Tolkien lied!

[Lalwendë]

Some biographical info - in as far as we can know what he thought - his Catholicism was obviously important to him, stemming from his mother's conversion to the faith; his faith was inextricably linked to the love of his mother and grew from there. During the 20s there is plenty of evidence to show that Tolkien's attendance of Mass declined somewhat, and in his writings you can see him struggling to reconcile the effects of war with his faith. This ultimately is what contributes to his fatalistic outlook and maybe to the creation of Eru, who is not always the kindest God! One later influence on him was the shift to Vatican 2 - something I don't know the ins and outs of - but anyway, he did not like it, preferring the old Mass.

We must note that though Tolkien was devout, devout does not necessarily equal evangelistic; to Tolkien his faith was central to his life, but it was not the only thing in his life. He was also thoroughly English and it simply is not done for someone of his class to be overly showy about his faith, especially an Oxford academic. Oxford is home to the High Church, a following in the CofE which uses a lot of catholic ritual; it is solemn and mystic like Roman Catholicism, but like most things in English culture, it is also subtle. It's worth looking up the Oxford Movement to get a sense of the culture in Oxford which remains to this day. Note that Tolkien felt that Lewis's tendency to proselytisation after his conversion had affected his chances of securing the English Chair at Oxford.

Remember as well where we get our quotes from. Tolkien, a Catholic, wrote to a Catholic priest about how his work was 'fundamentally Catholic'. This might be expected. And in writing to a literary scholar, he might say quite the opposite. Even Tolkien said different things to different audiences/correspondents.

Tolkien did not in any way shape or form lie about his work. He was a great writer and a subtle one. He did not approve of the Narnia series with their allegories, even though these are very subtle (and scholars are now bemoaning the fact that Lewis has sadly ended up pigeonholed as in reality, his allegories are much subtler than marketing would have us believe!) so its always worth considering that when considering his own works. If Tolkien didn't like it in the work of Lewis, would he have liked it in his own work?

Finally, does Tolkien say that LotR is a Christian work? Doesn't he say it is a Catholic work? That's a whole different kettle of fish.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Well, Tolkien was human. Humans do lie from time to time.

It is possible that Tolkien had an ulterior motive in stating specifically that it was not allegorical. I don't think he wanted people to go into his work with the thoughts 'I wonder what he was intending to do' or 'what deeper meaning was there here?' As he states in the forward, he just wanted to write a story that people would enjoy reading, and judging by the very existence of this website, I'd say he's had a bit of success in that department.

If he did put some references to Christianity in his work, its possible he wanted them to be more subtle than in, say, Lewis' work. Narnia is so blatantly Christian when compared to The Lord of the Rings that sometimes people forget that Tolkien was actually Christian himself. I just don't think Tolkien wanted to be seen as writing Christian literature because in most cases that would limit his audience. Granted, Narnia is read by none Christians and many can enjoy it without looking into Lewis' motives in writing his tale. I think the same can be said for The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien being Christian would have - one would hope - agreed with the moral teachings of Jesus and the writers of the Bible, it stands to reason then that his work might reflect this.

I think my point is that, if Tolkien did put Christian allegory in his work, it was probably not intended to be a major thing. I personally am satisfied that he wanted to write a story for people to enjoy, the search for deeper meaning is what he didn't want, really.

There is a line in The Screwtape Letters which I think the principal follows. When Screwtape is talking about learned people looking at historical text, he says that they 'look at it's context, which writers inspired it, what was the writers state of mind when writing it [...] the one question they never ask is "Is it true?"'. I think we can apply this to Middle Earth. Not asking , 'is it true?', of course, but 'is it an enjoyable story?'

Perhaps?

Originally Posted by lal

That's a whole different kettle of fish.

I'm sure there are laws against putting fish in kettles.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Hookbill

I think the same can be said for The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien being Christian would have - one would hope - agreed with the moral teachings of Jesus and the writers of the Bible, it stands to reason then that his work might reflect this.

I think my point is that, if Tolkien did put Christian allegory in his work, it was probably not intended to be a major thing. I personally am satisfied that he wanted to write a story for people to enjoy, the search for deeper meaning is what he didn't want, really.

I agree. Most people could not (nor would wish to) avoid writing something which was in basic agreement with their own values. It doesn't mean they have a 'message' though. If you want to compare two writers, one who is subtle and one who has a definite 'message' you couldn't go far wrong with comparing Tolkien and Pullman; the former tells a story (which Pullman in fact denounces for having no 'message') the latter adds obvious lessons to his story. But the key is what you say, Hookbill, that to try and pin Tolkien's work down instantly limits its appeal.

