J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...
's narrative interlacing in ''The Lord of the Rings'', also called by the French term ''entrelacement'', is an unusual and complex narrative structure, known from medieval literature, that enables him to achieve a variety of literary effects. These include maintaining suspense, keeping the reader uncertain of what will happen and even of what is happening to other characters at the same time in the story; creating surprise and an ongoing feeling of bewilderment and disorientation. More subtly, the leapfrogging of the timeline in ''
The Lord of the Rings
''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's b ...
'' by the different story threads allows Tolkien to make hidden connections that can only be grasped retrospectively, as the reader realises on reflection that certain events happened at the same time, and that these connections imply a contest of good and evil powers.
Interlacing and interconnections presented
Peter Jackson with a complex challenge in translating the book to a narrative suitable for his
''The Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy. Scholars have noted that he used techniques such as
intercutting,
visual doubling, and
voice-over
Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non- diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentation ...
to produce comparable emotional and thematic effects.
Medieval ''entrelacement''
![Orlando Furioso 20](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Orlando_Furioso_20.jpg)
Interlace, known in the Middle Ages as ''entrelacement'', was a narrative device developed in Medieval literature, especially
in France. Rather than seeking to make a story as clear as possible with a main plot and subsidiary storylines as in a modern novel, the interlaced medieval tale aimed to reflect the confusing flow of events that people perceive in the world.
Richard C. West gives as example the 13th century ''
Queste del Saint Graal
'' Septimus Heap'' is a series of fantasy novels featuring a protagonist of the same name written by English author Angie Sage. In all, it features seven novels, entitled ''Magyk'', '' Flyte'', '' Physik'', ''Queste'', '' Syren'', ''Darke'', an ...
'', where the
holy grail
The Holy Grail (french: Saint Graal, br, Graal Santel, cy, Greal Sanctaidd, kw, Gral) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Various traditions describe the Holy Grail as a cup, dish, or stone with miracu ...
is just one goal, while the knights Bors,
Galahad
Sir Galahad (), sometimes referred to as Galeas () or Galath (), among other versions of his name, is a knight of King Arthur's Round Table and one of the three achievers of the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. He is the illegitimate son of Si ...
,
Gawain
Gawain (), also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest ...
, and
Lancelot all pursue their own adventures, for readers to compare and contrast. Outside France, a form of interlace is seen in
Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' from
ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...
, in the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
epic poem ''
Beowulf'' (on which Tolkien was an expert, as in his lecture "
''Beowulf'': The Monsters and the Critics"), and in the English poet
Edmund Spenser's 1590 ''
Faerie Queene
''The Faerie Queene'' is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books IIII were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IVVI. ''The Faerie Queene'' is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 sta ...
''.
The Tolkien scholar
Tom Shippey
Thomas Alan Shippey (born 9 September 1943) is a British medievalist, a retired scholar of Middle and Old English literature as well as of modern fantasy and science fiction. He is considered one of the world's leading academic experts on the ...
comments that there is "a minor mystery" about Tolkien's use of this French Medieval literary device, as he favoured "northern" literature -
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
if possible,
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
otherwise - over French or later Italian epics like
Ariosto
Ludovico Ariosto (; 8 September 1474 – 6 July 1533) was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic ''Orlando Furioso'' (1516). The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's ''Orlando Innamorato'', describes the ...
's ''
Orlando Furioso'', which he notes was the model for
Spenser's ''
The Faerie Queene
''The Faerie Queene'' is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books IIII were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IVVI. ''The Faerie Queene'' is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 sta ...
''. The mystery stems from the fact that Tolkien hated Spenser's writing, and is recorded as saying that he hadn't read Ariosto "and wouldn't have liked him if I had". All the same, Shippey writes, Tolkien had read French interlaced romances when working on his edition of ''
Sir Gawain
Gawain (), also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest W ...
''; and his use of the technique is far more tightly structured than the Medieval romances.
