tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/j-r-r-tolkien-48152/articles
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Conversation
2023-11-21T16:54:45Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/218148
2023-11-21T16:54:45Z
2023-11-21T16:54:45Z
Italy’s far-right claim The Lord of the Rings – but they’ve misread Tolkien’s message
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560365/original/file-20231120-27-v478qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=125%2C116%2C5865%2C3871&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Region of Mordor on the map of Middle-earth.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/region-mordor-on-map-middleearth-2307612455">Erman Gunes/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Italian prime minister <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giorgia-Meloni">Giorgia Meloni</a> and I have precious little in common. But one important thing we share is The Lord of the Rings. Both she and I regard the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy as a personal “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/16/tolkiens-biggest-fan-italys-giorgia-meloni-opens-new-exhibit/">sacred text</a>” which has profoundly shaped our values and our political commitments. </p>
<p>Speaking as a queer, leftist theologian, however, the tricky thing about sacred texts is this: when you come to them searching for echoes of your own beliefs, with a little digging <a href="https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/43275654/a-new-teaching-with-authority-pacific-school-of-religion">you can usually find something</a>. </p>
<p>The fact that the leader of a far-right political party and I can both come to The Lord of the Rings and find sustenance for our imaginations suggests one of two things. Either Middle-earth is wide and wild enough to admit multiple interpretations, or one of us is reading it wrong.</p>
<p>Conservative Tolkien scholars have frequently claimed the latter. As Joseph Pearce writes in his foreword to Bradley Birzer’s book <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/J_R_R_Tolkien_s_Sanctifying_Myth.html?id=TyKDAwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth</a> (2003), it is “not merely erroneous but patently perverse to see Tolkien’s epic as anything other than a specifically Christian myth”. </p>
<p>J.R.R. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic. In <a href="https://bibliothecaveneficae.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/the_letters_of_j.rrtolkien.pdf">a 1954 letter</a> to the Jesuit Robert Murray, he described his trilogy as a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work”.</p>
<p>Tolkien was a particular kind of Catholic. Pre-<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Second-Vatican-Council">Vatican II era</a> (the most recent council of the Catholic Church) and English, he shared his tradition’s deep suspicion of modernity. </p>
<p>Middle-earth, with its ranked orders of elves and angels, and distinctions between High and Low Men, was influenced by the medieval Catholic notion of the <a href="http://dimitrafimi.com/2018/12/02/revisiting-race-in-tolkiens-legendarium-constructing-cultures-and-ideologies-in-an-imaginary-world/">Great Chain of Being</a> in which God ordains natural hierarchy in the cosmos. </p>
<p>It’s because of this that some of today’s far-right claim Tolkien as one of their own, arguing that his work underwrites values such as reactionary nationalism, rigid gender roles and the use of state violence to enforce cultural homogeneity.</p>
<h2>Interpreting The Lord of the Rings</h2>
<p>In his book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-reactionary-mind-9780190692001">The Reactionary Mind</a> (2011), political theorist <a href="https://twitter.com/CoreyRobin?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Corey Robin</a> argues that conservatism is, at its root, the defence of hierarchy. It would therefore be intellectually dishonest to deny that The Lord of the Rings could have certain right-wing interpretations. </p>
<p>If you are a neofascist, for example, looking to justify xenophobia and racism, you can latch onto Tolkien’s troubling tendency to cast nonwhite characters in the role of evil. If you are a reactionary Catholic who longs for a <a href="https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/11/christian-humanism-j-r-r-tolkien-bradley-birzer.html">restoration of the Holy Roman Empire</a>, you can read Aragorn’s return and coronation as justification for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/theocracy">theocracy</a>. These things are an inescapable part of the text.</p>
<p>However, if you wish to produce such a reading of The Lord of the Rings, you will have to ignore a lot of other things about the text too.</p>
<p>The fact, for instance, that the <a href="https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/War_of_the_Ring">War of the Ring</a> requires cooperation between diverse peoples, from diverse backgrounds, with diverse goals, in order to confront a common threat.</p>
<p>Or the fact that <a href="https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Sauron">Sauron</a> and <a href="https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Saruman">Saruman</a> seek to impose their will through forced industrialisation, brutal oppression of subject populations and naked violence on a mass scale – all favourite weapons of the far right. (The <a href="https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Ents">Ents</a> even rise up against their mechanising oppressors and drown their factories).</p>
<p>Then there’s the fact that the plot hinges around the <a href="https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/One_Ring">One Ring</a>, an object with the power to dominate which corrupts all who seek to wield it and which must be destroyed – not deployed – in order to overcome the forces of evil once and for all.</p>
<p>And the fact that the salvation of the world is brought about not by force of arms, but by the dogged persistence and fierce love of the small and powerless, by pity for the pitiless and mercy upon the merciless. These are, to my mind, far more “fundamentally religious and Catholic” ideas than racialised hierarchy is.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560368/original/file-20231120-15-dwico7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="J. R. R. Tolkien" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560368/original/file-20231120-15-dwico7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560368/original/file-20231120-15-dwico7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560368/original/file-20231120-15-dwico7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560368/original/file-20231120-15-dwico7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560368/original/file-20231120-15-dwico7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560368/original/file-20231120-15-dwico7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560368/original/file-20231120-15-dwico7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1920s on leaving Leeds University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#/media/File:J._R._R._Tolkien,_ca._1925.jpg">Bodleian Library</a></span>
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<p>In a <a href="https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol42/iss1/3/">recent paper, I argued</a> that The Lord of the Rings is too open to interpretation – and too enchanting – to collapse into a single authoritative meaning. </p>
<p>In his foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien defends “the freedom of the reader” against reductive readings. He was far more concerned that readers take his novel on its own terms as a work of art, rather than arrive at some objectively “correct” interpretation. There is, quite simply, no one “right” way to read Tolkien – but, in my opinion, there are wrong ones.</p>
<p>There are readings that ignore what’s in the text, twisting it to suit the reader’s own religious, cultural and political purposes. Far-right readings of The Lord of the Rings do not come from nowhere. But they are far from the only solution to the riddle of Middle-earth’s enduring power. Tolkien was savvy enough to realise that his imaginative reconstruction of a mythic past was fiction. Reactionary ideologues lack any such self awareness. </p>
<p>Far-right readings of The Lord of the Rings are therefore wrong in the sense that they are technically bad interpretations. More importantly to my mind, however, they are ethically wrong. There is nothing in Middle-earth – not even its most troubling elements – which requires readers to take it as an argument for far-right nationalism. That interpretation is a choice – and it must be resisted. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Emanuel receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).</span></em></p>
Tolkien was far more concerned that we take his novel on its own terms as a work of art than that we arrive at some correct interpretation.
