John Ronald Reuel Tolkien , ( ; January 3, 1892 - September 2, 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist and university professor best known as the author of a book of high fantasy classic The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
He served as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Associates of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English and Literature and Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was at one time a close friend of C.Ã, S. Lewis - they are both members of an informal literary discussion group known as Inklings. Tolkien was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on March 28, 1972.
After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive records and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. This, together with the The Hobbit
While many other authors have published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings directly leads to a revival of the popular genre. This has led Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature - or, rather, high fantasy. In 2008, The Times ranked her sixth in the list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Video J. R. R. Tolkien
Biography
Family origins
Tolkien's father's ancestor is a middle-class craftsman who makes and sells watches, watches and pianos in London and Birmingham. The Tolkien family had emigrated from Germany in the 18th century but had become "very fast English". According to family tradition, the Tolkien people arrived in England in 1756, as refugees from Frederick the Great invasion of Saxony voters during the Seven Years' War. Some families with Tolkien surnames or similar spellings live in northwest Germany, especially in Lower Saxony and Hamburg.
Tolkien believes his family name is derived from the German word tollkÃÆ'¼hn , which means "stupid", and jokingly introduces himself as a "cameo" to The Notion Club Papers under the name translated in literally Rashbold. However, the origin of this name has not been proven.
Childhood
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein at Orange Free State (now the Province of the Free State of South Africa) to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857-1896), a British bank manager, and his wife Mabel, nà © Å © e Suffield (1870-1904). The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office in the British bank where he worked. Tolkien has one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, who was born on February 17, 1894.
As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a giant spider in the park, an event that some people later resounded in his story, though he did not recognize the true memory of the event and no spider-specific hatred as an adult. In another incident, a young family waiter, who considers Tolkien a beautiful child, brings her baby to her corpse to show her, returning her the next morning.
When he was three, he went to England with his mother and brother about what was meant to be a long family visit. His father, however, died in South African rheumatic fever before he could join them. It left the family with no income, so Tolkien's mother took her to live with her parents at Kings Heath, Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved to Sarehole (now in Hall Green), then the village of Worcestershire, then annexed to Birmingham. He enjoys exploring Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog and Clent, Lickey and Malvern Hills, which will inspire scenes in his books, along with nearby towns and villages such as Bromsgrove, Alcester and Alvechurch and places like his aunt Tante Jane's Farm End, the name he uses in his fiction.
Mabel Tolkien taught his two children at home. Ronald, as he knew in the family, was a keen disciple. He taught him a lot of botany and awakened in him the pleasures of the look and feel of the plant. Young Tolkien likes to draw landscapes and trees, but his favorite lessons are related to language, and his mother taught him the basics of Latin from the beginning.
Tolkien can read at the age of four and can write smoothly afterward. Her mother allowed her to read many books. He dislikes Treasure Island
Mabel Tolkien was accepted into the Roman Catholic Church in 1900 despite strong protests by his Baptist family, who stopped all financial aid to him. In 1904, when J.R.R. Tolkien was 12 years old, his mother died of acute diabetes at Fern Cottage in Rednal, which he rented. He was about 34 years old, about as old as people with type 1 diabetes mellitus can live without treatment - insulin will not be discovered until two decades later. Nine years after his death, Tolkien wrote, "My own mother is a martyr, and it's not for everyone that God gives such an easy way for her great reward as she did for Hilary and myself, giving us a mother who killed herself with work and difficulties to ensure we keep faith. "
Before his death, Mabel Tolkien had assigned his sons guardianship to his close friend, Father. Francis Xavier Morgan from Birmingham Oratory, who was assigned to bring them as good Catholics. In a 1965 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled the influence of the man he always called "Father Francis": "He is an upscale Welsh-Spaniard Tory, and it seems only old gossip that shook him. He is- - and he no
After the death of his mother, Tolkien grew up in the Edgbaston area of ​​Birmingham and attended King Edward's School, Birmingham, and then St. Philip. In 1903, he won a Foundation Scholarship and returned to King Edward. While a student was there, Tolkien was one of the cadets of the School Officers Training Corps who assisted the "route line" to the 1910 King George V's coronation parade. Like the other cadets of King Edward, Tolkien was installed outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.
At Edgbaston, Tolkien lives there in the shadow of Perrott's Folly and the Victorian Edgbaston Waterworks tower, which may affect the dark tower images in his works. Other strong influences are the romantic medieval paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphael Brotherhood; The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have many collections of works on the public display.
Youth
While in his early teens, Tolkien had his first encounter with an established language, Animalic, the invention of his cousin, Mary and Marjorie Incledon. At that time, he was studying Latin and Anglo-Saxon. Their interest in the Animalic soon vanished, but Mary and others, including Tolkien himself, discovered a new and more complex language called Nevbosh. The next built language he uses, Naffarin, is his own creation.
Tolkien studied Esperanto some time before 1909. About 10 June 1909 he composed the "Foxrook Book", a sixteen-page book, in which "the earliest example of one of the alphabets he created" appears. The short text in this notebook is written in Esperanto.
In 1911, when they were at King Edward's School, Tolkien and three friends, Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Bache Smith and Christopher Wiseman, formed a semi-secret society they called T.C.B.S. Initials stand for the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, alluding to their fondness for tea at Barrow's Stores near the school and, in secret, in the school library. After leaving school, the members remained in contact and, in December 1914, they held a "council" in London at Wiseman's home. For Tolkien, the result of this meeting was a strong dedication to writing poetry.
