Hobbit

J.R.R. TOLKIEN (1892-1973)

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, which was at that tune part of the British Empire. His father died in 1895, and he, his mother and brother moved to a cottage near Birmingham. Tolkien's mother died in 1903, and he and his brother were then cared for by a Catholic priest. Tolkien went to school in Birmingham, then to Oxford University. After military service in the First World War (1914-18) Tolkien married Edith Bratt, also an orphan, whom he had known since he was sixteen. Tolkien worked for a while on the Oxford English Dictionary. He wrote some of the “W” entries. He then became Professor of English Language and Medieval Literature at Leeds University, and in 1925 he was appointed Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. Tolkien remained at Oxford until he retired in 1959, and during his retirement stayed mainly in Oxford (there were also a few years in the seaside town of Bournemouth before Edith died in 1969). J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973.

The three volumes of The Lord of the Rings appeared in 1954 and 1955. In the 1960s, publicity following a dispute over an illegal American edition of The Lord of the Rings helped to boost sales of the trilogy, and a 'cult' success became a global best seller. Tolkien insisted that his work was not topical. In other words, although most of it was written during the Second World War, and it describes a war against the forces of evil, The Lord of the Rings is not meant to be about the Nazis or nuclear weapons.

Before Tolkien published his essay “The Monsters and the Critics” in 1936, Beowulf, a poem which was probably written in the eighth century, was valued mainly as a sample of Anglo-Saxon language. Tolkien said the poem was not history, but literature, containing two traditions: the heroic and the Christian. The monsters are part of the legendary Anglo-Saxon past, and yet also symbols of evil as seen through the eyes of a Christian. The first two monsters, Grendel and his mother, are said to be descendants of Cain, the first named murderer in the Bible; they are also agents of Satan. The dragon, however, is “a personification of malice, greed, destruction (the evil side of heroic life) and of the undiscriminating cruelty of fortune that distinguishes not good or bad (the evil aspect of all life)” (see The Monsters and the Critics (New York: Allen and Unwin, 1983). l7).

Read Beowulf and you will recognize also in the Harry Potter books the dungeons-and-dragons popular culture that Tolkien inspired.

Another work that influenced Tolkien was the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien co-edited this work with his Leeds University colleague E.V. Gordon in 1925. In this work, Gawain is engaged in an attempt to preserve the honour of King Arthur’s Court, even if he should die himself. It presents a highly-qualified version of heroism— like Beowulf facing the dragon (and Frodo entering into Mordor), Gawain journeys to what he assumes will be his certain death; though, like Frodo, he is a flawed hero, because of his last-minute wearing of a magic object (a belt, in Gawain’s case).

In “A Secret Vice,” another of the essays to be found in The Monsters and the Critics, he writes: “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker” (see The Monsters and the Critics 145). In his words: “A real taste for fairy stories was wakened by philology on the threshold of manhood, and quickened to full life by war” (ibid. 135). “A Secret Vice” helps us to understand one half of Tolkien's preoccupations, and another of the essays in The Monsters and The Critics, “On Fairy-Stories,” helps us to understand the other half—his fascination with the literature of the fantastic.

We all desire escape from death; so the best fantasy stories offer the supreme consolation of the unexpectedly happy ending. Tolkien invented his own word for this moment of surprising happiness —eucatastrophe—which he said offered a glimpse of “joy beyond the walls of the world” (ibid. 153).