Is Tolkien still relevant?

[hitmouse]

His boyhood education emphasized reading ancient literature in the original language. As an impressionable adolescent he developed in an atmosphere of ancient languages, poetry, walking, and relative quiet. Fantasists today write about heroes on horseback and they have never seen a horse. Just sayin'.

No disagreement from me there!

 

[svalbard]

His boyhood education emphasized reading ancient literature in the original language. As an impressionable adolescent he developed in an atmosphere of ancient languages, poetry, walking, and relative quiet. Fantasists today write about heroes on horseback and they have never seen a horse. Just sayin'.

I think heroes on horseback are pretty dated these days as well. Or so it seems to me from the books I have read over the last few years.

 

[Extollager]

I think heroes on horseback are pretty dated these days as well. Or so it seems to me from the books I have read over the last few years.

Well, I guess that answers the question about whether Tolkien's still relevant or not! (grin)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

heroes on horseback are pretty dated these days as well

Try different books.
There are many excellent ones, old and new, by people that do have a clue, or at least do research.

But LOTR and Hobbit have little emphasis on horseback heroes. The bad guys start off having horses though.

 

[hitmouse]

I think heroes on horseback are pretty dated these days as well. Or so it seems to me from the books I have read over the last few years.

What is the most popular fantasy book series and most popular TV show generally in the world at present? A Game of Thrones? I think that might have one or two horses in it.

 

[svalbard]

It is the 'heroes' part that is the interesting part.

 

[The Bluestocking]

I am not sure about that.

Yes there is the internet and cars and sodium lamps, and the dark satanic mills have disappeared, but the old ways and the connection to the British countryside are still there to a significant extent if one knows where to look. Get onto the B roads and the lights disappear, the phone signal disappears too, it becomes single lane, and apart form the loss of horse-and-trap, things slow down considerably. Tolkein's countryside is still present to a large extent.

I think Tolkein's scholarship was quite rarefied even in his day, and clearly he had a much greater formal academic foundation than the majority of fantasy writers. However, there are still lots of classicists at Oxford and Cambridge. English undergraduates still study Old English and use Tolkein's academic works for reference. Old Welsh is a respectable academic discipline, as is Old Norse. A friend's daughter has recently gone up to UCL to read Viking Studies.

I can attest to all Hitmouse's points, having:

• taken a degree in English in the UK (Old and Middle English are still a standard part of the degree and yes, Tolkien is always brought up, even if it's just in passing)
• travelled a fair bit around the English countryside when I lived in England for many years.

I still re-read Tolkien every now and then even though I feel that there's an Old Boys Club feel to it (not many female characters and the main characters are all male). It reminds me of being 11 and discovering Fantasy for the first time when my dad bought me the complete trilogy. It was very much a part of my postcolonial Anglophile childhood and growing up years.

Regardless of how any of us feel about his work, he will still be relevant in the many many years to come because LOTR spawned so many generations of Fantasy writers. As long as there is high/traditional fantasy around, he will always loom in the background of pop culture.

 

[Extollager]

I can attest to all Hitmouse's points, having:

• taken a degree in English in the UK (Old and Middle English are still a standard part of the degree and yes, Tolkien is always brought up, even if it's just in passing)
• travelled a fair bit around the English countryside when I lived in England for many years.

I'm glad that OE and ME are still a standard part of a university English degree. But the few people who major in English start those degrees when they are, what? -- 18 years old or more?

I had in mind the years of childhood and adolescence. Tolkien worked with ancient languages on a daily basis when his imagination was being formed. Is that still true in Britain? If not, it would seem much less likely that imaginations will be formed with a concurrent fascination for languages. Youngsters will likely be fascinated by computer games and the like in which highly processed imagery is supplied for them, ready-made -- and swamps their imaginations, colonizing those imaginations with repetitive, simple, highly artificial, and of course violent content.

And I'm glad that you can find the British countryside here and there. But to travel to it is one thing; to roam, as an unhurried free-range kid, alone or with a friend, in it is another matter. I'm thinking of a relationship with a loved tract of countryside that grows over months and years when the young person is impressionable.