In 1911, Tolkien went on a summer vacation in Switzerland, a journey he recalled clearly in a 1968 letter, noting that Bilbo's journey across the Misty Mountains ("including glissades down a rock that creeps into a pine forest") directly based on his adventures as a feast 12 they hiked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen and camped in a morain outside MÃÆ'¼rren. Fifty-seven years later, Tolkien remembers his regret leaving the eternal snow view of Jungfrau and Silberhorn, "Silvertine (Celebdil) of my dreams". They went across Kleine Scheidegg to Grindelwald and across from Grosse Scheidegg to Meiringen. They continue across the Grimsel Pass, through the upper Valais to Brig and to the Aletsch and Zermatt glaciers.
In October of the same year, Tolkien began studying at Exeter College, Oxford. He originally studied Classics but changed his studies in 1913 to English and Literature, graduating in 1915 with a first class award in his final exam.
Dating and marriage
At the age of 16, J.R.R. Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt, who was three years older than him, when he and his brother Hilary moved to the boardinghouse where he lives on Duchess Road, Edgbaston. According to Humphrey Carpenter,
Edith and Ronald take to visit Birmingham, especially one that has a balcony overlooking the sidewalk. There they would sit and throw sugarlumps into the hats of passersby, moving to the next table when the sugar bowl was empty.... With two people of their personality and in their position, romance must have evolved. Both are orphans who need love, and they find that they can give it to each other. During the summer of 1909, they decided that they loved each other.
Father Morgan sees Edith as an excuse for Tolkien to "clean up" his exam and finds it "totally unfortunate" that his adoptive son is romantically involved with an older Protestant woman. He forbade her to meet, talk to, or even relate to her until she was 21 years old. He obeyed this prohibition against the letter, with a notable early exception, in which Pastor Morgan threatened to shorten his university career if he did not stop.
In his 1941 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recounted:
I had to choose between disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a wali who had fathered me, more than most fathers... and "dropped" an affair until I was 21 years old. I do not regret my decision, although it is very difficult for my beloved. But that's not my fault. He is completely free and does not swear to me, and I should have no complaints (except by unreal romance code) if he marries someone else. For almost three years I have not seen or written to my beloved. It was very difficult, especially at first. The effect was not entirely good: I fell back to ignorance and sluggishness and missed much of my first year in college.
On the eve of her 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith, who lives with family friend C. H. Jessop in Cheltenham. She states that she never stopped loving him and asked her to marry him. Edith replied that she had received a proposal from George Field, a brother of one of her closest schoolmates. Edith says, however, that he agrees to marry Field just because he feels "on the shelf" and begins to doubt that Tolkien still cares about him. He explained that, because of Tolkien's letter, everything had changed.
On January 8, 1913, Tolkien traveled by train to Cheltenham and was greeted on the platform by Edith. The two walked to the countryside, sat under the railway bridge, and talked. At the end of the day, Edith agrees to accept Tolkien's proposal. He writes to Field and returns his engagement ring. Field "was very disappointed at first", and Field's family was "humiliated and angry". After knowing Edith's new plan, Jessop wrote to his guardian, "I can not say anything to Tolkien, he is a cultured man, but his prospects are extreme bad, and when he will be in a position to marry, I can not imagine" If he adopted the profession, it will be different. "
After their engagement, Edith reluctantly announces that she turned to Catholicism at Tolkien's insistence. Jessop, "like so many other people his age and class... is so anti-Catholic", very angry, and he orders Edith to look elsewhere.
Edith Bratt and Ronald Tolkien were officially engaged in Birmingham in January 1913, and married in St. Roman Catholic Church. Mary Immaculate, Warwick, on March 22, 1916. In his 1941 letter to Michael, Tolkien expressed admiration for his wife's willingness to marry a man. without work, little money, and no prospect except the possibility of being killed in the Great War.
First World War
In August 1914 the United Kingdom entered the First World War. Tolkien's relatives were surprised when he chose not to volunteer for the British Army. In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled, "At that time, children joined in, or scorned publicly, a bad gap for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage."
Instead, Tolkien, "has an obloquy", and enters a program in which he suspends registration until completing his degree. By the time he passed the exam in July 1915, Tolkien remembered that the clue "became the vowel of the relatives". He was then assigned as a second lieutenant while in Lancashire Fusiliers on July 15, 1915. He trained with 13th Battalion (Reserve) at Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, for eleven months. In a letter to Edith, Tolkien complains, "Gentlemen are rarely among superiors, and even humans are rare." After their marriage, Lieutenant and Mrs. Tolkien took place near the training camp.
On June 2, 1916, Tolkien received a telegram calling him to Folkestone to be sent to France. Tolkien's family spent the night before his departure in a room at the Plow & amp; Harrow Hotel in Edgbaston, Birmingham.
He then wrote, "The junior officers are being killed, a dozen minutes apart from my wife then... it's like death."
French
On June 5, 1916, Tolkien boarded troop transport for an overnight trip to Calais. Like other soldiers who arrived for the first time, he was sent to the Expeditionary Force (BEF) base depot in ÃÆ'â € ° taples. On June 7, he was informed that he had been assigned as signal officer to Battalion 11 (Service), Lancashire Fusiliers. The battalion is part of the 74th Brigade, the 25th Division.
