England's Mythology?

[Lalwendë]

I've been considering Tolkien's famous (and often mis-quoted) quote, from the Letter to Milton Waldman, 1951.

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of fairy story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the large backcloths - which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.

Tolkien did not say that he wanted to create a mythology for England, but that at one time, he wished to create a mythology he could dedicate to England, which is a very different thing. That's the often misquoted part! I think that if we look at what he said about the content and structure of that 'Mythology', he more than acheived what he set out to do. Do his words above correctly describe what the Legendarium looks like? With different types of tale and scope for readers to develop it further?

Did he achieve the 'tone' he desired to convey? "Somewhat cool and clear"? A friend of mine has described Lord of the Rings as 'glacial' and I think he's correct.

Now about that whole idea of creating a mythology...

Tolkien's desire to create this mythology stemed from his early years, being an Englishman who loved myth and yet had no national myth cycle of his own; he admired the Kalevala, but England had nothing like that. The Kalevala stirred a Nationalistic fervour in Finland, Tolkien wished an English myth cycle might stir a moral revival. It's a high ideal. Perhaps not surprisingly as Tolkien grew older, his aims changed, as he says in his letter to Milton Waldman.

I have to pose the question whether England needed that anyway? England was still a global superpower up to WWII, under threat of invasion only for a short time; it was neither dominated nor occupied by any other country. It may have been a changing society, modernising day by day, but did Tolkien think a fictional mythology would change or halt any of that?

Tolkien made some attempts to 'tie' his mythology to the real England, for example through the Notion Club Papers, but ultimately, he left his published work as a secondary world. It is a vivd world and seems all too real, as we all know only too well! But would anyone seriously think that it really was England's true past? Does anyone think that?

England might not have a myth cycle like the Kalevala, but it certainly is not lacking in folk tales, legends and echoes of ancient history. Tolkien made use of some of these, adapting them to fit into the secondary world he created, but they are exactly that, adapted to fit. They are not preserved - some things would go unnoticed unless you knew the original stories and ideas. Other writers have done that though. Should he have preserved these folk tales if he truly wished to dedicate his work to England?

What does Tolkien use anyway? Where does he begin? Does he concentrate only on England since the Anglo-Saxon culture, which was cut down before it had chance to fully flower? If we go further back than that are we just speculating on what the stories might have been? England is also a country with a lot of influences - it would be a big mistake to think that the English are all Anglo-Saxons as even today there are distinct regional cultures, the Marches influenced by Wales, Northumbria influenced by Scotland, Liverpool very Irish, Cornwall still very Celtic. If Tolkien hoped that his work would represent England's past, did it capture the diversity that has always been part of our culture?

Tolkien has, like any other writer, a voice of his own. He is conservative, educated, Catholic. Is that the only voice of England? Much, even most, of our folklore has been preserved by uneducated people, by gypsies, farmers and folk singers. A lot of it is quite different to what we find in Tolkien's work, with violence, crime and sex, and it's not half so grand, more about the people at the bottom of the pile than about Kings.

When Tolkien wished to dedicate this work to England he did do something very important. It was not his work in and of itself that represented England's past, but it did create an incredible magic, and an urge to seek out those real stories for ourselves.

Or do we put far too much 'store' in what Tolkien said in his letter?

What do you think?

Some useful light reading:

The Single Greatest (Publishing) Tragedy in Tolkien's Life (yet another rant)

The Nazis & a Mytholgy for England

[lindil]

I was out walking my hound in the rain, I walked through orchards, through the rain, taking backways and old dirt footpaths, going to the only all night establishment in this backward town of 12,ooo mostly sleeping souls. And as I walked I pondered my lens through which I perceived my world. THere were teachers I knew w/ Osanwe-esque powers, there was my Aldarion and Erendis-like marriage awaiting my return from the latest journey, there was my coming gig as an acoustic minstrel at a wine and chocolate fete', there was my rebellion in taxation against king george II [or is it IV ?] and wondering how best to respond when it seems like a Saruman-type has taken over the country and has gone from white to ... ... anyway... I was thinking and feeling that my strange life was indeed part of a bizzare 'furtherance' of the 'myth' of M-E.

