Tolkien's Funny Bone

[Bêthberry]

There is no joke that hath not its uttermost source in me

Well, no, Eru did not quite say this. In fact, it is hard to suss out much humour in The Silmarillion. Does the high and mighty and free of the dross exclude comedy? Greek classical theatre worked this way, keeping tragedy and comedy separate.

Yet The Hobbit and hobbits in general are often lovingly given a wide variety of comedic touches. And the minor works incorporate humour. Then too, Tolkien's Letters show the man with a very dry and droll sense of humour.

What sort of sense of humour did Tolkien have? Why is so little of it displayed in the Legendarium?

Did he leave it out so legions of fanfiction writers in later ages could supply it?

Just where did Tolkien use comedy? And what kinds? Estelyn and I have been considering this--I might even nod towards a certain parodic statement here as arising from her gentle sense of parody--but what say the rest of you?

[Hookbill the Goomba]

I've often considered this topic rather closely and a few things have sprung to mind.
I think that Tolkien found that little folk being greedy was rather amusing, you can see this in the Hobbits. His word play here and there will say something like "No one refused a second helping, or a third or even fourth!" That always amused me, anyway. Even old Gandalf says, "Hobbits would gladly sit on the edge of ruin and discuss matters of the table and the small doings of their great grand fathers to the ninth degree."

I also think he liked putting the 'well-to-do' in situations that they wouldn't like to be put into. Bilbo is a prime example of this, as we see in The Hobbit, he is (in Tolkien’s own words) rather well-to-do and had no desire for any adventures (save in his Took nature). The number of times his mind wanders onto his old Hobbit hole (as well as good food, of course).

[Kuruharan]

Focusing on the Sil...

There are certain ways that events in the Sil can be regarded as humorous. I think Hookbill's statement about the humor being situational holds here too...and your sense of humor probably has to be a bit...odd...maybe even a tad unkind.

Take the burning of the ships at Losgar. If you just take that situation and rearrange the dialogue a bit, you get something like this...

Maedhros: Daddy, don't you think it would be a good idea for us to send back for some reinforcements? We are sort of stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with no idea of what is ahead of us.

Feanor: Hmmm...do I want to share the credit for reclaiming the Silmarils with my ignorant lout of a brother or do I want to get all the glory for myself and have everybody tell me how wonderful, interesting, and pretty I am? Sometimes rephrasing the question will give you the answer. Barbeque!!

Maedhros: But...

Feanor: No buts. I have pyromania to satisfy! I am named after fire, after all!

Maedhros: But...

Or something like that. It is situations, not so much characters that are funny.

Although, Turin is a veritable font of comedy, if approached from a certain angle.

[Aiwendil]

I have to disagree about humor in the Silmarillion. Not that I don't appreciate that there's such a thing as dark humor. I'm a great fan of dark comedies such as Dr. Strangelove or The Trouble with Harry. And I think that even some very grim books and films that are certainly not comedies as such can be seen as comic in their outlook (e.g. Psycho or Full Metal Jacket).

But I don't see the Silmarillion this way. In fact, if you ask me, the Silmarillion is at the opposite extreme - it's an intensely serious work. In fact, it's one of the few works I can think of that is just about utterly devoid of humor.

I think that Kuruharan's re-writing of the Burning of the Ships at Losgar does make a point, but a different one. For, obvious though it may be, it's important that Tolkien did not write it that way. It's easy to see how something like the burning of the ships (or Turin's story, or many other things) could have been written with a very dark sense of irony. One need only imagine the Silmarillion as a Kubrick movie - and I think it would have worked excellently as one. But that's not the way Tolkien chose to approach it. For him (and, I think, for us, insofar as we read the Silmarillion as it actually exists and not as we imagine it might) the Legendarium was a very serious thing, entirely heroic in nature rather than ironic.

Actually, the only bit of humor I can think of in the whole of the Silmarillion material is this bit from the Narn i Chin Hurin:

Then Beleg went out, and led in by the hand the maiden Nellas, who dwelt in the woods, and came never into Menegroth; and she was afraid, both for the great pillared hall and the roof of stone, and for the company of many eyes that watched her. And when Thingol bade her speak, she said: 'Lord, I was sitting in a tree;' but then she faltered in awe of the King, and could say no more.
At that the King smiled, and said: 'Others have done this also, but have felt no need to tell me of it.'