While waiting to be summoned to his unit, Tolkien was drowning in boredom. To pass the time, he composed a poem entitled The Lonely Isle , inspired by his feelings while crossing over to Calais. To avoid censoring the British Army post, he also developed a code of dots with which Edith could track his movements.
He left ÃÆ'â € ° taples on 27 June 1916 and joined his battalion in Rubemprà ©  ©, near Amiens. He finds himself commanding an enlisted man primarily drawn from mining, milling, and weaving the cities of Lancashire. According to John Garth, he "felt close to the working class," but military protocols forbade him to develop friendships with "other ranks". Instead, he was asked to "take over them, discipline them, train them, and possibly censor their letters... If possible, he should inspire their love and loyalty."
Tolkien then regretted, "The most inappropriate job of anybody... is to rule others, not one in a million people fit that, and at least everyone who seeks opportunities."
Battle of the Somme
Tolkien arrived at the Somme in early July 1916. Among the terms behind the line at Bouzincourt, he participated in attacks on Schwaben Redoubt and Leipzig. Tolkien's time in battle was a terrible pressure for Edith, who feared that any knock on the door might carry the news of her husband's death. To get around the British Army postal sensor, Tolkiens developed a secret code for his letters at home. Using that code, Edith can track her husband's movements on the Western Front map. According to memoirs of Rev. Mervyn S. Evers, Anglican priest for Lancashire Fusiliers:
On one occasion, I spent the night with the Brigade Machine Gun Officer and Signal Officer at one of the captured German shelters... We went down for the night in the hope of getting some sleep, but that did not happen. We did not immediately lie down rather than the flea gang. So we went to the Medical Officer, who was also in the rest room with his equipment, and he gave us some ointments that he assured us we would keep the little brute away. We anointed ourselves with these things and laid back with great hope, but that did not happen, because instead of discouraging them it seemed to act like some kind of hors d'oeuvre and a few beggars went to their party with a new spirit.
On October 27, 1916, when his battalion attacked Regina Trench, Tolkien descended with a trench fever, a disease carried by lice. He was exchanged to England on November 8, 1916. Many of his beloved schoolmates were killed in the war. Among their numbers were Rob Gilson of the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, who were killed on the first day of Somme while leading his men in the attack on Beaumont Hamel. Peer T.C.B.S. member Geoffrey Smith was killed in the same battle as a German artillery shell landed at the first aid post. Tolkien's battalion was running out after he returned to England.
Tolkien may have committed suicide, but he suffers from health problems and has been fired from the battle several times.
Menurut John Garth:
Although the Kitchener army perpetuates old social boundaries, it also divides the class by throwing people from all walks of life into desperate situations together. Tolkien wrote that his teaching experience, "a deep sympathy and feeling for Tommy, especially the ordinary army of the agricultural area". He is still very grateful for his lesson. For a long time, he was imprisoned in a tower, not of pearls, but of ivory.
In later years, Tolkien angrily stated that those who searched his works to parallel with the Second World War were completely wrong:
Someone is personally under the shadow of war to fully feel his oppression; but with the passage of time, it is now often forgotten that to be captured in youth in 1914 is no less dire than involved in 1939 and subsequent years. In 1918 all but one of my close friends died.
Front front
Tolkien who was weak and meager spent the rest of the war alternating between hospital and garrison duties, was considered medically unfit for public services.
During his recovery at a cottage in Little Haywood, Staffordshire, he began working on what he called The Book of Lost Tales, beginning with the Fall of Gondolin. Lost Tales represents Tolkien's effort to create mythology for England, a project he will leave behind without ever finishing. Throughout 1917 and 1918, his illness continued to recur, but he had recovered enough to do house-keeping in various camps. It was at this point that Edith gave birth to their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. In a 1941 letter, Tolkien described his son John as "(understood and brought during the famine year of 1917 and the great U-Boat campaign) about the Battle of Cambrai, when the end of the war seemed so much like it.
Tolkien was promoted to the lieutenant's temporary rank on January 6, 1918. When he was stationed in Kingston on Hull, he and Edith went for a walk in the woods near Roos, and Edith began dancing for him in the open between the flowering hemlocks. After the death of his wife in 1971, Tolkien recalled,
I never called Edith Luthien - but he is the source of the story that in time became a major part of the Silmarillion . It was first conceived in a grove of small groves filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a short time in command of a leading post from Humber Garrison in 1917, and he could stay with me for a while). At that time her hair was wrinkled, her skin was clear, her eyes brighter than you see, and she could sing - and dance . But the story is crooked, & amp; I was abandoned, and I could not ask Mandos for the inevitable.
This incident inspired the story of the meeting of Beren and LÃÆ'ºthien.
Academic career and writing
On 3 November 1920, Tolkien was demobilized and left the army, retaining the rank of his lieutenant. His first civil work after World War I was at the Oxford English Dictionary, where he worked primarily on the history and etymology of Germanic words beginning with the letter W . In 1920, he took a position as a reader in English at Leeds University, and became the youngest professor there. While in Leeds, he produced the Middle English Vocabulary and Sir Gawain and Green Knight's definitive editions with E. V. Gordon, both of which have been the work of academic standards for decades. He also translates Mr. Gawain , Pearl , and Mr. Orfeo . In 1925, he returned to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor Anglo-Saxon, with a scholarship at Pembroke College.
