David Brin Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is an American scientist and author of science fiction. He has won the Hugo,Salon'' as carefully crafted and seductive, but backward-looking. He wrote that he had enjoyed it as a child as escapist fantasy, but that it clearly also reflected the decades of totalitarianism in the mid-20th century. Brin saw the change from

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...

to a free middle class as progress, and in his view, Tolkien, like the

Romantic poets Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18t ...

, as opposed to that. As well as its being "a great tale", Brin saw good points in the work; Tolkien was, he wrote, self-critical, for example blaming the elves for trying to halt time by forging their Rings, while the Ringwraiths could be seen as cautionary figures of Greek '' hubris'', men who reached too high, and fell. The historian

Jared Lobdell Charles Jared Lobdell (29 November 1937 – 22 March 2019) was an American author and one of the first Tolkien scholars. He is best known for some thirty academic books on American history and the Inklings including J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewi ...

, evaluating the hostile reception of Tolkien by the mainstream literary establishment in the 2006 '' J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia'', noted that Wilson was "well known as an enemy of religion", of popular books, and "conservatism in any form". Lobdell concluded that "no 'mainstream critic' appreciated ''The Lord of the Rings'' or indeed was in a position to write criticism on it – most being unsure what it was and why readers liked it." He noted that

Brian Aldiss Brian Wilson Aldiss (; 18 August 1925 – 19 August 2017) was an English writer, artist, and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for o ...

was a critic of science fiction, distinguishing such "critics" from

Tolkien scholarship 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 Rawlin ...

, the study and analysis of Tolkien's themes,

influences ''Influences'' is the debut solo album by English musician Mark King, singer and bass player with Level 42. It was released by Polydor Records in July 1984. The album features a cover of the song "I Feel Free" by Cream, which was released as a ...

, and methods. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' reviewer Judith Shulevitz called ''The Lord of the Rings'' pedantic and full of "fusty archaisms", while the '' London Review of Books'' editor Jenny Turner attacked it as a comforting read for the immature. The Inkling

Hugo Dyson Henry Victor Dyson Dyson (7 April 1896 – 6 June 1975), generally known as Hugo Dyson and who signed his writings H. V. D. Dyson, was an English academic and a member of the Inklings literary group. He was a committed Christian, and together w ...

complained loudly at readings of the book;

Christopher Tolkien Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (21 November 1924 – 16 January 2020) was an English academic editor, becoming a French citizen in later life. The son of author and academic J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien edited much of his father ...

records Dyson as "lying on the couch, and lolling and shouting and saying, 'Oh God, no more Elves.'"

Rehabilitation

Tolkien studies

Tolkien's fiction began to acquire respectability in academia only at the end of his life, with the publication of Paul H. Kocher's 1972 ''Master of Middle-Earth''. In 1973, Patrick Grant, a scholar of Renaissance literature, offered a psychological interpretation of ''The Lord of the Rings'', identifying similarities between the interactions of the characters and Jungian archetypes. He states that the Hero appears both in noble and powerful form as

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 in childlike form as

Frodo Frodo Baggins is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, and one of the protagonists in ''The Lord of the Rings''. Frodo is a hobbit of the Shire who inherits the One Ring from his cousin Bilbo Baggins, described familiarly a ...

, whose quest can be interpreted as a personal journey of

individuation The principle of individuation, or ', describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things. The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Leibniz, Carl Gustav Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Sim ...

. They are opposed by the Ringwraiths. Frodo's

anima Anima may refer to: Animation * Ánima (company), a Mexican animation studio founded in 2002 * Córdoba International Animation Festival – ANIMA, in Argentina Religion and philosophy * Animism, the belief that objects, places, and creatur ...

is the Elf-queen

Galadriel Galadriel (IPA: Help:IPA, �aˈladri.ɛl is a Character (arts), character created by J. R. R. Tolkien in his Middle-earth writings. She appears in ''The Lord of the Rings'', ''The Silmarillion'', and ''Unfinished Tales''. She ...

, who is opposed by the evil giant female spider

Shelob Shelob is a fictional demon in the form of a giant spider from J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. Her lair lies in Cirith Ungol ("the pass of the spider") leading into Mordor. The creature Gollum deliberately leads the Hobbit prota ...

. The Old Wise Man archetype is filled by the wizard

Gandalf Gandalf is a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels '' The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. He is a wizard, one of the ''Istari'' order, and the leader of the Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien took the name "Gandalf" from the Old Nor ...

, who is opposed by the corrupted wizard Saruman. Frodo's Shadow is, appropriately in Grant's view, also a male Hobbit, like Frodo. Aragorn has an Ideal Partner in

Arwen Arwen Undómiel is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. She appears in the novel ''The Lord of the Rings''. Arwen is one of the half-elven who lived during the Third Age; her father was Elrond half-elven, lor ...

