What would Tolkien say?

[Lalaith]

The Royal Society of Literature in the UK recently asked some of their most distinguished members to nominate the ten books children should read before leaving school. JK Rowling, Phillip Pullman and Andrew Motion (the British Poet Laureate) all responded and their lists are here:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/children...698794,00.html

There have been some eyebrows raised at the "challenging" nature of Motion's list (mine went pretty high, for sure...).
But be that as it may, if Tolkien were still alive and had been asked, what books do we think he would have put forward?
Of course, a lot of what has been recommended had not yet been written when he was around. But I think he would have approved of much of Pullman's list - the ballads, myths and fairytales. I'm sure he would have suggested Andrew Lang - the Blue Fairy Book etc. What did he think of things like Lewis Carroll? I haven't read the letters so I don't have the insight. He might, like many of the authors approached by the RSL, have refused to participate at all.

But I do think he would have approved of this comment from the RSL:

"I think it's a fallacy to say that children need to be given books about children who are in similar situations to them. Children can empathise with characters from any place or time."

[Lalwendë]

This could potentially be an important set of lists as the QCA are the organisation used by the govt as experts in curriculum setting. There is also a certain amount of controversy (and quite rightly in my opinion) about the extent to which some schools are using 'extracts' for study instead of complete works. Extracts work well when studying areas such as structure and style but over-use denies the opportunity to study longer works; perhaps this issue is beginning to be addressed.

However there are some serious drawbacks as the lists say more about those writers' preferences and what they hope every child will have the chance to read. From Motion's list I'd only place the Lyrical Ballads as suitable for young people as while some of the others may be readable, I honestly think some of them can only be truly understood with age and bitter experience (Wuthering Heights is the Bronte novel of choice if you are under 30, Jane Eyre if you are over 30 ). There are other works which are challenging, but which will be of much more relevance to a younger person (e.g. Canterbury Tales, Songs of Innocence and Experience, Emma, Jude the Obscure, most of the Romantic narrative poetry).

When the representative from the RSL says "there were not many books that parents would not have read" I think he also over-estimates the level of literacy of most adults as only a small minority will ever have read Ulysses or Don Quixote; you'd struggle to find an English teacher in one of our schools who had read both of these!

I'm not so sure that Tolkien would have automatically plumped for any Shakespeare, and I think his list would have been closer to Pullman's than any other in this article. He may have wanted to see Beowulf studied, which I think would be a challenging but exciting text for say A Level students - it was often studied in universities here but is not so common now. I think the excitement factor would have figured strongly in Tolkien's choice.

[Anguirel]

Quite agree about Motion. I mean, Ulysses, honestly, I haven't read that yet...I'm still struggling with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man...

I expect that although if operating on personal taste his list would share certain things with Pullman's, though I think it would contain quite a lot more of the relatively obscure myths specifically (Mabinogion, Beowulf and Kalevala dead certs), he probably would go for the sensible "How am I supposed to account for every child's sensibility?" route and refuse to submit a list.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Tolkien would have written an initial list, then broken off to re-write the Grey Annals in Middle High German and prepare a series of lectures on Beowulf. He would then have returned to the list, changed most of the books on it, and translated it - first into fourteenth-century ecclesiastical Latin then into Quenya. Having finished this, and thirteen years after the other lists had been published, he would have decided that this sort of work could only ever have been written in Sindarin, but that he would need to revise the vocabulary in order to render some of the titles. This would inevitably have led him to a complete re-appraisal of the theological implications of the Silmarillion and a lecture about Celtic personal names in Icelandic saga.

Twenty years after having begun his list, Tolkien would have started again, this time writing entirely in modern English, but would have sent the only legible copy to his publishers and forgotten what it contained. The result, on the return of his original manuscript, would have been two lists, one of which would have lapsed into indeterminate West Saxon and a highly personal set of abbreviations. Satisfied with neither, he would finally have written another list containing every children's book published between 1840 and 1950, then spent four years revising it to include every book, myth, legend, poem and essay that his own children had ever liked. Eventually Tolkien would have sent the original commissioners of the list two-hundred pages of typescript, half of which would have consisted of footnotes and a significant proportion of which would have been written in classical or medieval languages. The bemused return of this list would have set him off on a completely new line of enquiry, the final result of which would have been a digest in Gothic of the sources for Bede's biblical commentaries. Whether or not any version of the list would have contained any of his own books is highly debatable.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

Tolkien would have written an initial list, then broken off to re-write the Grey Annals in Middle High German and prepare a series of lectures on Beowulf. He would then have returned to the list, changed most of the books on it, and translated it - first into fourteenth-century ecclesiastical Latin then into Quenya. Having finished this, and thirteen years after the other lists had been published, he would have decided that this sort of work could only ever have been written in Sindarin, but that he would need to revise the vocabulary in order to render some of the titles. This would inevitably have led him to a complete re-appraisal of the theological implications of the Silmarillion and a lecture about Celtic personal names in Icelandic saga.