In the middle of 1919, he began personally guiding students, most importantly for Lady Margaret Hall and St Hugh's College remembering that women's colleges were in desperate need of good teachers in their early years.
During his time at Pembroke College Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings , while living on 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford (where the blue plaque was placed in the year 2002). He also published a philology essay in 1932 under the name "Nodens", following the excavation of Sir Mortimer Wheeler of Roman Asclepeion at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, in 1928.
Beowulf
In the 1920s, Tolkien did the Beowulf translation, which he completed in 1926. He never published it. It was eventually edited by his son and published in 2014, more than forty years after Tolkien's death and nearly 90 years since completion.
Ten years after completing his translation, Tolkien gave a very famous lecture on the work, titled "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", which had a lasting influence on Beowulf's research. Lewis E. Nicholson said that Tolkien's article on Beowulf was widely recognized as a turning point in Beowulfian criticism, noting that Tolkien establishes the virtue of the poetic nature of work that is contrary to purely linguistic elements. By then, the scholarship consensus had been abandoned by Beowulf for dealing with childish battles with monsters rather than realistic tribal warfare; Tolkien argues that the author Beowulf is dealing with the common fate of man, not limited by certain tribal politics, and therefore the monster is very important to the poem. Where Beowulf does not deal with a particular tribal struggle, as in Finnsburg, Tolkien opposes speculation in fantastic elements. In the essay, Tolkien also reveals how much he respects Beowulf: "Beowulf is one of my most valuable sources", and this influence can be seen throughout his Middle-earth legendary.
According to Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien has an ingenious way to start his lecture series on Beowulf :
He would come quietly into the room, fix the audience with his gaze, and suddenly start declaring with the resounding sound of the opening line of poetry in the original Anglo-Saxon, beginning with a great cry HwÃÆ'Â|t! (the first word of this poem and some other Old English poetry), which some scholars consider "Calm!" It was not so much a pronunciation as a dramatic show, the impersonation of an Anglo-Saxon poet in the mead hall, and it impressed the generation of students for bringing back to them that Beowulf not only set the text to read for inspection purposes, but a piece powerful dramatic poetry.
Ten years later, W.H. Auden wrote to his former professor,
I do not think that I ever told you what an unforgettable experience for me as a scholar, to hear you read Beowulf . It was Gandalf's voice.
Second World War
On the way to the Second World War, Tolkien was destined to be a codebreaker. In January 1939, he was asked whether he would be ready to serve in the Foreign Office's cryptographic department in a national emergency. He answered firmly and, beginning on March 27, took an instructional course at London HQ from the Government Code and the Cypher School. A record of his training was found which included a "sharp" notation next to his name, although scholar Tolkien Anders StenstrÃÆ' suggestedm suggested that "Most likely, it was not Tolkien's note of interest, but a record of how to pronounce the name." He was told in October that his services would not be needed.
In 1945, Tolkien moved to Merton College, Oxford, became Professor of English and Merton Letters, where he remained post until retiring in 1959. He served as an external examiner for University College, Dublin, for many years. In 1954 Tolkien received an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland (where U.C.D. is a constituent college). Tolkien completed The Lord of the Rings in 1948, almost a decade after the first sketch.
Tolkien also translated the Book of Jonah to Jerusalem Bible , published in 1966.
Family
Toledoens has four children: John Francis Reuel Tolkien (November 17, 1917 - January 22, 2003), Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien (October 22, 1920 - February 27, 1984), Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (born November 21, 1924) and Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien born June 18, 1929). Tolkien was very devoted to his children and sent them a picture letter from Father Christmas when they were young. Each year more characters are added, such as North Polar Bear (maid Father Christmas), Snowman (his gardener), Ilbereth elf (secretary), and various other minor characters. The main characters will tell the stories of Father Christmas fighting against the goblins who ride bats and the various acts done by the North Pole.
Retirement and subsequent years
During his life in retirement, from 1959 until his death in 1973, Tolkien received increasing public attention and literary fame. In 1961, his friend C. S. Lewis even nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The sale of his books is very profitable so he regrets that he does not choose early retirement. At first, he wrote an enthusiastic answer to the reader's question, but he became increasingly unhappy with the sudden popularity of his books with the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s. In a 1972 letter, he regretted becoming a heretical, but admitted that "even the nose of a very simple idol... can not remain completely choked by the sweet smell of incense!"
The attention of the fans became so strong that Tolkien had to extricate his phone number from the public directory, and finally he and Edith moved to Bournemouth, then a seaside resort protected by the upper middle class of England. Tolkien's status as a best-selling author gave them easy access into a polite society, but Tolkien greatly missed his fellow Inklings company. Edith, however, was very excited to get into the role of a hostess, which was the reason Tolkien chose Bournemouth in the first place.
Menurut Humphrey Carpenter:
Friends who knew Ronald and Edith Tolkien for years never doubted that there was deep affection between them. It is seen in small, almost unreasonable things where each worries about the health of others, and the attention in which they choose and wrap their birthday presents to each other; and in big ways, the way Ronald is willing to leave most of his life in retirement to give Edith the last years in Bournemouth he thinks deserves to receive, and a degree in which he shows pride in his fame as a writer.. The main source of happiness for them is love with their family. It ties them together until the end of their lives, and that's probably the strongest power in marriage. They love to discuss and think about every detail of their children's lives, and then their grandchildren.
