Words, Worlds, and Wonder: Tolkien's and the Fairy Story

When you pick up a book and feel as though you have traveled outside of time while reading, there is a strange magic. You didn't really leave the world, but rather entered it more fully, as though the narrative had given you a clearer perspective. This past week, while reading The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's theoretical works, I sat with that emotion for a considerable amount of time. When a story has that effect on us, what precisely is going on? And why did Tolkien devote so much of his intellectual life to attempting to provide an answer to that query?

"On Fairy-Stories" is his most direct attempt to respond. The essay reads more like a defense of a deeply held belief than an academic exercise. Tolkien was challenging the prevalent belief of his time, which was that fairy tales were primarily for children and should be abandoned once reason fully developed. That, in his opinion, was incorrect.

As usual, he starts his argument with a word. Tolkien places fairy tales within Faerie, the realm or state in which fairies exist, a realm that contains the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky, the earth, and everything in it, instead of just being about fairies in the strict sense. We can already see what he is doing, which is to broaden the category until it becomes something significant and expansive. Little winged creatures have no place in Faerie. Any reader who has lost themselves in a book will instantly recognize it as the texture of a world experienced with full attention.

From this starting point, Tolkien develops the idea of sub-creation, which I believe forms the core of his argument. According to Tolkien, fantasy is a sub-creation exercise in which the author creates a Secondary World that the reader's imagination can access. What is related within it is "true" because it complies with the rules of that world. Although this may seem like a fancy way of describing what any novelist does, Tolkien's stakes are much higher. Sub-creation is more than just decoration or invention. According to Tolkien, literary works always refer back to the Creator and have their roots in created reality. Because we were created in a Creator's image, we are creators. Creating worlds is not an escape. I believe that most of us already understand that it is one of the most fundamentally human things we do. When was the last time you read far too late or experienced true sadness upon the conclusion of a series? That pull is not insignificant.

At this point, Tolkien's literary theory and faith become inextricably linked. He created the term "eucatastrophe" to refer to a situation in a narrative where defeat appears to be complete but is not, something that previous criticism was unable to fully capture. Perhaps the most well-known example is the destruction of the One Ring. Even though Frodo is unable to destroy it on his own, it is nevertheless destroyed. There's more going on here than just heroism. Tolkien views this kind of turn as more than just a literary delight. According to him, the Gospels contain a fairy tale of a greater kind, one that elevates the goal of sub-creation to the realization of Creation itself and embraces all the essence of fairy tales. According to his interpretation, the Incarnation and Resurrection are the greatest eucatastrophes in history; they are actual occurrences that possess the structure and emotional impact of the greatest fairy tales, giving them their most profound resonance. This elevates the fairy tale rather than diminishing the gospel.

The Lord of the Rings' Tom Bombadil does something subtly amazing in this setting, so it is worth stopping here. One of the most contentious characters in all of Tolkien's works, Tom was frequently brought up as a sort of conundrum in our class discussions. He defies all allegorical interpretations, is completely unaffected by the Ring, and cannot be explained. Simply put, he is the Master of Wood, Water, and Hill, singing his way through an increasingly gloomy world. In his letters, Tolkien himself opposed attempts to reduce Tom to a single meaning, arguing that any story worth telling can have a moral without being reduced to just one. Even though it isn't allegorical, I believe Tom's place in the context of faith and fairy tales is actually pretty obvious. He serves as a reminder that Middle-earth existed long before the Quest and will continue to exist long after in a tale full of significance and ramifications. He stands for something that is impervious to corruption because it lacks comprehension. And that is a kind of grace for a tale that is profoundly concerned with the corrupting weight of will and power.

Despite the essay's brilliance, "Leaf by Niggle" portrays these concepts in miniature and with a tenderness that it is unable to quite match. The narrative centers on Niggle, a painter who is constantly distracted by obligations, neighbors, and the everyday stresses of life while working compulsively on a large canvas of a tree. He never completes it. Before he can, he passes away. However, he finds that his vision has been realized in a way that his brushstrokes could never have accomplished in the purgatorial space that follows his death. The Great Tree is now fully realized, fulfilling all the goals his flawed painting had been pursuing.

This story has an almost intolerable poignancy when read after "On Fairy-Stories" because you can see what Tolkien is saying about himself. He was Niggle, constantly editing, creating maps, languages, and genealogies while being conscious that the entire enormous structure might not be completed. He expressed genuine worry about this in his letters, fearing that the tree would remain a canvas of strewn leaves and that the work would never be finished. However, the narrative does not end in despair. It gently but firmly asserts that sub-creative work has a purpose and that, despite its flaws, an incomplete leaf points toward a complete tree.

After sitting through all of these readings together, I find myself questioning the cost of holding onto Tolkien's beliefs. Imaginatively, not theologically. It takes a kind of persistent imaginative faith to believe that our little creative acts of meaning-making are actually connected to something greater, that the leaf points toward the tree and the story points toward a story. Tolkien contends that healing, escape, and comfort are the fundamental gifts of fairy tales. They give us the uplifting joy of eucatastrophe, help us regain lost perspectives, and provide a much-needed break from the grind of everyday life. But beneath all three of those functions lies something more fundamental: the insistence that joy is not naive. That the happy ending is not a lie told to children.

This, in my opinion, explains why Tolkien's theoretical writings, which are completely distinct from the Middle-earth he created, still seem so vivid. He is carefully arguing, with roots in both language and religion, that the human urge to tell stories is a participation in something genuine rather than a weakness that can be explained away. Regardless of one's religious beliefs, that assertion has merit. Tolkien would advise you to pay attention the next time a story takes you by surprise and causes that odd catch in your throat, that unexpected and unexplainable joy. There's a real thing going on.

— AJS

Faërie and the Edges of Possibility

The reality of Faërie and the value of it were of great concern to Tolkien. In his letters and foreword to The Lord of the Rings, he criticized allegory as a way to read his novels, and in his lectures, he disliked the breaking of immersion for Faërie. Because rejection of what he perceives as the nature fairy stories is thereby a rejection of scripture and the benefits conveyed by these works. Yet, his ideas can be extended beyond his discussion into the realm of mathematics.

Recovery, escape, and consolation are crucial ways to understand the value of fairy stories and high literature in general, as described in his lecture "On Fairy Tales". He describes how, depending on the setting, a contemporary or historical setting, or a fantasy setting, will impact the benefits that can be achieved by it. Those that take place in historical or contemporary settings can be equated as a more realistic element, but with lesser power than Faërie. Their lesser power is due to their limited aspects of creation: stuck to one place or time within the world. Instead of having the ability to unchain many aspects of one's thoughts and to participate in creation. Whereas Faërie is wholly dependent on creation, similar to how mathematical fields are dependent on the enumerated axioms, unlike physics, which is constrained to understanding the world. This greater degree of freedom must therefore allow for greater possibilities.

Tolkien illustrates it most with Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, where he is a stand-in for the resultant power of Faërie, and the fresh eyes or clean windows one finds after being transported to this new world. Both recovery and escape are illustrated by Frodo after he leaves the land of stories told by Tom Bombadil, returning to the forest. Frodo did not know whether one day or many had passed, but he knew that he was “only filled with wonder. The stars shone through the window and the silence of the heavens seemed to be round him” (Fellowship, 148). Here, he is only seeing the world with eyes filled with wonder, but he is transported closer to the All, becoming aware of the heavens in a way different than before. Recovery is seen first and foremost, with seeing things again for the first time, and so is escape in how he was so utterly sucked into that he did not know how time had passed. Implicitly, there is the idea that with the transportation to another world, upon the return to the main one, there is a clearer sight of transcendental properties. The mention of the heavens and this newfound awareness is crucial; the heavens are transcendental, and it is only after this realization that he inquires into what Tom really is. It is clear that Tom takes on these mythical aspects.

