LotR, an Edwardian Adventure Story?

[Bêthberry]

Well, it seems to me that there is some kind of concensus here that the description of Tolkien's work as Edwardian is flawed.

A good thing, too, as most paradigms are limiting. Also, to see his work in light of the Edwardian values concerning the upper classes would, I think, prompt the tendency to see the elves as members of an aristocratice class that had little interest in other denizens of Middle earth and which was shortly to be swept away by the rising hoards of workers, aka the hobbits and men. Not something that I think Tolkien had in mind.


As for the "Englishness of English art", might I humbly suggest Peter Ackroyd's Albion: The Origin of the English Imagination , particularly for his sense of English spirituality, as opposed to "preaching," to say nothing of themes such as tree and garden, stone, the sea, melancoly, ruins and sublime. I think there is much more Tolkien to be found in these themes than in the minutiae of daily life. To davem's observations about Chaucer's audience, let me add that Chaucer's characterisation of his Wife of Bath, for instance, owes much to medieval stereotypes of the cuckolded husband--literary caricatures rather than any known historical personage.

This is some ways away from Edwardian literature, but perhaps something can be found in Lobdell's theory concerning the relationships of boys and men, an aspect which Tolkien would have found in both his ancient sagas and Edwardian literature.

[JennyHallu]

A good thing, too, as most paradigms are limiting. Also, to see his work in light of the Edwardian values concerning the upper classes would, I think, prompt the tendency to see the elves as members of an aristocratice class that had little interest in other denizens of Middle earth and which was shortly to be swept away by the rising hoards of workers, aka the hobbits and men. Not something that I think Tolkien had in mind.

This is interesting. This isn't at all what Tolkien was trying to show us, but that was the view of Elves he gave Eomer and Gondor before the arrival of Aragorn. And the Elves were shortly to be swept away by the forces of hobbits and men, but not at all in a violent, revolutionary way. Was Tolkien perhaps making fun of this typical literary situation, or seriously discussing the real-life situation with his readers?

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Well, it seems to me that there is some kind of concensus here that the description of Tolkien's work as Edwardian is flawed.

Quite. Flawed but worth discussing, even if the book is not readily available, which is a problem.

Originally Posted by Bb

A good thing, too, as most paradigms are limiting. Also, to see his work in light of the Edwardian values concerning the upper classes would, I think, prompt the tendency to see the elves as members of an aristocratic class that had little interest in other denizens of Middle earth and which was shortly to be swept away by the rising hoards of workers, aka the hobbits and men. Not something that I think Tolkien had in mind.

This would be a misconstruction of what Lobdell had in mind, according to my (perhaps just as flawed) reading. The Elves in LotR would be comparable to the extraordinary that the "we happy few" confront in their travels. The fellowship starts in a familiar, Edwardian locale, which it leaves behind for strange places where the extraordinary is found.

I would have to agree that Englishness as preaching seems a bit narrow, if not downright unfortunate.

This is some ways away from Edwardian literature, but perhaps something can be found in Lobdell's theory concerning the relationships of boys and men, an aspect which Tolkien would have found in both his ancient sagas and Edwardian literature.

Pray might you consider informing us less well informed, as to what you are implying?

Here are a few links for those who care to pursue them: the first is another book by Lobdell, more recent (2005), which appears as if it may be an improvement upon his 'Edwardian adventure story' thesis of 1981.

A note I discovered, which does not surprise me considering some of the things Lobdell says: he is a Barfieldian. Which I am as well. To understand what that means, check out Mythic Unities in LotR.

Finally, here's a little note that serves (at least a little) to 'bio' this Tolkienite/Barfieldian Lobdell.

[Formendacil]

A rather funny side-note to the main discussion occurred to me whilst reading this thread, which I shall forthwith mention. I pray Davem not to take offence...

For Davem it concerns. The thought occurred to me, reading the idea herein that "Preachiness is Englishness" that Davem, one of the most "English" of 'Downers from my point of view, certainly fits this narrow vision of what is English. For, from my point of view, Davem's mode of posting is rather... preachy.

Okay, you may now return to Edwardian England and the Tolkien therein.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

For Davem it concerns. The thought occurred to me, reading the idea herein that "Preachiness is Englishness" that Davem, one of the most "English" of 'Downers from my point of view, certainly fits this narrow vision of what is English. For, from my point of view, Davem's mode of posting is rather... preachy.

As an impartial observer, can I just say that I feel it would be more accurate to describe davem's approach as argumentative, rather than preachy, as he has no interest in converting anybody (& probably if he did 'convert' anybody he'd start arguing with them). He has always come across to me as someone who wanted to get people to think for themselves & not just blindly accept other's opinions. I think he's probably the closeset thing to a modern Socrates one could find.

(He also gets bored easily, & as a result posts a lot of dubious stuff - luckily there's no harm in him

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by lmp

Pray might you consider informing us less well informed, as to what you are implying?