Last year
Edith Tolkien died on November 29, 1971, at the age of 82 years. According to Simon Tolkien:
My grandmother died two years before my grandfather and he returned to live in Oxford. Merton College gave him rooms near the High Street. I often go there and he will take me to lunch at Eastgate Hotel. The lunch was rather lovely for a 12-year-old boy who spent time with his grandfather, but sometimes he looked sad. There was one visit when he told me how much he missed my grandmother. It must be very strange if he was alone after they got married for more than 50 years.
Tolkien was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, a Commander of the Royal Order of the United Kingdom on New Year's Day 1972, and received the Order badge at Buckingham Palace on March 28, 1972. That same year, Oxford University awarded him the honorary doctorate of Surat.
Tolkien has the name LÃÆ'ºthien engraved on the epitaph of Edith in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. When Tolkien died 21 months later on September 2, 1973 of a bloody wound and chest infection, at the age of 81, he was buried in the same grave, with Beren added to his name. Reading carving:
In Tolkien's Middle-earth legend, LÃÆ'ºthien is the most beautiful of all Children of IlÃÆ'ºvatar, and abandoned his immortality for his love for mortal Beren warriors. After Beren was captured by the forces of the Dark Lord of Morgoth, LÃÆ'ºthien rode a horse to save him to the Huan wolf who was speaking. In the end, when Beren was killed in the battle against the Wolf Wolf Carcharoth, LÃÆ'ºthien, like Orpheus, approached Valar, the angelic order of beings responsible for the world by Eru (God), and persuaded them to restore his lover to life.
Maps J. R. R. Tolkien
Views
Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and in his religious and political views he was largely a traditionalist moderate, with libertarian, distributive, and monarchic, in the sense of supporting established conventions and orthodoxy over innovation and modernization, while punishing the government bureaucracy; in 1943 he wrote, "My political opinion is increasingly leaning towards Anarchy (understood philosophically, which means the abolition of control does not burden men with bombs) - or on an 'unconstitutional' monarchy."
Although he did not write or talk about it often, Tolkien advocated the dismantling of the British Empire and even the British Empire. In a 1936 letter to a former student, Belgian linguist Simonne d'Ardenne, he wrote, "The political situation is terrible... I have the greatest sympathy with Belgium - which is about the right size of any country! still bounded by the sea of ​​Tweed and the Welsh wall... we people at least know something about mortality and immortality and when Hitler (or the Frenchman) says 'Germany (or France) must live forever' we know that he is lying.
Tolkien has a strong hatred of the side effects of industrialization, which he considers to be devouring the English countryside and a simpler life. For most of his adult life, he insulted the car, preferring to ride a bicycle. This attitude can be seen in his work, most famously in the portrayal of the "industrialization" imposed from the Shire in The Lord of the Rings.
Many commentators have commented on a number of potential parallels between the stories and stories of Middle-earth in Tolkien's life. Lord of the Rings is often considered to represent England during and immediately after the Second World War. Tolkien strongly rejects this opinion in the preface to the second edition of the novel, stating that he prefers its application to allegory. This theme is taken longer in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", in which he argues that fairy tales are very precise because they are consistent both within themselves and with some truths about reality. He concludes that Christianity itself follows a pattern of internal consistency and external truth. His belief in the fundamental truths of Christianity brings commentators to find Christian themes in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien strongly opposed the use of the religious references of C.Ã, S. Lewis in his stories, which are often overtly allegorical. However, Tolkien wrote that the scenes of Mount Doom give examples of lines from the Lord's Prayer.
His passion for the myth and his faithful faith united in his statement that he believed mythology was a divine echo of "Truth". This view is expressed in his poetry and essay titled Mythopoeia . His theory that the myth of "fundamental truth" became the central theme of Inklings in general.
Religion
The faithful Roman Catholicism of Tolkien is a significant factor in the conversion of C.SS. Lewis from atheism to Christianity, though Tolkien is disappointed that Lewis chose to join the Church of England.
He once said, "It can be said that the ultimate goal of life, for all of us, is to improve according to our ability, our knowledge of God in all the ways we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thank."
According to his grandson Simon Tolkien, Tolkien in the last years of his life was let down by some liturgical reforms and changes that were implemented after the Second Vatican Council:
I remember clearly going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and soon after the Church changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My grandfather obviously disagrees with this and makes all the responses very hard in Latin while the rest reply in English. I found the whole experience to be very torturous, but my grandfather was unconscious. He just has to do what he believes to be true.
Politics and race
Anti-Communism
Tolkien voiced support for the Nationalists (eventually led by Franco during the Spanish Civil War) after hearing that the Communist Republican destroyed the churches and killed the priests and nuns.