I think we'll have plenty of horror fiction in years to come. Most people experience anxiety in modern settings (hence, I suppose, the prescription of various meds to help kids cope). Horror fiction can tap into that, likewise the sense of vast and impersonal forces arrayed around you. But I'm exceedingly doubtful that social conditions are at all favorable to the development of imaginative qualities such as Tolkien possessed in such superlative degree, but that (I suspect) many of his peers also possessed in lesser degree.

I think, too, that Tolkien's imagination comes out of a sense of Britain and Europe that is very different indeed from that which is inculcated now. See C. S. Lewis's remark, page 57 here:

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1962dec-00056

What he wished for is rather close to what Tolkien envisaged for Middle-earth after the defeat of Saruman and Sauron. But who thinks like that now?

Compare the difference between Patrick Leigh Fermor's "long walk" trilogy (A Time of Gifts and its sequels) and Nick Hunt's Walking the Woods and the Water. It's not just that the places through which PLF walked are so different now from what they were then, but that his imagination was formed so differently from Hunt's -- enjoyable as the latter's book also is.

 

[hitmouse]

Things change. Classics and ancient history used to be considered the backbone of a public school education in Britain. This has changed significantly since WWII, with a shift in emphasis towards modern laguages and modern history, (although I had to do latin at school in the 1970s and 80s.) Allowing for that, almost everyone will study Shakespeare at school in some context before the age of 15. Those who do english Lit A level (age 16-18) will probably find Chaucer on the syllabus. Outside of English, in Wales, Welsh is compulsory up to the age of 15 and will include The Mabinogion. For those in Welsh medium education, it may go much deeper than that. Scots gaelic is a bit more geographically restricted, but Irish in healthy form.

 

[HareBrain]

I found this article and its comments interesting, and vaguely relevant to the discussion here. It seems the strain related to romanticism that gave us Tolkien, Paul Nash, Alan Garner etc might have survived after all.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Tolkien's childhood and Education (and Lewis's for that matter) were pretty rarefied even then. I lived in East Belfast near Lewis's childhood home for 6 years, after I left College, and I always found it hard to believe he was from N.I.

Of course 90 years ago hardly anyone went to College compared to today. In mid to late 1960s I did Latin. My brother and sister didn't.

 

[Extollager]

I found this article and its comments interesting, and vaguely relevant to the discussion here. It seems the strain related to romanticism that gave us Tolkien, Paul Nash, Alan Garner etc might have survived after all.

That looks interesting -- thank you. I appreciate the author's distinction: "I find the eerie far more alarming than the horrific." More worthwhile, anyway.

I do relish MRJ.

I keep saying to myself I have got to stop buying so many books, but they keep publishing them.

 

[svalbard]

There is a nice interview with George R.R. Martin in today's Sunday Times which seems to answer my question on relevancy on two points.

1. Martin " I do sometimes feel like I am getting in the ring with Tolkien. That's the great one I want to be compared with; I'm flattered when I am."

2. Another part of the article " He doesn't have Tolkien's intellectual weight, but Martin's complex view of humanity resonates with a cynical postmodern audience."

 

[MWagner]

I think we'll have plenty of horror fiction in years to come. Most people experience anxiety in modern settings (hence, I suppose, the prescription of various meds to help kids cope). Horror fiction can tap into that, likewise the sense of vast and impersonal forces arrayed around you. But I'm exceedingly doubtful that social conditions are at all favorable to the development of imaginative qualities such as Tolkien possessed in such superlative degree, but that (I suspect) many of his peers also possessed in lesser degree.

If urban life is really that unhealthy compared to rural life (and in Canada, at least, the empirical evidence shows the opposite), we should have seen it show up in fiction already. Most writers today are two to three generations into urban or suburban living. And in my country, the countryside isn't bucolic, but harsh and inhuman (few people romanticize Saskatchewan in the 19th century). That hasn't stopped Canada from producing some well-regarded fantasists, like Guy Gavriel Kay.

I guess I can't get onboard with the notion that fantasy should be grounded in an elegiac longing for an idealized, bucolic, past. Moorcock and the rest of the New Wave were already agitating against that model back in the 60s. Tolkien was Tolkien. He tapped into longing in the late-20th century west for a romanticized, anti-modern world. He accidentally uncovered a zeitgeist, but he doesn't own the genre. I think he will still be read for a long time, but I also think the story and characters, in various pop culture forms, will outlive the popularity of the text itself, which isn't brisk and muscular enough for the popular tastes, and is too mawkish in characterization for more sophisticated modern readers.