Tom Emanuel, PhD Candidate, English literature, University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212590
2023-09-01T09:21:42Z
2023-09-01T09:21:42Z
How J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels were inspired by Medieval poems of ‘northern bravery’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545798/original/file-20230831-8847-jibysi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C21%2C1738%2C1432&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Knights travel to battle in an illustration from a Medieval manuscript.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=18406">British Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a moment of distraction from the laborious work of marking an “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR-4vMEiQ_U&t=166s">enormous pile of examination papers</a>”, J.R.R. Tolkien flipped to a blank page on a student essay and scribbled, “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”. </p>
<p>This became the first line of The Hobbit (1937). From this doodle Tolkien went on to write one of the world’s most popular fantasy adventure series, The Lord of the Rings (1954).</p>
<p>His main work, however, was not as the writer of fantasies that made him so famous. For the 50th anniversary of Tolkien’s death, I want to celebrate <a href="https://www.countrylife.co.uk/out-and-about/theatre-film-music/j-r-r-tolkien-life-and-times-253697">Tolkien’s life</a> as a medievalist and philologist (historian of languages), as well as some of his major contributions to the study of medieval literature.</p>
<p>Tolkein’s first teaching post was at the University of Leeds, where he worked on a <a href="https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Sir_Gawain_and_the_Green_Knight,_Pearl,_and_Sir_Orfeo">translation</a> of the 14th-century Middle English poem, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight">Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</a>. For many, his is still one of the best translations. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545794/original/file-20230831-23-imcqr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph of J.R.R. Tolkien." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545794/original/file-20230831-23-imcqr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545794/original/file-20230831-23-imcqr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545794/original/file-20230831-23-imcqr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545794/original/file-20230831-23-imcqr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545794/original/file-20230831-23-imcqr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545794/original/file-20230831-23-imcqr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545794/original/file-20230831-23-imcqr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Photograph of J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1920s upon leaving Leeds University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#/media/File:J._R._R._Tolkien,_ca._1925.jpg">Bodleian Library</a></span>
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<p>In 1925, Tolkien won a professorship at the University of Oxford. A year later he translated the Old English poem, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm">Beowulf</a>. He remained a professor of English language and literature for the next 20 years.</p>
<p>Tolkien’s world was in a state of flux. The rudderless turmoil of the two world wars undoubtedly had affected his writing and this is possibly why his preference for settings was always for pre-industrial England. This can be seen in his love of fairy tales and in his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/nov/29/jrr-tolkien-fine-modern-artist#:%7E:text=Tolkien%2C%20in%20other%20words%2C%20is,pictures%20are%20subtle%2C%20even%20abstract.">drawings</a>, which are almost all natural landscapes, with little architecture. </p>
<p>His love of trees was so great that he wrote a <a href="https://archive.org/details/lettersofjrrtolk00tolk_1">letter</a> to his publisher saying: “I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been and I find human mistreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals.” In <a href="https://archive.org/details/lettersofjrrtolk00tolk_1">another</a>, he talks of his fondness for myth, fairy tales “and above all for heroic legend”. </p>
<h2>A mythology for England</h2>
<p>Tolkien’s biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/J_R_R_Tolkien_A_Biography/uDQusCjsL-YC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=tolkien+humphrey+carpenter&printsec=frontcover">argues that</a> he was attempting to create “a mythology for England” through his fantasy fiction, by creating an imaginary world with its own languages, history, cultures and people. </p>
<p>Tolkien did this by drawing not only on his knowledge of languages and literature in Old and Middle English, but also on those languages that influenced the cultural and historical development of Britain, such as Finnish, Welsh, Old Norse, Old High and Middle German. </p>
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<img alt="Four knights battling in front of a castle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545799/original/file-20230831-21-g2enw3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545799/original/file-20230831-21-g2enw3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545799/original/file-20230831-21-g2enw3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545799/original/file-20230831-21-g2enw3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545799/original/file-20230831-21-g2enw3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545799/original/file-20230831-21-g2enw3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545799/original/file-20230831-21-g2enw3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An illustration of knights from a Medieval manuscript.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=42278">British Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>He loved languages – both ancient and modern – and was well versed in more than a few, including Finnish, Welsh, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Danish, Old Norse, Old English and Old Icelandic, as well as his invented Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin, which have full etymologies. </p>
<p>Tolkien wrote in a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/books/la-xpm-2013-may-23-la-ca-jc-jrr-tolkien-fall-of-arthur-middle-earth20130526-story.html#:%7E:text=I%20had%20a%20mind%20to,England%3A%20to%20my%20country.%22">letter</a> in 1951 about his desire to “make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic to the level of romantic fairy-story”. He wanted to dedicate it “simply: to England: to my country”. </p>
<p>The source of inspiration for this “mythology for England” was the medieval world Tolkien knew so well from his scholarly studies.</p>
<h2>‘Northern courage’</h2>
<p>One theme that Tolkien picked up from his work in medieval literature – and which runs like a thread throughout his fictional worlds – is the reckless bravery and heroic courage that many medieval protagonists exhibit.</p>
<p>Tolkien termed this kind of response to challenge “<a href="https://atolkienistperspective.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/northern-courage-ofermode-and-thorin-oakenshields-last-stand/#:%7E:text=Tolkien%20was%20fascinated%20by%20the,the%20face%20of%20impossible%20odds.">northern courage</a>” in his 1936 essay, <a href="https://jenniferjsnow.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/11790039-jrr-tolkien-beowulf-the-monsters-and-the-critics.pdf">Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics</a>. It was “northern” because this type of courage is highly prevalent in the Old Norse sagas that Tolkien was so familiar with and which grew out of the northern Scandinavian countries between the 9th and 13th centuries. This concept is probably best expressed in a line from the Old English poem, <a href="https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/battle-of-maldon/">The Battle of Maldon</a> (AD991): “Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.” </p>
<p>Simply put, northern courage is when one exhibits the courage to keep persevering despite the knowledge that sooner or later defeat is inevitable. In constructing his “mythology for England”, Tolkien drew on medieval poems such as Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon as he <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/J_R_R_Tolkien_A_Biography/uDQusCjsL-YC?hl=en&gbpv=1">argued</a> that the people of ancient England would have had a “fundamentally similar heroic temper”. </p>
<h2>Northern courage in Lord of the Rings</h2>
<p>Northern courage is at work in The Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf confronts the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-Dûm. In blocking the Balrog – and shouting his famous line, “you shall not pass” – he refuses to allow the enemy to cross the bridge and buys time for the rest of the fellowship to escape. He exhibits magnanimous courage and perseverance in the face of inevitable defeat. </p>
<p>In a different way, the protagonists Bilbo and Frodo Baggins exhibit courage as they leave the comforts of the Shire to fulfil a greater heroic duty. This is probably best summed up in Frodo’s exchange with Gandalf:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I wish it need not have happened in my time”, said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The wizard’s words here are steeped in northern courage. They insist that we must rise to the challenges offered in our time.</p>
<p>Fifty years on from Tokien’s death, that spirit of northern bravery endures as an alluring concept. What makes Tolkien’s fantastical world so appealing is the recurrent suggestion that the courage manifested to defeat the big monsters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is the very same courage that can be found in hopeless situations of a more ordinary sort. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeleine S. Killacky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For the 50th anniversary of Tolkien’s death, I want to celebrate some of his major contributions to the study of medieval literature.
