England's Mythology?

[narfforc]

Having a great love of all things mythological, I see many different themes within Tolkiens world. If we equate thus:

The Elves=Celtic ie Tuatha de Dannan/ CuCulainn
The Rohirrim=Anglo-Saxon/Norse/Tales from the Meadhall
The Gondorians=Norman/Ordered and Feudalistic.

I think that Tolkien melded all these differing themes quite well with the religious story of Good opposed to Evil. That story is one that is in most, if not all myth/religions. The problem of regionalisation is one of history, as Lalwende points out, how many parts of England are wholly English. Taking aside our Celtic cousins, in how many places would Arthur be hero or villain, remembering that he was a Briton and not an Anglo-Saxon. We are still a diverse people, listen to how many accents there are in such a small place. I dont think Tolkien could have wrote his English Myth Cycle and pleased as many people as he has done by what is basically a British Myth Cycle. In the LotR we get all of the above, and it doesn't matter how many generations have gone by here, or in our old colonies, we still dream and love tales of the old days, when Odin walked the Earth.

[davem]

I think its clear that Tolkien felt a need to tie his mythology into the modern world - hence the Translator conceit - that these stories have come down to us from ancient times & are not Tolkien's own 'invention'. Hence the original of the Legendarium stories is the Red Book.

Right from the beginning transmission is an essential element in the mythology - so it is as much history as myth. The first link in the chain is Eriol/Aelfwine, an Anglo-Saxon. In one of the latest developments we have the Notion Club Papers. The interesting thing there is the change from transmission via a book to transmission via dream & vision. The Legendarium comes down to modern Englishmen not simply through a book but through their very DNA. They are connected with the living past through their dreams & visions.

Of course, what's important here is not that it is Englishmen per se who have this connection with the mythic-historical Legendarium, but that the past is alive in modern men (cf Merry's dream in the Barrow of being slain by the Men of Carn Dum). The past is not a series of 'dead' events, but is in some way still 'happening' in some eternal 'now'.

Yet, the attempt to tie the Legendarium into England & its inhabitants is still there. It is not that he is attempting to re-create a 'lost' mythology - though he does take the fragments of Northern lore/myth/legend & attempt to explain them or account for them - why are there references in the Eddas to 'Light' & 'Dark' Elves, what is the difference, why are they different? Tolkien 'invents' the idea of the Calaquendi & the Moriquendi in response to this puzzle (see Shippey's essay in Tolkien Studies vol 1).

So, Tolkien believes there was once a more or less coherent Northern mythology, one which he sets out to 'reconstruct' (as he does with language itself in his professional life). Language, words, names are 'living' things - they evolve, & it is possible to work backwards & find their earlier forms, meanings & references.

There was once another way of explaining the world, a mythological account. It survives in words & names of course, but it also lives on in the minds, the blood, the DNA of our cells.

So, was he attempting to give us England's 'lost' mythology? I think he was - in a way: he wanted to explain the aspects of myth & legend that survived & fit them into a coherent, overarching myth (or worldview).

The question is whether there ever was such a single, coherent worldview, or whether there were actually lots of diferent, competing, myths, bits of all of which survived. Language itself perhaps provides a possible answer. Most modern languages can be traced back to a single Indo-European original. Did Tolkien believe the speakers of that language had a single mythology which, as the language itself fragmented, followed that fragmentation. Work back to the original language & find the original myth - how come, for instance, so many cultures have stories of races equivalent to Elves (Naiads, Dryads, Sidhe, Alfar, etc).

In Tolkien's Legendarium we are still linked through time to that mythic past, & that link is passed on through language (both written & spoken) & inherited in our genetic makeup. 'Blood' is central, not in the way it was misused by the Nazis, but in that it is like a 'river' which carries, transmits, the living past down to the present.

It seems that Tolkien wanted to emphasise the central importance of the past in the present, that we moderns are not a new, seperate, thing, but rather part of a story stretching from a lost mythic past & on beyond us into an unknown future.

So I'd say the Legendarium both is, & is not, a 'mythology for England'.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

So I'd say the Legendarium both is, & is not, a 'mythology for England'.

