolkien's attempt to provide a 'cure' for it. His 'mythology' was to be the antidote to all those things, & would help to make England once more what (he believed) it had been. Thirty years later, its simply a long story with, 'in the intention of the author' 'no inner meaning or message. It is neither allegorical nor topical. So, out of the horrors of WW1 Tolkien arises inspired to change the world (or at least his own small part of it. Out of the horrors of WW2 he arises 'inspired' by a very different desire:

The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, & at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.

So something had happened. And we're left with three possibilities - One: it was simply a matter of Tolkien growing older, & renouncing the ambitions held by his younger self as simply 'youthful folly'. Two: it was the rise of Nazism & the horror & destruction it produced. Three: it was a combination of both those options. I lean to option two, if pushed, but I don't reject out of hand option three. Option one simply doesn't work for me.

Again

Originally Posted by Child

I don't think Tolkien ever totally gave up the "dream" of myth creation, even if the Nazi experience might have made him more cautious about the possible end results. To me, myth still lies at the heart of the Silm.

I agree, but the issue is what he intended that myth to do, what effect he intended it to have. Initially he intended it to change England & the English, & he wanted it to do that from the last days of WW1 when he began The Book of Lost Tales. By the time he had completed LotR he no longer wanted it to do that (if we can believe what he tells us in the Foreword to LotR). Its not a question of whether he ever gave up myth creation, which he never did, its about what he was creating the myth for, what he wanted it to do, & why his desire changed between beginning BoLT & completing LotR.

I think what's needed is a sequel to Tolkien & the Great War: Tolkien & the Second World War. John Garth is suppposed to be attending Oxonmoot again this year (he was there last year reading excerpts from his book) - I may suggest it to him if I get a chance.