Faërie appears to open the mind to new possibilities —to engage in a true act of creation, unconstrained by worldly realities. However, by doing so, certain fundamental truths become revealed and explored. The fundamental quality that allows these benefits is due to an important internal consistency of Faërie itself. The world must flow together and be true, or true within itself.

Tolkien’s connection between Faërie and scripture is that scripture contains elements of Faërie, where everything is consistent within the world and is sometimes, begrudgingly, accepted as true by skeptics due to this inner consistency and impact. These stories are real in the liturgy. And it is through these stories that the work of God is meant to be revealed. Littered throughout the gospels are ways that can be interpreted to see or understand God’s action on earth, thereby allowing the reader to understand His creation in their everyday life. Here, scripture acts in a similar way to how Tom's stories acted for Frodo.

While Tolkien does not explicitly say that Faërie can unchain the human mind to explore and create that which is possible and true about the world, yet not immediately evident. The unchaining of inner aspects by Faërie can be likened to how men have received similar impacts from religion. Take, for example, Kurt Gödel; his firm religious beliefs allowed him to transcend contemporary mathematical thoughts and conceive that due to the nature of God, there must be true but unknowable aspects to the universe (for more information, please search Gödel's theorem of incompleteness). While it may have been philosophy and scripture that allowed his great advancement in proving complex mathematical and logical systems as inconsistent, the principles he used were Platonic ideas that transcend the mere limits of the observable world. Similar to how, after Frodo became transported through the tales of Faërie, he became aware of the silence of the heavens; Gödel, with help from scripture, became aware of the nature of the heavens' connection to the world.

Beyond the mere similarities of Gödel and Faërie, there exists a strong connection between the creation of Faërie and mathematics, which is not explored by Tolkien. Areas of mathematics arise when certain axioms are created, and then proofs are deductively derived based on these available properties of the axioms, which, for the system to be useful, it needs to be self-consistent. The creation of fantasy contains many of the same elements: a new world is created out of first principles, and then Tolkien argues that the world should be self-consistent. What is remarkable about both is that when done well, they find transcendental properties of the world applicable to our world. Tolkien’s critique of allegory is derived from how proper fairy stories examine these universals, and often, readers will misinterpret it as allegory.

Tolkien does not examine one of the crucial ideas underlying Faërie, scripture, and mathematics, which are elements not immediately perceptible in our world or existing in a completely different universe that, when taken seriously and self-consistent, can reveal important truths and new sight about the world we must live in every day. 

—ESW

Primary Truth and Secondary Meaning: Tolkien’s Theory of Sub-Creation

 “The magic of Faërie is not an end in itself, its virtue is in its operations”

What I find far and away most interesting about Tolkien’s argumentation on the land of Faërie and the importance of fairy stories is that he always begins from a philological lens, arguing from words and their derivations critical starting points that form the foundation of his later arguments. In this practice, as is true in so many ways for Tolkien, he resembles philosophers from long ago rather than the scientification that he found deleterious in the modern world.

Given that he argues from philology, it would make sense that the word of Faërie would have important linguistic elements—as, indeed, it does. For Tolkien, the purpose of words and names is not merely as a “label,” as he begins in the Mythopoeia. Rather, there is a deeper potential sense, that there are “great processes” marching on behind and beyond the words themselves. In the course of our making fairy stories, telling them, and working through them we engage in sub-creation. This process, sub-creation, is critical for Tolkien’s construction and conception of fairy stories. I propose that the sub-creation that Tolkien is arguing about and for is the addition of a deeper meaning than a mere label to a word and thus, by stringing together multiple words into a story, to stories as well.

That words have deeper inarticulable meanings is a fairly obvious proposition—thinking about one’s “home” as a “residence” causes a change in meaning far greater than their respective dictionary definitions would imply. If my residence were destroyed, I might talk with my insurance company and ascertain the extent of my deserved compensation. If my home was destroyed, I would (rightly) be in shambles. But the process by which words come to acquire a deeper meaning I think is what Tolkien, at his core, is arguing—they come to mean something by a process of story, by sub-creation.

Among the marvels of the Christian Story, which seems to be core to Tolkien’s world-building, is the fact that within the Christian Story there are mythical marvels that are, critically, significant. These marvels have been imbued with a meaning deeper than their direct label. The salvific nature of God is that he has saved us, the “corrupt making-creatures,” in a manner respective to our nature (On Fairy Stories, 88). In short, he gave us a primary story, the Christian Story via Creation, through which we can provide meaning via sub-creation.

The Christian Story is the first among the stories with significance, and it is pre-eminent among that class of “beautiful fairy stories” that are found to be “primarily” true, i.e. in accordance with history. But it is interesting to note again the importance of a deeper, non-label meaning even to the Christian Story—for the joy that one gets from it, while the best and truest joy, is not fully unique to it. Rather, all fairy stories, if found to be both a fairy story and also in accordance with history (“primarily” true), and in the finding of this truth they do not lose their “mythical and allegorical significance” (note again the use of significant), generate joy (On Fairy Stories, 89). 

I read the imbuing of this significance similarly to the imbuing of words with meaning. There is a primary truth, the verifiable face of the thing, the historically accurate nature or scientific accuracy or what have you, in a story. This is akin to the dictionary definition of a word. There is, further, a mythical and allegorical meaning to a story. I would contend that this is akin to the connotation some words have and others lack.

This lends further color to the constantly-referenced idea that for Tolkien there must be an internal consistency of reality. In so many ways, the way Tolkien constructs this internal consistency resembles the creation of a primary truth for something he knows not to be primarily true. The massive genealogical tables, new languages, and accurate cartography lend the same feeling that a history book does—namely, that it is telling a tale of something that happened. Even Tolkien’s literary work, in the manner of its release, resembles the medieval history he did so much of—the wider Silmarillion, which includes in a very minor aside the entire LOTR story, tells different stories that it feels of far wider importance, quite similarly to medieval chroniclers with differing frames. That Bilbo and Frodo also are discussed at such length writing about what they’ve seen, and that Sam aims to write down and preserve the Elvish stories, actively force them to engage with the construction of the primarily true.

But in this construction of the primarily true it makes the fairy story, in this case the realm of Middle Earth, come together with far greater power. For, like the Christian Story, there is no better joy than finding a story that is both primarily true and significant. The process of sub-creation, then, imbues the words we know have definitions, as all words have or will acquire a definition, with the greater significance they need to truly mean something. Interestingly, though, without the provision of the primarily true, sub-creation does not appear to work—from Imagination through Art to Sub-Creation, there is no addition of the primarily true, yet for the best fairy stories, as Tolkien himself implies in his own world-building, the primarily true must be added. While sub-creation is the addition of a deeper, an “allegorical and mythmaking,” significance, there are critical prerequisites to such additions.

