Tolkien’s Words and Fairy Stories
April 8, 2007 by Luci Wilder
Filed under Tolkien
Tolkien wrote the Hobbit then The Lord of Rings, the later was really one large book. He then went on to write the other books about Middle-Earth and develope the elfin language. He was a fan of Beowolf (the earliest truly English poem). After he died, his son Christopher Tolkien completed some of the later books.
As I mentioned yesterday Tolkien loved words… Tom Shippey in “The Road to Middle-earth: Revised and Expanded Edition” said that Tolkien took English place names and made them “things”. That’s an interesting concept.
Personally, I think Tolkien’s many years of word study actually gave him an unconscious word understanding that he was able to apply to his writing. I also think he was a great artist. I think some of the words he used would’ve made him smile because perhaps there’s an occasional joke on the reader.
When his children were small he’d make up fairy tales to tell them. Can you imagine growing up with the tales this inventive artist could tell? He later captured some of those in his books.
I don’t remember who said it, but someone recently pointed out that Tolkien perhaps created Middle-earth and it’s Third Age saga in order to then invent a language… how fun!
As a child I loved nursery rhymes and fairy tales, all kinds… I learned to read about the age of 4… and I’d read them over and over again… I wish I still had those books. I love words too… you know those Reader’s Digest word definition puzzles provided every month… I do every one, just for the sake of learning new words. I can recall when I was about 13 or so actually picking up a dictionary and reading it.
Personally, I want to know what every word Tolkien used… meant… what it didn’t mean… was it a real word?… like “hobbit”… had never been used before Tolkien… what does it mean?… short person? I don’t think so… I’ve also heard it said, perhaps by Tom Shippey… that Tolkien invented Middle-earth to give England an even older mythology…. I don’t know…
Legend (urban) has it that Tolkien was grading some papers from one of his classes… he found a blank piece of paper and wrote, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” … And “The Hobbit” was born… that became the first sentence of the book.
What many people may not know is that J.R.R. Tolkien was a Christian… I read somewhere recently that he, in fact, led C. S. Lewis to Christ. While C.S. Lewis became evengelical, Tolkien was a devout Catholic. It’s very easy for me to see that C. S. Lewis in his “Chronicles of Narnia” was really talking about God’s good versus Satan’s evil. For example the “Lion” represents God… to see that same thing in the Lord of the Rings is more difficult for me… so that’s why I’ve undertaken an indepth study of Tolkien and his work… that’s what I want to share here… Tolkien’s word view… while he had a wonderful imagination and was an artist and master at using words… his strong world view had to have been in the story…. as I said yesterday… many people see the fantasy… that part is very cool… I’m looking for Tolkien’s view of God…
What do you think?