Madeleine S. Killacky, PhD Candidate, Medieval Literature, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190196
2022-09-14T10:32:49Z
2022-09-14T10:32:49Z
Lord of The Rings: Rings of Power – a guide to the expanded world of Middle-earth in J.R.R. Tolkein’s other books
<p>With Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power having aired there has been a resurgence of interest in the vibrant fantasy world created by J.R.R. Tolkien over a century ago. What many might not know is that there is a whole universe in several books that expand what we know outside of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. </p>
<p>For those not familiar with the new television series, it is set in the Second Age of Tolkien’s mythology. To give that some perspective, his most famous works, The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), are set during the Third Age, which means that the events of the show take place approximately four and a half thousand years prior to the events of Lord of the Rings. </p>
<p>The universe created by Tolkien is vast, with an incredible depth of vision and detail that inspires people to this day. While Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy is widely considered to be a masterpiece of cinema, he was still obliged to make alterations to Tolkien’s story, and took even more liberties with the less well-received Hobbit trilogy. </p>
<p>The Amazon streaming service only has the rights to the appendices to the Lord of the Rings books and The Hobbit so the film-makers have had to draw all their material only from these appendices. This has resulted in sweeping changes to the lore written by Tolkien, so if you want to know the true world that Tolkien envisioned, any of the books listed below will provide readers with the genuine experience created by one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/lord-of-the-rings-rings-of-power-a-cheats-guide-to-middle-earth-before-you-watch-the-new-show-189644?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power – a cheat’s guide to Middle-earth before you watch the new show</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/house-of-dragons-an-introduction-to-the-stories-and-british-history-that-inspired-the-beasts-of-westeros-190021?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">House of Dragons – an introduction to the stories and British history that inspired the beasts of Westeros</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/salman-rushdie-where-to-start-with-this-pioneering-and-controversial-author-188707?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Salman Rushdie: where to start with this pioneering and controversial author</a></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>The Silmarillion</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book with mountain and boat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484577/original/file-20220914-1807-311yc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484577/original/file-20220914-1807-311yc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484577/original/file-20220914-1807-311yc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484577/original/file-20220914-1807-311yc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484577/original/file-20220914-1807-311yc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484577/original/file-20220914-1807-311yc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484577/original/file-20220914-1807-311yc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The most famous of these works is The Silmarillion (1977). Unlike The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion is a collection of epic tales worked (by Christopher Tolkien) into a single narrative. It begins with the creation myth for Tolkien’s world and includes his great romantic epic concerning the adventures of Beren, a mortal Man, and Luthien, an Elven princess. These two characters are of particular relevance to anyone seeking to explore Tolkien’s mythology as they are the ancestors of many important figures from the major narratives, such as Aragorn and Elrond. They were also personally significant to Tolkien himself as he was inspired to write their love-story by his real-life romance with his wife, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/thanks-for-typing-9781350150058/">Edith</a>. On Tolkien’s gravestone in Oxford is inscribed the name “Beren”, while on Edith’s is the name “Luthien”.</p>
<h2>The Tales</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Book with hill in front of son" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484578/original/file-20220914-26-v5bblw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484578/original/file-20220914-26-v5bblw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484578/original/file-20220914-26-v5bblw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484578/original/file-20220914-26-v5bblw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484578/original/file-20220914-26-v5bblw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484578/original/file-20220914-26-v5bblw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484578/original/file-20220914-26-v5bblw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The stories in Unfinished Tales (1980), edited by Christopher Tolkien, offer more background details regarding some of the most famous characters, including Gandalf. The anthology includes many of Tolkien’s notes about the world he was building, notes that he may not have intended to publish but which nevertheless offer a fascinating insight into his methodology and influences.</p>
<p>The two-volume Book of Lost Tales (1983–84) was compiled by Christopher Tolkien from his father’s notes to form the opening volumes of the all-encompassing 12-volume “History of Middle Earth” (1983-1996). While the stories are broadly similar to those told in The Silmarillion they go into more (some have said too much) detail and include extensive annotations added by Christopher with the intention of making them more like encyclopedias, or at least reference guides to Tolkien’s source material, rather than simple narratives.</p>
<h2>On Fairy-Stories</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book with an abstract painting on cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484579/original/file-20220914-11-dykbdv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484579/original/file-20220914-11-dykbdv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484579/original/file-20220914-11-dykbdv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484579/original/file-20220914-11-dykbdv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484579/original/file-20220914-11-dykbdv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1217&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484579/original/file-20220914-11-dykbdv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1217&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484579/original/file-20220914-11-dykbdv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1217&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><a href="https://uh.edu/fdis/_taylor-dev/readings/tolkien.html">On Fairy-Stories</a> is an essay Tolkien wrote in 1939, two years after the initial publication of The Hobbit. Given originally as a lecture at the University of St Andrews, the text was published in 1947 in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, who was one of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Inklings">the Inklings</a>, the literary discussion group in Oxford in the 1930s and 1940s that included Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. </p>
<p>Tolkien’s essay is noteworthy because it articulates his early opinion regarding what constitutes a “fairy story”, a genre we now refer to as “fantasy” or even “high fantasy” in Tolkien’s case. The essay essentially makes the claim that stories involving fairies or magical creatures that are set in the real world are not true fairy stories. For works of fiction to be truly considered as fantasy they must also be set in entirely imaginary worlds (unlike C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, for example). Tolkien ultimately justifies this assertion with the argument that the relationship between language and imagination can only develop with one driving the other.</p>
<h2>The Adventures of Tom Bombadil</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Illustration of a person sitting on grass by water filled with fish." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484580/original/file-20220914-13-fektur.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484580/original/file-20220914-13-fektur.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484580/original/file-20220914-13-fektur.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484580/original/file-20220914-13-fektur.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484580/original/file-20220914-13-fektur.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484580/original/file-20220914-13-fektur.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484580/original/file-20220914-13-fektur.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Given that he is one of Tolkien’s most enigmatic characters, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962) is a genuine curiosity. The book was published in Tolkien’s lifetime but it is a collection of poetry rather than a novel. </p>
<p>Tom Bombadil appears in Lord of the Rings but was written out of the film version. In The Fellowship of the Ring, he uses his extensive powers to rescue the Hobbits, but we never learn who or what he is, only that he alone is immune to the One Ring. </p>
<p>Inevitably, Tom has been the subject of much debate and speculation but <a href="https://www.academia.edu/82450278/Tolkien_s_Tom_Bombadil_An_Enigma_Intentionally_">Tolkien himself said of Tom</a>: “Even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas.” In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, there are some intriguing nuggets about the character, but no definitive answers. While some might argue that Tolkien’s poetry is an acquired taste, the volume nevertheless provides further insights into the world that Tolkien spent his life building.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190196/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Fulton receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. She is affiliated with the Learned Society of Wales.</span></em></p>
What can Tolkien’s lesser-known stories tell us about the world he created?