Narrative structure
Applying the medieval technique
The early reviewer William Blissett wrote in 1959, just a few years after the book was published, that ''The Lord of the Rings'', given its
medieval theme and structure, was "perhaps the last literary masterpiece of the Middle Ages." West comments that the remark is witty but not truly correct, as
the novel addresses modern issues and is enjoyed by readers unfamiliar with medieval literature.
The interlace structure of Tolkien's work was described in 1967 by George H. Thomson, who wrote that in its subject, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was "an anatomy of
edieval romance themes", and in its structure no less ambitious, since
All the same, according to John R. Holmes, West's 1975 analysis, which focussed specifically on the novel's interlace structure, "remains the definitive study". Holmes states that Tolkien "uses this medieval technique in a decidedly modern way, closer to
Woolf">irginiaWoolf and
Faulkner">illiamFaulkner than to
Thomas Mallory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author of '' Le Morte d'Arthur'', the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend, compiled and in most cases translated from French sources. The most popular version of '' Le Morte d' ...
n_his_''Le_Morte_D'Arthur''.html" ;"title="Le_Morte_D'Arthur.html" ;"title="n his ''Le Morte D'Arthur">n his ''Le Morte D'Arthur''">Le_Morte_D'Arthur.html" ;"title="n his ''Le Morte D'Arthur">n his ''Le Morte D'Arthur''or Chrétien de Troyes".
The story of ''The Lord of the Rings'' is, West writes, simple enough: the Hobbit Frodo Baggins, Frodo has to take the enemy Sauron's One Ring to where it was made, the fiery Mount Doom, in Sauron's dark land of
Mordor
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, Mordor (pronounced ; from Sindarin ''Black Land'' and Quenya ''Land of Shadow'') is the realm and base of the evil Sauron. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, an ...
, the only place where it can be destroyed. But, he adds, this
quest "naturally lies interwoven into the lives and fates of other persons and peoples". The quest is, in particular, intertwined with the War of the Ring, which brings all the
free peoples of
Middle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth is ...
into conflict with Sauron.
Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works '' The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawl ...
uses the medieval technique of interlacing to create a modern tale, unique for its "pervasive sense of history", its numerous
invented languages
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...
, its abundant
use of poetry, its deep roots in Tolkien's professional knowledge of
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
, history, and
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
, as much as its use of interlace.
Interwoven narratives
Tolkien structured the novel as six "books", that the publisher chose to print as three volumes. The first two books are almost single-threaded, as they follow Frodo from his home in
the Shire
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in ''The Lord of the Rings'' and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits, the Shire-folk, largely sheltered from the goings-on in th ...
with the other Hobbits to
Rivendell
Rivendell ('' sjn, Imladris'') is a valley in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, representing both a homely place of sanctuary and a magical Elvish otherworld. It is an important location in '' The Hobbit'' and '' The Lord of ...
, and then south as the nine companions of the
Fellowship of the Ring, through
Moria and
Lothlorien to the
River Anduin
The geography of Middle-earth encompasses the physical, political, and moral geography of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, strictly a continent on the planet of Arda but widely taken to mean the physical world, and ''Eä'', all ...
. From book 3, interlacing begins in earnest, as the Fellowship is broken, and the different groups pursue their own quests. The main quest is not forwarded at all in book 3; conversely, the other quests are not progressed in book 4 as Frodo and
Sam continue their dangerous journey towards
Mordor
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, Mordor (pronounced ; from Sindarin ''Black Land'' and Quenya ''Land of Shadow'') is the realm and base of the evil Sauron. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, an ...
. Book 5 again says nothing of Frodo and Sam, but interweaves the narratives of the Hobbits
Merry and
Pippin
Pippin or Pepin may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Pippin (comics), ''Pippin'' (comics), a children's comic produced from 1966 to 1986
* Pippin (musical), ''Pippin'' (musical), a Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz loosely based on the life ...
with that of the Man
Aragorn
Aragorn is a fictional character and a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. Aragorn was a Ranger of the North, first introduced with the name Strider and later revealed to be the heir of Isildur, an ancient King of Ar ...
and his friends the
Elf
An elf () is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology. They are subsequently mentioned in Snorri Sturluson's Icelandic Prose Edda. He distinguishes "ligh ...