—NFH

The Enchanter's Power

“Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted” (On Fairy Stories)

    Tolkien believes that fairy stories aren’t allegorical representations of solar phenomena (in the vein of Max Müller) nor remnants of ancient tokenism (as Andrew Lang argued), rather they are about something Tolkien calls ‘Faërie.’ So we began our discussion with the question: what is Faërie and how is it created? In short, the answer to the first part of the question seems to be that Faërie is the created story-world and a framework in which to perceive it. As for its creation, Tolkien argues that the key lies in the language used.

Yet trees are not 'trees,' until so named and seen—

and never were so named, till those had been

who speech's involuted breath unfurled,

faint echo and dim picture of the world (Mythopoeia)

    In Mythopoeia, Tolkien suggests that we can only understand the world around us through stories, and in naming things, we participate in their creation. Human beings are therefore ‘sub-creators’: our words shape, order, and reveal the world as intelligible. Language, then, is not merely descriptive but generative. Storytelling is a mode of engaging with reality, a way of participating in creation itself. For example, the Grimm brothers, by publishing the folk stories of the various German states, were defining a collective identity in the century leading up to the unification of the German Empire in 1871. Similarly, Elias Lönnrot’s compilation of Finnish oral poetry into the Kalevala in 1835 not only preserved these stories, but elevated the Finnish language at a time when Finland was still under Russian rule. These stories helped define a people through their language, imbuing their land with mythic significance and transforming Finnish, the language of the lower class back then, into a vehicle of beauty and national consciousness.

“But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent” (On Fairy Stories)

    To Tolkien, adjectives grant the mind an "enchanter's power" to separate qualities (like green) from objects (like grass). This mental ability to abstract and recombine properties is the root of magic and fantasy. Once the mind can conceive of separating qualities, it inevitably desires to wield that power creatively, leading to the sub-creation of new forms and the beginning of Faerie. 

    To enter such a work world, the reader doesn’t have to be in a state of “willing suspension of disbelief” (i.e. passive tolerance of fiction), but rather in the enchanted state of ‘Secondary Belief’ in which the mind enters the Secondary World and accepts it as true. Faërie isn’t separate from the real world, it’s the real world re-seen through enchantment.

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;

Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow (LotR, book 1, chapter 7)

    Tolkien emphasizes that achieving this effect—making a Secondary World believable—requires immense skill, “a kind of elvish craft.” An example of such sub-creative power within Lord of the Rings is Tom Bombadil. He tells the previously sheltered hobbits tales of the history of their world, leading them to “strange regions beyond their memory and beyond their waking thought, into times when the world was wider” until they were “enchanted” and “under the spell of his words” (book 1, chapter 7). Although the reader doesn’t get to hear his tales directly, we do get to see snippets of his earlier songs, such as the one above in which he uses lots of simple adjectives to create a vivid image of himself in the reader’s mind, drawing us into his world.

    In On Fairy Stories, Tolkien identifies three primary functions of fairy stories: Recovery, Escape, and Consolation. Through his stories of the past, Tom Bombadil helps the hobbits recover truth about their world by showing them how it got to its current state, letting them see it as it is meant to be seen. This also gives them the chance to escape the misery of their journey for a day. 

    Through sub-creation, language strips away the dullness of habit that obscures reality. Things that have become invisible through over-familiarity—such as “the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread”—are restored to their proper wonder. By re-presenting the world through imaginative language, Faërie allows us to encounter ordinary things as if for the first time, newly vivid and charged with significance. 

    As for the final (and “highest”) function, consolation, he says that “[the fairy-tale setting] denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world” (On Fairy Stories). Tolkien’s use of evangelium (“good news”) is deliberate. The joy offered by fairy stories is an unexpected turn toward hope, what he famously calls a ‘eucatastrophe,’ interrupting the reality of suffering.

    Thus, fairy stories like Tom Bombadil’s resemble the religious narratives Tolkien heard growing up in Birmingham Oratory. As he writes in Mythopoeia, “we make still by the law in which we’re made.” Human sub-creation mirrors divine creation, and in entering a Secondary World through genuine belief, one does more than entertain a fiction. One participates, however faintly, in the creative act itself. In this way, the experience of fantasy approaches something like worship: an imaginative encounter with truth, beauty, and meaning that reflects the deeper structure of reality.

-ME

On Fairy-Beyond-Stories

In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien opines that “in human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature.” But do his own definitions allow for more? Taking art by M.C. Escher and Tolkien’s own poetry as examples, I would argue that Faerie and Fantasy can indeed go beyond literature, but the path becomes fraught upon abandonment of story.

To begin, it will be necessary to reiterate the difference between these three elements in relation to my topic. Faerie, the realm somehow coexisting with or overlaying our own, possesses magic and the ability for subcreation, which leads into fantasy. The most important aspects of Tolkien’s Fantasy for my argument are “arresting strangeness” and the potential for Secondary Belief, but I also accept and support the dictionary definition he eschews, “inner consistency of reality.” Lastly, though it may seem inane, a fairy-story must be a story. In order to make room for the values fairy-stories offer – Fantasy, Escape, Recovery, and Consolation – and the paramount feature of the Eucatastrophe or turn, the story must have an enthralling plot. To return tangentially to a prior discussion, these last three are also why fairy-stories are journeys. Recovery, that “regaining of a clear view,” comes only after we are overwhelmed with sensation, stepping back at last after the intense plot which drew us in has been completed. If you will indulge me a quote from the movies,

It's like in the great stories…. [S]ometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, … when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Fairy-stories immerse readers in a “perilous” world with dangers and possibilities beyond our experience. It is exactly because those fantastic characteristics that, if successful, the story fosters real and strong emotion, and that returning to the world which we do experience gives us recovery and catharsis. Even more poignant are stories where the characters feel the same, such as both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. When the heroes return from their journeys, they too gain a renewed perspective on the Shire and home. Eucatastrophe requires a plot on the simple grounds that the “Consolation of the Happy Ending” needs something to end. Without a journey, without conflict and development and the feeling of having gotten somewhere or done something during the story, there can be nothing to “turn” from.

Tolkien critiques fantasy in visual arts as frequently sliding into “silliness or morbidity.” While I do not, of course, know his views on M.C. Escher or what he categorized as silly and morbid, the impossible, imagined worlds of Escher’s drawings are neither. Waterfall and Ascending and Descending, two of his most famous works, display this well.

When the hypothetical viewer’s eye first falls on Waterfall, it will focus on some small element perhaps the waterwheel in the middle, or the sharp polyhedral figures near the top. Between the dark bricks of the aqueduct and the implied motion of ripples, the viewer will likely follow the water around its course before stopping in confusion. Something is obviously not right, and yet the picture does not look completely wrong. I argue that this feeling, though I only have empirical data from my friends to support its existence, is a manner of Secondary Belief created inside the drawing. There is both sense and nonsense in the piece, and a shift of perspective is required to move between them; looking at any part of the structure closely it is comprehensible, a study in architecture, and only by switching to consider the whole can the viewer keep the impossibility in mind. A similar design is at play in Ascending and Descending: look at any half of it and you see people going up and down a staircase atop a lovely Italianate building, but look at the whole and the building ceases to cohere. If Secondary Belief is when unrealistic things can become “’true’: [they accord] with the laws of that world,” then these drawings create belief because the elements do make sense and fit together. This shift in perspective is like the Magic of Faerie, a mathematical magic if you will. Inside of its enchantment, these drawing achieve and inner consistency of reality and the strange seems natural. The bottom left of Waterfall, for instance, has a collection of shapes more suited to a fish tank, but in place with the building and gate it becomes but a transformed garden – similar to real life but shifted, like a green sun. Escher’s realistic and precise architecture and surroundings are a match for the abnormal elements and diminish their shock.