Helen Fulton, Professor and Chair of Medieval Literature, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/189644
2022-09-01T09:11:42Z
2022-09-01T09:11:42Z
Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power – a cheat’s guide to Middle-earth before you watch the new show
<p>For a newcomer to the wonderful world of Middle-earth, the universe created by the British author and academic J.R.R. Tolkien can seem as large and unwieldy as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (currently in Phase Four with more still to come). And, there is a new addition as Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) hits screens.</p>
<p>The series comes eight years after the concluding film of The Hobbit and 19 years after the last Lord of the Rings film. So if you want to watch the series and keep up with inevitable social media debates, here is a guide to this sprawling world to initiate newcomers to Tolkien’s Middle-earth.</p>
<h2>A quick catch-up</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-hobbit/j-r-r-tolkien/9780261103344">The Hobbit</a> (1937) and
<a href="https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/the-lord-of-the-rings.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw1ICZBhAzEiwAFfvFhGOuR5iAWS1taZAVm8GHjvsQmjPgezdeAfqTjLAyYx975PamLrmzaBoC5yQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">The Lord of the Rings</a> books (published between July 1954 and October 1955) were Tolkien’s most successful and famous novels.</p>
<p>The Hobbit follows the adventures of the eponymous creature (short of stature, hairy feet), Bilbo Baggins, on a quest with a party of dwarves to reclaim lost treasure. Along the way, he finds a ring that gives him the power of invisibility. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/salman-rushdie-where-to-start-with-this-pioneering-and-controversial-author-188707?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Salman Rushdie: where to start with this pioneering and controversial author</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/five-dating-tips-from-the-georgian-era-186847?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Five dating tips from the Georgian era</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/rihanna-and-radical-pregnancy-fashion-how-the-victorians-made-maternity-wear-boring-182000">Rihanna and radical pregnancy fashion – how the Victorians made maternity wear boring</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>The Lord of the Rings picks up the story many years later as Bilbo’s ring is revealed to be the One Ring, forged by the evil dark lord Sauron as a source of power. Bilbo’s nephew Frodo embarks on a dangerous journey to destroy the ring and save Middle-earth. He is aided by his gardener Sam Gamgee as well as representatives of the other chief races of Middle-earth: two further hobbits, the dwarf Gimli, elf Legolas and two human men, Boromir and Aragorn.</p>
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<p>Tolkien served during the first world war and his experiences on the <a href="https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-tolkiens-batmen/">battle-field</a> shape the numerous conflicts depicted in the stories as well as the various forms of heroism that are displayed. In Tolkien’s world, moral courage is just as important, if not more so, than physical prowess for the enduring heroes of Middle-earth. </p>
<p>The close bonds between serving soldiers also inform the interpersonal relationships that are central to The Lord of the Rings – it is evident in the devotion between the hobbits Frodo and Sam and the enemies-to-friends narrative of Gimli and Legolas.</p>
<h2>What is Middle-earth?</h2>
<p>Middle-earth is the fictional setting for Tolkien’s invented mythology, which made its debut in The Hobbit. However, the term Middle-earth was not used in that book – that came later with The Lord of the Rings.</p>
<p>Tolkien was a professor of English literature and an expert in language, especially in written and oral histories. His mythology for Middle-earth is filled with poems, songs and oral history traditions that help to build the world of different cultures and races (hobbits, elves, dwarves, men) that inhabit his universe. Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon epic poems, fairy tales and the Finnish mythic poem the <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5186">Kalevala</a> are all influences on the stories, characters and languages found in Tolkien’s work.</p>
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<p>Although The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are the best known stories, they’re not the complete history of Middle-earth. <a href="https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/the-silmarillion.html">The Silmarillion</a> (1977), which was published after Tolkien’s death and edited by his son Christopher and the fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay, outlines the thousands of years of history of Middle-earth. </p>
<p>The book charts the creation of Arda, where the continent of Middle-earth is located, and covers the First and Second Ages of the world (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place in the Third Age). Arda starts as a flat disc and evolves into something more recognisably planet-like over the course of cataclysmic events during repeated battles between forces of good and evil. Further events and characters that shape Arda and Middle-earth feature in <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/unfinished-tales/j-r-r-tolkien/9780261102163">Unfinished Tales</a> (1980).</p>
<p>However, as Amazon has only acquired the rights for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, none of the stories from either Unfinished Tales or The Silmarillion will feature in the new series. The extensive appendices to The Lord of the Rings are the source of the material for the new show.</p>
<h2>Familiar names</h2>
<p>Set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, The Rings of Power takes place thousands of years before either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings so there will be few recognisable characters. Sauron, who appeared in The Lord of the Rings as a flaming red eye, is still the big bad. </p>
<p>The creator of the corrupting rings of power and of the infamous One Ring that controls the others, Sauron may not be front-and-centre as an antagonist but his actions and desire for control of Middle-earth will drive much of the action.</p>
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<p>The other two familiar names are the elves <a href="https://ew.com/tv/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-character-guide/">Galadriel and Elrond</a>, here much younger than they appeared in the films. Galadriel is established as a warrior – which is true to her history as Tolkien wrote it – and there is a lot of scope in the series to see how she develops into the wise ruler of the elven realm Lothlorien.</p>
<p>Elrond Half-elven, the ruler of the enclave of Rivendell, is shown as more optimistic than in The Lord of the Rings and with closer links to the human kingdom of Númenor, whose rulers are descended from his twin brother, Elros. </p>
<p>As the brothers were half-elven, they could choose which of their kindred they would identify as. Elros lived as a mortal and eventually aged and died. Elrond chose to live as an immortal elf and the emotional toll of those decisions will be explored in his story arc.</p>
<p>Fans might be concerned that Tolkien might have disliked some of the liberties taken with his works. While his estate is known to be protective (and litigious) over the original works, Tolkien stated that he wanted <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309864-i-had-a-mind-to-make-a-body-of-more">other hands</a> to add to his universe. In light of that, he would probably have been delighted to see his creation still so beloved and still expanding.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Crossley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The new series is part of the expansive world created by J.R.R Tolkien across several books, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit.
Laura Crossley, Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Film, Bournemouth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/170958
2022-04-18T19:57:13Z
2022-04-18T19:57:13Z
How Tolkien and Lord of the Rings inspired the commercial and artistic success of the fantasy fiction genre
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441666/original/file-20220120-23-7pcpsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>When Allen & Unwin requested a sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s first novel <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-hobbit-j-r-r-tolkien/book/9780261103283.html">The Hobbit (1937)</a>, they could not have known that it would be one of the best publishing decisions of the century, if not all time. </p>
<p>The Lord of the Rings has <a href="https://publishingperspectives.com/2010/09/top-25-bestselling-books-of-all-time/#:%7E:text=(tie)%20The%20Lord%20of%20the,sold%20150%20million%20copies%20worldwide.">sold an enormous number of copies</a>, and generated a vast and still-growing multimedia franchise, including the upcoming TV series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/">The Rings of Power</a>. Tolkien’s work and ideas also inspired countless readers and authors and is at the root of contemporary fantasy’s commercial and artistic success. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457572/original/file-20220412-30661-o7r2jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457572/original/file-20220412-30661-o7r2jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457572/original/file-20220412-30661-o7r2jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457572/original/file-20220412-30661-o7r2jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457572/original/file-20220412-30661-o7r2jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457572/original/file-20220412-30661-o7r2jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457572/original/file-20220412-30661-o7r2jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457572/original/file-20220412-30661-o7r2jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The 1937 first edition of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
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<p>All of this took time, even after the 15 year the publishers waited for their sequel. The Lord of the Rings sold well in its original hardback edition and was positively reviewed. The poet W. H. Auden called it a “masterpiece” and said that in parts it was better than John Milton’s canonical poem Paradise Lost. </p>
<p>It became an international publishing phenomenon in the 1960s, with cheap paperback editions, first with an unauthorised version from Ace Books and then licensed ones from Ballantine Books and Houghton Mifflin. </p>
<h2>Sparking a genre</h2>
<p>These paperback editions sparked the commercial fantasy genre. According to the late David G. Hartwell, a leading figure in US fantasy and science fiction publishing, what the 1970s reading public wanted was “not more fantasy but more Tolkien”. </p>
<p>That desire was fulfilled with books like Terry Brooks’ Shannara series and Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, as well as the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. </p>
<p>Familiar fantasy conventions, with their roots in The Lord of the Rings, were established through this “genre-fication” of fantasy publishing: multi-book series about good vs evil, a pseudo-medieval time, a vaguely European setting and white, usually male, protagonists. They still persist, as in George R. R. Martin’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/43790-a-song-of-ice-and-fire">A Song of Ice and Fire series</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher">The Witcher</a> franchise.</p>
<p>Contemporary fantasy is varied, has many sub-genres, and is often strikingly and deliberately different to The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien and his work are still a touchstone, however, particularly for so-called epic fantasy. </p>
