EN 2215 S/F I Tolkien Lecture

Lecture 2 - World-Building

Physical Time History

Space Geography

Nature Laws

Matter

Energy

Biological Life-forms Human

Quasi-human

Non-human

Gender Sexuality

Psychological Minds The inner world

Mental Powers

Social Family

Community

Religion & Law

Political Institutions

Power

Ideology

Technological Scientific Knowledge

Control over & manipulation of Nature

Magic

Power

Cultural The Arts

Integration of artist in community

Ethical Good/Evil

Justice

Lecture 2

Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)

(Edition: The Lord of the Rings, illustrated by Alan Lee. HarperCollins, 1991)

2.1 Language and style

2.11 The language keeps a young audience in mind: it is direct, simple, action-oriented, and fast-paced.

2.12 It often aims for the pithy, the aphoristic, as part of its larger drive towards prioritizing wisdom and understanding over knowledge and skill.

· “you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.” (1:3, 97)

· · “short cuts make long delays” (3, 101)

· · “A hunted man wearies of distrust and longs for friendship.” (1:10, 187)

· · “he can see through a brick wall in time” (2:1, 237)

· · “he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom” (2:2, 276)

· · “despair is for those who see the end beyond all doubt.” (2: 2, 286)

· · “The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears.” (2:4, 315)

2.13 In terms of what it avoids: there are no references to locate the fictional world as part of a contemporary period of history.

2.14 In positive terms: the language is faintly archaic, poetic in a manner that will link it in the reader’s mind to old and traditional forms of narrative such as fable, legend, epic, and romance.

· “Loud and clear it sounds in the valleys of the hills”

· · “Slow should you be to wind that horn again”

· · “But always I have let my horn cry at setting forth…” (2:3, 296)

· · “It is for the Dimrill that we are making” (2:3, 300)

· · “Much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves…” (2:3, 301)

· · “Needless were none of the deeds of Gandalf in life.” (2:7, 375)

2.15 Temporally, it evokes an “arrested” world that is vaguely coterminous with the world of myth and legend, although, as narrative, it constantly speaks of its own time as one of historical belatedness.

2.16 The language uses poetry and song as an intrinsic aspect of the culture of the fictional peoples it depicts: history, riddle, charm, incantation, spell, etc. Examples:

· Aragorn: 186 Gil-galad: 202 Troll: 223

· · Earendil: 250 Sword: 263 Dwarf: 333

· · Nimrodel: 357 Frodo: 378 Galadriel: 392

· · Healing: “he sang over it a slow song in a strange tongue” (1:12, 214)

· Spells: “these doors are probably governed by words” (2:3, 322)

· “At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues … held him in a spell… visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him… Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike … a deep realm of sleep …. A dream of music…” (2:1, 249-50)

2.2 The relation of narrative to History

2.21 The narrative avoids any acknowledgement of its own fictiveness, i.e. it affiliates itself with the convention of narrative realism.

2.22 Song and poetry are also used as an intrinsic aspect of the role of narrative within the narrative: an allusion to how events, deeds, and figures were preserved as history in an oral culture, i.e. the narrative historicizes itself self-reflexively by drawing attention to itself as a quasi-historical record that includes song as a form of self-commemorating historical record.

2.3 The narrative as a fragment that bespeaks the whole

2.31 The narrative constantly alludes to its as a historical account focused on a specific set of events within a much larger series of quasi-historical events.

· “the Tale of the Ring shall be told from the beginning even to this present.” (2:2, 259)

2.32 The significance of the events in the narrative acquires its meaning through its relation to the whole of which it is a part.

· “that history is elsewhere recounted” (2:2, 259)

2.33 The novel comprises tales within tales.

· Dwarf history: 245 Tale of the Ring: 259-62

· · Bilbo’s Tale: 266 Isildur’s Scroll: 270

2.4 The narrative as quest in the paradoxical form of an anti-quest

2.41 A quest involves a hazardous journey undertaken for a specific purpose, whose fulfillment generally involves the finding or obtaining of some object of value, which has great (generally positive and restorative) value for an entire community.

“The Ring-bearer is setting out on the Quest of Mount Doom. On him alone is any charge laid: neither to cast away the Ring, nor to deliver it to any servant of the Enemy, nor indeed to let any handle it, save members of the Company and the Council, and only then in gravest need.” (2:3, 298)

2.42 The quest creates a set of related roles centered around support or opposition to the questor.

Positive: Gandalf, Elves, (some) Humans and Dwarves, Hobbits

Negative: Sauron, Saruman, Orcs, Trolls, Wargs, Werewolves

2.43 The role of the questor involves an initiate who will grow in stature by overcoming seemingly impossible odds by undergoing a series of challenges, adventures, tests and trials, gaining something very precious as a reward, not only for himself but also for his community.

“But you have some strength in you, my dear Hobbit!” (2:1, 235)
“you are the Ring-bearer. And you are the heir of Bilbo, the Ring-finder” (2:1, 241)

2.44 As anti-quest, he thus has to destroy an object. The gain is virtual rather than material.

“I suppose I must keep the Ring and guard it, at least for the present…” (1:2, 75)

“We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.” (2:2, 284)
“Just a plain hobbit you look … But there is more about you now than appears on the surface.” (2:3, 295)

“There is more about you than meets the eye, as I said a long time ago.” (2:5, 346)

2.45 The entire cast of fictional characters in the novel acquires its individuality primarily in terms of how they aid or obstruct Frodo’s quest.

2.5 Correspondingly, the protagonist of the quest as anti-quest will be analyzed in terms of Northrop Frye’s suggestion that “Fictions … may be classified … by the hero’s power of action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same” (Anatomy of Criticism, 1957: 33).

2.51 In Tolkien’s text, Frodo occupies the initial position of a seemingly anti-heroic protagonist who becomes an unwitting and diffident questor

2.6 The objective of the anti-quest — the destruction of the Ring — may be interpreted as the expression of an ambivalence or an animus regarding Knowledge and Technology. o:p>

· “the Elven-smiths of Eregion and their friendship with Moria, and their eagerness for knowledge, by which Sauron ensnared them.” (2:2, 259)

· Gandalf rejection of Saruman’s temptations of “Knowledge, Rule, Order” (2:2, 276-77)

· “It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill.” (2:2, 282)

· “We cannot use the Ruling Ring… It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil… The very desire for it corrupts the heart… as long as it is in the world it will be a danger even to the Wise…” (2:2, 285)

2.61 Frodo’s task is not the gain or acquisition of a precious object, but the destruction of an object.

· · “There is only one way: to find the Cracks of Doom in the depths of Orodruin, the Fire-mountain and cast the Ring in there, if you really wish to destroy it, to put it beyond the grasp of the Enemy for ever.” (1: 2, 74)

· · “His Ring was lost but not unmade.” (2:2, 261)

· · “there are but two courses… to hide the Ring for ever; or to unmake it.” (2:2, 284)

THE RING(s): 64, 267, 286, 385

· Elves: 3, Dwarves: 7, Men: 9

· Of the Dwarves’ 7: Sauron 3, Dragons 3, Frodo 1(2:2, 64)

· “What of the Three Rings of the Elves? …. They were not made as weapons of war or conquest … Those who made them did not desire strength or domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things unstained.” (2:2, 286)

Magic: Good/Bad: “this is what your folk would call magic…” (2:7, 381)