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> I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality t
by sircastor 4y ago
> I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands.
My immediate thought was “What about King Arthur?!” But then I begin to wonder how much Arthurian legend has been enriched purely in the 20th century.
“The once and future king” -where a lot of the modern take on Arthur came from - was punished in 1958, 4 years after the Lord of the Rings.
According to Wikipedia, Arthurian legend was popular in the Middle Ages, but kind of fell out of favor.
- Hemospectrum 4y agoThere's one other problem with Arthurian legend, and it's a doozy. Arthur's alleged subjects were the Celtic peoples who lived in Britain before the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon tribes speaking proto-English. If you use this as the origin story of England, you're making English people the bad guys. Tolkien must have realized this.
- hither_shores 4y agoArthurian literature is Celtic myth seen through the eyes of medieval Frenchmen: it's British, but not English.
- peeters 4y agoTolkien actually addressed Arthurian legend immediately after that quote I posted: > Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.