Legolas
Legolas (pronounced ) is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. He is a Sindar Elf of the Woodland Realm and one of the nine members of the Fellowship who set out to destroy the One Ring. He and the Dwarf Gimli ...
and the
Dwarf
Dwarf or dwarves may refer to:
Common uses
*Dwarf (folklore), a being from Germanic mythology and folklore
* Dwarf, a person or animal with dwarfism
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities
* Dwarf (''Dungeons & Dragons''), a humanoid ...
Gimli. Book 6 recounts how Frodo and Sam completed their quest, and brings all the friends together. The Hobbits return home and
scour the Shire of enemies. The timeline is more complex than this would suggest, as the books do not end with the characters synchronised; instead, the narrative repeatedly leapfrogs, so that sometimes one group is ahead in time, sometimes another. The scholars West and
Tom Shippey
Thomas Alan Shippey (born 9 September 1943) is a British medievalist, a retired scholar of Middle and Old English literature as well as of modern fantasy and science fiction. He is considered one of the world's leading academic experts on the ...
point out that these are just the major interlacings; many smaller-scale interlacings occur as the characters travel through Middle-earth and the story.
Effects
The effects of the interlace structure of ''The Lord of the Rings'' range from bold to subtle.
Bewilderment, suspense, and surprise
Interlacing allowed Tolkien to weave an elaborately intricate story, presented through the eyes of the Hobbit protagonists, "underscoring
heirfrequent bewilderment and disorientation". Most directly, this is achieved by letting the reader know no more than what one Hobbit sees as he struggles forwards, not knowing what lies ahead, where his friends are, or whether the quest has already failed. The bewilderment of the reader is minimised by the use of synchronising 'narrative landmarks', such as the brooch dropped by Pippin and discovered by Aragorn, and by having different characters observe the same event, such as a full moon, at different points in the narrative.
Equally, interlacing enables Tolkien to create
suspense and "
cliffhanger
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode or a film of serialized fiction. A cliffhang ...
" section endings, as at the end of book 5 when Pippin falls under the
Troll
A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human be ...
he has killed; the denouement is by means of story elements not introduced until later. As another example, it allows the
Ents
Ents are a species of beings in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world Middle-earth who closely resemble trees; their leader is Treebeard of Fangorn forest. Their name is derived from an Old English word for giant.
The Ents appear in ''The Lord ...
and
Huorns to appear suddenly and decisively on the
battlefield of Helm's Deep.
Naturalness and interconnectedness
West writes that "even a reader unconcerned with literary form or structure must notice, at least unconsciously, the apparently meandering manner of the plot". Things happen in the familiar way that "things seem to happen in our own lives", where "casual collisions of disparate people and events ... knit the fabric of the story". West illustrates this by examining Merry and Pippin's meeting with the Ents. This causes the Ents to overthrow their enemy
Saruman, who was also the enemy of the kingdom of Rohan. This frees up Rohan to go to the aid of Gondor in their war with Sauron. The two Hobbits would never have met the Ents unless Saruman's
Orc
An Orc (or Ork) is a fictional humanoid monster like a goblin. Orcs were brought into modern usage by the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially '' The Lord of the Rings''. In Tolkien's works, Orcs are a brutish, aggressive, ugl ...
s had captured them. The Hobbits would not have escaped the Orcs unless
Éomer
Éomer is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. He appears in ''The Lord of the Rings'' as a leader of the Riders of Rohan who serve as cavalry to the army of Gondor, fighting against Mordor.
The name Éomer, meaning "Hor ...
's band of Riders of Rohan, disobeying orders from the King, had hunted the Orc intruders down. West states that each group and character has their own motivation, but their stories interact. It feels natural, and may appear "loose", but "everything is interconnected."
