First paper for class

[Bowlin]

So this semseter I'm taking an English class on Tolkien and his writings. I'm gonna post up my first essay, which I just finished about 15 minutes ago. I dont' know what the grade will be, but I'm hoping for a good one. I hoped to finish it before it was due, to get some feedback but alas time has slipped by. So here it is.


Tolkien's Folklore

Tolkien’s writings and stories have been read by many people. Many scholars have tried to determine what kind of writing he has created. Does it fall in mythology, folktales, or some other yet to be defined category of writing style? William Bascom wrote an essay that described various aspects that types of folklore held. Tolkien’s stories included all of them in his writings in The Hobbit and his trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Consequently, since he demonstrated all of them, his stories do not fall into any of the created categories of folklore.
Folklore is often separated into three different areas of stories: myth, legends, and folktale. All three have their differing styles yet still retain some similarities among them. The development of stories through time has become muddled and confusing in their development (Bascom 4). Bascom broadly covers the three styles of writing under the heading of prose narrative. He feels they are distinguished from the writing style of proverbs, poems, riddles, and other forms of cadence writings (4). J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his essay “On Fairy Stories” a year later and in it he defined the genre of “fairy tales” as differing from stories such as science fiction and dream stories (5). In Bascom’s essay myth and legend are grouped together as their stories are based on factual evidence. However their time references are differing as myths are based in the long past and legends are more recent. Another principle difference between the two is the main character(s), myth representing non-human characters and legends containing humans. The third category differs from the two in its basis as a fictional belief, however it could be placed at any time, and use any type of characters. Its attitude is a secular attitude, whereas myth is sacred and legends could be either. Tolkien’s stories hold both sacred and secular attitudes, are set in this world, though a long time ago, and contain human, non-human, and extra-human characters. As such Tolkien added to the folklore genre by expanding it into a yet undefined category.
Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” gives an insight into his view about the characteristics of the stories he wrote and on what he calls “the nature of Faërie” (4). Tolkien does not attempt to define or describe the nature of Faërie as it cannot be seen as a whole. Tolkien held that many styles of stories held characteristics of fairy-stories, such as “beast-fables” where beasts can talk to/like men. Tolkien says there is a desire of men to commune with other living things (6). Another difference separating such stories like “beast-fables” is the importance of animals as the hero of the story and humans are simply background characters. In the Fellowship of the Ring, there are instances where the main characters talk to various beasts. Glorfindel speaks to his horse, Asfaloth, when pursued by the Black Riders (284). The communication between elf and horse is hearkened to beast-fables, however the horse has little relevance in the story, other than as a mount. Even in The Hobbit, where there is a man who can become a bear, there is a lack of importance to the overall story of his being a beast (113-139). In Tolkien’s writings he says that the story must have credence in its “world" (5).
In Tolkien’s The Hobbit, he starts by describing what a hobbit is, who they are as a race, and some background on one particular hobbit. He says “I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us (16).” The personal writing exhibited during the first part of his book gives the feeling that we are a part of the world whose history we are about to learn about and listen to. The feeling of actually being in the realm of the world is “a rare achievement of Art (OFS 16).” This Art is the delving of the mind into a fantasy and imaginative world, the belief that the mind can create a “Secondary World” (OFS 16). Tolkien describes the human mind as being able to create images from the words it hears. He says that pictures and paintings are “too easy” (16) when it comes to inducing the imagination of a person. With visual imagery being too easy to stimulate the mind, and as such it is literature that can create Art. “Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature (OFS 16).” The escapism of the mind, though to another world, leads to the belief that it is your own world.
Tolkien said that “fairy-story” could not be found in the oxford English Dictionary, and that the lexicon of “fairy” would be inaccurate to describe the many stories (OFS 2). Tolkien’s belief of stories and the way they influence the mind’s eye is the method of which one should measure the power of the writings. Fantasy and imagination combined together can create a reality that seems to be real to the mind, an Art form that is hard to master. The definitions of what folklore and fantasy were up to the present time, had become befuddled and confusing as to what they really were. His view of how the story should take you, not in a dream sense, but in an imaginative way was a new view point on the writing style of fiction. Songs and pictures have an easier time transporting the mind to a new and different place. Writing has a harder time, which is why the true “Art” that is created is what must be realized as the proper and correct form for which folklore must be. The differences of Tolkien’s work from the many centuries of stories before are evidenced in his beliefs stated in “On Fairy Stories.” His vision on the new way the story should be written lead to the creation of a new category, fantasy, that was not like, but held all, of the characteristics of the original three categories defined by Bascom.
 



Work Cited
Bascom, William. “The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives.” The Journal of
American Folklore 78.307 (1965): 3-20. JSTOR. Web. 10 August 2010.
Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy Stories.” The Dire Café. Ed. Berin Kinsman. 27
Sept. 2007. Web. 10 August 2010
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Authorised ed. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1982. Print
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. Authorized ed. New York: Ballantine Books,
1982. Print.

[Galenhir]

Well done Bowlin. I only would have omitted the very first line.

As you likely know - Tolkien set out to write a mythology for England, as well as a setting for his languages. What he wound up getting was the most famous 'high-fantasy' novel of all time.

Your analysis is correct in that he brought together those various elements from varying genres of writing to create his unique body of work.

[Turambaril]

Galenswerd wrote:

Well done Bowlin. I only would have omitted the very first line. As you likely know - Tolkien set out to write a mythology for England, as well as a setting for his languages. What he wound up getting was the most famous 'high-fantasy' novel of all time. Your analysis is correct in that he brought together those various elements from varying genres of writing to create his unique body of work.

Very well done! I agree with Galen, Tolkien cites in his letters that he constructed the languages and Middle-earth was their home spun from the creation of the languages. He brought them together from various genres of writing and varied European tales and cultures, whether it was the Finnish Kalevala, the Norse and Welsh people, and his own surroundings in Sarehole Mill.

Where do you go to school that offers such a course? If you are interested I would publish this and other papers you may have for our site over at The Northeast Tolkien Society

Anthony