In many respects I think JRRT was the mythological muse for the seeking 'masses' from the 60's upto the present. A stepping stone and touchstone for hundreds of thousands millions of artists, spiritual seekers. I will admit that it has been eclipsed by Harry Potter for many children these days, just as Star Wars was the seminal artistic and indeed cultural experience for many in the late 70's and 80's. A very good case can be made for saying that SW and HP are the fruits of the M-E myth in their creators? The effects of that will perhaps show as the current generation of children become our authors, filmakers, teachers and muscians, etc..Just as the effects of the 70's/80's gen making movies now...Matrix/SW/LotR/HP/Narnia... Fantasy/Sci-Fi is a huge part of mainstream movie-going and has been since SW.

Tolkien did I believe participate deeply, essentially - I would say in the moulding of the 'western mind'. He gave to all who could find there way to it a mythology I never had as a young child. For many he was a near biblical indictment of the curren trends of modernism. Did he hope to hold back the tide of it? Of course not, but he did hope to be true to the myths that had nurtured him as a teenage orphan-linguistic prodigy. And to his very well-informed Catholic Christian ideals.

Do I think it is true? More so than the history I learned a a child!

How so? because it spoke to all of my being, my mind, heart and even changed the way I experienced walking in the forests around my suburban tract mini-mansion. It gave me some template of how people with healthy and vital souls would walk, talk and in various crises involving forces from other levels of reality and wisdom both higher and lower than my own. In short it gave hope as I would now say, that the ideal of Elves was organically 'true' and that therefore there must be a way to that.

I know for a fact that this happened to many of my friends in our teenage years.
The Downs has been proof indeed that it has happened large and small all over the world [except ,maybe the muslim world?!].

So for people like suburban Americans, who had little to no mythical figures [Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, Lincoln and Washington, Paul Revere], LotR and co was soaked up like a sponge, and it went deep!!! Just like myths are supposed to.

Of course in everybody, how we absorb, understand and live out our myths is different, but to me M-E IS the 'real' mythological history for me...

[narfforc]

Having a great love of all things mythological, I see many different themes within Tolkiens world. If we equate thus:

The Elves=Celtic ie Tuatha de Dannan/ CuCulainn
The Rohirrim=Anglo-Saxon/Norse/Tales from the Meadhall
The Gondorians=Norman/Ordered and Feudalistic.

I think that Tolkien melded all these differing themes quite well with the religious story of Good opposed to Evil. That story is one that is in most, if not all myth/religions. The problem of regionalisation is one of history, as Lalwende points out, how many parts of England are wholly English. Taking aside our Celtic cousins, in how many places would Arthur be hero or villain, remembering that he was a Briton and not an Anglo-Saxon. We are still a diverse people, listen to how many accents there are in such a small place. I dont think Tolkien could have wrote his English Myth Cycle and pleased as many people as he has done by what is basically a British Myth Cycle. In the LotR we get all of the above, and it doesn't matter how many generations have gone by here, or in our old colonies, we still dream and love tales of the old days, when Odin walked the Earth.

[davem]

I think its clear that Tolkien felt a need to tie his mythology into the modern world - hence the Translator conceit - that these stories have come down to us from ancient times & are not Tolkien's own 'invention'. Hence the original of the Legendarium stories is the Red Book.

Right from the beginning transmission is an essential element in the mythology - so it is as much history as myth. The first link in the chain is Eriol/Aelfwine, an Anglo-Saxon. In one of the latest developments we have the Notion Club Papers. The interesting thing there is the change from transmission via a book to transmission via dream & vision. The Legendarium comes down to modern Englishmen not simply through a book but through their very DNA. They are connected with the living past through their dreams & visions.

Of course, what's important here is not that it is Englishmen per se who have this connection with the mythic-historical Legendarium, but that the past is alive in modern men (cf Merry's dream in the Barrow of being slain by the Men of Carn Dum). The past is not a series of 'dead' events, but is in some way still 'happening' in some eternal 'now'.

Yet, the attempt to tie the Legendarium into England & its inhabitants is still there. It is not that he is attempting to re-create a 'lost' mythology - though he does take the fragments of Northern lore/myth/legend & attempt to explain them or account for them - why are there references in the Eddas to 'Light' & 'Dark' Elves, what is the difference, why are they different? Tolkien 'invents' the idea of the Calaquendi & the Moriquendi in response to this puzzle (see Shippey's essay in Tolkien Studies vol 1).

