Tolkien’s Literary Theory and Practice

Abstract

Tolkien’s Literary Theory and Practice Robin Anne Reid (bio) The scholarship in this section shows the growing interest among Tolkien scholars in considering Tolkien’s work, the theoretical ideas explored in his essays and letters and practiced in his fiction, as engaging with mainstream critical debates of the 20th century. The theoretical critical debates involve reception (Saxton, Guanio-Uluru) as a response to New Criticism and structuralism (Sterenberg, Wicher). Other topics relating to contemporary theory involve concepts of nostalgia, nature, and time (Drout, Flieger, Zimmerman). Scholars are using Tolkien’s theories to analyze his fiction (MacLachlan, Butler) or to analyze work by other authors (Young). New work on analyzing Tolkien’s two major essays is appearing (Shank, Wicher). Variants of source [End Page 242] studies consider how Tolkien’s work relates to his critical theory (Long) or to the development of his later work (Joosten). A major exhibit of the Bodleian special collections relating to children’s stories is documented in a book containing essays and reproductions of the materials (Larrington and Purkiss). And finally, scholars in other disciplines continue to use Tolkien’s work as an example relating to the theoretical debates in political science, philosophy, and theology (Keys, McAleer, Hart). Two essays by Benjamin Saxton consider Tolkien’s theoretical work in the context of 20th-century debates over the nature of authorship, primarily in the work of Roland Barthes and Mikhail Bakhtin. Both essays address gaps in Tolkien scholarship and in theoretical work considering authorship, intentionality, and reception. The debate centers on the extent to which the meaning of a text is created solely by the author or collaboratively by the process of readers’ interactions with the text. Saxton argues that Tolkien’s work offers a synthesis of the two more extreme positions, and the essays present detailed and persuasive arguments for the necessity of this type of project: critical stereotypes of Tolkien as outdated and out of step have led to an inability to consider his theoretical work seriously. The essays were published separately, but considering them together reveals a strong meta-argument across them. In “J.R.R. Tolkien, Sub-creation, and Theories of Authorship” (Mythlore 31.3–4: 47–59), Saxton explicates Barthes’s major points and compares evidence from Tolkien’s fiction, letters, and “On Fairy-stories” to argue that, while they share a rhetorical similarity, there are major differences in their claims. The similarity is the consistent use of an analogy between an author and God, situating the author as the creator of the world of the subcreation. (Saxton is interested in the literary implications of the metaphor; for a theological discussion on the implications of this, see Hart, discussed later in this section.) The difference is how each theorist conceives of the nature of that God: Barthes’s God is an omnipotent and omnipresent force that, in the form of an author, produces for the reader a single meaning and allows no contradiction (48). Barthes’s theory requires the death of that authorial presence to liberate readers and provide a space for a multiplicity of possible meanings. Building on Sean Burke’s point that it is not necessary to assign all attributes of the Christian God to all human authors, Saxton argues that “Tolkien breaks down the causal relationship that Barthes established between omnipotence and domination and, in its place, presents God as an omnipotent force that leaves space for the creativity and agency of his subjects” (49–50). [End Page 243] Saxton analyzes Tolkien’s construction of Ilúvatar as an example of such a deity, notes the discovery in “Leaf by Niggle” when he realizes his creation cannot encompass everything, and incorporates Gergely Nagy’s exploration of Tolkien’s multiple narrators. Admitting that a paradox exists between the evidence that Tolkien rejected allegory and reductive interpretations and his letters that criticize some readings as mistaken, Saxton offers a useful rhetorical tool for synthesizing those stances: E. D. Hirsch’s concepts of “meaning” (a meaning represented by the language of the text) and “significances” (the aspects that readers find that can and do change over time and across readers). In “Tolkien and Bakhtin on Authorship, Literary Freedom, and Alterity” (Tolkien...