Tolkien insulted Joseph Stalin. During the Second World War, Tolkien called Stalin a "bloodthirsty old killer". However, in 1961, Tolkien sharply criticized a Swedish commentator who suggested that the Lord of the Rings was an anti-communist parable and identified Sauron with Stalin. Tolkien said, "I really reject such a reading, which makes me angry, the situation is structured long before the Russian revolution." Such a parable is completely alien to my thinking. "
Opposition to National Socialism
Tolkien vocally opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party before the Second World War, and is known to hate racist and anti-Semitic Nazi ideologies. In 1938, the publisher RÃÆ'¼tten & amp; Loening Verlag is preparing to release the The Hobbit in Nazi Germany. Against Tolkien's anger, he was asked in advance whether he came from Aryan. In a letter to his British publisher Stanley Unwin, he condemned the Nazi "racial doctrine" as "wholly destructive and unscientific". He added that he has many Jewish friends and is considering "letting the German translation be hung". He gave two letters to RÃÆ'¼tten & amp; Loening and ordered Unwin to send her what she likes. A more thoughtful letter was sent and lost during the later German bombings. In an undeliverable letter, Tolkien states that "Aryan" is a linguistic term, which denotes an Indo-Iranian speaker. He continued,
But if I understand that you are asking me if I belong to Jew , I can only reply that I am sorry that I seem to have no ancestors of talented people. My great-grandfather came to England in the 18th century from Germany: the main part of my descendants was pure English, and I was the subject of English - which should be enough. I have grown accustomed, however, to regard my German name proudly, and continue to do so throughout the period of regrettable war, where I served in the British army. However, I can not comment that if irrelevant and irrelevant questions of this sort are to be rules of literature, then the time is not far away when the German name is no longer a source of pride.
In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, he expressed his resentment at the distortion of German history in "Nordicism":
You must understand the good things, to detect the real crime. But nobody calls me to "broadcast" or do postscript. But I think I know better than most of what the truth is about this "Nordic" nonsense. However, in this war I have a grudging personal grudge... against that little fool Adolf Hitler... Destructive, twisting, abusing, and making a damned, noble north spirit, the highest contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and trying to be present in the real light. There is no place, incidentally, whether it is nobler than in England, or earlier purified and Christianized.
In 1968, he objected to Middle-earth's description as "Nordic", a term he said he did not like because of his relationship to racism.
Total war
Tolkien criticized the Allied use of total war tactics against civilians from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. In a 1945 letter to his son, Christopher, he wrote:
We should have reached the stage of civilization where it may still be necessary to execute criminals, but not to laugh at, or to hang up his wife and children by him when the crowd shouts. The destruction of Germany, a good 100 times worthy, is one of the world's most horrific disasters. Well, well, - you and I can not do anything about it. And it [must] be a measure of the number of errors that can be assumed to be attached to any member of a country that is not a member of its true Government. Well, the first Machine War seems to be pulling into an inconclusive final chapter - leaving, unfortunately, all the poorer, many mourning or disabled and millions of dead, and only one thing winning: Machines.
He also reacted with anger at the excesses of anti-German propaganda during the war. In 1944, he wrote in a letter to his son, Christopher:
... It is sad to see the press pleading in the gutter as low as Goebbels in its heyday, screaming that every German commander who survives in a desperate situation (when, too, the military needs of his side is clearly profitable) is a drunkard, fanatical fanatic.... There is a solemn article in the local paper that seriously advocates systematic destruction of the entire German nation as the only proper way after military victory: because, if you like, they are poisonous snakes, and do not know the difference between good and evil! (How about the writer?) The Germans have the same right to declare Poland and Jews with an imperishable, inhuman, because we have to choose Germany: in other words, not true, whatever they have done.
He was horrified by the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, referring to the scientists from the Manhattan Project as "this mad physicist" and "the builder of Babylon".
Nature
For most conservationism his own life was not yet on the political agenda, and Tolkien himself did not directly express the conservationist view - except in some private letters, where he told of his penchant for forests and the sadness of tree felling. In later years, a number of biographical authors or literary analyzes from Tolkien concluded that as long as he writes about the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien gained increased interest in wild and wild values, and in protecting what the remaining wild nature in the industrial world.
Write
Tolkien drafted some of the themes reused in the successive draft of his legendary, beginning with The Book of Lost Tales, written while recovering from the illness contracted during the Battle of the Somme. Two of the most prominent stories, Beren and LÃÆ'ºthien's story and the TÃÆ'ºrin story, are brought into a long narrative poem (published in The Lays of Beleriand ).
Influences
The English adventure story
One of the greatest influences on Tolkien is the art and craft of polymath William Morris. Tolkien hopes to mimic the romance of Morris prose and poetry, from which he takes hints for feature names such as the Dead Swamp in Lord of the Rings and Mirkwood, along with several common aspects of the approach.
Edward Wyke-Smith The Marvelous Land of Snergs , with the title character "high-table", greatly affects Bilbo's race incident, theme and portrayal in The Hobbit .
Tolkien also quotes the novel H. Rider Haggard He in a telephone interview: "I think as a boy he is very interested in me just like anything else - like a Greek chip from Amyntas [Amenartas], which is the kind of machine that makes everything move. "A suspected facsimile of this pottery appears in the first edition of Haggard, and the ancient inscription he wore, once translated, leads the English character to his ancient kingdom. Critics have compared this device to the Testament of Isildur in The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's attempt to produce a realistic page illustration of the Book of Mazarbul Criticism beginning with Edwin Muir has found a resemblance between Haggard and Tolkien's romance.
Tolkien wrote about being impressed as a boy by the historical novel of S. R. Crockett The Black Douglas and based his Necromancer (Sauron) on his villain, Gilles de Retz. The incidents in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are similar in narration and style to the novel, and their overall style and image have been suggested as an influence on Tolkien.