Not Monty Python, perhaps, but it does stand out in such a grim work.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest that Tolkien had no sense of humor. The Hobbit is filled with excellent comedy. So are Giles and Roverandom. And there is a good deal of humor in The Lord of the Rings as well. But it seems to me that Tolkien had two more or less distinct modes of literary thought - the high and the comedic. And though he sometimes combined these (e.g. in TH and LotR), he never synthesised them.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Focusing on the Sil...

There are certain ways that events in the Sil can be regarded as humorous. I think Hookbill's statement about the humor being situational holds here too...and your sense of humor probably has to be a bit...odd...maybe even a tad unkind.

. . . .

It is situations, not so much characters that are funny.

Although, Turin is a veritable font of comedy, if approached from a certain angle.

So are you saying that comedy lies in the eye of the beholder? Or that it implies a distance between reader/perceiver and character, with the reader holding a superior or supercilious attitude? That would imply a readerly interpretation, or unintentional humour. That's usually typical of satire, but not necessarily of all comedy.

Some of Tolkien's humour is word play. He's maybe not as sharp as P.G. Woodhouse, but the opening of Smith of Wootten Major has aspects of Woodhouse's word play.

Originally Posted by Hookbill

I also think he liked putting the 'well-to-do' in situations that they wouldn't like to be put into.

So he liked to pop a little bit of a person's vanity, if that person was perhaps pompous or lacked self-knowledge?

EDIT: Whoops no time now to reply to Aiwendil's excellent post. back later

[Tuor of Gondolin]

What sort of sense of humour did Tolkien have? Why is so little of it displayed in the Legendarium?

Did he leave it out so legions of fanfiction writers in later ages could supply it?

Aren't you forgetting about when Aldarion brought back from
northern Middle-earth a Norwegian Blue Parrot for
Erendis? Sadly, it turned out the parrot was dead, not
resting, and the relationship headed south.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Tuor of Gondolin

Aren't you forgetting about when Aldarion brought back from
northern Middle-earth a Norwegian Blue Parrot for
Erendis? Sadly, it turned out the parrot was dead, not
resting, and the relationship headed south.

Are you suggesting that there is a lost Pirates of the Haradrim text which CT has not included in HoMe?

Originally Posted by Warg Fancier

This creation myth is just so......high; and comedy would bring it back down.

You aren't suggesting a rank order to Tolkien's creation are you? I think that, if the elves had had more of a sense of humour, perhaps they wouldn't have become so nostalgic. It was Frodo's tragedy, as an elf-friend, to become enmeshed in this perspective and so be unable, as Sam, Merry and Pippin, to reintegrate with the Shire society.

[Kuruharan]

I don't have time to respond at length, I'm afraid.

But I don't see the Silmarillion this way. In fact, if you ask me, the Silmarillion is at the opposite extreme - it's an intensely serious work. In fact, it's one of the few works I can think of that is just about utterly devoid of humor.

-Aiwendil

-and-

So are you saying that comedy lies in the eye of the beholder?

-Bethberry

Bethberry basically restated my point in a much more concise (and intelligible) manner.

But I don't see the Silmarillion this way. In fact, if you ask me, the Silmarillion is at the opposite extreme - it's an intensely serious work. In fact, it's one of the few works I can think of that is just about utterly devoid of humor.

The same thing could be said of Dr. Strangelove if you wanted to view it from that perspective.

The stories are constructed with different goals in mind. Kubrick designed Dr. Strangelove to be funny complete with witty dialogue, etc. Tolkien was intending The Sil to be serious and he did this through dialogue and tone. You are not going to be reading The Sil for hilarious dialogue...unless your sense of humor is truly bizarre.

[Balin999]

I found this thread where Downers wrote about their favourite funny scenes (actually started by Esty). Doesn't fit to the ongoing debate, but maybe it's interesting for some of you anyways.

[davem]

Certainly The Book of Lost Tales is 'lighter' in mood & tone in many parts than the later Silmarillion. It seems like Tolkien deliberately chose an increasingly serious tone for the work. If humour is absent from the Sil it is, as Aiwendil points out, a deliberate decision on Tolkien's part.

I think LotR is the greater work, among many other things, because of the presence of humour, which 'humanises' it. The odd thing is that in his attempt to create a modern mythology he omitted something central to just about all mythologies. Or perhaps its more subtle?

'The Silmarillion is a fundamentally humourous & comical work, but I have deliberately cut out all references to custard pies & rubber chickens. The Sillyness has been absorbed into the story itself...'