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<span class="caption">John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
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<p>George R. R. Martin has been dubbed the “American Tolkien,” and critic Laura Miller explored the fantasy of David Anthony Durham and N. K. Jemisin in an article titled <a href="https://www.salon.com/2011/11/09/if_tolkien_were_black/">“If Tolkien Were Black”</a>. Steven Erikson, the bestselling author of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series called his fiction<a href="https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2012/cfp-reminder-tales-after-tolkien-medievalism-and-twenty-first-century-fantasy-literature/"> “post-Tolkien”.</a></p>
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<span class="caption">Peter Jackson, who created the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film franchises, with a copy of the original book.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Pizzello/ AP</span></span>
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<h2>The impact of Tolkien’s ideas of fantasy</h2>
<p>Tolkien’s ideas about fantasy literature are influential far beyond books (and other media) that were inspired, even indirectly, by The Lord of the Rings. </p>
<p>The great American fantasy and science fiction author Ursula K. le Guin wrote that his essay <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007582914/tolkien-on-fairy-stories/">On Fairy Stories</a> is “the best introductory guide I know to the domain of fantasy”. The ideas expressed in Tolkien’s essay validate fantasy as art and shape how many authors (and readers) understand what it means to write it. </p>
<p>For Tolkien, imagination and story-telling are central to being human. He wrote that “fantasy” is the purest and most “potent” kind of art because it requires subcreation of a “secondary world”. A secondary world is a different world to reality, and has “inner consistency” obeying its own rules. </p>
<p>If there is any one thing that the great variety of fantasy works have in common, it is that they need imagination, even if not taking place in what Tolkien would have called a secondary world. Even urban fantasy, like <a href="https://www.neilgaiman.com/works/Books/">Neil Gaiman’s novels</a>, where magic and mythological beings exist in a world like our reality, involves creation of a world that differs meaningfully from our own. </p>
<p>“Subcreation” is the author’s process of imagining and building a secondary world and the story (or stories) that take place in it. </p>
<p>Tolkien, a devout Christian, thought of this process as being an emulation of what he believed was God’s creation. Many fantasy authors don’t share his religious beliefs of course, but the notion of making a new world is a powerful one that gives a framework for the artistic, literary endeavour of writing in a genre that is sometimes dismissed as juvenile, repetitive and unimportant. </p>
<p>For Tolkien, human subcreation differed from God’s creation because humans had to work with what already existed, recombining elements to create the new world. One example of this sort of re-combination he used was imagining a world with a sun that is green, rather than the bright white of the real sun.</p>
<p>Even more important, for him, is dipping into what he called the “cauldron of story”, a hypothetical pot of soup where every major story ever told bubbles together for the author to draw ingredients from. </p>
<p>Elements of folk and fairy tales, mythologies and mythical figures like King Arthur, are familiar features in fantasy, all taken from the cauldron of story. </p>
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<h2>Lord of the Rings though the ages</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/aug/09/best-selling-books-all-time-fifty-shades-grey-compare">Exact sales figures</a> for The Lord of the Rings are impossible to get because it’s been sold in separate volumes as well as a single edition of all three books, and the many translations. </p>
<p>It is nonetheless clearly one of the best-selling books of all time with estimates putting sales at more than 150 million, and copies of The Hobbit at more than 100 million copies. </p>
<p>Peter Jackson’s film franchise has raked in<a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchises"> more than US $5.8 billion</a>. This puts it in the top 15 franchises of all time.</p>
<p>Still, Tolkien’s fiction and ideas have a contested and troubling legacy. The Lord of the Rings’ impact was partly due to it being taken up by<a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20141120-the-hobbits-and-the-hippies"> 1960s hippie counter-culture</a>, but it is also a <a href="https://psmag.com/education/untangling-white-supremacy-from-medieval-studies">favourite text of neo-Nazis</a>, who embraced the fantasy depictions of race within the texts. </p>
<p>Fantasy, along with science fiction, has been a battle ground in the culture wars for more than a decade. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/feb/20/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-series-race">bitter reaction of some fans</a> to casting actors of colour in Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series shows that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/lord-of-the-rings-debunking-the-backlash-against-non-white-actors-in-amazons-new-adaption-177791">“racialised” history of the series </a>continues in the present. Such reactions have been “debunked”, and were resisted by other fans.</p>
<p>Discussions like this abound in modern criticism of Tolkien’s work - but they are only part of his legacy. It is Tolkien’s insight into the nature of fantasy itself and the way it demands that we imagine and desire a new world, that defines his work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Young is President of the Australia and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.</span></em></p>
The Lord of the Rings paperback edition could be said to have sparked the commercial fantasy genre as we know it.
Helen Young, Lecturer, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/175333
2022-02-15T18:47:02Z
2022-02-15T18:47:02Z
The new Lord of the Rings prequel, The Rings of Power, is set in the Second Age of Middle-Earth - here’s what that means
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446191/original/file-20220214-19-1l73abm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=34%2C540%2C7634%2C3230&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon Studios</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amazon Studios is due to launch its Lord of the Rings prequel TV series in September this year. Not much is known about it yet, other than the title – Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power, <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-character-posters-amazon">some first looks</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7v1hIkYH24">a teaser-trailer</a>, and that it will be set in the Second Age of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth timeline. </p>
<p>The Second Age will not be all that familiar to audiences of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of Tolkien’s novels, which take place in the Third Age, many thousands of years after the events featured in The Rings Of Power. But the books, including Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and the lore-heavy Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-Earth provide us lots of background to the history of the Second Age.</p>
<p>What follows is a quick primer on this setting and what we can expect from the Amazon series. </p>
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<h2>What is the Second Age?</h2>
<p>The Second Age begins after the downfall of Morgoth (a Lucifer figure in Tolkien’s mythology) and ends with the first defeat of Morgoth’s lieutenant Sauron, which film audiences will remember from the opening montage of the Fellowship of the Ring, where an alliance of men and elves defeat the dark lord by cutting the source of his power, the One Ring, from his finger. </p>
<p>None of Tolkien’s books focus specifically on the Second Age, though key events are briefly detailed in the last sections of the Silmarillion and some stories from Unfinished Tales. Tolkien’s lengthily appendices to the Lord of the Rings provide a full timeline of the Second Age. These fragments describe a time when the elves were more prominent and powerful, and human kingdoms were greater and more unified. </p>
<p>The Second Age serves as a lost classical period that falls between the heroic myth-cycle that depicts the events of the First Age in the Silmarillion, and the grittier medievalism of the Third Age that we see in the Lord of the Rings. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446196/original/file-20220214-29677-1hmq5m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446196/original/file-20220214-29677-1hmq5m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446196/original/file-20220214-29677-1hmq5m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446196/original/file-20220214-29677-1hmq5m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446196/original/file-20220214-29677-1hmq5m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446196/original/file-20220214-29677-1hmq5m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446196/original/file-20220214-29677-1hmq5m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446196/original/file-20220214-29677-1hmq5m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Galadriel played by Morfydd Clark.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>What happens in the Second Age?</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most important event is the forging of the rings of power. A disguised Sauron tricks the elven smith Celebrimbor into forging nineteen rings to be distributed between elves, dwarves and humans. </p>
<p>However, the elves quickly realise that this is a ploy by Sauron to control them all through the power of the One Ring and begin a long battle against his influence. </p>
<p>Given its title, the series will probably focus on the consequences of falling prey to the power of the rings. It might well depict the origins of the Nazgûl, or ringwraiths, the undead servants of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings, who first emerge in the Second Age. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446404/original/file-20220215-138710-kkbbl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446404/original/file-20220215-138710-kkbbl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446404/original/file-20220215-138710-kkbbl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446404/original/file-20220215-138710-kkbbl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446404/original/file-20220215-138710-kkbbl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446404/original/file-20220215-138710-kkbbl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446404/original/file-20220215-138710-kkbbl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446404/original/file-20220215-138710-kkbbl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Nazgul, as shown in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New Line Cinema</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What else?</h2>
<p>Promotional images include a map of the island of Númenor, a land given to humans who fought against Morgoth. In the Second Age it becomes a great naval power, creating colonies and settlements on the main continent. </p>
<p>Eventually Númenor joins the war against Sauron and takes the dark lord captive. However, Sauron corrupts their king, Ar-Pharazôn, and convinces him to invade the western land of Valinor, home to the angelic Valar, in pursuit of immortality. In retribution, the Valar sink the island of Númenor into the ocean. </p>
<p>Tolkien first conceived of Númenor in the Lost Road, an abandoned novel about time travellers witnessing the fall of Atlantis, but it really works as an analogue to Rome within the history of Middle Earth: a broken empire that is eventually succeeded by fragmented kingdoms. </p>
