Tolkien Stereotypical

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Loath as I am to answer the arguments of someone who believes himself capable of judging all of an author's works on the basis of a few pages, I feel that Tolkien is at least owed some sort of defence. Sadly, I am ill-equipped provide it, since I am by no means clear what 'typical fantasy' is: if the phrase means run-of-the-mill sword-and-sorcery novels, with fur-clad, sword-wielding barbarian heroes fighting wicked sorcerors for the control of some mystical device, then I would say that these are rather a pale reflection of Tolkien's works, a clumsy attempt to recreate the atmosphere of his writing without any of his skill or depth of thought. However 'fantasy' is not composed of Dragonlance alone: there are fairy-tale creatures in the works of C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll as well. There are invented kingdoms and outlandish races in the writings of Jonathan Swift; John Bunyan uses a series of fantastic locations in his extended allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. I could include Lord Dunsany, Mervyn Peake, Mary Shelley, Homer, Ovid and Virgil, perhaps also Dante Alighieri in the list of authors who used fantastic races or settings to achieve their narrative ends. If these sweeping vistas of style and aim are fantasy then I find it difficult to see how J.R.R. Tolkien can be stereotypical of the concept: so heterogeneous a group would be ill represented by a single man's work.

The fact is that the modern fantasy genre, from books to films to computer games owes its entire existence to Tolkien. The reason for the superficial similarity between his work and that of later authors is that he virtually invented the genre. He is their influence just as the Beowulf poet, the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Geoffrey Chaucer, Elias Lönnrot and the Viking saga poets were his own. The difference is that he took elements of the legends he had read and wrote something that was greater than the sum of a few plundered fragments. He betters his successors in the depth of his world's conception; the internal consistency and sheer level of invention - not just a world, but its languages, alphabets, literature, history and calendars, together with entire races. Elves and Dwarves he lifted from European myth and folklore (the names of all the dwarves in The Hobbit were taken verbatim from a section of the Norse poem Völuspá entitled Dvergatal or 'the Tally of the Dwarves'), but Hobbits and Ents are his own invention. All too many of his emulators merely re-write Tolkien badly and turn out pulp.

This might lead us to a consideration that if Tolkien is childish for using invented races (as he might have admitted to being) then so is most of Dark Age Germanic and Northern mythology as it has been passed down to us. All those Vikings, the author of the Nibelungenlied, the Irish and Welsh bards were all equally puerile and nonsensical. The name Ælfwine is a real Anglo-Saxon name, and it really does mean 'Elf-friend': clearly those ancient Englishmen were also just rather immature and silly. The Hobbits themselves, for it is almost certainly here that the accusation of childishness arises, are essentially an idealised version of the rural English, and they did indeed first appear in a book for children. However, as you are no doubt aware the tone of The Lord of the Rings moves steadily away from the simple rustic world of the Shire quite rapidly, and into deeper currents of legend that owe more to the bleak epics of the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons than any collection of fairy-tales for children, and the Hobbits themselves grow as do the demands placed on them.

On the subject of Fairy-stories, for Tolkien did think a great deal on the subject, he has this to say:

Actually the association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the 'nursery', as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the playroom, primarily because the adults do not want it and do not mind if it is misused. It is not the choice of the children that decides this. Children as a class - except in a common lack of experience they are not one - neither like fairy-stories more, nor understand them better than adults do; and no more than they like many other things

He goes on to say

It is true that in recent times fairy-stories have usually been written or 'adapted' for children. But so may music be, or verse, or novels, or history, or scientific manuals. It is a dangerous process even when it is necessary ... Any one of these things would, if left altogether in the nursery, become gravely impaired ... Fairy stories banished in this way, cut off from a full adult art, would in the end be ruined; indeed in so far as they have been so banished, they have been ruined.

The stories of folklore have been sent to the nursery because they have been deemed unworthy for adult consumption, and have as a result become so. Tolkien made a valiant effort to bring myth and legend back, to take them out of the nursery and the philologist's study and give some sort of new life to them. Perhaps this was childish, but as G.K. Chesterton once said 'The follies of mens' youth are in retrospect glorious when compared to the follies of their old age.' His was at least an heroic folly, and not merely a snide or petty one. I should rather read Tolkien, whose writing I enjoy than something more critically acclaimed that I do not. Perhaps this only serves to highlight my own uncultivated literary tastes, but uncultivated though they may be they are at least my own, based on what I have read rather than on what I have not, and on my own opinions rather than on what I have been told. Let others not share my tastes if they wish; but I'd rather that they didn't belittle them unless they have at least sampled what they profess not to like.

In conclusion I have to admit never to having played any of the modern string of fantasy-based computer games. I am currently surrounded by devotees of Everquest, but it really doesn't appeal to me: I would rather read about people fighting giant spiders than take part in a rather unconvincing computer simulation of it. Were I feeling uncharitable I might say that computer games are really too immature for me to play them, but that would just be silly; wouldn't it?