, but also a Negative Animus in Eowyn, at least until she meets

Faramir Faramir is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. He is introduced as the younger brother of Boromir of the Fellowship of the Ring and second son of Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. Faramir enters the narra ...

and chooses a happy union with him instead. Richard C. West compiled an annotated checklist of Tolkien criticism in 1981. Serious study began to reach the broader community with Shippey's 1982 ''

The Road to Middle-earth ''The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology'' is a scholarly study of the Middle-earth works of J. R. R. Tolkien written by Tom Shippey and first published in 1982. The book discusses Tolkien's philology, and then e ...

'' and

Verlyn Flieger Verlyn Flieger (born 1933) is an author, editor, and Professor Emerita in the Department of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, where she taught courses in comparative mythology, medieval literature, and the works of J. R. R. Tol ...

's ''

Splintered Light ''Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World'' is an 1983 book of literary criticism by the leading Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger, in which she argues that light is a central theme of Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology, in particul ...

'' in 1983. To borrow a phrase from Flieger, academia had trouble "taking seriously a subject which had, until he wrote, been dismissed as unworthy of attention." Tolkien's works have since become the subject of a substantial body of academic research, both as

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

fiction and as an extended exercise in

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. ...

. In 1998, Daniel Timmons wrote in a dedicated issue of the ''

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA), founded in 1982 is a nonprofit association of scholars, writers, and publishers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in literature, film, and the other arts. Its principal act ...

'' that scholars still disagreed about Tolkien's place in literature, but that those critical of it were a minority. He noted that Shippey had said that the "literary establishment" did not include Tolkien among the canon of academic texts, whereas Jane Chance "boldly declares that at last Tolkien 'is being studied as important in himself, as one of the world's greatest writers'". Tom Shippey by Gage Skidmore

Alongside their analysis of Tolkien's work, scholars set about rebutting many of the literary critics' claims. Starting with his 1982 book ''

'', Shippey pointed out that Muir's assertion that Tolkien's writing was non-adult, as the protagonists end with no pain, is not true of

, who is permanently scarred and can no longer enjoy life in the Shire. Or again, he replies to

Colin Manlove Colin Nicholas Manlove (4 May 1942 in Falkirk – 1 June 2020) was a literary critic with a particular interest in fantasy. ''Modern Fantasy: Five Studies'' (1975, published as by C. N. Manlove), which considers at length works by Charles King ...

's attack on Tolkien's "overworked cadences" and "monotonous pitch" and the suggestion that the '' Ubi sunt'' section of the Old English poem '' The Wanderer'' is "real

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

" unlike anything in Tolkien, with the observation that Tolkien's ''

Lament of the Rohirrim Rohan is a fictional kingdom of Men in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy setting of Middle-earth. Known for its horsemen, the Rohirrim, Rohan provides its ally Gondor with cavalry. Its territory is mainly grassland. The Rohirrim call their land the ...

'' is a paraphrase of just that section; other scholars have praised Tolkien's poem. As a final example, he replies to the critic Mark Roberts's 1956 statement that ''The Lord of the Rings'' "is not moulded by some vision of things which is at the same time its ''

raison d'etre Raison may refer to: __NOTOC__ People * André Raison (c 1640 – 1719), French baroque composer and organist * Kate Raison, Australian actress * Max Raison (1901-1988), English cricketer * Miranda Raison, English actress * Timothy Raison Sir ...

''"; he calls this one of the least perceptive comments ever made on Tolkien, stating that on the contrary the work "fits together ... on almost every level", with Interlacing in The Lord of the Rings, complex interlacing, a consistent ambiguity about One Ring, the Ring and the nature of evil, and a consistent theory of the role of "chance" or "luck", all of which he explains in detail. The pace of scholarly publications on Tolkien increased dramatically in the early 2000s. The dedicated journal ''Tolkien Studies'' was founded in 2004; that same year, the scholar Neil D. Isaacs introduced an anthology of Tolkien criticism with the words "This collection assumes that argument about the value and power of ''The Lord of the Rings'' has been settled, certainly to the satisfaction of its vast, growing, persistent audience, but also of a considerable body of critical judgment". The open-access ''Journal of Tolkien Research'' began publication in 2014. A bibliographic database of Tolkien criticism is maintained at Wheaton College (Massachusetts), Wheaton College. Pressure to study Tolkien seriously came initially from fans rather than academics; the scholarly legitimacy of the field was still a subject of debate in 2015. Tolkien was strongly opposed to both Nazism and Communism; Hal Colebatch in ''The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia'' states that his views can be seen in what he considers to be the somewhat parodic "The Scouring of the Shire". Leftist critics have accordingly attacked Tolkien's social conservatism. E. P. Thompson blames the cold warrior mentality on "too much early reading of ''The Lord of the Rings''". Other Marxist literary criticism, Marxist critics, however, have been more positive towards Tolkien. While criticizing the politics embedded in ''The Lord of the Rings'', China Miéville admires Tolkien's creative use of Norse mythology, tragedy, monsters, and Worldbuilding, subcreation, as well as his criticism of allegory.

