4 ms·

I don't see the connection between the quote and the article. Tolkien is rejecting allegorical reading like "the ring symbolize the coronavirus, Saruman repres

by goto11 6y ago

I don't see the connection between the quote and the article. Tolkien is rejecting allegorical reading like "the ring symbolize the coronavirus, Saruman represent Trump" etc. The article is not about allegory though but about the intentions and influences of Tolkien. Tolkien was open about his influences and at times they are pretty blatant, like directly taking the names of dwarwes from the Edda. Also the whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology, but he didn't consider that allegory but more like a retelling.

brtkdotse 6y ago
> Tolkien is rejecting allegorical reading like "the ring symbolize the coronavirus, Saruman represent Trump" etc. Brb, gonna make a YouTube-video with a million views.
eredengrin 6y ago
> Also the whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology That sounds like a pretty big stretch to me, could you elaborate? I agree there are most certainly elements from Christianity in it, but claiming the entire thing is based directly on it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, nor does that seem to be how Tolkien viewed it, at least as far as I can tell. For example, in one particular quote in the preface of the Silmarillion (as part of a letter Tolkien wrote to Milton Waldman), Tolkien says "In the cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth. These tales are 'new', they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements...There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and have them." I suspect the tendency to lump Tolkien's works together with Christianity may be more due to both his own association with Christianity as well as the general cultural knowledge of Christianity, whereas other myths he may be deriving from are not as widely known.
- goto11 6y ago
  Just read the creation myth in the first chapters in Silmarillion. It's basically Paradise Lost with more diacritics. What other mythologies have angels anyway? The Tolkien mythology is monotheistic and morally dualistic (good vs evil), which is fundamentally different from the pagan cultures he is otherwise inspired by. I actually think this is key to his success: He takes a lot of cool stuff from pagan mythologies and legends, but he frames it in a simplified "good versus evil" dualism which is easier to understand for modern readers with this background.
  - eredengrin 6y ago
    Yes, the creation of the Tolkien universe most certainly has the most direct inspiration from Christian myth, but to say the entire thing is based on it is a much stronger statement. Once the earth is formed to the point of the arrival of the elves, most of those stories afterward have very little comparison to anything in Christianity. Beren and Luthien, the creation of the rings, the wars over the Silmarils...perhaps I was just misunderstanding what you meant by the "whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology". As I mention in another comment, there is certainly a lot of Christian inspiration in the framework of the world, and you do see that in how it is all set up in the first few chapters. The stories themselves (built within that framework) seem no more related to Christianity than any of the other places they draw inspiration from.
    - goto11 6y ago
      Yes I was thinking of the creation/fall, not the whole of the Silmarillion, sorry for not making that clear.
- notahacker 6y ago
