I’ve read a number of critical examinations which vary from discussions of where he derived his primary source material to the influences which subtly affected his writing to his characters and use of language. I’ve read a number of very erudite discussions here on this board.
But what I haven’t found is any examination of Tolkien as actual history.
Please bear with me a moment while I attempt to explain.
Tolkien frequently portrayed himself as a sub-creator, holding to the idea that he was merely uncovering or discovering the real history and facts of Arda. Although both he and any serious scholar of his writings know this to be merely a literary conceit, it does permit a unique approach to the study of his world. Much as Nennius “heaped together all that he could find” and then attempted to make sense of the resulting contradictory jumble, Tolkien, appears to have done the same. This is, of course, once one accepts the fictitious premise that he was merely a sub-creator and that all of his various writings, meanderings and versions are actually different surviving fragments of ancient lore.
Having done so, however, would permit one to apply historical textual criticism to these writings in much the same manner as has been done ad nauseum to The Matter Of Britain. One would first need to specify that one did or did not accept the possibility of the supernatural in this ancient world. Personally I feel the results would be more interesting if one assumed Tolkien’s sources genuinely believed that what they wrote was fact or could have been fact just as medieval hagiographers did when writing the lives of saints. One could then look for the kernels of actual history behind and incorporated within the legends, discuss the reasons for various mystical accumulations to different characters and even whether such characters were “historical” or a composite.
So far as I can tell, no one has taken this approach to an examination of Tolkien’s work. The closest I have found are the excellent volumes of “Middle Earth seen by the barbarians” by Codex Regius. (Disclaimer - I have no association with the author(s) nor their website)
I would be very interested to hear from Dopers what they think about such an approach and if they are aware of anyone who has undertaken it.
TL DR – Is it possible to pretend Tolkien was working with real historical sources and thus euhemerize a history of Middle Earth from his writings?
So you’re looking for a study of the Red Book of Westmarch? Who besides the Good Professor himself could interpret the ancient languages within? Though Christopher did give us 12 excellent volumes to work with in this pursuit.
I am honestly curious. What would be the point of such an elaborate and laborious game of make-believe? It seems like an exercise that would drain the enjoyment right out of reading Tolkein’s yarns. An obsessive fan attempted something along those lines for Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun, and it is a tedious slog indeed.
Not exactly. There are quite a few examinations of the Red Book and other writings. I’m familiar with HOME and most of the rest. My question was more on approach. Has anyone treated Tolkien’s works as if they were based upon a real history and then, setting aside the obvious supernatural elements, much as we do with say Gilgamesh, attempted to extrapolate a real history behind the myth which Tolkien “compiled”?
Obvious questions would be the levels of development of Elves and Men at various stages . Were the Elves every in the stone age, were Men in a bronze age setting when first encountered? these types of things along with an attempt to piece together a “real” history behind the presented myth.
Scumpup, I get the question you ask. I am and have been for a long time a history buff. I am also interested in mythology and how it interacts with the real world. There is evidence, here and there, for a factual basis for some legends and myth, much of it speculative or subject to interpretation but nonetheless interesting to those with a bent that way.
I personally find this type of thing engaging and, assuming I am not the only one, was curious as to whether anyone with similar interests had undertaken the tedious/challenging task of doing so with Tolkien.
I find it an interesting concept but understandably YMMV.
I understand what you mean, but since there isn’t any actual history involved, it is a game of make-believe. I suspect any such work would end up as more a product of the writer’s imagination than Tolkein’s. The finished book would be essentially fanfic as faux scholarly treatise. Looking over the Star Trek, Star Wars, and various comicc book fanbases, the more there is any attempt to treat things as if they were real, the less enjoyable the result. Inevitably, things become endless, obsessive acrimony centering around arcane and minor points with no possibility of resolution through archeologcal evidence.
Check out the reviews on Amazon for Lexicon Urthus to see what I mean. Who knows, though? Maybe you could do this and make it work.
I am not familiar with those fan bases but I am acquainted with the general fanboy phenomenon. You are right that any such work would be essentially fanfic pseudo-scholarship and, I fear, you may well be correct that it would be largely the product of the author’s own imagination projected onto Tolkien’s canvas.
As for the acrimony etc. that might ensue, yeah, sadly I can see that happening as well. That was one of the reasons I raised the question here rather than on any of the many Tolkien fan sites.
Thanks for your replies. Gives me something else to ponder.
I know of one article that’s close to what you ask for, although it’s not very close. There’s an article by Jim Allan in Mythlore, Number 9 in 1973. Allan, in this article, pretends to be a person from some far future society on Earth after some sort of disaster has destroyed civilization and it has slowly been rebuilt. There are only a few written records left from before this disaster. One of them happens to be most of The Lord of the Rings. This future person tries to understand The Lord of the Rings as being part of the mythology/history of the pre-disaster times. This fictional person puts it together with the small number of other surviving works of the pre-disaster times to create a theory about the history and mythology of those times. He gets it pretty wrong, as you might expect:
To get a copy of Mythlore 9, you would have to contact the Mythopoeic Society and see if you can order a copy of that issue:
I remember reading the article at the time it came out and thinking what a clever idea it was. Unfortunately, it’s not much more than a clever idea. It’s not real scholarship in any sense.
Holmes was set in a real historical milieu and written for an audience that lived there, themselves. Fantasy/mythological aspects of that are very few. The history of the UK for Holmes is the same history as for the reader. Tolkein’s stories are entirely fictional and have a fanbase that behaves disturbingly like religious true believers. I see lots of charges of heresy and very little fun coming out of a project like this.
The Lord of the Rings itself seems unclear on what “magic” means, so the first question in the OP: is it supernatural? is already impossible to answer. Galadriel made fun of the question when the Hobbits asked it, and she was probably in the best position of anyone in Middle Earth to know.
Another big difference between this and Sherlock Holmes pseudo-history is that we don’t have anything physical to work with. There aren’t any big mysterious cyclopean jumbles of stone that might be the ruins of Barad Dur or Minas Tirith. The Alps don’t work as the Misty Mountains. Where is Mordor? (The box-shape of Mordor’s mountains looks a little like the coastline of Turkey…)
Holmes fans have newspapers from the era, so they can look up weather reports and railroad schedules. It makes the game playable. But Tolkien fans have very little in the way of external evidence to perform games of rationalization upon.
Foolsguinea - That was sort of my thought as well. I can easily picture Tolkien having a “eureka” moment and then leaping enthusiastically back into everything he had written just to see what he found. I will admit I’m over romanticizing the idea but I think you get where I’m coming from.
I do get the idea that lack of an external reference could easily turn a fun intellectual discussion into a fanboy version of handbags at dawn but don’t see it as being much different from the multitude of examinations of inspiration etc. We cannot know what actually went through the mind of an author in producing a work. Often the author themselves is not entirely clear but simply responding to what feels right.
But we can infer from internal evidence some attitudes and outlooks that may or may not be correct. The fun is in the exploration, not in achieving the ultimate truth which is, in any case, unknowable.
I appreciate everyone’s thoughts and comments. It’s given me a number of things to examine and ponder. If you should happen to stumble across anything along these lines, please let me know.