# Tolkien criticism **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 23, 2015, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676 "2015-01-23T15:09:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/41 "2015-01-24T01:24:46Z")
Eorl ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/42 "2015-01-24T01:58:05Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > His tall, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Mongols? Interesting thesis you have there. The Scythians of the Hellenic era probably fit the bill. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/43 "2015-01-24T02:23:56Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > What other people who were horse-borne nomads ranging over significant distances were there in the real world? The Scythians of ancient Greek times and the Huns (Attila!) near the end of the Roman Empire. I think the later versions of the Ostrogoths were highly equestrian, and perhaps also the first Turks to appear in the ME from out of Central Asia. > [@Quartz](#): > > And the Mongols traded with the Vikings, so plenty of blue-eyed blonde slaves went East. The Mongols (fl. ca. 1250-1375) were too late to trade with the Vikings, whose era may fairly be siad to have ended at Stamfordbridge in 1066. The Mongols wouild have obtained their first great numbers of caucasian slaves from the Kievan Rus, who they conquered in the 13th century. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/44 "2015-01-24T03:13:04Z")
The criticism I take seriously is that he is unreadable if you don’t encounter him until you’re over the age of say, 12. We argued this in threads when the first LotR movie came out. My position was that the vast, overwhelming majority of Tolkien lovers first read the books when they were kids, or teens at most but the vast, overwhelming majority of those who tried to read him first as adults felt that he was at best a one-time read with nothing to make them enthusiastic. I’ve never seen any convincing evidence against this. Most literary critics of his day and long after, until the generation that read him in paperback starting in the 60s grew up, would have encountered him as adults. Even those who were conversant with science fiction generally as a genre tend to find Tolkien a puzzling writer to champion. He is boring, wordy, meandering, low on characterization, uninterested in standard politics and conflict (in the broadest sense) except for a fetish on honor and duty, and overintent on creating a world based on the British class system and the pastoral village. The real question is why any literary critic would do anything but place him at the bottom of the scale of literary values. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/45 "2015-01-24T03:26:44Z")
What **Exapno Mapcase** and the others unimpressed with Tolkien’s writing chops said. Good lord, he needed an editor with a broadaxe. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/46 "2015-01-24T04:07:07Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > The Mongols (fl. ca. 1250-1375)… Make that about 1150-1175 for the beginning of the Mongol rise to power-- I think Genghis died in the early 1200s. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/47 "2015-01-24T04:11:57Z")
I’m glad a few dark horses have shown up to agree with me. _All_ SFF writers are in love with their worlds and over-invent them, **Gorsnak**. The good ones get over themselves and keep 95% of what they know about the world to themselves, even if they are Oxford dons who thought it would be fun to invent some languages. I have a Ph.D. in linguistics and I write SFF. Believe me, I understand. There is a difference between liking Tolkein’s world, even liking his characters, and doing literary criticism of him. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/48 "2015-01-24T04:19:57Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > The thing is, Tolkien was only accidentally a writer of epic fantasy. All the early writing was simply world-building for the purpose of creating peoples to speak the languages he was inventing. So of course he was in love with his world. That was always the point of his writing. The stories were mostly incidental. Yep. _Having readers_ at all was a secondary interest at best, and he would have been happy to go without some that he did acquire. Never mind editing with a mind to increasing readership! Also, critics’ being “conversant with science fiction generally as a genre” _should_ not have helped with Tolkien, as his work contains nothing of the sort. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/49 "2015-01-24T04:52:23Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > All of which is understandable criticism, from people who completely misunderstand what he was trying to do. Are you saying he was TRYING to be long winded? Because even the people I know who are ardent Tolkien fans generally admit that, yes, brevity was not what he did best. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/50 "2015-01-24T05:10:21Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > It’s a hell of a lot better in its social message than its contemporary darling _Lolita_ and sold a lot better too. Good grief, _no_. _Lolita_ is brilliant. _LOTR_ is _Beowulf_ for children. And who cares how many books sold, other than the Tolkiens and Nabokovs? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/51 "2015-01-24T05:55:00Z")