<p>The survivors of Númenor later join with the elves to defeat Sauron and found Gondor and Arnor. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446193/original/file-20220214-25-dvfa20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446193/original/file-20220214-25-dvfa20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446193/original/file-20220214-25-dvfa20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446193/original/file-20220214-25-dvfa20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446193/original/file-20220214-25-dvfa20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446193/original/file-20220214-25-dvfa20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1117&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446193/original/file-20220214-25-dvfa20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1117&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446193/original/file-20220214-25-dvfa20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1117&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A first look from Amazon Studios upcoming The Rings of Power.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What’s Arnor? Tell me about Arnor!</h2>
<p>Arnor is established towards the end of the Second Age as a sister-kingdom to the more familiar Gondor and is located far to the north. </p>
<p>It is later destroyed by the Witch-King of Angmar, the most powerful of Sauron’s Nazgûl, which is why we don’t hear much about it in the Lord of the Rings. This probably won’t make into the Amazon series, though, unless it runs for quite a few seasons. </p>
<h2>Is anyone from the Lord of the Rings around in the Second Age?</h2>
<p>The elven queen Galadriel will be a central character, and also Elrond, the lord of Rivendell. They are both important figures of the Second Age and recipients of rings of power, so they will certainly play an active role. </p>
<p>Sauron himself will also play some part. In the Second Age Sauron is not just the purely antagonistic force depicted in the novel and the films, but also a subtle trickster and manipulator. This offers the potential to portray him as a more compelling and multifaceted villain. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-invent-a-tolkien-style-language-57380">How to invent a Tolkien-style language</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>No chance of a young, sexy Gandalf then?</h2>
<p>Gandalf is never young, exactly. As a wizard (Istari), he is a spirit sent by the Valar to Middle Earth in the form of an old man. The Istari don’t appear until the Third Age, but Amazon might try to work him in anyway, given the focus on the rings of power. </p>
<p>The appendices state Gandalf took possession of Narya, the elven ring of fire, and Tolkien fans have speculated his threat to the Balrog about being “the wielder of the flame of Anor” might refer to this ring. If the series is a success then we might eventually see how it makes its way into Gandalf’s hands. </p>
<h2>How much of this story can we expect to see?</h2>
<p>Amazon seems likely to condense some of the key incidents from the Second Age (the rings of power, the fall of Númenor, the emergence of the Nazgûl), which are separated by centuries in the appendices, to provide a compelling narrative. </p>
<p>But whatever happens, it is all leading to the events we know from the beginning of the Lord of the Rings: the forging of the One Ring, Sauron’s attempt to assert his dominion through it, and the war between the orcs and the elven and human alliance.<br>
While audiences may well be exhausted with prequels to the Lord of the Rings after the Hobbit film trilogy, this exploration of Tolkien’s Second Age of Middle Earth has the potential to add texture and richness to the stories we already know and love.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Novitz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings TV show, The Rings of Power, takes place thousands of years before the popular movie franchise, and tells a story from deep Tolkien lore.
Julian Novitz, Senior Lecturer, Writing, School of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102420
2018-08-31T11:14:52Z
2018-08-31T11:14:52Z
From Tolkien to Burgess: the ethics of posthumous publication
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234268/original/file-20180830-195325-1syp62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artistic interpretation of a Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nazgul_fan_art_-_Danijel.jpg">wikipedia/NazgulfanartDanijel</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The publication of <a href="https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780008302764/the-fall-of-gondolin/">The Fall of Gondolin</a> by JRR Tolkien completes a publishing project that began in the distant past of 1977, when Christopher Tolkien edited <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7332.The_Silmarillion">The Silmarillion</a>, the first volume of his father’s posthumous stories.</p>
<p>When Tolkien senior died in 1973, he left four full length published novels and a mass of uncollected papers behind him. His youngest son Christopher, now aged 93, has spent almost half a lifetime annotating his father’s work and preparing it for publication. The 12 volumes of the <a href="https://www.tolkien.co.uk/products/the-complete-history-of-middle-earth-deluxe-boxed-set-edition-christopher-tolkien-j-r-r-tolkien-9780008259846/">History of Middle-earth</a> provide an astonishingly detailed account of the languages and landscapes of Tolkien’s fictional world. </p>
<p>This monument of scholarship allows readers of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/66175-the-lord-of-the-rings">The Lord of the Rings</a> to gain the fullest possible understanding of the careful preparation which stood behind the handful of books published by Tolkien in his lifetime.</p>
<p>As a literary critic who specialises in archival work, I admire the heroic labours of the Tolkien estate in presenting the author’s private papers, letters and illustrations to a wide readership of scholars and enthusiasts. But not all heirs and executors take the same view when it comes to publishing posthumous work, and there are often ethical problems arising from an author’s drafts and manuscripts. </p>
<h2>The Larkin Letters</h2>
<p>When the first edition of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/philip-larkin-33854">Philip Larkin’s</a> posthumous Collected Poems appeared in 1988, many readers were dismayed to find that the editor had chosen to include a large number of unfinished poems and apprentice work written when Larkin was a student. Critics of that volume argued that Larkin would never have allowed publication of this inferior work, and the overall effect was to diminish the impact of the poems he valued.</p>
<p>Publication of the Collected Poems was followed in 1992 by a volume of Larkin’s letters (heavily cut to remove libels), which revealed the poet to have been <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/philip-larkin-misogynist-racist-miserable-or-caring-playful-man-who-lived-for-others-9684522.html">seething with racist prejudices</a>. It took many years for Larkin’s reputation to recover from these deep wounds, which had been administered by his own literary executors. There will be no posthumous edition of Larkin’s diaries, which were shredded shortly after his death, according to his own instructions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-years-of-scandal-philip-larkin-finally-has-a-spot-in-poets-corner-68527">After years of scandal, Philip Larkin finally has a spot in Poets' Corner</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="http://www.woolfonline.com/timepasses/?q=letters/vw/overview">Virginia Woolf’s letters</a> and journals offer a positive counter example. Edited by her nephew Quentin Bell and published posthumously, Woolf’s Diaries have established themselves as an inspiring series of books for everyone who studies her novels. The pleasure of watching over Woolf’s shoulder as she documents the ups and downs of her writing life is immense.</p>
<h2>The ‘lost’ works of Auden and Burgess</h2>
<p>Other writers have attempted to take control of their reputations more directly. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/auden_wh.shtml">W.H. Auden</a>, who died in 1973, stipulated in his will that no edition of his letters should be published, and he requested that anyone who had letters in their possession should burn them. Fortunately for posterity, many of his friends had already sold their batches of Auden letters to university archives, and other people simply ignored his wishes. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that an edited collection of Auden’s letters will ever appear.</p>
<p>Edward Mendelson, who is Auden’s literary executor, recently <a href="https://academic.oup.com/eic/article-abstract/68/3/273/5050221">wrote an article</a> in which he discussed his own ethical dilemmas as the editor of the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6183/collected-poems-by-w-h-auden/9780679731979/">Collected Poems</a>. Mendelson’s guiding principle has been to value the poems that Auden chose to include in his two volumes of Collected Longer Poems and Collected Shorter Poems.</p>
<p>But what to do about the poems published in magazines but excluded from Auden’s books? Those appear in the Collected Poems on the grounds that Auden had signed them off for publication. And what about the rejected early work, such as the poem <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/upr.edu/modernpoetry/Student-Blogs/ivan-andres-rodriguez/spainbywhauden">“Spain”</a> – a response to the Spanish Civil War published in pamphlet form but later excluded from the Collected Shorter Poems? That does appear in The English Auden, an edition of poems written in the 1930s, but it is absent from the Collected Poems.</p>
<p>There is another category of “lost” work by Auden, existing only in manuscripts and notebooks, but never collected in book form. Mendelson has recently unveiled his plans to publish some of these poems, carefully edited and contextualised, in a volume of Auden’s “Personal Writing”, which will include poems and verse-letters written for friends. But none of this work will be finding its way into the next edition of the Collected Poems.</p>
<p>Anyone who manages a literary estate faces hard questions about what should or should not be published. In September 2018 Manchester University Press will publish Paul Wake’s edition of Puma, a science fiction novel by <a href="https://www.anthonyburgess.org/">Anthony Burgess</a>. The manuscript, completed in 1976, was unpublished in Burgess’s lifetime, but letters in the archive confirm that he was actively seeking to find a publisher shortly after he’d written it. What readers will make of <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526132734/">this “lost” novel</a> by Burgess remains to be seen.</p>
<p>The Tolkien example is a story of a son’s devotion to his father’s work and there is much to admire in Christopher Tolkien’s determination to put as much unpublished writing as possible into the public domain.</p>
<p>For the future, as electronic communication becomes more pervasive, it seems likely that writers will find it harder to delete published work from the record, or to edit their past in the ways evidenced by Auden and Larkin. If only they had survived into the age of social media, their Collected Tweets might have been required reading for every diligent student of their poems.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Biswell is the Director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and one of the General Editors of the Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess, published by Manchester University Press. His work on the Irwell Edition was supported by a one-month fellowship awarded in 2016 by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin.</span></em></p>
Not all heirs and executors take the same view when it comes to publishing posthumous work.