European mythology
Tolkien was inspired by early German, especially Old English, literature, poetry, and mythology, which was his chosen and well-liked field of expertise. This source of inspiration includes ancient English literature such as Beowulf, Norse saga like Volsunga saga and Hervarar saga , the Poetic Edda , Prose Edda , Nibelungenlied , and many other related cultural works. Despite the similarity of his work with the Volsunga saga and Nibelungenlied , which is the basis for Richard Wagner's opera cycles Der Ring des Nibelungen , Tolkien dismisses the direct comparison of critics with Wagner, told the publisher, "The two rings are round, and there is a resemblance to a halt." However, some critics believe that Tolkien, in fact, is indebted to Wagner for elements such as "the concept of the Ring as the owner of world domination..." Two characteristics possessed by Ring One, the hatred attached to it. and destroys the power of thought and will, is absent in the mystical sources but has a central role in Wagner's opera.
Tolkien also recognizes some non-Germanic influences or sources for some of his stories and ideas. The Sophocles game Oedipus Rex is called the inspirational element of The Silmarillion and The Children of HÃÆ'ºrin . In addition, Tolkien first read William Forsell Kirby's translation of the Finnish national epic, Kalevala , while attending King Edward's School. He portrays the character of VÃÆ'¤inÃÆ'¤mÃÆ'¶inen as one of his influences for Gandalf the Gray. The Kalevala ' s antihero Kullervo was further described as an inspiration for TÃÆ'ºrin Turambar. Dimitra Fimi, Douglas A. Anderson, John Garth, and many other prominent Tolkien scholars believe that Tolkien also draws influence from various Celtic histories and legends (Ireland, Scotland and Welsh). However, after the Silmarillion scripts were rejected, in part because of the "Celtic" names that broke eyes, Tolkien rejected their Celtic origin:
Needless to say they are not Celtic! Not that fairy tale. I know the Celtic stuff (many in their native Irish and Welsh languages), and feel them a certain resentment: largely because of their fundamental ignorance. They have bright colors, but like stained glass windows that are assembled again without design. They are actually "insane" as your readers say - but I do not believe in me.
Fimi points out that despite his disparaging comments about the "Celtic stuff" in 1937 that Tolkien was fluent in medieval Welsh (though not modern Welsh) and stated when delivering the first O'Donnell lecture at Oxford in 1954 on the influence of Celtic on English the "Welsh is beautiful".
One of Tolkien's goals when writing his Middle-earth book was to create what his biography Humphrey Carter called "mythology for England", complained in a letter to Milton Waldman about "my country's poverty: it has no story of its own (bound to tongues and "Unlike the Celtic states in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, all of which have well-developed mythology, Tolkien himself never used the exact phrase" mythology for England ", but he often made statements for that effect, writing to one reader that his intention in writing Middle-earth's story was "to return to the English an epic tradition and present it with their own mythology." Early in the 20th century, Irish nationalists such as poets William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and others has managed to connect in the traditional Irish fairy tale minds about the fairy and elves into Irish national identity while degrading English fairy tales as just a derivative of Irish folklore. This has prompted a reaction by British writers, leading to a savage war of words about which nation has a more authentic and better tale with the example of the English essay GK Chesterton who was involved in a series of polemical essays with Yeats on the issue of Irish fairy tales versus v. English. Even through there is no naturally anti-English about Irish folklore, the way in which Irish mythology is associated with Irish nationalism, promoted most enthusiastically by those who support Irish independence, led many to regard Irish mythology and folklore as Anglophobia. Tolkien with his determination to write "mythology for England" is for this reason reluctant to recognize the influence of Celtic. Fimi notes specifically that the story of Noldor, the Elves who fled from Valinor to Middle-earth, resembles the related story at Lebor GabÃÆ'¡la ÃÆ'â € renn of the half-divine Tauah Dahu who escaped from a place described as a place in the north or Greece to conquer Ireland. Like Elves Tolkien, Tuatha DÃÆ' Â © Danann is inferior to the god, but superior to man; endowed with extraordinary skills as craftsmen, poets, warriors, and magicians. Likewise, after the victory of mankind, both Elf and Tuatha DÃÆ'Â Â © Danann was pushed underground, which caused their "fading", causing them to become small and pale.
Catholicism
Catholic theology and image play a role in shaping Tolkien's creative imagination, which is overwhelmed by his deep religious spirit. Tolkien admits this:
Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in revision. That's why I did not include, or have cut, almost any reference to something like "religion", to a cult or practice, in an imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and symbolism.
In particular, Paul H. Kocher argues that Tolkien portrays evil in an orthodox Christian way in the absence of goodness. He cites many examples in The Lord of the Rings, such as "Lidless Eye" Sauron: "the pupil's black slit opens in the hole, the window becomes nothing". Kocher sees Tolkien's source as Thomas Aquinas, "which makes sense to assume that Tolkien, as a medieval and a Catholic, knows very well". Tom Shippey makes the same point, but, instead of referring to Aquinas, Tolkien is very familiar with Alfred's Great Anglo-Saxon translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy , known as the Lays of Boethius . Shippey argues that the Christian view of evil is most clearly stated by Boethius: "evil is nothing". He says Tolkien's use of evil consequences can not be created as the basis of Frodo's remark, "Shadow... can only mock, it can not make: not the real things of itself," and related statements by Treebeard and Elrond. He goes on to argue that in the The Lord of the Rings evil sometimes seems to be an independent power, more than merely a lack of goodness (though not independent to the point of the Manichaean heresy), and indicates that Alfred's addition to his translation about Boethius might have inspired that view.