I'm not implying anything, just wondering if Lobdell posits anything about this merry band of brothers who go questing as lads are wont to do. Chariots of Fire had this feel to it as well as the passing of the privileged class. You could think, too, of Sean Connery--ha, ha, the Scot!--and Michael Caine in the movie of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. Perhaps the feel I am getting from your quotations of Lobdell are best expressed by this description I found for the miniseries Brideshead Revisited.

Originally Posted by http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/bridesheadre/bridesheadre.htm

Brideshead Revisited was made by Granada television, scripted by John Mortimer and originally shown on ITV in October 1981. The 11 episode adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel of the same name helped set the tone of a number of subsequent screen presentations of heritage England such as Chariots of Fire (1981), A Jewel in the Crown (1982), A Passage to India (1984), A Room with a View (1986)). These "white flannel" dramas, both on television and on the big screen, represented a yearning for an England that was no more, or never was. Brideshead Revisited opens in England on the eve of the World War II. Charles Ryder (played by Jeremy Irons), the main character and narrator, is presented as a rather incompetent officer in the British Army. He stumbles upon an English country house, which he has visited more than twenty years before. Upon seeing the house, Charles begins to tell the story of his years at Oxford, his meeting Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews) and his love for Julia (Diana Quick). This retrospective narrative is nostalgic in two senses. It is concerned with Charles' nostalgia for his affairs in the interwar period. But it is also concerned with a nostalgia for a time before World War I--a longing for a lost way of life, for an Edwardian England.

I suppose it is just not helpful discussing a book I haven't read.

[littlemanpoet]

Lobdell doesn't say a lot about the "we few, we happy few", but he does say something.

...the adventurers in the Edwardian adventure story are, in general, not solitary. They may indeed be "we few, we happy few," but (if only so that one may tell the story of the others), they are at least two in number -- Holmes and Watson, for example. They are likely to be more than two: indeed, the charateristic Edwardian adventure story is that of Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good, Allan Quatermain, and Ignost, or of G.E. Challenger, Lord John Roxton, Edward Malone, and Professor Summerlee -- the band of (very different) brothers. And the narrative is in the first person, eve if it involves that first person's bringing in parts of the story of which he had no firsthand knowledge. That is, there is a convention that the story should be told by those whose story it is. In general, the narrator is the most ordinary member of the band of adventurers (Allan Quatermain, Edward Malone, John Watson), and the tone of the narration tends to be self-deprecating.

Obviously, there are aspects of this description that clearly do not apply to LotR. However, Lobdell does say:

I find this [by this Lobdell means "Englishmen abroad in the wide and mysterious world ... looking for ... not so much the Holy Grail or the Golden Fleece as ... the wide world itself} this parallels LotR: it does not seem to me that Frodo sets out on a quest much more than Bilbo set out on one in TH. Certainly, Frodo and Bilbo, though they are Hobbits, are Englishmen, and to them the "back again" in the subtitle of TH is as important as the "there".

This second quote does not strictly adhere to the sub-issue of "we happy few", I grant. What it does is show that Lobdell keeps trying to tie LotR back into the Edwardian adventure mode after showing ways in which it clearly departs from it. Nevertheless, I found the book interesting and worth discussing, at least in order to soundly reject much if not all of what Lobdell says.

There is one thing that he said that I found rather persuasive, though I have not given it a great deal of thought:

Tolkien's

mind was chiefly attuned to languages and the past -- which is not, I should emphasize, the same thing as being interested in words and history.

I think Lobdell was onto something with this, and I rather wish that he had proceeded to write a book about that instead of his pet theory about Edwardian adventure stories.

So what do you think? There is a difference between word and language, and between history and the past. It seems that Tolkien used the respective former, in each case to create at least a sense of the respective latter, in the two pairs.

Does this distinction seem important to anybody else? What's there? Curious to learn what others think about this...?

[davem]

Two passages from an essay by Stratford Caldecott 'Tolkien's Elvish England' seem relevant here. The first is from an essay by Chesterton, the second is by Caldecott himself.

It is also in fairy-tales, or in Faerie itself, that our nation, or landscape, our place in the world is made luminous, and revealed to be more than it appears to the mundane consciousness. "Elvish England" is in this sense the only true England, because it is England seen with eyes that reveal the meaning of things, and the meaning of things (as Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy) is simply that they are "magic." They might not have been at all, and the fact that they are as they are is due to an act of will on the part of the Creator. Thus "England" cannot be perceived-we will miss it entirely if we do not view it as an imaginative construction, in other words as a story. And furthermore this is a story we are helping God to write. We are part of the magic. We imagine "England" into existence, and if we cease to believe in it, it will cease to be. The National Census cannot reveal England. It can only truly be seen wrapped in the mists of imagination, in the myths and folklore that tell us what it feels like to belong to this landscape & this tradition.

The essay is in the latest issue of the Chesterton Review. An interesting point Caldecott makes in the context of this thread is that what ended the 'Edwardian' period, in art as in every other way, was the single most formative event in Tolkien's creative (& personal) life: WWI. LotR could not be an 'Edwardian' novel for that reason alone - after WWI there was no real going back...