Andrew Biswell, Professor of Modern Literature, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/94189
2018-04-04T07:58:19Z
2018-04-04T07:58:19Z
How I invented a new language for The City and The City
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212993/original/file-20180403-189798-dz19cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Georgian alphabet.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_scripts#/media/File:Beautiful_Georgian_Letters.jpg">rocketfall via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The BBC’s latest drama series, an adaptation of China Miéville’s 2009 novel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Ds23M9-RE">The City and The City</a>, is a police procedural – but with a difference. The series is set in a fictitious divided city – Besźel and Ul Qoma – where the residents of each side are allowed no contact with each other. The main character, Inspector Tyador Borlu (played by David Morrissey), is a resident of Besźel – a slightly grubby, down-at-heel kind of place. During an investigation, he has to travel to the other city, Ul Qoma, and in order to heighten the difference for both the character and the audience, the Ul Qoman language of Illitan had to be completely different.</p>
<p>This is where I came in. As a linguist, I was called in to design a distinctive language for the series. This is not as uncommon as it sounds – there have been a number of languages created over the years, for various reasons. The American linguist <a href="http://arikaokrent.com/">Arika Okrent</a> lists 500 in her book <a href="http://inthelandofinventedlanguages.com/">In the Land of Invented Languages</a> which goes well beyond the usual suspects of Esperanto, Elvish and Klingon.</p>
<p>Constructed languages, or conlangs, have been gaining popularity in recent years, with their own society, the <a href="https://conlang.org/">Language Creation Society</a>, and annual conference. The seventh annual conference was held in July 2017 in Calgary – and even a brief look at the schedule of talks will tell you that these people take language construction extremely seriously (“(Ab)using Construction Grammar (CxG) as a Conlanging Tool”) but also have a sense of humour (“Someone from That Planet Might Be in the Audience”).</p>
<p>Of course, <a href="https://folk.uib.no/hnohf/howmany.htm">J.R.R. Tolkien created languages</a> for Lord of the Rings – and there is a huge amount of detail on those languages for anyone with enough interest to pursue it. But in what is now widely regarded as the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/68309b3a-1f02-11e7-a454-ab04428977f9">golden age of television</a>, with multiple providers needing content for their channels, there is a broader scope for invention and fantasy – which is where language invention comes into its own.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s16pdi2JeqU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The most famous example of a language created specifically for film and television is Klingon, originally created by <a href="http://www.startrek.com/database_article/okrand">Marc Okrand</a> for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Klingon has since taken on a life of its own, with a <a href="https://www.kli.org/">Klingon Language Institute</a> and translations of <a href="https://www.kli.org/activities/kli-press/the-klingon-hamlet/">Hamlet</a> and <a href="https://www.kli.org/activities/kli-press/much-ado-about-nothing/">Much Ado About Nothing</a>. More recently, HBO’s television adaptation of the Game of Thrones books required the creation of the <a href="https://www.dothraki.org/">Dothraki</a> and <a href="http://www.makinggameofthrones.com/production-diary/2014/5/8/high-valyrian-101-learn-and-pronounce-common-phrases">Valyrian</a> languages, for which David J. Peterson was responsible.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SUUHH5lpLL4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Talking points</h2>
<p>While Tolkien left some fairly detailed instructions regarding the structure and vocabulary of Elvish, most authors do not go into such detail. George R.R. Martin makes reference to the languages in his Game of Thrones novels, but Peterson created them. Likewise, while Miéville gives a number of hints about the sound and structure of Illitan, there was no grammar or dictionary to refer to. Having free rein to create a language – not purely as an academic construct, but one which will be used – is both a challenge and a joy.</p>
<p>The primary concern for what we might term “artistic” language creators is the ease of pronunciation for the actors. If we are being asked to produce a human language, then we have the luxury of our previous study of language and linguistics to guide us. If asked to create an alien language – as Okrand was – there might be limitless possibilities, but the actors still have to be able to physically say the lines; we are constrained by human physiology. This was not an issue in the adaptation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/apr/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview23">Story of your Life</a> by Ted Chiang (which was filmed using the title Arrival), as the aliens communicated telepathically – although the writing system had to be created by the design team.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212986/original/file-20180403-189821-1cg0y0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C53%2C1170%2C730&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212986/original/file-20180403-189821-1cg0y0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212986/original/file-20180403-189821-1cg0y0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212986/original/file-20180403-189821-1cg0y0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212986/original/file-20180403-189821-1cg0y0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212986/original/file-20180403-189821-1cg0y0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212986/original/file-20180403-189821-1cg0y0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bilingual: David Morrissey in The City and The City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Des Willie/BBC/Mammoth Screen</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Script reading</h2>
<p>In his novel The City and The City, Miéville tells us that Illitan uses the Roman script, having lost its original, right-to-left script “overnight” in 1923 (we’re not told how or why). We know that Borlu finds the sound of Illitan “jarring” (although we know from Miéville’s description of the character that he speaks “good” Illitan). In Besźel, meanwhile, people speak Besz, but for the purposes of the TV adaptation this is rendered as English and the written language, despite its occasional Cyrillic intrusions and diacritics (accents, for example), is still understandable to an English-speaking audience.</p>
<p>In order for the audience to share in Borlu’s sense of alienation in Ul Qoma, the decision was taken to use an entirely different alphabet for Illitian for the television series – and we eventually settled on the Georgian alphabet as it bears no resemblance to English.</p>
<p>The grammar of Illitan is made up of a mixture of Slavonic languages (such as Slovene, with its extra verb conjugation referring to two people: “we two are”, “you two are”, “they two are” as well as “we are”, “you are”, “they are”) and a system of infixes (like a prefix, but it fits into the word rather than in front of it) to denote tense and aspect. The word order remained roughly the same as English in order to help the actors know where to put the emphasis in their lines.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212989/original/file-20180403-189798-1ql6nvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212989/original/file-20180403-189798-1ql6nvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212989/original/file-20180403-189798-1ql6nvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212989/original/file-20180403-189798-1ql6nvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212989/original/file-20180403-189798-1ql6nvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212989/original/file-20180403-189798-1ql6nvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212989/original/file-20180403-189798-1ql6nvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maria Shraders as Quissima Dhatt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bbcpictures.co.uk/image/14970706?collection=14970888+14970706&back=L2ltYWdlL2NhbXBhaWduLzExMDAyODI3LzE2">Des Willie/BBC/Mammoth Screen</a></span>
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<p>One final problem when creating a language from a novel is one familiar to any adaptation – the expectations of the audience. With any adaptation, the audience is divided into those who know the original novel and those who do not. Those who do will always have their own ideas about how the characters look and sound – and this extends to fictional language. </p>
<p>My version of Illitan will not necessarily match up with that of a fan of The City and The City, but I hope it will add something for people who are new to Miéville’s work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Long does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Linguist Alison Long helped translate a best-selling novel into the latest BBC television drama.
