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?