In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, a collection of poems with many of “less serious” nature, one striking piece after reading this essay is #3, “Errantry.” I linked the poem at the end, but since it was not assigned reading I will quote some of the lines that caught my attention here:

He wove a tissue airy-thin
to snare her in; to follow her
he made him beetle-leather wing
and feather wing of swallow-hair
He caught her in bewilderment
with filament of spider-thread;
he made her soft pavilions
of lilies, and a bridal bed
of flowers and of thistle-down
to nestle down and rest her in;
and silken webs of filmy white
and silver light he dressed her in.
…
He made a shield and morion
of coral and of ivory,
a sword he made of emerald,
and terrible his rivalry
with elven-knights of Aerie
and Faerie, with paladins
that golden-haired and shining-eyed
came riding by and challenged him.

When I read this I found clear parallels with the type of fairies and stories depicting them that Tolkien derides, with the excerpt from Nymphidia echoing in my head. Here is a passage referencing objects made from things befitting a fairy of diminutive stature, full of “prettiness.” The meter, though unique and clever, is made for decorative language and obscure words that, to me at least, evoke the same generically old-fashioned time period as fragile and delicate flower fairies. The poem follows a courier who wanders around, woos a butterfly, and engages in battle before going back to delivering his message. It is altogether a rather nonsensical and unengaging story more reminiscent of “Pigwiggenry” than fantasy.

To me, “Errantry” does feel more like Faerie than Escher’s drawings. Perhaps it is just the romantic medieval imagery, or perhaps it gets to Tolkien’s point that fantasy is best in language where the audience can envision it themselves. Nonetheless, the poem does not create secondary belief in its world nor show much consistency besides prettiness. So why might pictures succeed where the written word fails? My argument is that, even though neither has enough plot for escape, recovery, consolation, or eucatastrophe, the difference is still in the story. The poem is too involved in meter and rhyme to go anywhere, and furthermore what story it does have is like the beast-fables Tolkien describes: all can be transformed into human items, materials, and experiences, stripping it of the fantasy. Meanwhile, in these two and other Escher drawings, we capture a slice of life. People are moving around their house, looking over balconies, doing laundry, and all while existing in an enchanted Faerie realm. The art is not simply an exploration of form, it is situated in a world, and this truly is the key to secondary belief.
____________________________________________

There are obviously other points that could be considered, but I am already long even without the poem excerpt. “Errantry” and many of the other poems in the collection were likely composed for Tolkien’s children. As he said in letter 215, he sometimes fell victim to societal assumptions that children and fairy-stories went together, so should we excuse the poem’s imagery and frivolity? I should also note that The Adventures of Tom Bombadil are presented as marginalia from the Red Book of Westmarch, and a cyclical structure of the language is a part of this Hobbitish poem type, which may excuse the cyclical plot. What is the purpose of the framing device? Surely he doesn’t actually expect anyone to believe these are poems he just collected, and as a way to create a secondary world it is frankly unconvincing. Perhaps Tolkien simply wanted to tie them into the canon on a more meta level.

-- ᛸᚻᚹ (SEP)

http://www.ae-lib.org.ua/texts-c/tolkien__the_adventures_of_tom_bombadil__en.htm#03

Tom or Tolkein?

“Who are you, Master?” Frodo asks in the passage from “In the House of Tom Bombadil,” subsequently breaking open a space for our class discussion.

Sub-creation, Tom Bombadil’s place in The Lord of the Rings and his absence in the movie version was widely discussed in our Zoom classroom on Wednesday. From whether or not Tom should have been included in the movies, to whether he was supposed to be seen as a version of Christ, we covered him and his passage thoroughly. In this scene, Tom Bombadil relates to the hobbits, who just got out of a rough encounter with Old Man Willow, his life full of journey’s around their world. To our class, Tom was either seen as a Godly/Jesus-y figure or perhaps Tolkien himself. I believe that Tom Bombadil is more of a stand-in for Tolkien himself, rather than a religious figure, despite Tolkien’s background. I think Tolkien reveals his own presence in the telling excerpt we read from the book.

Tom comes into the mise-en-scene with a good attitude, erupting with poems and songs as well as a pleasant relationship with his wife Goldberry. These details help explain his presence in the story. Tolkien’s description of Goldberry demonstrates an effort to show beauty in her character. “Her long yellow hair rippled down her shoulders…set with the pale blue eyes of forget-me-nots” (134). There is a tenderness to the way he described her. While this might be the result of his talent, I think it digs to a place slightly deeper. When he was writing the story, Tolkien was married to Edith Bratt. Edith is sometimes referred to as his muse, inspiring many of his works (History Collection). Her effect on his writing is most notable in his works such as The Silmarillion (History Collection). They were married up until her death in 1971. However, Goldberry’s character may have also been a reflection of Edith, revealing his personal fairy tale. The relationship between the two characters echoes a happily married J. J. Ronald and Edith. If they had a sexual relationship, that too would further distance themselves from Christ figurines, despite his devout Christianity. “Leaf by Niggle,” helped demonstrate his Christianity. Niggle is a struggling artist who stumbles across heaven by finding the tree he was painting, in what is seen as a perfect world.

Tom Bombadil proves himself an adept storyteller, enchanting the Hobbits for two nights with tales from his travels and life. Tom’s story within the greater framework of the novel, suggests another connection to Tolkien. The passage demonstrates that fairy stories are not just meant for children, as they contained both good and bad endings and beginnings – too scary for the ordinary free folk children. It may be argued that it seems like he is talking to children in a way, because the hobbits size and their experience in the world is far less than Tom himself. But, as Tolkien says in “On Fairy-Stories,” “The value of fairy-stories is thus not, in my opinion, to be found by considering children in particular,” (5), so the hobbits must be considered as men, as Tolkien himself would. And they are men, enjoying a fairy-tale, which is certainly a nod to Tolkien’s opinion on “On Fairy Stories.” Tolkien himself is obviously a master storyteller, reflecting similarities between him and Tom. Tom lays out a blueprint of what the Hobbits may face later, speaking of fortresses and heights, acting a bit like foreshadowing, as Bilbo’s presence in the beginning did for Frodo. Regardless, Tolkien follows that blueprint and creates, through sub-creation, an entire world in 6 books. I also thought it was interesting that some believed Tom acted as a transition from The Hobbit to this greater world he is introducing.

What struck me was Tom’s personality that matched his green stockings. While Tom told a story, he would turn to song, and he would “dance about” (140), a highly unusual way of acting. His stories acted like a movie montage, “leaping up the young stream…over pebbles and worn rocks” (141) as Tolkien describes. I read him as being a happy and likable character, despite having several war stories underneath his belt. In terms of being likable, I think Tolkien would want his reflection to be likable. If his reflection is Tom as I say, he would want to be liked, most probably. Unless of course, they wouldn’t. I am not sure what J. R. R. Tolkien was like in real life, but if his personality was known to be bubbly, Tom and his connection would be even tighter.

