{"id":1462,"date":"2018-05-22T12:33:46","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T10:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2018-05-22T12:33:46","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T10:33:46","slug":"in-middle-earth-again-tolkien-and-william-morris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2018\/05\/22\/in-middle-earth-again-tolkien-and-william-morris\/","title":{"rendered":"IN MIDDLE-EARTH AGAIN: TOLKIEN (AND WILLIAM MORRIS)<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m re-reading again The Lord of the Rings<\/em> these days, for the third time. J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) is not one of my great passions as a reader or researcher but I acknowledge the immense importance that he has as a major contributor to English Literature, and not just to fantasy. What he offers in his work is astonishing. Also, it makes me wonder what academic life was like back in the first half of the 20th century, since he managed to be a highly respected Oxford don and the writer of such massive texts. I do not refer here to the extension of his works but to the density of his mythological imagination, which reaches amazing heights in The Silmarillion<\/em>. <\/p>\n

There are actually several Tolkiens (without even mentioning the academic philologist and the fancy linguist): the charming children’s author of The Hobbit<\/em> (1937), the epic writer of The Lord of the Rings <\/em>(1954-55) and the mythmaker of The Silmarillion<\/em> (1977, edited and published post-humously by his son Christopher Tolkien, but started in 1917). The latter book is far less known because few readers are willing to face the demands that Tolkien\u2019s languid pseudo-Biblical prose imposes (even on his most ardent fans). I just wish Amazon would adapt that book instead of doing again The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, not only because The Silmarillion<\/em> has such an attractive plot (together with the other texts attached to it in the volume) but also because a new adaptation feels like a gratuitous insult to poor director Peter Jackson and his still recent film series (2001-3), undoubtedly a major feat in the history of cinema.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a personal anecdote: on Sunday I rushed to the Museu Nacional de les Arts de Catalunya to see the exhibition on William Morris and the \u2018Arts and Crafts\u2019 movement that ended yesterday. I find Morris (1834-1896) a fascinating figure in many ways but, above all, because he came up with the idea that beautiful objects need not be the prerogative of the rich. Disliking very much the habitual clutter of useless objects that you could find in most wealthy Victorian houses, he drew a \u201cgolden rule\u201d: \u201cHave nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful\u201d (this comes from \u201cThe Beauty of Life\u201d, a lecture delivered at the Birmingham Society of Arts and School of Design, 1880). IKEA is the ultimate descendant of that philosophy but also all our current perspective on high quality design, for Morris had a gigantic international impact. <\/p>\n

Anyway, I was contemplating one of the magnificent pseudo-Medieval tapestries made by Morris\u2019s house and thinking \u2018um, this looks like Rivendell\u2019 (the perfect home of the lordly half-Elf Elrond in The Lord of the Rings<\/em>) when I overheard a guide explain that Tolkien had drawn much inspiration for his work from Morris\u2019 fiction and, specially, his translations of the Icelandic sagas. Please, recall that Rivendell is presented in Peter Jackson\u2019s adaptation as a kind of pseudo-Gaudinian paradise, which closes the circle very nicely: Morris was a major influence on Catalan Modernism (approx. 1885-1920), in which Gaud\u00ed (1852-1926) is a key figure (see the article by Anna Calvera on Morris\u2019 impact in Catalonia here: www.raco.cat\/index.php\/Dart\/article\/download\/100491\/151064<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Obviously, I have not paid enough attention either to Morris or to Tolkien for I didn\u2019t know what, checking the internet, everyone appears to know: Tolkien was very fond not only of Morris\u2019s poetic translations from Icelandic (which he actually produced with his friend Eirikr Magnusson, see one instance here: https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/volsungasagatran009188mbp<\/a>) but also of his historical and fantasy novels. The House of the Wolfings<\/em> (1889) tells the story of how a Germanic tribe (renamed Goths in Morris\u2019s novel) resists the invasion of the Romans, unusually presented as the true barbarians. The Wood Beyond the World<\/em> (1894) appears to be a sort of update of Thomas Mallory\u2019s style (not of the Arthurian content), and a clear precursor of current epic fantasy. The Well at the World\u2019s End<\/em> (1896) continues in the same supernatural vein. It has a King Gandolf, a name everyone cites as proof that Tolkien knew his Morris (apparently he spent part of the money earned for winning the Skeat Prize in 1914 to buy several books by Morris, including his translated V\u00f6lsunaga Saga<\/em> and House of the Wolfings<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Tolkien was also familiar with Morris\u2019 classic of socialist utopianism News from Nowhere<\/em> (1890) in which he preached essentially that the future should be built on a pre-Industrial Revolution rural economy. Echoes of this are, indeed, found in \u201cThe Scouring of the Shire\u201d, the penultimate chapter of The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. After fulfilling the hazardous mission of returning the evil One Ring to the place where it was made by Sauron, the hobbits (Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin) go back home to the Shire only to discover that its lovely landscape has been destroyed by the wizard Saruman, posing as the capitalist Sharkey. Jackson didn\u2019t film this segment, which he doesn\u2019t like, even though it is essential to understand Tolkien: this author hated modern life (what Bauman called Modernity with a capital M\u2013see my previous post), in which he was following Morris but also his experience in the trenches of WWI. Tolkien\u2019s utopian Shire is, ultimately, much closer to socialism than the author\u2019s dream of a restored Medieval feudalism might allow us to see. Gondor may enjoy the aristocratic rule of the returned King Aragorn, but in the Shire there is no equivalent ruler, just a Thain in charge of guaranteeing the safety of the tightly-knit community and the enjoyment of its simple pleasures.<\/p>\n

