The Power of Tolkien's Prose

[tumhalad2]

Over at my blog, A Clearer Thinking Oasis, I've just discussed a newly released work of Tolkien criticism called The Power of Tolkien's Prose: Middle-earth's Magical Style, by Professor Steve Walker. Walker has been teaching Tolkien courses at Brigham Young University in the United States for 14 years, but this appears to be is first foray into publishing anything on Tolkien for consumption by the public, or at least those sections of the public that are interested.

I don't want to use this as an advertisement for my blog; sure, you can read and comment on other sections if you'd like; but I'm particularly interested in discussing some of my thoughts relating to this book. In particular, I'd like to ask some general and specific questions related to my post, and see if we might not be able to discuss some of them at length.

Of a more general nature, I'd be interested in your thoughts on the current state of Tolkien scholarship. Is it headed in the right direction? is it a little too clannish at times, and does new blood like Walker have difficulty penetrating the aura surrounding the "high priests" of criticism like Shippey and Flieger. (Personally I think Shippey, while valuable, is accorded far too much credit sometimes). Should other interesting thinkers on the subject, like Brian Rosebury and Walker himself, be given more space in our considerations of all things Middle-earth?

More specifically, and relating to Walker's ideas themselves: Do you relate to, agree with or feel you disagree with his idea of "possible meaning"; the notion that Tolkien's fiction is crafted on the premise of "negative spaces", wherein the reader is not merely encouraged, but actively positioned, to utilise their imaginative potential and become a "sub-creator" along with the author himself.

If this is the case, what do you think Tolkien was trying to achieve? To you agree with the contention that Tolkien's "mode" is "inherent ambiguity", wherebye he invites readers to multiple interpretations.

Walker focuses on the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, and to a lesser extent Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wooton Major. Can Walker's ideas be extended to Tolkien's other works, like the Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin? If so, where can we find evidence in the text of this playing out?

These are just some of the questions that could be looked into, and I'm sure others will come up with more. Now, I realise that many of you will not have read this book, but my post contains quite a few quotations from it and otherwise I have tried to explicate in some detail Walker's ideas. But I urge any of you with access to a good university library to go see if you can't find it. It's well worth it: a new and fresh approach to Tolkien that I hope opens the floodgates to a new, less partisan criticism.

[Lainadann]

I am not familiar with the book you mention but you raise some interesting ideas. I don't think Tolkien intended his work to be allegorical in any way. Every mythology is open to interpretation and sparks debate. I guess Tolkien was well aware of this when he created his.

[Pitchwife]

Thanks for the recommendation, tumhalad! I've just ordered Walker's book via inter-library loan and intend to revisit this thread once I've read it (which may take some time), but here are some stray remarks in the meantime.

First of all, it's great that Tolkien's works are becoming more and more accepted as an object of serious scholarly criticism, and I think we should be grateful for every new author who approaches them from a new angle. I can't claim to be an expert on the current state of Tolkien scholarship, but what I've read up to now (mainly Shippey's Author of the Century and a few essay collections) seems to have concentrated on his mythological and medieval sources and some general philosophical questions (such as e.g. the nature of evil in his world), while somewhat neglecting his craft as a writer of prose - so it looks like Walker's book is going to fill a market gap, so to speak.
(Btw, do you have any idea what sort of theoretical background he's coming from? I'm asking because your post and the review on your blog made me wonder what e.g. a descendant of the Russian Formalists would make of Tolkien...)

About Tolkien's "inherent ambiguity" - this touches on an interesting but rather short-lived discussion we recently had on a thread about Tolkien and Negative Capability, but the discussion over there was preoccupied with ambiguities in Tolkien's 'worldbuilding' (i.e. ambiguous/contradictory representations of events/characters in various writings of his on the same subject), so I'm curious to see how Walker is going to apply this to the fabric of Tolkien's prose, and what examples he proffers.
One example that came to my mind is Tolkien's tendency to represent natural objects which we usually think of as inanimate (like mountains or trees) as dynamic agents rather than static elements of a landscape - i.e. he ever so often describes them as 'marching' rather than just 'extending' into the distance (in fact, this kind of thing is so omnipresent in LotR that I can't think of any specific examples right now, but I think you know what I mean). Now usually we would read that kind of usage as metaphorical - but when we come to Entmoot and the Ents' and Huorns' attack on Isengard, we suddenly find the forest marching as a matter of fact! "Metaphor actualised", it can't be described any better than that.

On a more general note, to quote from your blog:

Walker contends that above all else, Tolkien was an effective writer, and that it is his effectiveness as a writer that accounts for much of his popularity.

Amen to that! And I think one of the secrets of his effectiveness is that his prose, no matter how many layers of implied meaning can be unearthed from it at close study (and I'm sure there are quite a lot), never draws attention to itself, never stands in the way of the story it's telling, but makes itself the perfect vehicle for conveying the story. A rare virtue among authors of our age, I think.

Finally, talking about the power of Tolkien's prose, I can't describe its effect on me any better but by this quotation from LotR itself (Book II, Lothlórien):

All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful.

Exactly: we read no words but those we know... but.