Literary re-evaluation

With the understanding that Tolkien was worth studying, scholars, authors, and critics began to re-evaluate his Middle-earth writings as literature. The humanities scholar Brian Rosebury stated in 2003 that ''The Lord of the Rings'' is both a quest – a story with a goal, to destroy the Ring – and a journey, an expansive tour of Middle-earth through a series of tableaux that filled readers with delight; and the two supported each other. Rosebury considered why ''The Lord of the Rings'' has attracted so much literary hostility, and re-evaluated it as a literary work. He noted that many critics have stated that it is not a novel and that some have proposed a medieval genre like "romance" or "wikt:epic, epic". He cited Shippey's "more subtl[e]" suggestion that "Tolkien set himself to write a romance for an audience brought up on novels", noting that Tolkien did occasionally call the work a romance but usually called it a tale, a story, or a history. Shippey argued that the work aims at Northrop Frye's "heroic romance" Anatomy of Criticism#mode, mode, only one level below "myth", but descending to "low mimesis" with the much less serious hobbits, who serve to deflect the modern reader's scepticism of the higher reaches of medieval-style romance. Rosebury's analysis of Lord of the Rings

Rosebury's analysis of Lord of the Rings

Rosebury noted that much of the work, especially Book 1, is largely descriptive rather than plot-based; it focuses mainly on Middle-earth itself, taking a journey through a series of tableaux – 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 ...

, in the Old Forest, with

Tom Bombadil Tom Bombadil is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He first appeared in print in a 1934 poem called " The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", which also included ''The Lord of the Rings'' characters Goldberry (Tom's wife), Old Man Willow ...

, and so on. He states that "The circumstantial expansiveness of Middle-earth itself is central to the work's aesthetic power". Alongside this slow descriptiveness is the quest to destroy the Ring, a unifying plotline. The Ring needs to be destroyed to save Middle-earth itself from destruction or domination by Sauron. Hence, Rosebury argued, the book does have a single focus: Middle-earth itself. The work builds up Middle-earth as a place that readers come to love, shows that it is under dire threat, and – with the destruction of the Ring – provides the "eucatastrophe" for a happy ending. That makes the work "comedic" rather than tragic, in classical terms; but it also embodies the inevitability of loss, like the elves, hobbits, and the rest Decline and fall in Middle-earth, decline and fade. Even the least novelistic parts of the work, the chronicles, narratives, and essays of the appendices, help to build a consistent image of Middle-earth. The work is thus, Rosebury asserted, very tightly constructed, the expansiveness and plot fitting together exactly. In ''Mallorn (journal), Mallorn'' in 2004, the Tolkien scholar Caroline Galwey wrote the ironically-titled "Reasons for 'not' Liking Tolkien", inverting Turner's "Reasons for Liking Tolkien" and attacking her position, along with Edwin Muir's. In her view, "we cannot understand Tolkien-haters properly unless we go beyond their arguments to the things they do not say." Those things, she argues, include the "greatest strength" of ''The Lord of the Rings'', that "in sensibility it is a (capital-R) Romantic work". In her view, Turner is "apparently so embarrassed by [Tolkien's Romanticism] that she won't even name it or admit that it has a pedigree." Galway writes, too, that Tolkien-haters have an "existential fear" of Tolkien's happiness: they cannot accept that "Joy, wonder, reverence, the Sublime (literary), Sublime" do mean something, that they stand alongside the world's suffering and evil, "undiminished by them, as a fact in this world." In 2013, the fantasy author and humorist Terry Pratchett used a mountain theme to praise Tolkien, likening Tolkien to Mount Fuji, and writing that any other fantasy author "either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact Standing on the shoulders of giants, standing on [it]." In 2016, the British literary critic and poet Roz Kaveney reviewed five books about Tolkien in ''The Times Literary Supplement''. She recorded that in 1991 she had said of ''The Lord of the Rings'' that it was worth "intelligent reading but not passionate attention", and accepted that she had "underestimated the extent to which it would gain added popularity and cultural lustre from Peter Jackson's film adaptations". As Pratchett had done, she used a mountain metaphor, alluding to Basil Bunting's poem about Ezra Pound's ''Cantos'', with the words "Tolkien's books have become Alps and we will wait in vain for them to crumble." Kaveney called Tolkien's works "Thick description, Thick Texts", books that are best read with some knowledge of his Middle-earth framework rather than as "single artworks". She accepted that he was a complicated figure, a scholar, a war survivor, a skilful writer of "light verse", a literary theorist, and a member of "The Inklings, a coterie of other influential thinkers". Further, she stated that Tolkien and the modernists, he had much in common with modernist writers like T. S. Eliot. She suggested that ''The Lord of the Rings'' is "a good, intelligent, influential and popular book", but perhaps not, as some of his "idolators" would have it, "a transcendent literary masterpiece". Andrew Higgins, reviewing the 2014 volume ''A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien'', welcomed the "eminent line-up" of the authors of its 36 articles (naming in particular Shippey,

