Patrick Curry Research Articles

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Mzansi Magic

Why Do Trees Need Herding? J. R. R. Tolkien’s Mastery of Trees in The Lord of the Rings

Why Do Trees Need Herding? J. R. R. Tolkien’s Mastery of Trees in The Lord of the Rings Mary-Anne Potter (bio) and Deirdre C. Byrne (bio) Introduction J. R. R. Tolkien is known to have loved trees and advocated for them against the forces of industrialization. He wrote to The Daily Telegraph in 1972: “In all of my works, I take the part of trees as against all their enemies” (419).1 The “enemies” of trees include industry and machines; the entire modern era of manufacture and sale of commodities; the densification of housing; and the demand for more edible crops to support livestock for meat. The Ents represent Tolkien’s righteous anger against those who would turn the trees into material for imperialist ends. Saruman needs timber for his war effort on behalf of Sauron, but the Ents do not take this kindly, and Saruman receives the punishment he deserves for mistreating the trees. The march of the Ents and Huorns to Isengard, which they destroy, inspired by the Birnam Wood march to Dunsinane to defeat a tyrant in Macbeth, is emblematic of Tolkien’s “tak[ing] the part of trees” in The Lord of the Rings (LotR).2 This article explores Tolkien’s advocacy of trees, particularly focusing on contrapuntal voices in his depiction of trees in LotR. Tolkien’s hierarchy of values is shown in that all his forests are cared for by human, or humanoid, stewards.3 Environmental critic John Elder defines stewardship in LotR as “faithful and discerning action on behalf of a beloved landscape and community . . . the knowledgeable and practical service of living communities” (Dickerson and Evans xi). This sounds very loving, but implies superior human knowledge and insight. The trees do not act or speak on their own and are not represented from their own perspective; they are always seen, [End Page 277] and spoken for, by their stewards. We trace Tolkien’s propensity to speak for trees to his Catholic humanism, which leads him to adopt a position of control and mastery4 over his fictive creations. The question of “who speaks?” reminds us of postcolonial theorizing about subaltern voice and agency,5 and raises concern about who has the right to speak and act. We begin with an exploration of Tolkien’s, specifically LotR’s, Catholic humanism. We then discuss non-humanist paradigms that we find useful in thinking about the portrayal of trees in LotR. Finally, we read the relationships between forests and their eco-stewards in LotR (Lothlórien, the Old Forest and Fangorn) diffractively through nonhumanist paradigms. For Barad, diffractive reading “place[s] the understandings that are generated from different (inter) disciplinary approaches in conversation with each other” (92–93) to “produce a new way of thinking about the nature of difference” (73). Our diffractive reading of LotR concludes that, while the novel constitutes a paean to trees, it also keeps its author’s humanism intact. A Liberal Humanist Love of Trees Tolkien’s love of trees permeated his capacity to make sense of his context and life events, as well as his self-expression in language. Further, Tolkien’s Catholic humanism directs his response to trees. First, he often used arboreal images in his personal writings. Following the death of fellow Inkling and close friend, C. S. Lewis, Tolkien wrote: “So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age—like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots” (“Letters” 258). He also refers to LotR as “my own internal tree” (“Letters” 341), implying that the story takes root and grows from within his psyche. The story appears to have been Tolkien’s inner Yggdrasil: a World Tree and the central axis of his inner world. Frodo’s journey to Mordor serves as the trunk, from which numerous branches grow: Aragorn’s ascension to the throne of Gondor; the war with Sauron and Saruman; Gandalf’s ascension to White Wizard; the Elves’ departure; the hobbits’ growth to warriors and their liberation of the Shire, and so on. Patrick Curry reinforces the arboreal emphasis when he describes Tolkien’s...

Patrick Curry, Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life

Patrick Curry, Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1st edn, 2019), 152 pp., $35 (pbk), ISBN: 9781782506096.

Laughter in Middle-earth: Humour in and around the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien eds. Thomas Honegger and Maureen F. Mann