I think there some interesting Catholic ideas to be found in Tolkien's work though that nobody has ever touched on yet...

Originally Posted by Hookbill

I'm sure there are laws against putting fish in kettles.

Someone wants to tell that Rick Stein then...

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Let's not forget in all of this that presumably the letter to Milton Waldman concerns the Silmarillion, whereas his statements about "a fundamentally Catholic work" refer to LR. I don't know which of the letters we're talking about here, since my copy of the Sil doesn't include it, but surely just because Tolkien thought that LR was strongly influenced by Catholicism doesn't mean that the Silmarillion (which was never completed) must necessarily admit the same interpretation.

I think that the comments above about not wanting to be pigeonholed and not wanting to push readers into particular beliefs are spot on. Something can be 'fundamentally Catholic' without transmitting a fundamentally Catholic message; the Catholicism might be buried deep in the foundations, underpinning the work's moral structure but not intended to guide the reader in any particular direction, without intending to deliver a fundamentally Catholic message.

When it comes to allegory it's worth considering what an allegory is: the portrayal of one thing in the guise of another. Where an allegory is clearly intended, such as in Tolkien's tower analogy or, for example, Animal Farm, there is always a direct and consistent correlation between the real world and the allegorical portrayal. Tolkien wanted to scotch the idea that LR contains any such thing and it doesn't. No allegorical interpretation can be applied consistently to the narrative, just as no one message can be derived from it. When Tolkien spoke of applicability he meant just that: people might apply events in the book to real life and thereby inform their decisions. The two work in entirely opposing directions: with allegory the events come first and the writer comments on them; with applicability, the writing comes first and then is applied to the events as they occur. The fact that anyone can find almost any message in LR is a result of the supreme applicability of its themes, particularly those relating to conduct and morality. The danger arises when someone thinks that because a theme seems so strong and so right it must be the overall point of the work. In every case I've seen it isn't, and that's what Tolkien meant.

Whilst you might see this in LR, the Silmarillion is much more complicated and heterogeneous a work, and any statements about its influences would have to take account of the whole span of its development and each influence at each stage thereof. The idea that it has any consistent theme other than the struggles of the Noldor and Edain seems to be reaching too far. Perhaps that is what Tolkien intended, but then again the letter in question may have been one of those in which Tolkein talks about LR, in which case the Sil is not pertinent. The fact that Tolkien intended to publish both works together should not be taken as a statement that the two expound upon common themes: for Tolkien, the Silmarillion forms a backdrop to LR, and the two are more valuable when taken together, but they are not parts of the same work.

What I suppose I mean is that Tolkien could, entirely truthfully, claim one influence or intention for one part of his work whilst still denying it for another. Again he was not immune to the human trait of wanting to please his correspondants, so of course he would play up its religious aspects to the religious or its philological aspects to academics. That means neither that any one statement of his can be taken to define an entire work nor that none of his statements can be trusted. The danger is that someone will latch on to one thing that Tolkien said and think that it is some sort of magic key for unlocking the Middle-earth Code. We all want to think that we are privy to something that only we and the author understand, but usually either everyone else knows about it too or it turns out to exist only in one person's head. A classic example of this was the member of another forum who claimed to have found the Entwives, and made several cryptic statements about it, statements so cryptic as to be meaningless. Nobody has found the Entwives and nobody will find them, because Tolkien hadn't hidden them. Now, he may contradict himself about that subject, as he often does about a number of things, but people contradict themselves all the time and I have no doubt that he always believed what he was saying when he said it. When two statements from Tolkien disagree, I tend to start by seeing which of them fits most closely with observable trends in his wider body of work. After that you get into the murk of canonicity discussion, which has always bored me rigid. I'm not a great fan of angels on pin-heads.

I've rambled across a lot of ground here, but hopefully I've managed to pull this into some semblance of order. I suppose my point is that Tolkien didn't lie to his correspondants: he just didn't expect his letters to enter the public domain, and so made unguarded statements in them that he wouldn't have made in a preface. We need to be careful with them, but we shouldn't cease to trust them. In many cases they both turn out to be true in a way, and we just need to apply a little subtlety in our understanding of them.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Squatter can perhaps find the relevant letter for me, but somewhere Tolkien did explain that LotR was not "intended" as a Christian work when he first wrote it, but that it became a consciously Catholic work in the process of revision....I think that might be the full comment from the letter already cited....get to it Squatter!

