A Critical Overview

A CRITICAL OVERVIEW

It is the best of books, it is the worst of books. Ever since publication, reactions to The Lord of the Rings ² have been marked by remarkably strong views, both among the reading public and the critics. Great displays of emotion, ranging from the enthusiasm of the world-wide Tolkien societies to the ridicule of Edmund Wilson's 1956 review "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!" seem to follow in the wake of Tolkien's fiction. Indeed, many authors through time have found themselves in the centre of opposing views, but in Tolkien's case the battles fought over Middle-earth are unusually bloody. This gulf between opinions has shown no sign of narrowing, even after 50 long years. Years during which Tolkien's vision (or rather its fantasy setting) has had a decisive impact on new genres and new generations of writers and critics, either in terms of an ideal for modern fantasists to imitate, or as a prime example of what was to be shunned at all costs.
This tendency was apparent very early on, as W.H. Auden observes in his 1956 New York Times review of The Return of the King, the final volume of Tolkien's trilogy:

I rarely remember a book about which I have had such violent arguments.
Nobody seems to have a moderate opinion: either, like myself, people find
it a masterpiece of its genre or they cannot abide it, and among the hostile
there are some, I must confess, for whose literary judgement I have great
respect ... I can only suppose that some people object to Heroic Quests
and Imaginary Worlds on principle; such, they feel, cannot be anything
but light 'escapist' reading.³

                    What Auden was hinting at appears to be something subtler than just "taste", insofar as this can be acquired or influenced - or sated. Equally, "the hostile" are likely to object to more than Heroic Quests and Imaginary Worlds - which, respectively, constitute only the surface and the immediate context of Tolkien's narrative. In most cases, the view of LotR as an affront to all serious adult readers sprang from a deeper and not fully realised source. This is apparent in the often vague or groping reviews which seemed prompted rather by instinct ("juvenile trash", "balderdash", "facile and weak"⁴ , etc.) than by in-depth reading and attention to subtleties. The more one reads of these literary skirmishes, however, the clearer it becomes that they express a clash of fundamental literary visions: of romantic and ironic vision, of a blatantly high-mimetic work emerging from a predominantly low-mimetic age ⁵ . It is what Edmund Fuller, examining Toynbee's hostile view on LotR, described as "a total temperamental antipathy"⁶. Tolkien's is indeed a vision of ancient "Northern temperament", but it is governed by profound meditations on concepts like power, free will and the nature of evil – each containing more elements of modern thought than the surface reveals. Tolkien's complex vision may address the basic longing for enchantment in a starkly disenchanted society, it may represent a revival of heroic romance in literature, but at a deeper level, it is also a cogent response to the only century that could have produced it: the 20th ⁷ .
                    That strong emotions should arise from LotR (and The Silmarillion⁸ ) is really not surprising - colliding worldviews, like warm and cold air, will inevitably involve some thunder - indeed nothing short of this kind of personal investment would account for the ferocious ad hominem⁹ attacks directed at this author over time ¹⁰ . Tolkien structured his entire life's work around a defining vision which he knew to be anything but "fashionable" or even widely acceptable in established literary circles, then as well as now. And it is fair to say that not until profound studies, such as those by Jane Chance, Verlyn Flieger and Tom Shippey, became widely read during the 1980s and 1990s, has the full range of Tolkien studies been revealed. Pioneers such as these have added innumerable insights into the complexities of Tolkien's life's work and as a result he is slowly but surely being given more weight in serious publications of recent years. Significant anthologies like J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances - Views on Middle-earth and Tolkien's Legendarium - Essays on The History of Middle-earth¹¹ have explored this new territory, opening new windows and critical angles on Middle-earth. As a consequence, and perhaps an ironic one, those who do dislike Tolkien continue to voice their views with remarkable animosity, though with better grounding in actual study. Study of which Tolkien has been deemed grossly unworthy by the enduring "Winnie-the-Pooh posing as epic" type of critics ¹² .
                    The continuing popular appeal and the new depth of research into the Tolkien phenomenon have invalidated or seriously challenged many of the traditional objections and criticisms made against the author. The notorious "affected language", "reversed word order" and so-called "false archaisms" have been shown by fellow philologist and medievalist Tom Shippey to harbour deeper intricacies and more ingenious construction than anyone ever imagined ¹³ . The language of LotR represents the creative embodiment of Tolkien's life-long linguistic aesthetic. Similarly, the much-derided depictions of good and evil (and by extension of the various characters) contain considerable philosophical and psychological nuance upon closer scrutiny. With the continuing posthumous publications of Tolkien's immense body of work, new perspectives on his main works of fiction and, notably, of the academic essays and letters ¹⁴ much light has been shed on the depth of Tolkien's authorship and scholarship.
                    A good example of the overweening refusal of hostile critics to qualify or substantiate their disapproval is Peter Green with his inability to take the book "seriously"¹⁵ . Similarly, history has sadly reversed Philip Toynbee's sententious assertion from 1961 that although the "dull" and "childish … Hobbit fantasies of Professor Tolkien" had enjoyed an initial wave of popularity, this had now receded: "today those books have passed into merciful oblivion"¹⁶ . Incidentally, this does seem to be the fate of some of the early allegorical readings that stubbornly tried to equate the One Ring with the Atom Bomb or Sauron's Mordor with Stalin's Soviet Union since both were situated in the East. Indeed, such one-to-one equations between fact and fiction are foreign to Tolkien's mode of storytelling. What the history of reception does show, however, is that professionally disliking Tolkien takes more work nowadays. Gone are the days when off-hand dismissals like "balderdash" or "juvenile trash"¹⁷ would suffice. Today, building a case against Tolkien and Middle-earth takes more than a loose reading of LotR, concluding that it can not be taken seriously. It means addressing the scholarly foundation of Tolkien's works, for example his essays "On Faerie-stories" and "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"¹⁸ , his biographies or his letters. And it certainly involves challenging the major studies of Shippey, Flieger, Joseph Pearce or Patrick Curry. That fact alone provides considerably more qualified views on both sides and serves to fertilise the growing field of Tolkien studies.

