Tolkien and agrarianism

[Extollager]

Elsewhere at Chrons, we had a discussion going --

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/532928-tolkien-and-agrarianism.html

It seems to have run into the sand, but if anyone would like to revive it, there would seem to be more that could be said.

 

[Peter Graham]

I haven't waded through all the posts in the original thread, but I certainly raise an eyebrow at the notion that Tolkien was actively trying to promote an agrarian way of life (whatever that might be).

The Shire is completely out of place in the LOTR milieu. Whereas the rest of Middle-Earth serves up a medieval setting of clanking armour and spears, the Shire is a little enclave of Edwardian England - a sort of diminuitive Downton Abbey scripted by G K Chesterton. The social structures, landscape, village development and even the clothes worn by the inhabitants are unashamedly Edwardian/late Victorian. The hobbits are at least 600 years ahead of every other race of Middle Earth. They even eat fish and chips, for Heaven's sake!

Much is written about Tolkien's own view of the encroachment of industrial Birmingham onto the village of his birth and how this is echoed by Sandyman's Mill and the incursion of Saruman's new engines. I think there is something in this. I don't think he's making any grand statement. What we are really seeing in the Shire is a very personal picture of Tolkien's idealised version of home - basically, the one he grew up in. A bit dewy eyed and sentimental, perhaps, but there you go. A leafy, rolling and fertile countryside of pretty little villages, good pubs, sturdy farmers, kindly squires and a working postal system. A sort of never-never land dream of Old England which might have been quite lovely had it really ever been like that.

Regards,

Peter

 

[Brian G Turner]

It may also be remembered that the Hobbit was written specifically as a children's book, and presumably there was a presumption of some leeway for romanticism here. In writing Lord of the Rings as - eventually - a sequel for more mature audiences, the Shire will inevitably look out of place, but I think that's simply the nature of the different audiences for the different books being catered for at different times.

 

[Peter Graham]

Hi Brian,

Perhaps so, but I'm not massively convinced by this notion that LOTR was a childrens'-book-gone-adult. The narrative style of LOTR is miles away from the Jackanory-esque style of The Hobbit. The first few chapters of LOTR are homely (in the British, rather than US sense of the word) but seem to have been written for an adult audience.

JRRT talked about how folk had been badgering him for more stories about hobbits, but I seem to recall that he had his world complete (and lots of floaty Elven languages written down to the last airy umlaut) by then, so perhaps he used the hobbits as a way of getting folk interested in a world which had originally been conceived as an origins myth for England. JRRT spent his working life lecturing at Oxford about such heady matters as the linguistics of Beowulf and was very aware of how England's near neighbours still remembered their origin myths in a way which the English didn't.

I've always assumed that The Hobbit was a child friendly version of an adult world, rather than LOTR being an adult friendly version of a child world.

Regards,

Peter