So no, of course he didn't lie, he simply meant that the work cannot be read "only" or "solely" as Christian. Simply that for him, as he revised it, it became a work which reflected his own Catholic view of the world.

EDIT: Ignore this post. Just read the following by Celuien.

[Celuien]

Perhaps there doesn't need to be a contradiction at all...

Originally Posted by Preface to The Silmarillion

I was grieved from early days by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found, (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands...Of course these was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.

For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me to be fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.

I think that Tolkien made it abundantly clear that he was not writing a story that was meant to be an allegory or representation of Christianity. But in the same letter, he has also said that all art contains elements of moral and religious truth. For Tolkien, I have no doubt that this means that his work reflects his own moral and religious beliefs. Hence, it is also perfectly truthful for him to say that...

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously so in the revision.

...because the moral underpinnings of the work come (obviously) from its author, who was Catholic.

But does that mean that the intention for writing the story was to convey Christian themes (which would be my definition of a 'Christian work', based on Tolkien's reference to Arthurian legend)? No. It means only that Tolkien's beliefs probably shine through as the basis for the "elements of moral and religious truth" in his writing. As do his many other influences that went into his writing; including northern myth and legend, philology, and a dislike of allegory.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Most people could not (nor would wish to) avoid writing something which was in basic agreement with their own values. It doesn't mean they have a 'message' though.

Exactly. Can anyone imaging trying to separate themselves from their work? 'Twould feel most unnatural, and I think the results would be less than satisfactory. But, again, having one's worldview expressed through one's work is not the same thing as creating a work with the intent to give a 'message.'

If it weren't presumptuous, I could give an example with something that I wrote not too long ago, but I'm far from comparing the process of my idle scribblings to the process behind Tolkien's work. So I won't.

Conclusion: Tolkien didn't lie about anything. No hidden motives. There are just many facets to a highly complex work and the man behind it.

[Child of the 7th Age]

I wanted to take a look at this letter, and I think I've tracked it down. It appears in the second edition of Silm but not the first. It also appears in the published Letters if anyone wants to look at it there. It's a 10,000 word monstor written in 1951 to try and get the Collins publishing house to hurry up on their promise to publish both the Silm and LotR together . This is a well known letter. It's where Tolkien says that he once thought to write some tales in great detail while leaving others as fragments in order to encourage minds wielding paint, and music and drama to come in and complete the outline. (This line is much loved by RPG and fanfiction writers!)

After looking over this letter, I've come to the conclusion that Tolkien is not a liar. He actually means what he says. The most substantive reference to Christianity is in this context: Tolkien was bemoaning the fact that his own country had no truly "English" myth and that he had hoped to be the one to remedy that deficiency by drafting a "body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogenic, to the level of the romantic fairy story". He argues that the Arthurian legend did not provide an adequate English mythology for a number of reasons:

Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britian but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. . for one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent, and repetitive. For another and more important thing, it is involved in and explicitly contains the Christian religion.... for reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy story must, as with all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error) but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary "real" world. ( I am speaking of course of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my essay, which you read."

The italics are mine. And what "essay" is he referring to in the last sentence?
Is this the passage you meant, Morm???

If this is it, then I think Tolkien's words are a coherent part of a particular argument that he is making throughout the entire letter and not just a knee jerk reaction and possible cover-up of some hidden Christian "agenda". (I am saying this in jest, of course!) Just look later in the letter and you'll see what I mean. Tolkien explicitly refers to his story of Creation. He acknowleges that there is "a fall: a fall of Angels, we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of the Christian myth." Then he goes on to point out that all myths and legends are connected. Certain symbols and truths must invariably reappear, whether or not we are talking in a Christian or some other context:

These tales are 'new', they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of "truth" and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear. There cannot be any "story" without a fall--all stories are ultimately about the fall--at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.

Tolkien is distancing himself from an explicitly Christian interpretation in this letter, but he is doing it for a particular reason. He is doing it because his stories will not operate on that level--instead they will reflect the more universal symbols and images that are the heart of all myth, whether Christian or not.

Just an aside, but I don't think Tolkien is referring only to Silm in these passages. The whole point of his letter is to show the publisher that Silm and LotR are a complete whole that must be published together. His statements apply to the entire Legendarium. If he felt that it was "fatal" to include Christian elements in the Silm, it would be equally fatal to include them in Lord of the Rings.