After Frodo asks Tom who he is, Tom responds with “Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer,” (142). Tom goes on to talk about how he was “here before the river and the trees, Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn.” I think this also suggests that Tolkien is Tom. He was the only one who came before everything else. He created the world we are in as readers, acting as a sub-creator, making a world of his own. He created the world and the first man to set foot in it was him.

Another aspect that we didn’t discuss as much in class was how Lord of the Rings was an escape from the industrialism, as mentioned in “On Fairy Stories.” Industrialism was happening all around Tolkien and England at the time. Industrialism has a lack of beauty, whereas the story does, helped by its fantasy elements.

In summary, Tom is Tolkien (They even share the same letter, “T!”) as they both are storytellers. This passage sticks out from the rest which is presumably why Peter Jackson removed the part in the movies, but it is actually a crucial part of the story because it’s the only time we get to see Tolkien’s hand in his craft.

https://historycollection.co/how-jrr-tolkiens-relationship-with-edith-bratt-inspired-and-echoed-a-tale-of-middle-earth/

IG

Hey Dol! Merry Dol! Tom and Children’s Stories

           I absolutely loved reading Tolkien’s letter 215, in response to his invitation to participate in a symposium issue of The New Statesman about children’s literature (I’m sure I don’t need to point out what a delight it is, reaching the end of the drafted letter and seeing the short missive actually sent in its place).  It was invigorating to read such a defense of looking at children’s literature as just literature (and it reminded me of The Monster and the Critics in its defense of looking beyond form and historical context for a piece of art). While The Hobbit is a children’s book, and its writing style is distinct from The Lord of the Rings and much of the Middle-Earth legendarium, we can see its style reappear in the Hobbits’ encounter with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry in Book One, chapters six and seven. I think, also, our discussion of Tom Bombadil’s many possible selves (as divine, as Christ, as Tolkien) in class is worth revisiting in the context of children’s literature. This is especially true, because in said letter, Tolkien openly regrets the “whimsy mood” of The Hobbit, and this tone seems to permeate chapters six and seven of The Lord of The Rings throughout, from the “Hey Dol! Merry Dol!” to the green stockings. It is true that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings needed some connection, but it seems strange that the voice of this section is so close to the former, and differs so strongly from the rest of the text.

            This situation is partly explained when Tom is considered an aspect of Tolkien. Just as Tom “told [the Hobbits] many remarkable stories” and “as they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home,” so does the reader become a stranger in a full and complete land, Middle-Earth. In order to create the mystical character of the story-teller, in a world that is already totally fantastic and apart from that of the reader, it is necessary for Tolkien’s stand-in to be magical to a degree further than the Rings of Power and the Hobbits that readers have, by that point, already encountered. Bombadil is set further apart by his agelessness. As he says, “I am old. Eldest, that’s what I am.” It is worth noting that the Hobbits experience the “strange regions of memory” and “strange language” of Bombadil the same way readers experience the invented historiography and conlangs of the text.

Moreover, paralleling Tom to Tolkien, and the Hobbits to us, the readers, being swept into a magical world of things far older and deeper than us, both on the side of light and of dark, fits the whole Tom Bombadil episode squarely in the category of allegory. The “whimsy mood” in this section also helps delineate the allegory from the main story of the text, and, additionally, to set aside the further allegory of Tom’s discussion of Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wights, the reality of Middle-Earth, with Sauron’s rise in the Third Age.

One aspect of the childlike nature of the description, at this point also, may be to set Tom Bombadil aside from Christ, to whom he is often compared. This parallel may seem natural, as he is immune to the effects of The Ring of Power, he is ageless and seems all-powerful, and he is a story-teller, as Christ was fundamentally. However, the whimsical nature of this chapter, as opposed to Tolkien’s writing in the rest of the text, which can sometimes approach scripture in tone, pushes against that, and against Tom Bombadil as divine. Rather, it helps solidify that while Tom Bombadil is powerful, he is not a higher-power of Middle Earth, or rather, he is not Eru Iluvatar, nor is he one of the Valar. The contrast between this section’s tone, and the tone of The Silmarillion or of characters discussion of The One Ring bears this out clearly.

There is, perhaps, one more, playful reason for this section’s tone: Tolkien, by exposing the world to The Hobbit first, was forced to somehow open up the much more child-oriented, episodic, world of The Hobbit (designed for children) into the totality of Middle-Earth, and a writing style for everyone (or, in the terms of 215, perhaps aspirationally available to young readers but not specifically written with them in mind). Having a character as (frankly) goofy as Tom introduced to help safeguard the hobbits through the Old Forest is a natural vehicle for this opening. Moreover, while Tom remains goofy, by indicating himself as endlessly old and being immune to The One Ring, he also hints at the deeper world, beyond even that which we’ve been exposed to so far (Sauron, Gandalf, Smaug, etc.), that Tolkien clearly has now conceptualized showing to the reader as well. Additionally, Tom Bombadil’s speech consists of things that more closely resemble folkloric fantasy than the rest of Middle-Earth: the spirits of trees, ghosts haunting their burial places, etc. This connection with common fantasy elements, especially of English pastoral life (Tolkien, before the publication of The Lord of the Rings, referred to Tom as the spirit of the Oxford countryside) helps ferry the reader from their reference of fantasy into the totally new world Tolkien created.

It’s also interesting to me, that, having read Leaf by Niggle, which is clearly an allegorical story as well, also dealing with the nature of sub-creation, it is meaningful to ask whether our knowledge of Tom can be enhanced by Leaf. Additionally, there are sharp parallels between the literary styles of Leaf and Tokien’s portrayal of The Old Forest: both of them using language that seems straight out of a children’s tale, although neither story’s audience is childlike. However, this seems to be explained in both of their evoking folklore. While The Lord of the Rings, at times, involves folk-lore, Tom Bombadil seems to be folk-lore in the flesh, sprung to life, while Leaf uses the conventions of the evocative, moralistic folk-tale for Tolkien to convey his own feelings on sub-creation. I think this stems mainly from the difference between the worlds of Leaf by Niggle and Middle-Earth proper: in Leaf,  the world exists to support the allegory, while for Tom, the world exists, vast and full and formed, and the allegory is merely a small element of it.

- MHK

Tom Bombadil and the Human Condition

If there’s anything that I have learned during my first-time Tolkien journey, it’s that fans of The Lord of the Rings absolutely love Tom Bombadil. “He’s the best character,” gushed a friend. “I’m still mad he wasn’t in the movies.” I was somewhat surprised to find this character, who inspired such devotion, to be a truly minor character: Tom enters the narrative on pg. 119 and all but departs from it on pg. 148. Although his role is largely unexplained within the text, his story’s confusing relationship with the mythology regarding the Garden of Eden as well as the ways that he reflects Tolkien’s own views on storytelling as an innately human project.

            Tolkien actively invokes the Genesis account of the creation of man in the section where the hobbits take temporary refuge with Tom, but it’s the mythos of Adam and Eve twisted in very specific ways. Tom is aligned directly with Adam:

            “Who are you, Master?” [Frodo] asked.