Originally Posted by narfforc

In the LotR we get all of the above, and it doesn't matter how many generations have gone by here, or in our old colonies, we still dream and love tales of the old days, when Odin walked the Earth.

Originally Posted by lindil

Of course in everybody, how we absorb, understand and live out our myths is different, but to me M-E IS the 'real' mythological history for me...

It's clear that Tolkien's work awakened something within many people, or perhaps even reawakened what was already there. What interests me is that his story is his own, his own 'take' on the myths which already existed. Any references to England's existing myths are altered and presented in a very different way. If we wanted to read those myths and folktales, Tolkien would be the wrong place to go to for them (Elves and Hobbits are very different to witches and boggarts), but it would be the right place to start. Maybe we wouldn't start at all until we had read Tolkien.

It interests me that he may have written his story as a way of making us aware of the 'truth', much in the same way that Lewis wrote Narnia to make young readers 'aware' of the Christian story.

Does Tolkien's work gather together myth and folklore and present it in a new way? And for what reason?

Is what he did a new mythology, based on the old tales, but developing something new and remarkable out of them?

[Gothmog]

I will, on Lalwendë's recommendation post the following extract from a PM I wrote earlier today:

In one of the notes in BoLT, CT mentions a connection between Elfwine (=later Eärendil, right?) and the legend of Hengest and Horsa. Now, according to the mixture of history and myth that this story concerns, they were two Anglosaxan brothers that came to England to aid the celtic king Vortigern (Wyrtgeorn) against the Picts. Later they attacked their employee and began the Anglosaxan conquering of Britain. (You probably knew all this but anyway...)

Wouldn't this suggest that Tolkien begins his story in the earliest Anglosaxan-English time? With the inspiration of Celtic and other cultures, but with a foundation in Anglosaxan history?

I don't know enough of the English mythology/history to make any real conclusions from this, but I would be happy if anyone with more knowledge would comment on this. Is the Anglosaxan history important for the basis of the ME-history or was it just a stepstone that Tolkien used to get his own mythology/history on it's way to every Englishmen's heart?

Lalwendë:

It interests me that he may have written his story as a way of making us aware of the 'truth', much in the same way that Lewis wrote Narnia to make young readers 'aware' of the Christian story.

I don't know what you mean by the "truth", but it's obvious that Tolkien has inspired a lot of people to read more about the old English history and the language itself. The recent Public Researches concerning "Fields of Study" proves that many of the BD:ers have studied both literature, the English language and history more than they would have if the works of Tolkien didn't exist. Apparently it makes people think and the curious mind want to know more about the things that created the foundation for this wonderful world. So if that is what you mean by the "truth", then yes. It has inspired readers to learn more about the old myths. I'm one of those, but unfortunately I haven't given myself the time to study these things more careful.

Personally, I don't think that many people actually thought Tolkien's world to be the truth about England's history. But it made people think, didn't it? Maybe that was the point of everything? Not to make people believe in the Tolkien-mythology, but to make people interested in their own history and myths. Maybe it was supposed to make people of English inheritance think about their past and create their own personal view of their origin? A way of activating peoples fantasy and interest? I know it worked that way for me, even if I'm not English. I feel, as Scandinavian, that this story concerns me too, and that I want to be a part of it. Maybe that's what it was supposed to be, a source of inspiration rather than a complete answer to every question regarding English history. If it was, it's a success...

P.S. I hope I will learn more about English Mythology and History in this thread. Don't make me disappointed

[Aiwendil]

Elfwine (=later Eärendil, right?)

An interesting idea, Gothmog, about a connection between Aelfwine and Earendil. I do think that the two figures are rather related in some ways. However, I also must point out that "Earendil" is not equivalent to "Aelfwine" (the Quenya translation of which would be "Elendil").

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Gothmog

I don't know what you mean by the "truth",

The 'truth' that there was so much more to England's hstory and culture than that which came after 1066. Tolkien, like so many people of his class and age, was educated in the public/grammar school tradition of a 'good classical education'. Lots of Latin and Greek, Homer, Virgil and the mythology of the South. I went to an ordinary school and even there any focus on mythology was from the Classical world.