And we should recognize that Tolkien's imagination was deep but narrow. He brought to life ancient sagas, married them to a twee English countryside of the 18th century, and set them in a world that is unparalleled in its depth of history and myth. But the professor wasn't especially imaginative about the human psyche. I doubt he could paint a convincing portrait of a postman in the 1950s, let alone a postwoman. Or really, any modern person. He strikes me as one of those types who don't really understand their fellow man in all their contradictions. Today's audience expects more nuance in character. Compare the Shire and its inhabitants to those of Henry Fielding's England. Even though Fielding wrote two centuries before Tolkien, his characters seem more modern and believable. I suppose Fielding's background as a journalist gave him a much better insight into human nature than Tolkien's as a linguist and antiquarian.

 

[hitmouse]

I guess I can't get onboard with the notion that fantasy should be grounded in an elegiac longing for an idealized, bucolic, past.

Neither can I. New Wave, urban fiction is important. But that is not the same as disputing the fact that there is a fertile and perfectly valid vein of past and present literature which has a strong resonance with the land, in particular that of the British Isles. The Guardian article referenced by HareBrain further up the thread is pretty good on this subject, and discusses a number of modern writers who are much less twee than Tolkein, such as Alan Garner. There are also a number of noted non-fiction writers such as Richard Mabey, Robert McFarlane, and Philip Hoare who continue to explore the psychogeography of the British Landscape.

 

[HareBrain]

The Guardian article referenced by HareBrain further up the thread is pretty good on this subject, and discusses a number of modern writers who are much less twee than Tolkein, such as Alan Garner. There are also a number of noted non-fiction writers such as Richard Mabey, Robert McFarlane, and Philip Hoare who continue to explore the psychogeography of the British Landscape.

I'd also like to put in a plug for Adam Thorpe, whose On Silbury Hill I really enjoyed recently.

The thing that worries me a bit is that all the "modern" writers mentioned were either working in, or grew up in, the seventies, which was also the era of the "gothic" strain of Doctor Who, and series like Children of the Stones, etc. As I mentioned on another thread somewhere, I haven't detected any real new blood coming through working with the same kind of material. It might be I just haven't seen it because those artists and writers haven't been around long enough to make their names, but I wonder if the cynical postmodern age (as I think it was called in that article or one of the comments below it) has almost killed it.

 

[Extollager]

I've actually studied the matter a fair bit, and have found that important fantasists had unusually strong emotional, intellectual, and imaginative connections with particular places.

William Morris was particularly attached to the relatively unspoiled reaches of the Thames, if I'm not mistaken. He also got to know Iceland at walking-pace and pony-pace when it was quite its own place.

Rider Haggard wrote with much love and knowledge of the area where he farmed.

Beatrix Potter's feeling for the Lake District translated into books and also into the rescue of landscapes from "development." Denis Watkins-Pitchford (BB), who wrote The Little Grey Men, etc., celebrated the outdoors and a free-range childhood.

Lord Dunsany seems to have been deeply involved with Irish locales where he hunted -- walking, of course. I don't remember much about T. H. White's boyhood, but certainly as an adult he was an outdoorsman.

Tolkien and Lewis had their walking tours. Tolkien's profound connection with certain parts of England is well-known and integral to his conception of Bombadil or even of Farmer Giles. Lewis's published letters (and the portions of his brother's diary that have been published) reflect their love of the countryside, walking, slow trains, villages, etc.

Lovecraft's devotion to colonial New England is well-known too, btw. for what it may be worth, his penpal Robert E. Howard seems to have been immersed in the tales and landscapes of his own region, and Clark Ashton Smith lived in a backwoods cabin much of his life; however, I don't reate those guys with the other authors mentioned here.

Richard Adams's Watership Down and The Plague Dogs, etc. could not have been written without his devotion to an intimately known walker's world.

Garner is also a case in point. I'd be surprised if Ursula le Guin had purely urban youthful years. Lars Walker grew up on a farm.

And so on.