  He apparently said 'the Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.' But what he didn't like were crude 'Saruman represents Judas' type comparisons, not least because he'd criticised his friend CS Lewis for being as explicit as to incorporate Jesus as a talking Lion who is resurrected into his novels and said he found their symbolism heavy handed [it's interesting Lewis himself rejected the idea of his books as allegory, but not the idea that Aslan was supposed to be that world's Jesus or that respective books in the series were supposed to have Creation/Crucifixion/Antichrist themes. Perhaps they both viewed the term allegory as an accusation the scope of their work was too narrow] LOTR is Christian inasmuch as it has very explicit concepts of good and evil and temptation, but it's also a book involving more explicit anti-industrialization messaging and Tom Bombadil.
  - goto11 6y ago
    Gandalf "dying", fighting demons in the underworld, and returning as "Gandalf the White" is also a pretty clear parallel though. But arguably Tolkien is a better writer so it doesn't seem so on-the-nose.
  - eredengrin 6y ago
    Yeah that quote does sound familiar, but I'd say that's a bit different than "the whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology". I think the moral framework of his world certainly has strong roots in the Christian tradition and I expect that is what Tolkien was referring to in that quote, but the stories themselves are generally quite distinct from anything you'd find in Christianity. I think this is pretty much what you are saying as well, so I think we're mostly in agreement here.
morelisp 6y ago
Tolkien also contradicts himself by hinting at more direct allegories e.g. the dwarves as Jews during the later years of his life. Combined with his open lament for the Nazi appropriation of Norse mythology, it's hard to see how his fictional Eddaic / Judaic nexus is not among the most stereotypically prescriptive combination of metaphor, allegory, and moral. (Not intended as a negative criticism, because I think it justifies itself at every level.) Authors don't always know what their work is about, especially as they're writing it.
- goto11 6y ago
  I think the quote is just Tolkien getting really annoyed that people read LoTR as an allegory for WWII. If I understand the quote correctly, he is rejecting the form of allegory where the reader is supposed to "get it" and use the allegory to "decode the message". But Tolkien wasn't trying to say anything about the Jewish people through the vehicle of Dwarwes, he was just drawing on some inspiration.
  - morelisp 6y ago
    But - really? You don't think he was saying anything about the Jewish people when he had a friendship between a dwarf and elf succeed over timeless racial antipathy? Or by having the plight of the dwarves be what ultimately moves a member of the extremely comfortable hobbit gentry to direct action? Or even by the simple mixing of the unquestioned Norse "supreme contribution to Europe" with Jewish mythology, he wasn't hinting that, maybe, also, the Jewish people had contributed in the same way? I agree you can't just read Middle Earth as "alternate Europe" (and especially not the War of the Ring as a WW2 allegory) and a lot of people unfortunately do. But if Tolkien had nothing to say, he would not have written anything; and having written something, he cannot help but say something.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - goto11 6y ago
      > Or by having the plight of the dwarves be what ultimately moves a member of the extremely comfortable hobbit gentry to direct action? I curious what you think he was trying to say with this? > Or even by the simple mixing of the unquestioned Norse "supreme contribution to Europe" with Jewish mythology, he wasn't hinting that, maybe, also, the Jewish people had contributed in the same way? Jewish mythology was by far more well known than Norse, through the Old Testament and its influence on Christianity. So I don't see why Tolkien would want to make that a point of that.