Tolkien instead took his inspiration from the tradition which grew up in the Victorian period, leading from the pre-raphaelites through William Morris and on - an interest in the 'Gothic' and the Northern. England's history and culture before 1066 was predominantly Northern. Even during the Roman occupation British culture remained strong, so much so that that culture is called Romano-British; many of the villas discovered from that time will have been owned by British people who prospered under the Roman occupation.

England is filled with the marks of its past culture, Stonehenge, Avebury, the Cerne Abbas Giant, Silbury Hill - even in the city I live in there are prehistoric remains in one of the woods, and I'm only 30 minutes drive from two major megalithic stone circles, Sherwood Forest, Mam Tor, Odin's Mine and Lughnasadh's Hill, among other things. Most of these places also have stories attached to them, tales of faeries, giants and druids. I think Tolkien hoped to reawaken awareness of this, and for me he certainly did, as it was only after reading his work that I 'discovered' that the seemingly created magic of Middle-earth was actually all around me in the real landscape.

What I'd like to know is if Tolkien really did capture this magic, or if he altered it into something else entirely? In a sense, I think he did recreate some of that magic, but in another sense, he ommitted some of it. His work points the way towards the 'truth', but doesn't tell the whole story.

[davem]

Tolkien clearly couldn't present us with our Pagan myths in their pure form. If his was not a Christian mythology it couldn't deny the Christian worldview. So things get left out or adapted to fit. A 'dubious' figure like Odin gets split, his positive aspects coming out in Gandalf & Manwe, his negative ones in Sauron & Saruman, Ravens make an appearance in TH, but are omitted from LotR - they have too many & too powerful Pagann connotations.

Like Lewis, Tolkien was happy to present us with Pagan things, but only if they were sufficiently Christianised as to make them safe. As Flieger stated in regards to Tolkien's ambivalent attitude to Faerie http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...&postcount=197 (he was both attracted to it & could see the danger in it), Tolkien's relationship to his sources was complex.

[Lalaith]

Fascinating discussion.
Apologies that my own thoughts are not as well-ordered as many on here, but here are some scraps of thought.

I think the lack that Tolkien felt, which drove him to create his own world of myth, can be found in that word he uses, "majestic." The mythology I think of as typically English may be fascinating but it has a certain unsophisticated and rustic atmosphere: Robin Goodfellow, hobbyhorses, welldressing, The Green Man, Robin Hood, and so on. Perhaps it has become that way because it has survived in the hands, as Lalwende says, of the uneducated, or perhaps it was always like that.

Is there a case to argue that the Lord of the Rings starts out in this kind of "English" environment - not just the Shire itself, but most of the ghouls and creatures that the hobbits meet before they get to Rivendell - trolls (of stone), barrow-wights, Tom Bombadil, Old Man Willow - all "fit in" with the bucolic unsophisticated character of English folklore? There are hints of grandeur, both good and bad (Aragorn's stories of the First Age, the Nazgul) but it is only as they approach Rivendell and travel beyond it that this grandeur becomes actuality - Moria, Lorien. A parallel with Tolkien's own journey from English traditions to a grander personal mythology? Or, as davem suggests, a search back to an Indo-European-type ur-mythology?

The other English tradition, the Arthurian mythical cycle certainly has more of the grandeur and majesty that Tolkien was seeking, but perhaps he felt it was too Frenchified?
Another thought. I don't really know the Kalevala, but I do know the Norse mythical epic tradition. It has majesty of sorts, probably more so than English myths, but it is very grim and dark, I certainly wouldn't call it "fair and elusive". And it has just struck me that Tolkien chose to eschew almost completely in his own work one of its defining features, that of blood vengeance. (In the same way that he chose to eschew a vital part, as Lalwende points out, of the English tradition, ie crime and sex...)
And another...

The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama

Very interesting. I wonder if Tolkien felt this ever happened? I always thought that the musical equivalent of Tolkien was Vaughan Williams, myself...