I suppose someone like Fritz Leiber was always an urban fellow, but then his semi-heroic fantasy can seem to me more a half-spoof of fantasy. The Leiber who gets through to me more is the fellow who wrote the very urban You're All Alone (The Sinful Ones), which is more in the horror vein than "fantasy" as we usually call it.

These remarks are something of a footnote to my earlier remark expressing doubt that we shall have much more Tolkienian fantasy -- though we may have many trilogies and so on with magic talismans, elves, dragons etc. These will be more like Peter Jackson's idea of Tolkien than Tolkien.

 

[Bick]

Answering the question literally, and not really addressing the very interesting discussion that precedes this short post, I think it depends what you mean by "relevant". If one means "maintaining closeness or similarity to current technology, social mores and state of the nation", then I'd say the answer is probably no. If you mean "of relevance to the current generation in serving as a reminder of our pastoral and moral roots", then I'd say the answer is an enthusiastic yes.

 

[hitmouse]

I've actually studied the matter a fair bit, and have found that important fantasists had unusually strong emotional, intellectual, and imaginative connections with particular places.

William Morris was particularly attached to the relatively unspoiled reaches of the Thames, if I'm not mistaken. He also got to know Iceland at walking-pace and pony-pace when it was quite its own place.

Rider Haggard wrote with much love and knowledge of the area where he farmed.

Beatrix Potter's feeling for the Lake District translated into books and also into the rescue of landscapes from "development." Denis Watkins-Pitchford (BB), who wrote The Little Grey Men, etc., celebrated the outdoors and a free-range childhood.

Lord Dunsany seems to have been deeply involved with Irish locales where he hunted -- walking, of course. I don't remember much about T. H. White's boyhood, but certainly as an adult he was an outdoorsman.

Tolkien and Lewis had their walking tours. Tolkien's profound connection with certain parts of England is well-known and integral to his conception of Bombadil or even of Farmer Giles. Lewis's published letters (and the portions of his brother's diary that have been published) reflect their love of the countryside, walking, slow trains, villages, etc.

Lovecraft's devotion to colonial New England is well-known too, btw. for what it may be worth, his penpal Robert E. Howard seems to have been immersed in the tales and landscapes of his own region, and Clark Ashton Smith lived in a backwoods cabin much of his life; however, I don't reate those guys with the other authors mentioned here.

Richard Adams's Watership Down and The Plague Dogs, etc. could not have been written without his devotion to an intimately known walker's world.

Garner is also a case in point. I'd be surprised if Ursula le Guin had purely urban youthful years. Lars Walker grew up on a farm.

And so on.

I suppose someone like Fritz Leiber was always an urban fellow, but then his semi-heroic fantasy can seem to me more a half-spoof of fantasy. The Leiber who gets through to me more is the fellow who wrote the very urban You're All Alone (The Sinful Ones), which is more in the horror vein than "fantasy" as we usually call it.

These remarks are something of a footnote to my earlier remark expressing doubt that we shall have much more Tolkienian fantasy -- though we may have many trilogies and so on with magic talismans, elves, dragons etc. These will be more like Peter Jackson's idea of Tolkien than Tolkien.

I think that the discussion about place has been a fascinating and illuminating digression from the original subject of the thread. We could legitimately add the Hundred Acre Wood in Winnie the Pooh (in reality Ashdown Forest in Sussex), The Wind in the Willows (the Thames Valley) and the island of Sark in Mervyn Peake's Mr Pye.

A really significant book for me as a child was Legends of the Dreamtime, a book of Australian aboriginal legends, all about the land:

Bruce Chatwin expanded on the theme of language and land in aboriginal Australia in his book The Songlines.

 

[Extollager]

the importance of place in fantasy is worthy of attention, yes. Perhaps use these terms:

Topographic romance:
http://fancyclopedia.org/topographic-romance

Cartographic romance:
http://fancyclopedia.org/cartographic-romance

But I was contending that the great fantasy writers are often emotionally and imaginatively connected with particular places, in a way that isn't, it seems, typical of many authors.

In turn, such works of the fantastic sometimes move readers to a new interest in and even protectiveness of real-world places.

This book (despite a somewhat cutesy title) has valuable things to say (and also a cover photo of Tolkien that isn't very commonly seen):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0813129869/?tag=brite-21