Tolkien's Funny Bone

[Aiwendil]

I have to disagree about humor in the Silmarillion. Not that I don't appreciate that there's such a thing as dark humor. I'm a great fan of dark comedies such as Dr. Strangelove or The Trouble with Harry. And I think that even some very grim books and films that are certainly not comedies as such can be seen as comic in their outlook (e.g. Psycho or Full Metal Jacket).

But I don't see the Silmarillion this way. In fact, if you ask me, the Silmarillion is at the opposite extreme - it's an intensely serious work. In fact, it's one of the few works I can think of that is just about utterly devoid of humor.

I think that Kuruharan's re-writing of the Burning of the Ships at Losgar does make a point, but a different one. For, obvious though it may be, it's important that Tolkien did not write it that way. It's easy to see how something like the burning of the ships (or Turin's story, or many other things) could have been written with a very dark sense of irony. One need only imagine the Silmarillion as a Kubrick movie - and I think it would have worked excellently as one. But that's not the way Tolkien chose to approach it. For him (and, I think, for us, insofar as we read the Silmarillion as it actually exists and not as we imagine it might) the Legendarium was a very serious thing, entirely heroic in nature rather than ironic.

Actually, the only bit of humor I can think of in the whole of the Silmarillion material is this bit from the Narn i Chin Hurin:

Then Beleg went out, and led in by the hand the maiden Nellas, who dwelt in the woods, and came never into Menegroth; and she was afraid, both for the great pillared hall and the roof of stone, and for the company of many eyes that watched her. And when Thingol bade her speak, she said: 'Lord, I was sitting in a tree;' but then she faltered in awe of the King, and could say no more.
At that the King smiled, and said: 'Others have done this also, but have felt no need to tell me of it.'

Not Monty Python, perhaps, but it does stand out in such a grim work.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest that Tolkien had no sense of humor. The Hobbit is filled with excellent comedy. So are Giles and Roverandom. And there is a good deal of humor in The Lord of the Rings as well. But it seems to me that Tolkien had two more or less distinct modes of literary thought - the high and the comedic. And though he sometimes combined these (e.g. in TH and LotR), he never synthesised them.