Twenty years after having begun his list, Tolkien would have started again, this time writing entirely in modern English, but would have sent the only legible copy to his publishers and forgotten what it contained. The result, on the return of his original manuscript, would have been two lists, one of which would have lapsed into indeterminate West Saxon and a highly personal set of abbreviations. Satisfied with neither, he would finally have written another list containing every children's book published between 1840 and 1950, then spent four years revising it to include every book, myth, legend, poem and essay that his own children had ever liked, before sending the original commissioners of the list two-hundred pages of typescript, half of which would have consisted of footnotes and a significant proportion of which would have been written in classical or medieval languages. The bemused return of this list would have set him off on a completely new line of enquiry, the final result of which would have been a digest in Gothic of the sources for Bede's biblical commentaries. Whether or not any version of the list would have contained any of his own books is highly debatable.

I think Squatter earns Top Trumps for this post.

After all, all this list business is just that--business--and Tolkien was an academic, devoted to the making of mind-play and not money--at fact which explains why he spent so much time marking exam papers to earn extra money for his family, academics being the poor cousins of the military and the church.

Originally Posted by Lal

However there are some serious drawbacks as the lists say more about those writers' preferences and what they hope every child will have the chance to read. From Motion's list I'd only place the Lyrical Ballads as suitable for young people as while some of the others may be readable, I honestly think some of them can only be truly understood with age and bitter experience (Wuthering Heights is the Bronte novel of choice if you are under 30, Jane Eyre if you are over 30 ).

Actually, I would have thought that Jane Eyre would be the book of choice for those under 18 while Whuthering Heights and Villette would be for those over 30. Of course, reading Jane Eyre while an impressionable teen likely means one misses most of the dark irony at Jane's expense.

I seem to recall a comment somewhere that other than Science Fiction and Fantasy, Tolkien hadn't read much "formal" literature post Wordsworth. Or was that post Pearl and Gawain?

[Lalaith]

I agree with most of the suggestions here. (Particularly Squatter's!)
Thanks for reminding me about Gawain, Bethberry, I think Tolkien would probably have picked it for his list...I wonder if he might have suggested a mediaeval prose work such as Njalssaga, as well.
Of course, he might have just narrowed himself to English literature....and natural modesty might have prevented him from suggesting Gawain or Beowulf, as he of course was responsible for the translations then most readily available.


As for more general points:

There is also a certain amount of controversy (and quite rightly in my opinion) about the extent to which some schools are using 'extracts' for study instead of complete works.

Indeed, Lalwende, this is a problematic issue and one I don't know the answer to. In my day, we did a few texts extremely thoroughly, now they get through a lot more but don't read them right through - "selected scenes" from Othello, Oliver Twist or whatever and watch the video for the rest of the story.
Sad truth is, a lot of children just aren't up to ploughing through a whole Dickens, and giving them a taste is better than nothing, I suppose. What say those Downers still at school?

My own list for teenagers would probably be closest to JK Rowling's, with some of Pullman. David and Goliath was the first bit of the Bible I ever read of my own volition...I think children should definitely read something from the St James version, and not for religious reasons.... I think Tolkien would have mentioned the Bible, too.
I'd probably have stuck Brighton Rock and/or Camus' L'etranger in there somewhere as the alienation in both books goes down well with angsty teenagers....a bit less predictable than Catcher in the Rye. A bit of Tolstoy or Zola wouldn't go amiss either. And I'm a Wuthering Heights rather than a Jane Eyre girl....But what about Lord of the Rings? No-one mentioned that....or the Hobbit....

PS. Motion-inspired confession: I am an English graduate and I have never read Ulysses or Don Quixote. Nor have I read the Iliad or Odyssey all the way though. (Or Portrait of a Lady, for that matter, but I should get round to it at some point, I suppose, ho hum)

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Bethberry

Actually, I would have thought that Jane Eyre would be the book of choice for those under 18 while Whuthering Heights and Villette would be for those over 30. Of course, reading Jane Eyre while an impressionable teen likely means one misses most of the dark irony at Jane's expense.

It's probably a bit of a contentious thing that I said. But I think Wuthering Heights is all about defiance, passion, idealism. It's got the grand gothic element that is so appealing when you're young. Whereas Jane Eyre is more considered, loving a person rather than getting lost in the 'love for love's sake' ideal. I think at 18 I'd have found Jane Eyre to be a total prig and Mr Rochester just a pig.

[JennyHallu]

I think at 18 I'd have found Jane Eyre to be a total prig and Mr Rochester just a pig.

I don't think age has as much bearing on a person's understanding of a text as you or Bethberry are giving it, Lalwende.

At 16, reading Jane Eyre for a class, I had just such an opinion of the main characters as you describe (if you substitute naive twit for total prig), but my mother, who taught the class at age 36, had much the same opinion.

I think one's ability to understand the nuances and intricacies of a text rests on one's on personality and experience. Orson Scott Card describes a great story as one that forces you to revise the story you tell yourself about yourself and the world around you. And not everyone sees the same stories as great, because everyone's personal stories are so unique.