Tolkien and Parody

[davem]

Shippey makes the point that in Giles Tolkien is effectively parodying some of the sources he knew well -' the 'Brutus Books' of Sir Gawain, of King Lear, & indeed of the Old King Cole of nursery rhyme, all of which are referred to'. He writes:

Yet entirely in line with the light-heartedness, the story makes a point, & a rather agressive one. In the mock editorial 'Foreword'. a device Tolkien liked, we are told that the story is just like the histories erected on Macaulay's hypothesised Lays, ie not contemporary with the events it records, 'evidently a late compilation', & 'derived not from sober annals, but from the popular lays to which its author frequently refers'.

...the only person in the story who gets things right nearly all the time, besides Giles..., is the Parson of Ham. He is treated with a certain comedy, especially in the first conversation with giles. He insists on seeing the sword presented by the King...He looks carefully at the letters on scabbard & blade, but 'could not make head or tail of them'. He covers up with bluff, of a highly proffessional kind - 'The characters are archaic & the language barbaric'. Nevertheless he gets the answer right in the end: the sword is Caudimordax, or Tailbiter. When it turns out that the dragon has no intention of keeping his word, & though this may have been

'beyond the comprehension of the simple, at the least the parson with his
booklearning might have guessed it. Maybe he did. He was a grammarian, & could doubtless see further into the future than others'

Shippey then points out that in medieval terms 'grammar' was the same as 'glamour' (the ability to change one's shape & decieve observers) & as 'grammarye' (magic)

So, Tolkien is parodying, or satirising, or at least playing with, many old beliefs & even specific old books. Perhaps Old Nokes in Smith is a similar kind of satire on beliefs & attitudes.

Certainly Tolkien could use irony & satire, but he does it cleverly, & his stories work simply as stories in their own right. Most importantly for me, though, is the fact that he is not riding on the backs of other writers, & selling his work by tying it to that of greater writers than himself. Another important point is that the things he is satirising are so obscure barely one reader in a thousand would pick up on the satire if it wasn't pointed out to them by someone in the know. One almost gets the feeling that he would have preferred it if none of his readers got the joke, if it remained private, & he himself was the only one who laughed.

Which makes me wonder how many other 'hidden jokes' run through the rest of his books - something Fordim touched on earlier in reference to the 'hidden' meaning of various names in the books.

I quite like the idea that there may be other books out there, which are blatant parodies of Tolkien's works, but where the author doesn't draw attention to it. Wouldn't that be wonderful - to be reading a book, & have it suddenly 'click' that you were reading a parody of something you know so well?

[Bêthberry]

Quoted by davem

One almost gets the feeling that he would have preferred it if none of his readers got the joke, if it remained private, & he himself was the only one who laughed.

Which makes me wonder how many other 'hidden jokes' run through the rest of his books - something Fordim touched on earlier in reference to the 'hidden' meaning of various names in the books.

I quite like the idea that there may be other books out there, which are blatant parodies of Tolkien's works, but where the author doesn't draw attention to it. Wouldn't that be wonderful - to be reading a book, & have it suddenly 'click' that you were reading a parody of something you know so well?

One of the most astounding 'coup de tonnerre' that I have ever received is to recognise suddenly correspondences and similarities where I have not previously seen them. This 'click' as you name it (do you know a book called Click which Lynn Crosbie edited?) is an incredible feeling--it mixes insight and blindness, both sides of the coin, at once. Often once I see the relationship I marvel that I had not first seen it, but all the more interesting and rewarding is to follow all the clues that I had first missed and to consider what it was that brought this new 'vision' or sound wave my way. This experience is a never ending revelation and marvel to me, the more so because of its subtlety (or what at first appears subtlety. Often afterwards, it is more like 'how could I have missed that').

I can understand this thoroughly as part of a writer's true enjoyment in playing with his audience, that ultimately there is some shared recognition. What I don't understand so well is a writer who would wish this to remain private, and not want anyone else to share it. What might prompt a writer to want to keep such things a private joke at the reader's expense? Would Tolkien have been such a writer?

I suppose part of me wants to think that every writer ultimately wishes for someone somewhere to share the communication with him--or her. "Only connect" Auden said. Perhaps this is an idealistic expectation of authors and I should consider other stances towards audience. Certainly to me this secrecy might fit the great satirists or cynicists. Perhaps I should read Les Liaisons Dangereuse. Or is there something comic in the discrepancy between an author's intention and an audience's understanding?

On the other hand, there might also be writers who wish to engage their readers actively rather than passively and who wish to help readers understand how reading literature, at its best, opens minds to new possibilities and teaches readers how to question basic, unexamined assumptions.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bethberry

This 'click' as you name it (do you know a book calledClick which Lynn Crosbie edited?) is an incredible feeling-

No, but I'll have to look out for it. this expression, that somethign just 'clicks' is a common English expression, & I thought is was common to all English speaking people - though I remember Jung referred to it as an expression the English have.

I suppose what I like about Tolkien's approach in Giles is that he doesn't, unlike the writers of Bored of the Rings & the Soddit, tell you exactly what he's satirising or parodying, so most readers will read Giles just as a story - though the odd references to old Lays might just inspire some of them to investigate further - perhaps he was doing something similar with all his references to other (unpublished) Middle earth texts in LotR.