, Dimitra Fimi, John D. Rateliff and Gergely Nagy (scholar), Gergely Nagy). He called it "joyous indeed that after many years of polite (and not so polite) disdain and dismissal by establishment 'academics' and the 'cultural intelligentsia that Tolkien had reached the "academic pantheon" of Blackwell's, Blackwell Companions. Higgins applauded the volume's editor, Stuart D. Lee, for "the overall thematic structuring of this volume, which offers a progressive profile of Tolkien the man, the student, and scholar, and the mythopoeist". Curry, writing in the ''Companion'', stated that attempts at a balanced response, finding a positive critic for each negative one, as Daniel Timmons had done, was "admirably irenic [peaceful] but misleading" as this failed to address the reasons for the hostility. Curry noted that the attacks on Tolkien began when ''The Lord of the Rings'' appeared; increased when the work became "spectacular[ly] successful" from 1965; and revived when readers' polls by Waterstones and BBC Radio 4 acclaimed the work in 1996–1998, and then again when Peter Jackson's film trilogy came out in 2001–2003. He cited Shippey's remark that the hostile critics Philip Toynbee and Edmund Wilson revealed "gross inconsistency between their self-professed critical ideals and their practice when they encounter Tolkien", adding that Fred Inglis had called Tolkien a fascist and a practitioner of "'country-based fantasy' that is 'suburban' and 'half-educated". Curry states that these criticisms are not simply demonstrably mistaken, but "rather how ''very'' (his emphasis) mistaken they are, and how consistently. That suggests that there is (as Marxists like to say) a structural or systematic bias at work". He noted that Shippey's 1982 ''The Road to Middle-earth'' and then

's 1983 ''

'' had slowly begun to reduce the hostility. That did not prevent Jenny Turner from repeating "some of her predecessors' elementary mistakes"; Curry wrote that she seemed to fail to grasp "two of the most important things about art, literary or otherwise: that reality is (also) ineluctably fictional, and that fiction and its referents are (also) unavoidably real", pointing out that metaphor is unavoidable in language. Summing up the history of attacks, Curry identified two consistent features: "a visceral hostility and emotional animus, and a plethora of mistakes showing that the books had not been read closely". In his view, these derived from the critics' feeling that Tolkien threatened their "dominant ideology",

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

. Tolkien is, he wrote, Tolkien and the modernists, modern but not modernist, at least as well-educated as the critics (another thing that made them feel threatened), and not irony, ironic (especially about his writing). ''The Lord of the Rings'' is equally "a story told by a master story-teller; a story inspired by philology; a Christianity in the Lord of the Rings, story suffused with Catholic values; and a mythic (or Mythopoeia, mythopoeic) story with a North European pagan inflection". In other words, Tolkien was about as anti-modernist as possible. Curry concluded by noting that newer authors including China Miéville, Junot Díaz, Junot Diaz, and Michael Chabon, and the critics Anthony Lane in ''The New Yorker'' and Andrew O'Hehir in ''Salon (magazine), Salon'' were taking a more open attitude, and cited the work's first publisher,

Rayner Unwin Rayner Stephens Unwin CBE (23 December 1925 – 23 November 2000) was an English publisher. He served as the chairman of the publishing firm George Allen & Unwin, which had been founded by his father Sir Stanley Unwin. Early life Unwin was bo ...

's "pithy and accurate" assessment of it: "a very great book in its own curious way".

References

Sources

* {{Use Oxford spelling , date=November 2017 Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien, * History of literature in the United Kingdom Reception of works

Context

Enthusiastic early support

Literary hostility

20th century

21st century

Rehabilitation

Tolkien studies

Literary re-evaluation

References

Sources