Medieval Tolkien

Jrr Tolkien, author deemed to be easy, is he still the subject of ostracism on the part of the university community ? We would hesitate to believe it, in view of the publications that have continued to multiply for a few years about it. Highlight of this movement, the edition by Christopher Tolkien of most of the drafts, step reports, sketches and unfinished works of his father, in a monumental History of Middle Earth In twelve volumes, today being published in French at Christian Bourgois. In France, the movement has been relayed for several years by Vincent Ferré, a young academic specialist in comparative literature, author of a Tolkien: On the shores of Middle -earth (Christian Bourgois, 2001) who was a great success. There is no longer any reason to pass Tolkien today for an author cursed intellectuals, even if university rhetoric still sometimes displays its modesty before the commercial success of the work and its derivatives, in particular cinematographic.

Tolkien and the Middle Ages is a collection of articles written by master’s and doctorate students under the direction of Leo Carruthers, English teacher in Paris Iv Sorbonne and director of the English medieval student center (Cema). The unity of the collection is ensured by the theme: Tolkien’s work in his relationships with the medieval world. The study is fully justified by Tolkien’s professional activity, who was a researcher and a philologist, specialist in the medieval Anglo-Saxon world. It is mainly justified by the obvious influence that this specialty exerted on the conception of the land of the environment, the universe created by Tolkien, and on the writing activity which leads to the publication of Bilbo the hobbitof Rings and Silmarillion.

Surveys on sources and models

The collection unit is also guaranteed by the relative uniformity of services. Thirteen articles follow one another, almost all devoted to the study if not sources, at least of the possible models of Tolkien: influences and similarities chant the pages, in a retail review where the parade in turn the Kalevala Finnish, Beowulfthe Arthurian cycle or Germanic heroic poems of the Middle Ages. The latest articles are trying an out of the literary field to tackle cultural themes (feudalism, weapons and armor, music and poetics, architecture, magic and medicine) specific to the medieval period. In almost all cases, the privileged heuristic model is that of influence and reference: Tolkien’s texts are considered in their completion, as a unique version born under the pen of a writer who finds part of his inspiration in literary works or in historical models. The collection draws the portrait of an author with various sources, working as much by innutrition as by imitation.

Once the collection closed, what remains of so much information ? First of all, the idea, after all expected, that the Middle Ages of Tolkien is not that of contemporary historians, because Tolkien’s work is not a historical fresco, and also because the Middle Ages that Tolkien knew is a university reconstruction dated from the end of XIX^e s. or the beginning of XX^e s. We would have liked that this idea, so banal, was posed more strongly from the introduction, and that it does not appear only in conclusion of this or that article, as a discovery, but served as a postulate and the starting point for the analysis.

In fact, the Tolkian lover I am staying hungry, in particular for a method problem. In general, the various authors lead to convincing results, but of a limited scope. An article escapes the rule, that of Claire Jardillier, (“Arthurian echoes in The Lord of the Rings”, P. 143-169) who renounces the theme contoured of influence and inspiration to speak in terms of writing and echo, of” familiarity report “, of “ reminiscence “, of “ community of interests »: In short, this author shows in a few pages, among the most engaging and the best written on the volume, how Tolkien» Weaves a diffuse resemblance of arthurian pattern in a larger and quite original diagram “(p. 161), how his use of symbolism the apparent to writers of the Middle Ages, how the reader can not take,” under penalty of countens, “ The work for a simple rewriting, although learned, of any past mythology (P. 169). We began to wish that all participants in the volume took note of this sentence, and applied the consequences to their study.

Tolkian writing in question

In general, it is difficult to approach Tolkien without taking into account the particular status of his writing: most of his works, with the notable exception of Bilbo the hobbit and Ringsremained unfinished, in the draft state, and were published as such, either in the Silmarillioneither in Unfinished tales and legendseither in the monumental set of drafts (History of Middle Earth) which has unexpected and endearing sketches, such as Notion club papersa reflection both on the island of Númenor and the status of the writer (t. IX), or as The New Shadowa sequel to Ringsinterrupted as soon as started (t. XII). It is a shame that the authors have not used Tolkien’s drafts any more to study the genesis of the texts where they detect resemblances and influences, and that, despite their knowledge of medieval literature and their habit of the theories of P. Zumthor and B. Cerquiglini, they did not treat the work of Tolkien as a fabric of variations, instead of considering it as a set.

The romantic nature of Rings Also obscure the fact that a large part of Tolkien’s work comes in the form of tests, historical or linguistic, which aim both to deliver to the reader information on the universe created and to redefine the relationships that this reader has with this work. We know that Tolkien had the ambition not to write novels, but to constitute a legendary likely to compete with both Greco-Roman and Celto-Germanic mythologies. However, it is in the intertwining of the romantic framework to documents presented in the appendix, inside the works, that this work of redeployment of fiction takes place. Taking this specificity of Tolkian writing into account would have undoubtedly and considerably modified the scope of the analyzes.

In addition, the authors of the articles obviously know at the end of their fingertips medieval literature, but too often are content with banal or outdated references for areas that are not theirs. Can we still cite without more precautions Mircea Eliade as a valid reference for the definition of myth ? His name, however, returns, as a source of authority, in several pages (p. 194 ; n. 33 p. 277 ; p. 292-295 ; p. 301). It is time for literature specialists to know that Mr. Eliade is not an absolute authority with anthropologists and mythologists, and that his analyzes are more than questionable, even discussed. It is mainly time that they experience definitions of myth and mythology more interesting than those which refer to an oral tradition from the bottom of the ages, especially since these definitions have invested the field of comparative literature and literary mythopetics.