²Tolkien, J.R.R., The Lord of the Rings, HarperCollins, London, 1991-edition Henceforth LotR. back
³George & Timmons, Daniel, ed. J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances - Views on Middle-earth, Greenwood Press, Westport, 2000, p.1. back
⁴Remarks from Edmund Wilson and Colin Manlove, respectively, quoted in Ibid., p.1. back
⁵Referring to Northrop Frye's literary modes in his An Anatomy of Criticism. In descending order of style: Myth, Romance, High-mimetic, Low-mimetic and finally Ironic. Of course, LotR contains elements of all five levels and, as T.A. Shippey points out (in his study J.R.R. Tolkien: Writer of the Century, HarperCollins, London, 2000, p. 222) some characters, like Gandalf, seem to move effortlessly between the low-mimetic Shire and the romance level of Rivendell or Lothlórien. back
⁶Isaacs, Neil D., & Zimbardo, Rose A., ed., Tolkien and the Critics, University of Notre Dame Press, 3rd printing, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1970, p. 36 back
⁷An observation that is substantiated by, for example, Professor T.A. Shippey in his book J.R.R. Tolkien: Writer of the Century, and which will be elaborated in this paper. back
⁸Tolkien, J.R.R., ed. Christopher Tolkien, The Silmarillion, HarperCollins, London, 1998-edition. - Henceforth: Sil back
⁹In rhetoric: directed at the man, not the case. back
¹⁰Notoriously from Edmund Wilson, et al. Recently from critics like Jenny Turner in the London Review of Books. back
¹¹Flieger, Verlyn & Hostetter, Carl F., ed., Tolkien's Legendarium - Essays on The History of Middle-earth, Greenwood Press, Westport, 2000 back
¹²Moorcock, Michael. Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy, London, Gollancz, 1987, p.125 back
¹³Shippey, T.A., The Road to Middle-earth, HarperCollins, London, 2nd ed. 1992 back
¹⁴Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, HarperCollins, London, 1995. - Henceforth: Letters. back
¹⁵Clark & Timmons, op.cit. p.1. back
¹⁶Toynbee is quoted by Edmund Fuller in Isaacs & Zimbardo, op.cit., p. 36 back
¹⁷Again Edmund Wilson, Shippey, op.cit. p. 307 back
¹⁸Tolkien, J.R.R., ed. Christopher Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”, (Henceforth "Monsters") in The Monsters & the Critics and Other Essays, HarperCollins, London, 1997 back

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