So, Tolkien believes there was once a more or less coherent Northern mythology, one which he sets out to 'reconstruct' (as he does with language itself in his professional life). Language, words, names are 'living' things - they evolve, & it is possible to work backwards & find their earlier forms, meanings & references.

There was once another way of explaining the world, a mythological account. It survives in words & names of course, but it also lives on in the minds, the blood, the DNA of our cells.

So, was he attempting to give us England's 'lost' mythology? I think he was - in a way: he wanted to explain the aspects of myth & legend that survived & fit them into a coherent, overarching myth (or worldview).

The question is whether there ever was such a single, coherent worldview, or whether there were actually lots of diferent, competing, myths, bits of all of which survived. Language itself perhaps provides a possible answer. Most modern languages can be traced back to a single Indo-European original. Did Tolkien believe the speakers of that language had a single mythology which, as the language itself fragmented, followed that fragmentation. Work back to the original language & find the original myth - how come, for instance, so many cultures have stories of races equivalent to Elves (Naiads, Dryads, Sidhe, Alfar, etc).

In Tolkien's Legendarium we are still linked through time to that mythic past, & that link is passed on through language (both written & spoken) & inherited in our genetic makeup. 'Blood' is central, not in the way it was misused by the Nazis, but in that it is like a 'river' which carries, transmits, the living past down to the present.

It seems that Tolkien wanted to emphasise the central importance of the past in the present, that we moderns are not a new, seperate, thing, but rather part of a story stretching from a lost mythic past & on beyond us into an unknown future.

So I'd say the Legendarium both is, & is not, a 'mythology for England'.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

So I'd say the Legendarium both is, & is not, a 'mythology for England'.

Originally Posted by narfforc

In the LotR we get all of the above, and it doesn't matter how many generations have gone by here, or in our old colonies, we still dream and love tales of the old days, when Odin walked the Earth.

Originally Posted by lindil

Of course in everybody, how we absorb, understand and live out our myths is different, but to me M-E IS the 'real' mythological history for me...

It's clear that Tolkien's work awakened something within many people, or perhaps even reawakened what was already there. What interests me is that his story is his own, his own 'take' on the myths which already existed. Any references to England's existing myths are altered and presented in a very different way. If we wanted to read those myths and folktales, Tolkien would be the wrong place to go to for them (Elves and Hobbits are very different to witches and boggarts), but it would be the right place to start. Maybe we wouldn't start at all until we had read Tolkien.

It interests me that he may have written his story as a way of making us aware of the 'truth', much in the same way that Lewis wrote Narnia to make young readers 'aware' of the Christian story.

Does Tolkien's work gather together myth and folklore and present it in a new way? And for what reason?

Is what he did a new mythology, based on the old tales, but developing something new and remarkable out of them?

[Gothmog]

I will, on Lalwendë's recommendation post the following extract from a PM I wrote earlier today:

In one of the notes in BoLT, CT mentions a connection between Elfwine (=later Eärendil, right?) and the legend of Hengest and Horsa. Now, according to the mixture of history and myth that this story concerns, they were two Anglosaxan brothers that came to England to aid the celtic king Vortigern (Wyrtgeorn) against the Picts. Later they attacked their employee and began the Anglosaxan conquering of Britain. (You probably knew all this but anyway...)

Wouldn't this suggest that Tolkien begins his story in the earliest Anglosaxan-English time? With the inspiration of Celtic and other cultures, but with a foundation in Anglosaxan history?

I don't know enough of the English mythology/history to make any real conclusions from this, but I would be happy if anyone with more knowledge would comment on this. Is the Anglosaxan history important for the basis of the ME-history or was it just a stepstone that Tolkien used to get his own mythology/history on it's way to every Englishmen's heart?

Lalwendë:

It interests me that he may have written his story as a way of making us aware of the 'truth', much in the same way that Lewis wrote Narnia to make young readers 'aware' of the Christian story.

