The spiritual side of Tolkien

I have plagiarized an article I wrote elsewhere for this, for relevant sections. Therefore, it’s a bit disjointed. There are other, more obvious points, and I will make them in a reply, e.g. Gandalf resembles Christ in certain ways.

JRR Tolkien (1892-1973) was an English academic born in South Africa. His main interests were in Anglo-Saxon and Norse. A vast body of unfinished work was edited by his son, Christopher, and published posthumously. Over fifty million copies of his books have been sold, in over thirty languages.

[edit to add – Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic. His mother was a convert. After being orphaned at an early age, he was raised by a priest.]

The Hobbit (1937) was developed from a children’s story. Contrary popular belief, the word “hobbit” was not coined by Tolkien. It is a diminutive of “hob”, an old English word found in “hobgoblin”, and the “hobby horse”, which originally a figure found in old dances such as that of Padstow in Cornwall.

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Despite his massive popularity, literary critics have not been kind to Tolkien. Their biggest mistake, in many cases, is to isolate him from contemporary trends. In actual fact, Tolkien’s work is all too twentieth century. Like Ernest Hemingway for example, Tolkien was heavily traumatised by WWI. And the way he felt about industrialisation, urbanisation and pollution echoes Rachel Carson.

Modernism paralleled Tolkien in mixing myth, legend and folklore with modern experience. We can see this in the works of WB Yeats, and TS Eliot’s The Wasteland (1922), Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). And if Tolkien tried to express himself through new languages, so did Hugh MacDiarmid, and the impenetrable Finnegans Wake (1939).

Tolkien wished to give England back a mythology. The Germanic influences are obvious, whether Beowulf, or Wagner’s Ring cycle, or the Edda etc, but they are not the only ones. For one, Tolkien was highly taken with the Finnish epic, the Kalevala, and for another, Tolkien looked towards Scotland, Wales and Ireland for inspiration. When trying to write his Númenor cycle, for example, Tolkien noted that he wanted one of the pieces to be “a Tuath-de-Danaan story or Tir-nan-Og”…

One of the biggest influences on Tolkien was CS Lewis, who was originally from Belfast. Like Tolkien, he was highly religious, but it is said that he refrained from converting to Catholicism, to avoid upsetting his Ulster Protestant relatives…

Both Tolkien and Lewis were in turned influenced by the Rev. George MacDonald (1824-1905), author of Phantastes (1858) and Lilith (1895), commonly considered to be the first true modern fantasy novels…

Some of Tolkien’s names are evidently Germanic, e.g. Samwise, Ilúvatar (i.e. “All-Father”) and Baggins. But of course, Other sources come into play […] “Sauron” and “Saruman” suggest the Greek sauros meaning a lizard, by extension the dragon (Satan); “Mordor” suggests the necromantic Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28), death (mort) and “murder”…

Tolkien’s Elves are not the small, pestilential creatures of English folklore, they are the human sized beings of Celtic myth. Despite being slightly effete and arty, they are extremely formidable. They seem to come out of a coalescence of Finnish, and Welsh influences, together with Tolkien’s Romantic leanings. And in the end, they disappear off to the west to what could be Hy Breasail, Tir nan Og or Avalon…

…Hobbits are actually quaint English peasants, with names like “Baggins” and “Took”, and live in “the Shire”. It’s said that Tolkien based them on the out-of-place country folk that he had encountered in the Trenches. Their innocence and honesty contrasted with the horror and enormity of their situation, and that’s perhaps what we see throughout the LOTR…