Alison Long, Programme Director, Modern Languages, Keele University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/89464
2017-12-21T14:29:06Z
2017-12-21T14:29:06Z
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Christmas letters to his children bring echoes of Middle-earth to the North Pole
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200388/original/file-20171221-15874-mm9y6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">First letter and illustration from Father Christmas, 1920.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© The Tolkien Estate Ltd, 1976.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Like parents the world over, J.R.R. Tolkien dedicated considerable time and effort to making Christmas a joyful time for his young children. Yet this was a man whose rich imagination brought to life an <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/fantasy-worlds-invention-restraint/">entire world</a> with thousands of years of legendary history; described different orders of creatures, wars and battles; even invented languages. So inevitably, his family traditions were something rather special. </p>
<p>Every year, from 1920 to 1942, the Tolkien children – first John, and later Michael, Christopher and Priscilla – would receive a letter from Father Christmas. It would be written in his spidery hand (he would, after all, be a very old man) and illustrated with funny scenes from life in the North Pole. In 2018, <a href="http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/2017/dec-20">the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford</a> will exhibit the letters, alongside other manuscripts, artwork, maps, letters and artefacts from Tolkien collections around the world.</p>
<h2>The American influence</h2>
<p>Tolkien was not the first author to produce letters from Father Christmas for his children. Mark Twain famously <a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/santaclaus.html">wrote a letter</a> from “Santa Claus” to his elder daughter, Susie Clemens. And although Tolkien retained the English name for his protagonist, there was a lot of popular American-derived folklore associated with his Father Christmas. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200389/original/file-20171221-15915-og2s9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200389/original/file-20171221-15915-og2s9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200389/original/file-20171221-15915-og2s9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200389/original/file-20171221-15915-og2s9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200389/original/file-20171221-15915-og2s9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200389/original/file-20171221-15915-og2s9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200389/original/file-20171221-15915-og2s9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200389/original/file-20171221-15915-og2s9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The aurora borealis, 1926: ‘Isn’t the North Polar Bear silly? … [he] turned on all the Northern Lights for two years in one go. You have never heard or seen anything like it. I have tried to draw a picture of it: but I am too shaky to do it properly and you can’t paint fizzing light can you?’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© The Tolkien Estate Ltd, 1976.</span></span>
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<p>The idea of Santa Claus dressed in red and white, and riding a sleigh drawn by reindeer every Christmas Eve delivering presents to children, comes from perhaps the best-known poem in the English language: <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43171/a-visit-from-st-nicholas">The Night Before Christmas</a>. Written either by Clement Moore or Henry Livingston (the authorship <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/26719/mystery-behind-worlds-most-famous-christmas-poem">is contested</a>) in the 19th century, this classic American poem established Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, as we know him today. </p>
<p>The imagery of Santa Claus was enhanced by German-American illustrator <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Nast">Thomas Nast</a>, who provided Santa with elf helpers and a toy workshop, and portrayed him living in the North Pole and in regular receipt of children’s letters. </p>
<p>Tolkien borrows freely from all of this American pop culture which, by the end of the 19th century, had migrated to Britain and was immensely popular. But he also takes his Father Christmas in different directions, gravitating towards his own mythology of Middle-earth, which was developing in parallel. </p>
<h2>Old friends, and new</h2>
<p>So of course we get elves in Tolkien’s North Pole. But despite the fact that these are diminutive, jolly elves with pointed hats (a far cry from those of The Lord of the Rings) they belong to different kindreds: Snow Elves, Red Elves or Gnomes, Green Elves – not unlike the High Elves, Silvan Elves and others in The Lord of the Rings. </p>
<p>Some of the Christmas elves were fierce warriors, giving the evil goblins a run for their money in battle. Indeed, the goblins themselves are precursors of the Goblins in The Hobbit, and later the Orcs. They live underground, they are keen on tunnelling, and they are a perennial threat to Christmas.</p>
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<span class="caption">Christmas, 1932: ‘The caves are wonderful. I knew they were there, but not how many or how big they were. Of course the goblins went off into the deepest holes and corners, and we soon found Polar Bear. He was getting quite long and thin with hunger, as he had been in the caves about a fortnight … At the top of my ‘Christmas card’ is a picture, imaginary, but more or less as it really is, of me arriving over Oxford. Your house is just about where the three little black points stick up out of the shadow at the right.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© The Tolkien Estate Ltd, 1976</span></span>
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<p>At the same time, Tolkien expands the Christmas mythology considerably. Father Christmas’s best friend (and regular rascal) is the North Polar Bear, whose funny antics are the focus of the early letters. Later on, his nephews, Paksu and Valkotukka (Finnish for “fat” and “white hair” respectively) provide further comic relief, and showcase Tolkien’s love for the language which influenced one of his own invented languages, Quenya, spoken by the Elves of Middle-earth. </p>
<p>A number of “aetiological” myths are also added: motifs that “explain” away things that happen in the real world of Tolkien’s children. So broken chocolates can be explained by the Polar Bear squishing them, and a bright light in the night sky is surely a glimpse of the gigantic Christmas tree in the North Pole. </p>
<h2>Innocence lost</h2>
<p>More details and innovations make this frozen world wonderful and intriguing. Father Christmas apparently has a tap in his cellar that “turns on” the Aurora Borealis; there is cave art by primeval men in the goblin caves, including depictions of mammoths and reindeer; and Snow-boys (the sons of Snow-men who live in the vicinity) get invites to parties in Father Christmas’s house.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200377/original/file-20171221-17748-1y3167q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200377/original/file-20171221-17748-1y3167q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200377/original/file-20171221-17748-1y3167q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200377/original/file-20171221-17748-1y3167q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200377/original/file-20171221-17748-1y3167q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200377/original/file-20171221-17748-1y3167q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200377/original/file-20171221-17748-1y3167q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cave drawings, 1932: ‘Polar Bear himself was astonished when I brought light; for the most remarkable thing is that the walls of these caves are all covered with pictures, cut into the rock or painted on in red and brown and black. Some of them are very good (mostly of animals), and some are queer and some bad; and there are many strange marks, signs and scribbles, some of which have a nasty look.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© The Tolkien Estate Ltd, 1976</span></span>
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<p>Even more Tolkienian, we also get invented languages and alphabets. An elf called Ilbereth, who becomes Father Christmas’s secretary, sends the children a Merry Christmas message in elvish script, which is ostensibly a variation of Tolkien’s tengwar writing system, the same seen on the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings. And the Polar Bear gives us a sentence in “Arctic” (a version of Quenya) and introduces us to an alphabet he has devised based on goblin symbols.</p>
<p>The Father Christmas letters were published after Tolkien’s death in 1973, and their lasting popularity is, I would argue, due to the extended Christmas saga they create and the funny and moving father’s voice that comes through each of them. </p>
<p>The poignant “last letter”, when Father Christmas waves goodbye to children who are now “too old” to hang their stocking anymore, while the Second World War is raging, marks the end of innocence in more than one way. But the myth of Father Christmas lives on, and continues to be a favourite festive read of children all over the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89464/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dimitra Fimi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote letters to his children from Father Christmas every year for 23 years. And they’re filled with elves, goblins and playful polar bears.
Dimitra Fimi, Senior Lecturer in English, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.