I don't know what you mean by the "truth", but it's obvious that Tolkien has inspired a lot of people to read more about the old English history and the language itself. The recent Public Researches concerning "Fields of Study" proves that many of the BD:ers have studied both literature, the English language and history more than they would have if the works of Tolkien didn't exist. Apparently it makes people think and the curious mind want to know more about the things that created the foundation for this wonderful world. So if that is what you mean by the "truth", then yes. It has inspired readers to learn more about the old myths. I'm one of those, but unfortunately I haven't given myself the time to study these things more careful.

Personally, I don't think that many people actually thought Tolkien's world to be the truth about England's history. But it made people think, didn't it? Maybe that was the point of everything? Not to make people believe in the Tolkien-mythology, but to make people interested in their own history and myths. Maybe it was supposed to make people of English inheritance think about their past and create their own personal view of their origin? A way of activating peoples fantasy and interest? I know it worked that way for me, even if I'm not English. I feel, as Scandinavian, that this story concerns me too, and that I want to be a part of it. Maybe that's what it was supposed to be, a source of inspiration rather than a complete answer to every question regarding English history. If it was, it's a success...

P.S. I hope I will learn more about English Mythology and History in this thread. Don't make me disappointed

Just like Frodo failed on his quest to destroy the ring himself, so has Tolkien failed to make Middle Earth a mythology for England, or of England itself. The limitation of mixed cultures (unless it was an evil mix) was it's downfall. He failed to realize that human beings have been intermixing and migrating for over 100,000 years. He failed to realize that not all original settlers of Europe or regions of Middle Earth to include Britain were blonde, blue eyed folks. Too much purism in his races, though I would not go so far to call him a racist. He failed to identify the history of Middle Earth with the real people of the Shire, the Yeomen Farmers. He gave the once lowly longbow of the Yeoman to every "good" race or culture in Middle Earth. I don't think the Romans used Longbows, very not Atlantean like either. Tolkien fell into the trap of writing epic stories of elitists because he had "borrowed" from Beowulf, which he did a great job of. He failed to follow the lines of Chaucer however as he was the first to identify the everyday ordinary person in literature. Not some superhero out on a conquest or to save the world and make a name for himself. Too much of the LoTR focuses on heroic cultures, and heroic men, rather than the 'ordinary' heroes. With a lot of borrowing of different mythologies and languages it is perhaps the downfall for his objective did come with the fact he did not intermix races and culture. Though he was a pluralists in terms of the objective of the quest, but very singular on culture. He made us forget about our reality and great events, and real heroes and legends, this is perhaps the saddest part of one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. Someday somebody will fill that void and create an en mass frenzy like what happened in Finland. A mythology for Britain, rooted in reality itself and perhaps not copyrighted

[littlemanpoet]

Okay, I'll bite. :P

Welcome to the Downs, yeomanrycavalry. I hope to see more of you around, and I hope you enjoy being Dead.

Did Tolkien really intend to do all you have claimed he failed at? One can only fail at a thing if one was reaching for the goal. As Tolkien said, "my crest has long since fallen". So by the time he wrote LotR, he was trying to write a good ripping yarn and succeeded in doing a whole lot more than that. You can't fault a man for the culture to which he belonged.

[davem]

Of course, as has been pointed out previously, Tolkien did not say he wished to create a mythology for England. What he actually said was that he wished to create a mythology which he could dedicate to England - a very different thing.

[Selmo]

Tolkien's last word on this topic: "Absurd".

.

[Saurreg]

According to Bulfinch's Mythology there were at least three origins to the start of mythical England. Two of them were associated with the the classical era and one has its source from Judaism.

Of the two classical myths, the first proposed that the island derived its name from Albion, the son of Neptune (Poisedon) who ruled over the island and was slain by Hercules (Herackles). The second myth had a Trojan refugee by the name of Brutus who sailed all the way from Anatolia to the island and became the founding father of the British (if that is even possible). That leaves us with the third variant which, stated that Japhet, son of Noah had an offspring called Histion (history) who beget four children and one of them was named Britto (Britain) who was the great progenitor of a people that would bear his name. How original!

So it would seem that England is deprived of a root for myths that are exclusive to it and it alone. Can't fault Tolkien for wanting to find something somewhat more "original".