I've been all over the boards on this issue. At different points, I've seen more or less Christianity in the Legendarium. At this juncture I am personally convinced that there is no explicit Christianity in the early Legendarium, just as Tolkien implies in this letter. The reason we have so many interpretive problems with this is that later on the author changed his mind on this and a number of related things. When he speaks of the Christian elements in LotR, it is always in terms of "revisions" and not the original draft. (that was the other letter that Fordim refers to above. I don't have the citation but will try to dig it up.

Long ago I said to Littlemanpoet that I'd love to see someone go through HoMe and all the archival material and pinpoint exactly when this change occurred. (I was actually hoping he would do it for me. ) This change was undoubtedly gradual: certain revisions even before 1951, more later on. It almost seems as if Tolkien wantsed to erase some of the faerie elements and spirit and substitute history instead. There must be ways to determine this chronologically. To the best of my knowledge, no one has done such a study. I just do not see Christianity in the early Legendarium--the whole mood of pessimism and fate seems very different than a Christian world. Even Shippey said that one of the reasons Tolkien wrote LotR was to explore how and why good men perservered when they were struggling in a pre-revelation world. There is also no doubt when I read the Athrabeth that something has definitely changed. If Christianity isn't coming through the front door, it's at least slipping in the back!

I would love to know more about why this happened. Is it just a middle aged/older man coming closer to his doom and dwelling on questions of ultimate fate? Was it the slow realization that the world was not going to heal despite the fact that two world wars had been fought? I don't know. I just know that somewhere along the road Tolkien changed his mind. Perhaps first there was a revision here and there (certainly pre 1951) or a letter referring to Christian symbolism. In subsequent years Tolkien's whole image of the Legendarium shifted. No longer were the Elves the center of attention. Explicit references were made to Eru taking on a man's form and coming into the world. This is so, so far away from the distant Eru that we began with. So Tolkien isn't a liar, but he was notorious about changing his mind. Kilby called it "contrasistency"

Can anybody figure out this particular change that led from elf to man and from universal myth to hints of explicit Catholic doctrine?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

Long ago I said to Littlemanpoet that I'd love to see someone go through HoMe and all the archival material and pinpoint exactly when this change occurred.

I'll bet you a large acorn squash that it came about the moment Trotter was replaced by Strider in the early drafts of LotR. The instant the tall, grim Man came to lead the hobbits on their journey in place of the faintly humourous hobbit marks the moment in which all the more "dark and serious matters" enter into the tale. Frodo's ring becomes for the first time the Ring, and this Hobbit sequel is suddenly connected to the vast material Tolkien had developed for what we now call the Silmarillion.

As to why this happened...Tolkien himself could never say. My personal favourite letter is the one in which he recalls his own surprise and curiousity when this Strider fellow turned up unexpectedly at the Prancing Pony. Who is he? Why is he so grim? What is his connection to Frodo's ring? Why has Gandalf appointed him as their guardian and guide? Answering these questions is what led Tolkien to write the story that he did (it also added about 10 years to the time he thought it would take him to finish writing it!).

[Child of the 7th Age]

Fordim,

And there's another letter even eerier than that one....the draft for Carole Batten-Phelps in 1971.

This is the story where Tolkien was visited by a famous MP who had been "struck by the curious way in which many old pictures seemed to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time". Tolkien politely declined knowing these pictures at which point this happened:

When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before and was not well acquainted with pictorial Art, he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly he said, "Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?"

Poor Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with G to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said, "No, I don't suppose so any longer." I have never been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old philologist to draw concerning his private amusement. But not one that should puff any one up who considers the imperfections of "chosen instruments", and indeed what sometimes see their lamentable unfitness for their purpose.

The words "Christian" and "Christianity" never appear in this quote. Yet it's hard to read this and not get the feeling that Tolkien is no longer talking about Eru--he is talking about God and his own relationship with him, and God's use of his talents. We've come a ways from the earliest days of the Legendarium when Tolkien and his friends spoke mainly in terms of moral regeneration of the English. This is setting things on a whole different plane. I would love to know how and when this occurred. I do think it's why we can argue endlessly about whether the Legendarium has any explicit Christian or Catholic elements. It seems to me that what we start out with --the emphasis on universal myth--is a lot different than where we finally end up. Some people love this shift, while others including Christopher Tolkien are not especially happy with it.

That leaves another question unsolved. Were Tolkien's "revisions" (and I mean revisions in the widest sense involving everything from symbolic references to Mary or the host and essays like the Finrod/Andreth debate) so drastic that they completely changed the nature of the Legendarium by making it more Christian and geared to men? Or were these just surface gloss with the basic story and its emphasis on elves and universal myth still lying intact at the heart of things?