Stratford Caldecott also interprets the Ring in theological terms: "The Ring of Power shows the dark miracle of broken will, self-declaration in disobedience to God. It seems to give freedom, but its real function is to enslave the wearer with the Fallen Angels, pollute the human will of the wearer, 'thin' and unreal: indeed, the transparent gift symbolizes the ability to destroy all natural human relationships and identities.You can say the Ring is sin itself: seductive and seemingly harmless to begin with, the harder it is to give up and destroy in the long run. "
Publications
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
As well as his fiction, Tolkien is also a leading author of academic literary criticism. His seasonal lecture in 1936, later published as an article, revolutionized the Anglo-Saxon epic treatment of Beowulf by literary critics. This essay remains very influential in the study of Ancient English literature to this day. Beowulf is one of the most significant influences on Tolkien's final fiction, with the main details of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings adapted from poetry. This section reveals many aspects of Beowulf that Tolkien finds most inspiring, most clearly the role of the monster in literature, especially the dragon that appears in the final third of the poem:
As for poetry, a dragon, no matter how hot it is, does not make the summer, or the host; and a man might exchange a good dragon that he would not sell for a wilderness. And the dragon, the original dragon, which is important both for machines and the idea of ​​poetry or stories, is rare.
Children's books and other short work
In addition to his mitopoeya composition, Tolkien enjoys creating fantasy stories to entertain his children. He wrote Christmas letters yearly from Christmas Pastor to them, building a series of short stories (later compiled and published as Christmas Father's Letters ). Other works include Mr. Bliss and Roverandom (for children), and Leaf by Niggle (part of Tree and Leaf ), The Adventures of Tom Bombadil , Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham . Roveracak and Smith of Wootton Major , such as The Hobbit , borrowed ideas from legendarium .
The Hobbit
Tolkien never expected his stories to be popular, but by coincidence the book called The Hobbit, which he had written several years earlier for his own children, came in 1936 to the attention of Susan Dagnall, an employee. from London publishing company George Allen & amp; Unwin, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it for publication. When published a year later, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, and became quite popular for publishers to ask Tolkien to produce sequels.
Lord of the Rings
The demand for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what would be his most famous work: the epic novel The Lord of the Rings (originally published in three volumes 1954-1955). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the main narrative and appendix for The Lord of the Rings, during which time he received constant support from Inklings, especially his closest friends C.Ã, S.Ã, Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia . Both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are set against the background of The Silmarillion , but in the long run thereafter.
Tolkien was originally intended to be the Lord of the Rings to be a children's tale in The Hobbit style, but quickly became darker and more serious in writing. Although the direct sequel to The Hobbit , it was aimed at an older audience, drawing on the large backline Beleri and Tolkien had built in previous years, and who finally saw the posthumous publication on The Silmarillion i> and other volumes. Tolkien's influence greatly weighed on the fantasy genre that grew after the success of The Lord of the Rings.
Lord of the Rings became very popular in 1960 and has remained so since then, ranking as one of the most popular works of 20th-century fiction, judged by sales and reader surveys. In the BBC's "Read Big" 2003 survey, Lord of the Rings was found to be the "Best Blessed Novel" of England. Australians chose the Lord of the Rings "My Favorite Books" in a 2004 survey by ABC Australia. In the Amazon.com customer 1999 poll, Lord of the Rings was regarded as their favorite "millennium book". In 2002, Tolkien was voted the 92nd greatest Briton in a BBC poll, and in 2004 he was voted 35th in SABC3 Great South Africa, the only person to appear on both lists. Its popularity is not limited to the English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by Britain's "Great Read" survey, some 250,000 Germans found the Lord of the Rings to be their favorite literary work.
Posthumous publication
Silmarillion
Tolkien wrote short "Sketches of Mythology", which included the stories of Beren and LÃÆ'ºthien and TÃÆ'ºrin; and the sketch eventually evolved into Quenta Silmarillion, an epic history that began Tolkien three times but never published. Tolkien desperately hopes to publish it along with The Lord of the Rings, but publishers (Allen & Unwin and Collins) refuse. In addition, the cost of printing was very high in the 1950s in England, requiring The Lord of the Rings to be published in three volumes. The story of this continuous recurrence is told in the posthumous series The History of Middle-earth, edited by Tolkien's son Christopher Tolkien. From about 1936, Tolkien began to expand this framework to include the story of The Fall of NÃÆ'ºmenor, inspired by the legend of Atlantis.
Tolkien has appointed his son Christopher to be a literary executioner, and he (with the help of Guy Gavriel Kay, then a famous fantasy writer in his own right) arranges some of these materials into a coherent volume, published as The Silmarillion in 1977. He received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel in 1978.
Unfinished Tales and Middle Eastern History
In 1980 Christopher Tolkien published a collection of more fragmented material, entitled Unfinished Tales of NÃÆ'ºmenor and Middle-earth . In the following years (1983-1996) he published a large number of unpublished material, along with extensive notes and comments, in a series of twelve volumes called The History of Middle-earth . They contain unfinished, abandoned, alternative, and overtly contradictory accounts, because they are always a work in progress for Tolkien and he rarely sets the definitive version for any of the stories. There is no complete consistency between the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit , the two most closely related works, because Tolkien never fully integrates all their traditions with one another. He commented in 1965, when editing The Hobbit for the third edition, that he preferred to completely rewrite the book because of his prose style.
Sir. Bliss
One of Tolkien's best known works is the children's storybook. Bliss , published in 1982. I
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