Providence and luck
More subtly, the leapfrogging of the timeline by the different story threads allows Tolkien to make hidden connections that can only be grasped retrospectively, as the reader realises on reflection that certain events happened at the same time. Shippey gives as an instance the moment when Frodo sits on
Amon Hen
Gondor is a fictional kingdom in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, described as the greatest realm of Men in the west of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age. The third volume of ''The Lord of the Rings'', ''The Return of the King'', is largely ...
, the Seat of Seeing, puts on the One Ring, and feels the Eye of Sauron pressing towards him; at the same time, Frodo hears a voice urging him to take the Ring off, giving him just enough time to make up his mind and save the quest by complying. Interlace, West notes, can "show purpose or pattern behind change". This can appear, Shippey writes, as luck, where in daily life it is uncertain whether this is "something completely humdrum and practical or something mysterious and supernatural", just like the Old English word used for the same purpose in ''Beowulf'', ''
wyrd
Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English '' weird'', whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or ...
''.
Depth and openendedness
The wealth of detail in the novel, and the way that events mutually interact, helps to create both an
impression of depth and a feeling of solidity; the imaginary world comes to seem real. Further, West writes, the evident sense that the novel is a part of an immense
mythology
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narra ...
, encouraged both by mentions of ancient events in the text and by the extensive appendices (which cover Kings and Rulers, Chronology,
Family Trees
A family tree, also called a genealogy or a pedigree chart, is a chart representing family relationships in a conventional tree structure. More detailed family trees, used in medicine and social work, are known as genograms.
Representations of ...
, Calendars, Writing and Spelling, and the
Languages of Middle-earth
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of me ...
), creates in the reader's mind a feeling of openendedness, "whereby the reader has the impression that the story has an existence outside the confines of the book and that the author could have begun earlier or ended later, if he chose". The appendices indeed supply details of events long before the War of the Ring, what else occurred in Middle-earth at the same time, and what happened to the protagonists after the period described in the text. West notes, too, that openendedness is actually described in Frodo and Sam's conversation on the stairs of
Cirith Ungol
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, Mordor (pronounced ; from Sindarin ''Black Land'' and Quenya ''Land of Shadow'') is the realm and base of the evil Sauron. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, and ...
, the dangerous pass into Mordor.
am:"'Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! Don't the great tales never end?' 'No, they never end as tales', said Frodo. 'But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later—or sooner'". ''The Lord of the Rings'' was not, West writes, the last literary masterpiece of the Middle Ages, but Tolkien's instinct was right that medieval interlacing would work for his "modern masterpiece".
Translation to film
Peter Jackson and his scriptwriters chose to flatten out the book's complex interlacing and back-and-forth timeline to create a much more direct narrative suitable for his
''The Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy. The scholars of English literature E. L. Risden and Yvette Kisor studied how Jackson had achieved this. Risden analysed how Jackson had made the Ring central, selecting a storytelling approach to provide "compelling progress with as few asides as possible". Kisor examined how Jackson had used a combination of film techniques to mimic the effect of interlacing, and importantly to preserve the interconnections between related storylines within Tolkien's narrative; those techniques included
intercutting, visual doubling, and
voice-over
Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non- diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentation ...
. Kisor concluded,
unlike some Tolkien scholars, that Jackson had succeeded in producing comparable effects in "emotional and thematic content" and so in remaining true to the book.
The scholar Emily Auger writes that far from removing interlacing, the film, especially in its extended DVD versions, uses "specifically filmic variations of Tolkien's interlace", namely intercutting, to amplify the narrative and "dramatis
its status as myth". She lists over 50 scenes where various forms of interlacing occur. Further, she detects what she calls all three types of narrative interlace used by Tolkien in
Alan Lee's illustrations for the book; these are structural interlace (achronological order), stylistic interlace (restatement of themes), and pictorial interlace (characters and their environment depicted as if the outer was a projection of the inner).
References
Sources
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{{The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
Narrative techniques