New interview with Christopher Tolkien

[Bêthberry]

Thanks for posting the English translation of the interview, davem. I had a link to the French but the type was not clear enough for me with my very rusty French.

I have a few questions about the translation, such as when Sedulia defends the right to call Christropher Tolkien a professor, rather than use his correct title of Lecturer or Fellow. It doesn't do to fall back on "but in America we say" when there is a legitimately meaningful difference. I also wonder why--and this is perhaps in the original--much is made of Christopher Tolkien's "upper class" accent. Is that a point which is supposed to influence our understanding of his position?

It is very good to be reminded that the producers used that despicable line about 'not having shown profits yet' as a way to deny the Estate their legitimate profits. It provides a perspective on why the lawyers are being so assiduous about the rights of the Estate. As I recall, that line has also been used by the producers of Jimi Hendrick's music to deny his heirs any money from his estate. There's a culture of legal nitpicking and entitlement these days that amounts to greed and abuse by those in authority who feel empowered over those who may lack power. I'm glad the Estate won their case. Perhaps if The Scouring of the Shire had not been omitted from the films the producers might have understood the squalour of their position.

I often think of the history of medieval texts when I look at how Middle-earth has fed so many different imaginations. This interest is a tribute to Tolkien's desire to write a story that would interest him, and hopefully interest others. The text invites entry into the world; this could well be a quality that other authors have not pursued. But the effect is also an ironic consequence of something Tolkien himself noted in his essay on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Originally Posted by Tolkien, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"

It ["Sir Gawain"] is one of the masterpieces of fourteenth-century art in England, and of English Literature as a whole. It is one of those greater works which not only bear the trampling of the Schools [Tolkien's capitalisation], endure becoming a text [again, T's italics], indeed (severest test) a set text, but yield more and more under this pressure. For it belongs to that literary kind which has deep roots in the past, deeper even than its author was aware. It is made of tales often told before and elsewhere, and of elements that derive from remote times . . . like Beowulf, or some of Shakespeare's plays, such as King Lear or Hamlet.

I have often wondered if Tolkien was, in part, inspired by this observation of a quality in his favourite stories to attempt to capture it in his stories. Whether that is the case or not is not for this thread to discuss, but another comment from his essay I think can be used to describe the broad use of Middle-earth in so many other genres.

Originally Posted by Tolkien, "Sir Gawain"

His story is not about those old things, but it receives part of its life, its vividness, its tension from them. That is the way with the greater fairy-stories--of which this is one.

How many versions exist of "Little Red Riding Hood"? "Cinderella"? "Goldilocks and Three Bears"? "Sleeping Beauty"? "Hansel and Gretel"? "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves"? "Beauty and the Beast"?

Like Christopher Tolkien, I don't particularly like the movies (although my dislike is milder than his). Yet at the same time I have to wonder if this explosion of versions of Middle-earth isn't in fact a literary phenomenon like the kind seen in medieval stories. It becomes a tribute to Tolkien's writing, both his scholarly and his fictive interests.