Of course, it also helps to create the illusion of 'depth' in both Giles & LotR. but the point as far as Giles is concerned, is that the story works on two levels, or for two kinds of readers - the ones who aren't familiar with the old lays & medieval ideas/beliefs. will read it in one way (but miss a lot of the jokes) & the 'ones in the know' will read it in a very different way - just as readers of LotR who don't know the Sil will read that in one way, missing a lot of the references, & those who do know the Sil (& all the other ME writings) will have a different experience, based on what they know of the background material.

Back to Canonicity! So, what we bring to our reading of LotR (or any other book) & the way we interpret it, what it means to us, is not just a matter of the life experiences we bring with us, all the things unconnected to ME, but also on our knowledge of ME itself. I suppose this expands the debate. We can't simply ask what effect our experiences have on our understanding of LotR, we also have to ask what effect our knowledge of the history of ME itself has on the way we read it. So perhaps its a question of 'The book, the books, or the reader'.

Is Giles a 'stand alone' book. or does a complete understanding & appreciation of it depend on a knowledge of the Brutus books, the lays & medieval beliefs generally? And further, how much of an understanding of those books can we have without the other, lost, books which inspired their authors? Yet those books came out of a primarily oral culture (which also applies to Middle earth itself, I suppose - to what extent was the population of ME literatate? What other knowledge did the readers, or hearers, of the Red Book bring with them? Can we read the Red Book in the way a Hobbit would? When Men of the Fourth Age heard the stories of the earlier ages, did they understand them in the way we do, or, because of their wholly different world view & value system, did they understand them differently, & take different things from them?

All the writings refer to something, yet we all (& this also applies, within the Secondary World, to the hearers within that world) have baggage we bring with us. So should we attempt to free ourselves of that baggage, & approach the stories 'objectively'? How can we? Could even Tolkien himself do that? Yet, the thing we're interpreting & experiencing in our own way has an 'objective' existence in a sense - the accounts in the books are the same for all of us.

er... this should probably be in the Canonicity thread.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Another example of Tolkien parodying older stories seems to be contained in the early drafts of the Valar. Aren't they very human, bickering and rivaling beings in the 'Lost Tales', much like the old Greek/Roman pantheon?! I'd have to reread the pertinent passages to give detailed examples, but I vividly remember thinking how different they were from the later Valar when I first read them.

Oh, and concerning Farmer Giles, the line I think is most hilariously parodic is this one:

'So knights are mythical!' said the younger and less experienced dragons. 'We always thought so.'

[Encaitare]

Shippey then points out that in medieval terms 'grammar' was the same as 'glamour' (the ability to change one's shape & decieve observers) & as 'grammarye' (magic)

So, Tolkien is parodying, or satirising, or at least playing with, many old beliefs & even specific old books. Perhaps Old Nokes in Smith is a similar kind of satire on beliefs & attitudes.

How cool! I was not aware of that... clever, clever man, that Tolkien. I wonder what else I'm not getting in "Farmer Giles"... I'll definitely have to reread it!

'So knights are mythical!' said the younger and less experienced dragons. 'We always thought so.'

I love that line!

[davem]

On 'Grammeree'

There is a folksong, The Wife of Usher's Well, about a mother who's three sons had 'died' whille at the 'Foreign School', & who attempts by an invocation of Christ to bring them back to life:

There was a lady at Usher's Well,
And children had she three,
She sent them off to the foreign school,
To learn their grammeree.

O they hadn't been gone but a very short time,
About three weeks & a day,
When death, sweet death came hastening along,
And stole those babes away'

As RJ Stewart points out in The UnderWorld Initiation, in folksong (specifically the type known as 'Magical Ballads'), 'visits to 'Spain', 'Turkey', the 'unco'land, a 'foreign land', often imply the journey to the OtherWorld or UnderWorld'.

In other words, she sends her children into Faerie to learn the 'mysteries', but they die (or get trapped) while there, & she attempts to bring them back into this world, but as the song tells, she fails in the attempt.

So 'grammerians' were believed to know 'secrets' - they were 'wizards' who had arcane knowledge unavailable to others - possibly the reason for the suspicion of 'book learning' among the ignorant.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I've been thinking, not for the first time, about the similarity between parody and the art form which I actively (sub)create, patchwork. The thought came up in this discussion that parody is "easy" to do, since one works with existing material. Well, the same could be said of patchwork, and has, in the past. How silly to cut up a perfectly good fabric and sew the pieces together again! But the art is in the choice of the fabrics and colors, and in the pattern and arrangement of the pieces. Nowadays, antique quilts are prized collector's items, and new quilts and patchworks are recognized as art.

Cannot the same be true of parody? It is in the choice and combination of elements, the quality of writing that goes into a work of parody, that the skill (or lack of the same! ) of its author is shown. A good parody can bring references to highly varying previous works (and other elements) together and make us see them in a new light.

As a matter of fact, I'm discovering that in a completely different type of parody - a classical music parody! (P. D. Q. Bach, for those who are familiar with 'him' ) After hearing the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a sportscast, (two elements that one would never associate with each other!) I'll never hear that piece the same way again! But that is not quite related to our discussion...

If a well-written parody can make me see Tolkien's works in a new and fresh light, isn't it worthwhile?!