In this third reading of The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, and possibly because in the last stages I was thinking of Morris, I have noticed a few things that I had overlooked. One is that the references to the economy and the labour system of the lands of Middle-earth are very vague: actually, we know more about how the arch-villain Sauron runs Mordor than about the other kingdoms and territories run by Elves and Men. The class system is also a problem. Many others have noticed that Sam Gamgee appears to play the role of WWI \u2018batman\u2019, or officer\u2019s servant, a position often assumed by private soldiers from rural backgrounds. Tolkien was himself a junior officer (1915-18) and acknowledged in some letters that the batmen he knew had been an inspiration for Sam. However, I find Gamgee\u2019s status as a servant (batman or otherwise) problematic mainly because it has a clear impact on how Sam\u2019s deep bond with Frodo functions: it\u2019s one-sided. Sam declares again and again that he loves Frodo but I don\u2019t see that he is requited in the same way. This is a lopsided friendship, which somehow mars the text. By the way: I had missed how often Tolkien uses the word \u2018queer\u2019, it\u2019s amazing\u2026 But I\u2019m not saying that Sam and Frodo are gay, that\u2019s a topic for another post.<\/p>\n

Something else I had overlooked: I had kept the impression from my previous readings that Tolkien uses plenty of description but I realize now that this is not correct. His topographic detail is extremely abundant but also overwhelming for someone who can barely distinguish north from south (like yours truly). I realize now that Peter Jackson\u2019s production design team (headed by Grant Major) must have faced a gargantuan challenge despite the precedents set by the illustrators of Tolkien\u2019s works, among them Alan Lee. Incidentally, Tolkien was a marvellous illustrator as it is plain from his drawings for The Hobbit<\/em>\u2013clearly inspired by the painters of the Arts and Crafts movement. At any rate, Major\u2019s design team had to be necessarily specific to make up for Tolkien\u2019s descriptive vagueness. I don\u2019t mean that he offered no descriptions whatsoever but that they are limited to certain features rather than to complete portraits, both for characters and for landscapes. Tolkien suggests, in short, rather than draw a full picture, in which he is far less Dickensian than I thought.<\/p>\n

The women… What can I say? The Lord of the Rings<\/em> is a patriarchal text 100%: it\u2019s male-centred, exalts male bonding, celebrates patriarchal aristocratic power and so on. Funnily, if you read The Silmarillion<\/em> you will see that the Valar (the fourteen auxiliary gods that the god Il\u00favatar employs in creating Arda, or Earth) are genderless until they decide, according to individual inclination, to take a gendered form. Some of the females, like Varda, are very powerful but it is soon obvious that this is a patriarchy and that the male Manw\u00eb is in charge. Likewise, although the female Elf Galadriel astonishes everyone with her beauty, intelligence and power, she\u2019s just the exception that confirms the rule: power is gendered male, anyway. Frodo timidly suggests to Galadriel that, if she took the Ring, she might use power in a beneficial way but she denies this\u2013there is no feminine or feminist alternative. Or Tolkien is too nervous to consider it.<\/p>\n

All female characters are, of course, defined by their physical appearance. And as the cases of L\u00fathien and Arwen show, Tolkien had this fantasy about superior women abandoning their high status for the love of men: both Elves become mortals to marry Men. Tolkien, by the way, who claimed to love and admire his wife Edith very much (naming her as the inspiration for L\u00fathien) forced her totally against her will to become a Catholic like him and raise their children in that faith\u2013do what you will of this factoid. Finally, E\u00f3wyn, whom many worship as a figure of empowerment because she is a successful warrior, ends up assuming her proper feminine role as wife and future mother. For me E\u00f3wyn is particularly annoying, poor thing, because her dissatisfaction with her housebound life shows that Tolkien understood very well the problems women faced as he wrote (1940s to 1950s). I don\u2019t mean with this that The Lord of the Rings <\/em>is a sexist or misogynistic text: it\u2019s, rather, a text with a conspicuous lack of concern for women. Fathers mourn again and again lost sons but mothers are hardly ever seen, and daughters are just princesses to be married off.<\/p>\n

So why read and re-read this? Well, we women have this long training in reading patriarchal stories as if they had been written for us and we can even forget how deeply gendered they are. I have complained that the bond between Sam and Frodo is unbalanced in Frodo\u2019s favour but even so, this relationship is the main reason why I do love The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. The scene when Frodo volunteers to carry the evil One Ring back to Mount Doom and try to destroy it is very moving, as is his realization that he will never heal from his psychological wounds once he has accomplished his mission\u2013or not, since he actually fails (do read the book to know how and why). I have read plenty of WWI fiction and I recognize in the brave hobbit the veteran suffering from shellshock, or what is now called post-traumatic stress syndrome. This might be a misreading, but in my view this is Tolkien\u2019s main contribution to fantasy and mythmaking: its grounding in the evil reality of the trenches, not as allegory but as background inspiration. Beowulf would not understand what kind of hero Frodo is\u2013but Harry Potter does.<\/p>\n

Now, if you\u2019re minimally interested, go beyond Sauron, and check who Melkor\/Morgoth was. For if Morris is all over The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, Milton reigns in The Silmarillion<\/em>. Or, perhaps, now that I think about it, William Blake. <\/p>\n

I publish a new post every Tuesday (for updates follow @SaraMartinUAB). Comments are very welcome! Download the yearly volumes from: http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116328. My web: http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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