“Eh, what?” said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. “Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless—before the Dark Lord came from Outside.” (Tolkien 131)

Tom is the first person, he says, and was a present spectator throughout all of the early history of Middle Earth. Although he sees all and knows all, he is not the originator or participant in any of these acts, which enhances his Adam-ness because Adam too was just a caretaker and resident of Eden. Like Eden, the Old Forest is also threatened by a powerful evil from the “Outside”: Satan is replaced with Sauron, but neither of them belong in the land they menace. The Old Forest, like the Garden of Eden, is a place where things can grow and prosper, and prior to the encroachment of Sauron, they do so without fear or restraint because evil does not yet exist there. More broadly, the similarities between Adam and Tom are numerous: he has a wife who serves as his sole non-plant or animal companion, he enjoys a privileged relationship with nature, and he lives in a bounded natural space (just like Adam doesn’t leave the Garden until he’s kicked out, Tom refuses to leave his Forest). Besides all that, both also contend with an evil tree.

Tolkien is consciously drawing upon these parallels, and in so doing, he transports the hobbits to an older time, an ur-world, if you will. In this most ancient, basic setting, Tolkien gives storytelling and especially poetry primacy. Tom speaks in verse, and often breaks into song. I think this is a large part of what makes him seem so magical: everything he says feels half like a spell or incantation. However, it also has the effect of making verse seem an older mode of speaking than prose: prose is the way the “young” hobbits speak, not “old” Tom. And indeed, one of his most important roles in the book is as a storyteller. His tales ground the hobbits in the lore of Middle Earth at the beginning of their epic quest, becoming foundational to their later understandings of the lands and people they come across. The process of understanding they go through serves to widen and contextualize the world the hobbits are venturing into: “As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home.” (Tolkien 129-130). Tom’s storytelling, as stories generally, has the power to show them different perspectives and thereby lend them a sort of empathy: in order to “feel themselves as the strangers where all other things [are] at home,” the hobbits must be able to see the Forest the way its inhabitants see it. They must leave behind their impressions and fears of it in exchange for a greater truth.

Tolkien’s strongly defined views on storytelling, especially the genre of mythology or fantasy, are clearly the driving force behind the Tom Bombadil episode. Storytelling has this power and this importance because it is a basic response to the very condition of being human. In his “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien writes, “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.” Fantasy is fundamental to the human condition because to be a human is to reflect a greater creative process on a divine scale. The process of creation that goes into storytelling is a sacred and worshipful act, so Tom Bombadil’s purpose within the story is a consecrated one. Tolkien foregrounds this urgent need to create stories within the very story that he himself is creating: this nesting of creation in itself echoes the Creator-creator relationship he describes. This is also magnified to a general human construct by Tom’s position as the “Eldest” because Tom represents the most basic, natural impulses of humanity. Nothing about Tom is contrived, nothing he does reflects the corrupting potential of society or modern life: he is pure in a way no other character can be, except perhaps Goldberry, by sheer virtue of the fact that she also exists within this sphere. If Tom values storytelling so highly, then, how can it be otherwise?

RHL

The Limits of the Sub-Creator

    J. R. R. Tolkien put a lot of effort into making characters that are fun to analyze. The choices each person makes in the narrative, the emotions they show, the relationships they form, these are all sources of interest and exploration enough for any reader and/or scholar. However, Tom Bombadil is a fascinating character to analyze, simply because he is less characterized than almost any other being in the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's characters are, to most readers, almost real, with a depth of emotion, thought, and experience that make them seem like they could so easily exist in our world and not only in Middle Earth. This strength of Tolkien's writing is one of many things that makes Lord of the Rings a great book. However, it is just as interesting to analyze when Tolkien did not give that amount of character depth. Tom Bombadil is introduced as a mysterious being. He is deliberately given no history or origin. His powers go unexplained. His thoughts and emotions are rarely stated and never analyzed. In many other stories less well-executed, he would be what we call a one-dimensional character, badly written and uninteresting. And yet, readers continue to love his character, and his lack of existence in the films is still a source of bitterness for many a fan. Why? Because that mystery is what makes his character so real, and so interesting.
    We will probably never get an answer for who or what Tom Bombadil is supposed to be, either in the internal world's history or as an author's device. As was discussed in class this week, however, a reader may make a shrewd guess that Tom Bombadil is meant to represent the creator; he is, in a way, Tolkien himself. This guess opens up several lines of thought for future discussion, but I was most drawn to one I had questioned when first reading the story: why does Tom not accompany the Hobbits to Bree?
    His explanation in-story makes a good enough sense in that world, I suppose:
           "...he laughed and refused, saying: Tom's country ends here: he will not pass the borders. Tom has his house to mind, and Goldberry is waiting!" (The Fellowship p. 159).
As a mysterious character, Tom does not need more explanation than that. He has his land and that is what he concerns himself with. He need not and does not want to extend his influence further. However, it seems to me that there may be meaning beyond a simple plot device. If we accept that Tom is at least somewhat representative of Tolkien himself, the idea that Tom cannot leave his land, or, better stated, that Tom does not feel he can or should influence or control events outside of his set sphere, illuminates some of Tolkien's ideas about sub-creating. In a letter to a student, who wrote to ask him questions related to her thesis, Tolkien spoke some about his writing process. She likely asked him something along the lines of 'How did you determine how the plot would go? Did you plan the whole story ahead of time, or write as the story unfolded?'. Tolkien's answer was that it was a mix of both:
           "The general idea of the Lord of the Rings was certainly in my mind from an early stage...From time to time I made rough sketches or synopses of what was to follow, immediately or far ahead; but these were seldom of much use: the story unfolded itself as it were" (Letters p. 258).
Here, Tolkien explains that his story was, in many ways, not under his control. He wrote as the story came to him, rather than planning ahead to a controlled ending. This restraint reminds me of Tom and his refusal to go beyond his sphere of influence.
    Tom is presented in Lord of the Rings as a sub-creator. Tolkien defined Fantasy as the result of a person combining the Sub-Creation Art (sub-creation being the creation of a Secondary World  and Art being the transference of that world to the reader) and the "quality of strangeness and wonder" that makes Fantasy so otherworldly (Reader p. 68). This process is mirrored in the chapter of the Lord of the Rings in which the hobbits stay in Tom Bombadil's house. In fact, most of the chapter consists of Tom telling the hobbits the history of Middle Earth, telling the tales of the world. These stories are a Secondary World in two ways: to the hobbits, the past of Middle Earth may as well be another world, so different is it to their own; and to the reader, the stories are background for the book they are currently reading. Tom is weaving stories of fantastic other world and telling them to the hobbits and the reader. Consequently, Tom is a sub-creator within his own creation, he is Tolkien in Middle Earth.
    But that influence does not extend past the present moment; Tom, while having a good deal of control that other characters do not have (e.g. he can touch the ring without being affected and see Frodo while the ring makes him invisible (Fellowship p. 144), does not tell the hobbits the future. He does not set their path or even advise them beyond a few more general maxims and suggestions; he is only a guide. Like Tolkien, much of the story is unveiled to him as it is to the other characters: in time. He is not all-knowing. Tolkien's writing style, that of having only vague plans if any, matches well with Tom's simultaneous power and control over his domain (power over what is already written) and lack of power and control over anywhere else (uncertainty about what will be written next) [whether this is by inability to or choice not to interfere does not matter to this argument; Tom's influence does stop. As does Tolkien's knowledge].
    Most of our guesses as to Tom Bombadil are exactly that: guesses. Tolkien purposefully did not define him within the story, and if there is further explanation of his existence in supplementary texts, I am not aware of it. This lack of information should be annoying; as Tolkien has said, the mark of a true Fantasy is internal consistency, which cannot be created without world-building. A reader should not be blind-sided by unexplained or random aspects of the Secondary World that remove them from the story, and Tom Bombadil is introduced rather suddenly and never explained. But in fact he is intriguing to so many readers of the book, including myself. One of the best parts of reading a well-created Secondary World is that rather than be distracted by the mysteries that should already have been explained, you are distracted by the mysteries the author made to catch your attention. Tom is one such mystery. He does not need to be explained to make sense in the world, but he was created to catch our attention and make us wonder. And in that way, too, he is very like Tolkien. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings to make us think and wonder, and Tom Bombadil is both an exemplary microcosm and a reflection of the writer's mind.