by goto11 6y ago

brtkdotse 6y ago

> Tolkien is rejecting allegorical reading like "the ring symbolize the coronavirus, Saruman represent Trump" etc. Brb, gonna make a YouTube-video with a million views.

eredengrin 6y ago

> Also the whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology That sounds like a pretty big stretch to me, could you elaborate? I agree there are most certainly elements from Christianity in it, but claiming the entire thing is based directly on it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, nor does that seem to be how Tolkien viewed it, at least as far as I can tell. For example, in one particular quote in the preface of the Silmarillion (as part of a letter Tolkien wrote to Milton Waldman), Tolkien says "In the cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth. These tales are 'new', they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements...There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and have them." I suspect the tendency to lump Tolkien's works together with Christianity may be more due to both his own association with Christianity as well as the general cultural knowledge of Christianity, whereas other myths he may be deriving from are not as widely known.

goto11 6y ago
Just read the creation myth in the first chapters in Silmarillion. It's basically Paradise Lost with more diacritics. What other mythologies have angels anyway? The Tolkien mythology is monotheistic and morally dualistic (good vs evil), which is fundamentally different from the pagan cultures he is otherwise inspired by. I actually think this is key to his success: He takes a lot of cool stuff from pagan mythologies and legends, but he frames it in a simplified "good versus evil" dualism which is easier to understand for modern readers with this background.
- eredengrin 6y ago
  Yes, the creation of the Tolkien universe most certainly has the most direct inspiration from Christian myth, but to say the entire thing is based on it is a much stronger statement. Once the earth is formed to the point of the arrival of the elves, most of those stories afterward have very little comparison to anything in Christianity. Beren and Luthien, the creation of the rings, the wars over the Silmarils...perhaps I was just misunderstanding what you meant by the "whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology". As I mention in another comment, there is certainly a lot of Christian inspiration in the framework of the world, and you do see that in how it is all set up in the first few chapters. The stories themselves (built within that framework) seem no more related to Christianity than any of the other places they draw inspiration from.
  - goto11 6y ago
    Yes I was thinking of the creation/fall, not the whole of the Silmarillion, sorry for not making that clear.
notahacker 6y ago
He apparently said 'the Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.' But what he didn't like were crude 'Saruman represents Judas' type comparisons, not least because he'd criticised his friend CS Lewis for being as explicit as to incorporate Jesus as a talking Lion who is resurrected into his novels and said he found their symbolism heavy handed [it's interesting Lewis himself rejected the idea of his books as allegory, but not the idea that Aslan was supposed to be that world's Jesus or that respective books in the series were supposed to have Creation/Crucifixion/Antichrist themes. Perhaps they both viewed the term allegory as an accusation the scope of their work was too narrow] LOTR is Christian inasmuch as it has very explicit concepts of good and evil and temptation, but it's also a book involving more explicit anti-industrialization messaging and Tom Bombadil.
- goto11 6y ago
  Gandalf "dying", fighting demons in the underworld, and returning as "Gandalf the White" is also a pretty clear parallel though. But arguably Tolkien is a better writer so it doesn't seem so on-the-nose.
- eredengrin 6y ago
  Yeah that quote does sound familiar, but I'd say that's a bit different than "the whole mythology is directly based on christian mythology". I think the moral framework of his world certainly has strong roots in the Christian tradition and I expect that is what Tolkien was referring to in that quote, but the stories themselves are generally quite distinct from anything you'd find in Christianity. I think this is pretty much what you are saying as well, so I think we're mostly in agreement here.

morelisp 6y ago

Tolkien also contradicts himself by hinting at more direct allegories e.g. the dwarves as Jews during the later years of his life. Combined with his open lament for the Nazi appropriation of Norse mythology, it's hard to see how his fictional Eddaic / Judaic nexus is not among the most stereotypically prescriptive combination of metaphor, allegory, and moral. (Not intended as a negative criticism, because I think it justifies itself at every level.) Authors don't always know what their work is about, especially as they're writing it.

goto11 6y ago
I think the quote is just Tolkien getting really annoyed that people read LoTR as an allegory for WWII. If I understand the quote correctly, he is rejecting the form of allegory where the reader is supposed to "get it" and use the allegory to "decode the message". But Tolkien wasn't trying to say anything about the Jewish people through the vehicle of Dwarwes, he was just drawing on some inspiration.
- morelisp 6y ago
  But - really? You don't think he was saying anything about the Jewish people when he had a friendship between a dwarf and elf succeed over timeless racial antipathy? Or by having the plight of the dwarves be what ultimately moves a member of the extremely comfortable hobbit gentry to direct action? Or even by the simple mixing of the unquestioned Norse "supreme contribution to Europe" with Jewish mythology, he wasn't hinting that, maybe, also, the Jewish people had contributed in the same way? I agree you can't just read Middle Earth as "alternate Europe" (and especially not the War of the Ring as a WW2 allegory) and a lot of people unfortunately do. But if Tolkien had nothing to say, he would not have written anything; and having written something, he cannot help but say something.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - goto11 6y ago
    > Or by having the plight of the dwarves be what ultimately moves a member of the extremely comfortable hobbit gentry to direct action? I curious what you think he was trying to say with this? > Or even by the simple mixing of the unquestioned Norse "supreme contribution to Europe" with Jewish mythology, he wasn't hinting that, maybe, also, the Jewish people had contributed in the same way? Jewish mythology was by far more well known than Norse, through the Old Testament and its influence on Christianity. So I don't see why Tolkien would want to make that a point of that.