[“100 Years An Orc - Deconstructing Tolkien’s Nordicist Racism”](https://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/tolkiens-racial-theories/) > [@](#): > > Noisms at Monsters and Manuals suggested in comments that a “formalist” reading of Tolkien is necessary to properly understand how the races in Middle Earth might reflect real racial differences. Others online have suggested that Tolkien didn’t give any formal characteristics to his races – that he never said elves are white and Haradrim are black – and that subsequent racially-specified images of them reflect the readers’ prejudices. But reading Tolkien doesn’t support the view that his races weren’t racialised. For example, here is the first Haradrim we meet ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/52 "2015-01-24T15:58:17Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > Also, critics’ being “conversant with science fiction generally as a genre” _should_ not have helped with Tolkien, as his work contains nothing of the sort. I use science fiction in the common generic sense used by those in the field so it includes all varieties and genres including fantasy. There once was a separate fantasy tradition that Tolkien was hewing to, but that was the province of a tiny few specialists. Fantasy and science fiction normally appeared in the same venues by the time Tolkien put out _The Hobbit_ and were completely melded by the time of LotR. The early \*Astounding \*published Lovecraft and _Weird Tales_ published Edward Hamilton. Robert Heinlein appeared simultaneously in \*Astounding \*and \*Unknown \*and at that time both were edited by John W. Campbell. Fantasy Press published nothing but science fiction and the \*Avon Fantasy Reader \*started its first issue with Murray Leinster. The _Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ was the most successful post-war magazine. I’m an expert on [Gnome Press](http://gnomepress.com/) and that published Asimov and Clarke alongside Robert E. Howard, spending the entire 50s mixing fantasy, science fantasy, and science fiction. The reviews for LotR when it first appeared in Britain were decidedly mixed. Some gave it the same treatment that Harry Potter got from critics. In 1973 Brian Aldiss published a major history of science fiction, _Billion Year Spree_, but also covered fantasy. He wrote, “Tolkien’s prose, the very shaping vehicle of his story, is bland and universalised. It has no particular characteristic, apart from the joining of long sentences by “and,” which can become wearying.” He was trying to separate the book from what he called its “cult.” In the 40 years since that’s become almost impossible to do. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2015, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/53 "2015-01-25T20:36:13Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I use science fiction in the common generic sense used by those in the field so it includes all varieties and genres including fantasy. Well, that just seems stupid. It makes me think less of the experts. If you’re going to lump the two genres together, they fit best under a “fantasy” label, not under a “science fiction” label. You can say that science fiction is a form of fantasy using an allusion to science as a base. But you can’t have science fiction without science. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2015, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/54 "2015-01-25T23:18:26Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Well, that just seems stupid. It makes me think less of the experts. If you’re going to lump the two genres together, they fit best under a “fantasy” label, not under a “science fiction” label. You can say that science fiction is a form of fantasy using an allusion to science as a base. But you can’t have science fiction without science. There are certainly some people who favor the use of fantasy for exactly that reason. But that’s not the way the English language works. You can try to defend or deride a usage on the grounds of logic, but you might as well scream at a wall. The language evolves and the common speech becomes the common speech. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/55 "2015-01-26T00:32:38Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I use science fiction in the common generic sense used by those in the field so it includes all varieties and genres including fantasy. … I’m an expert on [Gnome Press](http://gnomepress.com/) and that published Asimov and Clarke alongside Robert E. Howard, spending the entire 50s mixing fantasy, science fantasy, and science fiction. I notice “science fiction” means something different at the end of the paragraph than it did at the beginning. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/56 "2015-01-26T02:02:23Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > I notice “science fiction” means something different at the end of the paragraph than it did at the beginning. Yes, “classic” or “mainstream” science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction, and gave its name to the whole field. It’s similar to the way “whodunit” once was used to refer to the entire set of mystery subgenres, although that’s no longer common. If one referred to the entire field as fantasy, fantasy would also be a subgenre of itself. The English language is quite fascinating once you start to study it. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/57 "2015-01-26T03:38:10Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > I notice “science fiction” means something different at the end of the paragraph than it did at the beginning. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The English language is quite fascinating once you start to study it. And ever so very flexible! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/58 "2015-01-26T03:58:52Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Yes, “classic” or “mainstream” science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction, and gave its name to the whole field. It’s similar to the way “whodunit” once was used to refer to the entire set of mystery subgenres, although that’s no longer common. May I ask where you are from and what circles of literary criticism you’re reading? Could you cite an example of a critic describing Tolkien as “science fiction”? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/59 "2015-01-26T04:23:16Z")
No critical cites, but back in the 60s the genre hadn’t been balkanized and there was nowhere else to put Tolkien. Didn’t help that hardly nobody else was writing Fantasy at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676/60 "2015-01-26T04:31:34Z")
Briant Aldiss’ _Billion Year Spree_ is subtitled “The True History of Science Fiction.” He does not label Tolkien as science fiction, nor do I. What he does is include Tolkien among discussion of the field that is broadly labeled “Science Fiction.” Just as Adam Roberts does in _The History of Science Fiction_. And Edward James in _The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction_. I’m not sure how to make this clearer. Unless you are writing a specialist work, in today’s language “science fiction” is the broad term that subsumes, among many other subgenres, fantasy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-criticism/710676.md?page=4)