- Fiona Helgren

Works Cited
Tolkien, J. R., & Tolkien, C. (2000). The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (H. Carpenter, Ed.). Houghton Mifflin.
Tolkien, J. R. (1966). The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine.
Tolkien, J. R. (1978). The Fellowship of the Ring (2nd ed., Vol. 1). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Elrond vs. Elric: Situating Tolkien in Modern Fantasy

Some people do not like The Lord of the Rings.

 This, of course, is as it should be. I for one would be far more concerned if there were not a certain difference of opinion on the matter, and indeed I harbor certain reservations about Tolkien's work myself. What is more striking is the reason many give for their dislike: they find Tolkien unserious, even juvenile. Andrew Rissik's biting "Middle Earth, middlebrow" is a fairly typical criticism of the kind, in which references to "the twee doggerel of Tom Bombadil," Middle-earth as a "strangely simplified mock-Teutonic never-never land," and Tolkien's own "essential simplicity of temperament" make it clear that the author considers The Lord of the Rings a children's novel at best. It would be easy to dismiss Rissik as the very sort of literary gatekeeper Tolkien himself decries in "On Fairy-Stories," a biased critic who believes that tales about elves and dragons are fit only for the nursery. In Rissik's case, this may indeed be so, but such a defense of Tolkien generally is undermined by the fact that his work has been subject to similar criticism from other fantasy writers. I am speaking, of course, of Michael Moorcock, a critic so vocal that a 2014 profile in The New Yorker was simply titled "The Anti-Tolkien."

Before I turn to his criticisms of Tolkien, I would like to take a moment to evaluate Moorcock. So far as name recognition is concerned, he's hardly Tolkien, or even Pratchett or Le Guin, and yet Moorcock's influence on fantasy as a modern genre is equal to any of them. Tellingly, while Tolkien's elves, dwarves, and hobbits—excuse me, halflings—were always an important part of the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, the RPG's original cosmology was based primarily on Moorcock's, and the first edition of the Deities and Demigods sourcebook included an entire section on his mythos and characters, particularly Elric of Melniboné, his signature fantasy antihero, until a lawsuit forced its removal. Modern luminaries of the genre regularly cite Moorcock as an influence—see, for example, Neil Gaiman's story "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock." In 2000, the same year Tom Shippy declared Tolkien the "author of the century," Moorcock was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. His qualifications to criticize even a fantasist of Tolkien's reputation are beyond doubt, and criticize he does.

Moorcock's most significant piece of Tolkien criticism is the essay "Epic Pooh," in which, as the title suggests, he unflatteringly likens The Lord of the Rings to an elf-filled version of A. A. Milne's children's classic. "The sort of prose most often identified with 'high' fantasy," he writes, "is the prose of the nursery-room." He proceeds to rip into Tolkien on this front, with textual examples, then moves on to complaining about his politics. Eventually, he returns to the point, even more strongly than before: "The Lord of the Rings is much more deep-rooted in its infantilism than a good many of the more obviously juvenile books it influenced." At this point, one gets the sense that Moorcock's complaint runs deeper than the quality of Tolkien's prose, or the conservatism of his politics. And, indeed, it does, though he dithers a while longer before finally spitting it out:

Tolkien, going against the grain of his subject matter, forces [a happy ending] on us—as a matter of policy.
...

The great epics dignified death, but they did not ignore it, and it is one of the reasons why they are superior to the artificial romances of which Lord of the Rings is merely one of the most recent.

 Moorcock goes on, but he hardly needs to. This, here, is the beating heart of his objection to Tolkien. It is, I think, the true heart of all of them, even Rissik's, if they could but get past their petty biases and articulate it properly.

As Moorcock's objection has its roots, ultimately, not in The Lord of the Rings, but rather in the philosophy of the "eucatastrophe" which underlies it, I shall turn now to "On Fairy-Stories," the essay in which that claim is articulated, in order to examine it. Tolkien's discussions of the definition and origins of fairy stories are irrelevant to us here, and can be safely ignored for the present. The first section of note is the one entitled "Children," for though his objection to the classification of fairy-stories and fantasy as children's things indicates that he aspires to something more, both Rissik and Moorcock suggest that he has failed to achieve it. Here, it may be helpful to compare the literary backgrounds of Tolkien and Moorcock's respective works. Tolkien's deepest sources are, of course, the ancient myths and epics, but his treatment of fairy-stories as having been tragically relegated to children's literature, along with his self-classification as a writer of fairy-stories, transitively suggests that he sees himself as arising from a literary tradition most recently incarnated in the form of tales for children. Moorcock, by contrast, got his start as a writer and an editor in pulp magazines, in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and H. P. Lovecraft, and although his creation of Elric was a deliberate attempt to cast aside a number of Conan-era pulp conventions, even this refutation served to further cement him as heir to a tradition in which children had precious little place. Thus, Tolkien, unlike Moorcock, is in the position of trying to move beyond the childishness of his predecessors. As Rissik and Moorcock claim, he is not wholly successful.

Reading further in "On Fairy-Stories," certain contradictions begin to emerge. Close to the end of the essay, Tolkien writes that "one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose—an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king—that is yet sickeningly ugly" as existing in Faerie. Here, Tolkien errs, first because I can most certainly conceive of such a place, and second because he reduces Fairy to simple binaries. But Fairy resist such easy categorization; it is an in-between place, full of tangled briars and crooked trees and twisting paths, and it is no easier there to tell good from evil at a glance than it is in our own world. One wonders if Tolkien is not here mistaking Fairy for Heaven or Hell, which are much neater places, despite his own admonition that it is neither of those. In this oversimplification, we can see that yes, perhaps, the charges against Tolkien—that he has failed to avoid the childishness he himself railed against—are merited, and that Moorcock's objection stands: the eucatastrophe is not the particular triumph of Tolkien's fantasy, but rather its undoing.

However, it would take a measure more misanthropy than I possess to simply leave the matter there, with Tolkien's idealism broken like some once-loved doll, for while I must conclude that Tolkien's methodology was flawed, even Rissik had to recognize a measure of nobility in his intentions. Perhaps there is something to be built from the wreckage. I am not a Christian, but I shall attempt to formulate my argument in the terms of that faith, in order to better be in dialogue with Tolkien. Before I begin, however, I must briefly two vital sources of criticism which shall inform my reconstruction.

First, in his essay "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes writes that "every text is eternally written here and now;" that is, every reader, indeed, every reading, brings a new formulation, created in the moment. If we take this to be true, we find that suddenly not only the architect of a given secondary world but rather every reader to inhabit that world must be considered as a sub-creator of that world, generating a unique instance with each reading. For while, as in Tolkien's example, every reader may see a green sun, no two of them will see it the same. Each must take their own green—from grass, or from trees, or from some beloved's eyes—and apply it to their own sun. Though such is beside the point, this formulation also presents a far better argument than any that Tolkien actually gives against dramatic or visual representations of fantasy: that in creating such representations definitively, they deny the audience their own sub-creative power. I do not necessarily agree with that particular argument myself—I've seen too many fine works of visual fantasy to wholly believe it—but I cannot help but feel that Tolkien would have approved of the sentiment.

My second source is "The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde, and while I may not use it in the way that Wilde intended, my earlier citation of Barthes should make it quite clear that I do not especially care. Wilde writes:

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

At first, these lines seem to suggest that art must have no relationship with what is ethical at all. However, as Wilde notes just a single line earlier, "the moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist." Rather, these lines are a caution against judgement. A writer of fiction, for example, I may create characters I find morally repugnant, and yet it is my duty as their creator to write them, if not dispassionately, then at least without judgement, for if I judge them in my own person, I am not writing justice, merely a scripted, predetermined farce. I must not yield to a desire to prove anything wrong in my fiction, but rather portray it as fairly and honestly as I am able—which will, of course, still be somewhat subjectively—and let it condemn itself on its own. I must, as Wilde says, have no ethical sympathies. I must express everything. In Christian theology, this forbearance of judgement and gift to the condemned of their own fates has another name. There, it is called grace.

Just as grace is an essential function of the Creator, it must also be understood as an essential function of any sub-creator. In this, we find Tolkien's eucatastrophe obsoleted by something yet grander, for, following my earlier point, grace must be a function of every sub-creator, reader and author alike, and thus a well-built fantasy will induce it in all who come into contact with it, bringing them closer to a supreme understanding and mercy. Whether the end of the story is happy or sad is irrelevant, because, as Tolkien notes early one, it is in fact the human beings in Fairy who hold our interest, and if they are rendered well, their tragedy will elicit as much a depth of feeling in us as their triumph. And perhaps, just perhaps, a sub-creator might carry some of this grace with them out into the Primary World. Just a sliver would be enough to justify the whole exercise.

So, Tolkien was not perfect. He was not, perhaps, the greatest author of the 20th century. But his methods, while flawed, were quite a step beyond what he was coming from, and moving in the right direction. He may not be the be-all and end-all of modern fantasy, but he nevertheless deserves the credit he receives for having shaped it, and if nothing else, we can forgive him for not getting everything right on the very first try. The Road, after all, goes ever on and on.

—Nathaniel Eakman

Tom Bombadil and Fantasy as Reason

What amazes me about Tom Bombadil, and what I think amazes everyone else who tries to answer the question, “Who or what is Tom Bombadil?” is that there is not a clear answer. Tom Bombadil, unlike every other creature that one encounters in the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, does not fit into the neatly defined categories of beings that inhabit Middle-Earth. One of the things that Tolkien says about Fantasy in “On Fairy-Stories” is that it is an exercise of reason, and that it is hard because of this. It is hard to create a world that is as orderly as our own, but that has key differences, because those differences tend to breed paradoxes. Tom Bombadil appears to be one of those paradoxes, inserted into the otherwise extremely orderly Middle-Earth. This is what draws many people to look at Tom Bombadil more closely and to attempt to figure out where he fits in the classification systems that Tolkien set up. Theories that Tom Bombadil is Eru Ilúvatar himself, or one of the angelic Vala or Maia, have abounded. A personal favorite theory is that Bombadil is in fact the spirit of the land itself, explaining his lack of care for the One Ring as being a matter for the beings who inhabited the land, not the land itself.

But Tolkien never let those theories take hold. He is always quoted as saying that Tom Bombadil is one of those mysteries that will never be solved, like the Entwives. This of course has not stopped anyone from trying to figure out whom and what Tom is of course, but the fact remains that we will never truly know, simply because it seems likely that even the storyteller himself didn’t know. Tolkien’s universe is notable, if for nothing else, for its strict internal consistency. Yet even a storyteller as consistent as Tolkien allowed a few inconsistencies to slip through. It is curious that the one thing that eludes even Tolkien himself is another storyteller within Tolkien’s story. Tom is a kind of sub-sub-creator. He uses the power that Tolkien says the realm of Faerie is filled with: enchantment, which is very specifically mentioned as Tom tells stories to the hobbits fresh out of the Shire.

Tom uses the power of fairy-stories, the power of the stories of Middle-Earth, to give the hobbits the same things that we gain from fairy-stories. The stories allow the hobbits to recover their sense of the Shire and the world that they are used to, and prepares them for their journeys ahead in realms they hadn’t even begun to imagine. It allows them to escape, not only from their perilous encounter with Old Man Willow, but from their secluded little lives that cannot grasp the gravity of their errand. And it gives them consolation, showing them that even though there is danger, and history, and danger in that history, there is always the possibility that they will succeed. Yes, there is a possibility that they will fail, that everything will end in catastrophe and the Dark Lord will rule over Middle-Earth to the detriment to every living creature, but there is also the possibility that they will win, they will not just get past the Barrow-wights that await them just beyond Tom’s humble home, but that they will make it all across the land and becomes legends themselves. Both possibilities exist within the story, but that is a hopeful fact, not a disheartening one.

And it’s all of that, the heart of Fantasy with a big F that makes Tom Bombadil’s enigmatic nature so important. The realm of Faerie, also known as the Perilous Realm, is supposed to be enigmatic, beyond description. Each person can experience Faerie in their own way, but there is no way for a person to truly capture that experience with mere words and give their experience to another person. Tom Bombadil is the gateway to the Perilous Realm. Just beyond him are the Barrow-Wights, but beyond that is a land of other perilous and wondrous adventures. Tom Bombadil couldn’t be anything classifiable because he is the storyteller and the realm the storyteller transports the hobbits and the reader to all in one.

Tom Bombadil is in many ways the most magical thing in Middle-Earth. Whereas the feats of wonder that the Elves or other creatures perform can be considered merely “Art”, Tom’s power over language and his ability to enchant the hobbits is just as supernatural as Gandalf’s staff. For Tolkien the most powerful Art of all was words, rhetoric, and storytelling. There is not god or being that inhabits this power though, no force that can explain it. It is merely something that is innate in the creation we find ourselves in, and so we create ourselves, Tolkien’s sub-creation. So how could Tolkien, in any good conscience, make the storyteller, the one who leads the hobbits into the Perilous Realm for the first time, and who is the maker of Fantasy in Tolkien’s created fantasy, into anything other than a figure as enigmatic as Tom Bombadil?

Tom Bombadil is unclassifiable, but that is because he is something so true to the experience of living, of being human (or hobbit or elf or what have you), that he can stand on his own as nothing more than the embodiment of storytelling, of sub-creation, perhaps not in the allegorical sense but in the sense of his presence being applicable to our lives. Readers will continue to wonder for generations where Tom fits into the mythology of the Lord of the Rings, and I don’t think Tolkien would have it any other way. Tom is that sense of wonder we get from any truly excellent fairy-story. He gives that wonder to the characters in the story, and to the readers of that story. Tom Bombadil is wonderful, both because he enchants us so, and because he shows us that that enchantment isn’t just for great men, or for children, or for any specific group, but for anyone who is willing to be enraptured by his story.

-Josh Greenberg