Reviewed by: Laughter in Middle-earth: Humour in and around the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien eds. Thomas Honegger and Maureen F. Mann David Bratman Laughter in Middle-earth: Humour in and around the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Thomas Honegger and Maureen F. Mann. Zurich: Walking Tree, 2016. 242 pp. $24.14 (softcover). ISBN 978-3-905703-35-1. Humor in Tolkien's work is a vexing subject, particularly to those who think there isn't any. While his negative critics will allow that his work contains "some whimsical jokes" (Moorcock 107), even the more positive observers frequently comment, with overtones of disapproval, on Tolkien's lack of the pervasive irony of Modernist literature (for examples, see Curry 379–80). All that this means, of course, is that Tolkien is not a canonical Modernist writer; and, as Patrick Curry notes, while Tolkien is never ironic about his fiction, which is what Modernism expects its irony to be, "ironies abound within The Lord of the Rings, of course, not least that it turns out to be not Frodo or Sam who finally destroy the Ring, nor any of the great and good, but Gollum" (380), a point also made by other scholars and also about other instances than that (Éowyn slaying the Lord of the Nazgûl, for another most obvious example; see, e.g., Enright 131). As for the "whimsical jokes," no subject is more de gustibus than jokes; even Tolkien himself, who delighted in the narrative humor of E. A. Wyke-Smith's The Marvellous Land of Snergs, later had second thoughts about reproducing so much of it in The Hobbit. None of this contentious critical debate, and nothing about whether the internal ironies of The Lord of the Rings count as humor or even if they count as irony, makes it into Walking Tree's anthology of articles on "humour in and around the works of J.R.R. Tolkien." Where a previous Walking Tree anthology, on Tolkien and Philosophy, opened with an impressive 12-page editorial introduction scouring the Tolkien critical bibliography for 62 relevant past titles (Arduini and Testi 9–20), the present book makes no attempt to consider past scholarly discussion [End Page 205] of Tolkien's humor—there has been some—nor do the individual articles cite much of it. Instead, this book begins with a perfunctory five-page foreword by Tom Shippey, who calls Sam's final words in The Lord of the Rings, "Well, I'm back," a "non-committal and even pointless remark" (1). Has Shippey forgotten the book he's discussing? Frodo had told Sam to ask Rose "if she can spare you" for a short trip: "Tell Rose that you won't be away very long, not more than a fortnight" (RK, VI, ix, 306). And now he's back, just as he'd said he'd be. It's just that, while he was taking this insignificant vacation, he witnessed the unexpected (to him) departure of Frodo—not to mention Bilbo, Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond—oversea, and the End of the Third Age before his very eyes, that's all. So his final line is another Tolkienian internal irony, for those with the wit to observe it. Shippey's foreword actually concerns laughter more than it does humor. This intensifies a suspicion first aroused in this reader by the book's title, Laughter in Middle-earth, that the two are not the same thing. This is fully justified by the essays by Alastair Whyte and Jennifer Raimundo. These both discuss the corpus of instances of Tolkien's characters laughing, which they do not do necessarily because anything is humorous even to them, let alone to the reader. Whyte begins uninvitingly with a theory of laughter, and through examples in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings reaches the conclusion that, in Tolkien, laughter is a signifier of the relationship between good and evil. Good characters laugh to show that evil has no power over them, and evil characters laugh to show confidence in their power over good, confidence which, Whyte notes, is invariably mistaken (54). Raimundo begins by addressing humor, even briefly...

Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relationships in The Lord of the Rings, by Susan Jeffers

Reviewed by: Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relationships in The Lord of the Rings, by Susan Jeffers Kristine Larsen Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relationships in The Lord of the Rings, by Susan Jeffers. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014. 168pp. $34.95 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-60635-201-4. In my 2012 review of Liam Campbell’s The Ecological Augury in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, I opined that there had not yet been a “complete study” on the topic of Tolkien and the environment and that I expected a fourth book-length survey of the topic to appear on the horizon before long (Larsen 88). My hope was that such a volume not only would be an analysis of three early works—Patrick Curry’s Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien, Myth, and Modernity (2004), Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans’s Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien (2006), and Campbell’s 2011 volume—but would break significant new ground in the area of Tolkien’s environmental themes. Three years later, Susan Jeffers’s volume Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relationships in The Lord of the Rings crossed my desk, and I read it with much anticipation, expecting that it would be the fulfillment of my prophecy. But the work reveals itself to be significantly less than a complete study, due not simply to its limited focus on The Lord of the Rings but rather to the overall scope and development of the essential argument. Based on Jeffers’s master’s thesis at Abilene Christian University, the book could have been significantly expanded before publication instead of reproduced as the slender volume with which I was presented. This book puzzles me on several other levels, the first being its title. “Arda” as a title for the world harks to The Silmarillion rather than The Lord of the Rings, as does the act of inhabiting said world. Indeed, “Arda” does not appear in the index of The Lord of the Rings. It is therefore surprising that it was chosen for the title. Another point of confusion was made apparent in the first paragraph of the introduction, where Jeffers makes the claim that “the trees of Middle-earth have received relatively little critical attention” (1). A quick web search on the topic will turn up a number of papers and book chapters that have done precisely this. In terms of more general previous works on Tolkien and the environment, while Jeffers references [End Page 215] the seminal volumes by Curry and Dickerson and Evans, Liam Campbell’s work is conspicuous in its absence, especially because Campbell spends a significant portion of his work discussing ecocriticism in relation to Tolkien’s environmental themes. Likewise, other works that I would have expected to have been referenced, such as Andrew Light’s “Tolkien’s Green Time: Environmental Themes in The Lord of the Rings” (2003), are regrettably missing as well. These apparent lacunae in the expected literature search can possibly be explained by one of the other disappointing aspects of this work, the list of sources. Rather than relying principally on primary texts or well-known secondary texts, half of the listed references are reprinted papers and excerpts of larger works published in anthologies and readers. It must be noted that similar works certainly do cite some of these same secondary sources, but the heavy reliance on them in this case is puzzling. Returning to the general layout of the work, Jeffers offers us an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion. In her introduction, she defines her thesis in terms of “the connection between people and place,” based on the still-evolving literary framework of ecocriticism (2). Jeffers explains to the reader that her perspective in some ways parallels that of Dickerson and Evans but is specifically focused on The Lord of the Rings rather than the legendarium as a greater whole. Jeffers’s goal is to focus on “the power relationships that result from or are indicated by the way characters interact with their environments” (3). The remainder of the introduction is focused on an overview of ecocriticism (including common criticisms of ecocriticism) and positions Tolkien’s works within this philosophy as...

No Triumph without Loss: Problems of Intercultural Marriage in Tolkien’s Works

No Triumph without Loss: Problems of Intercultural Marriage in Tolkien’s Works Hope Rogers (bio) The Lord of the Rings has often been praised for what Jonathan Evans calls its “cultural, racial, or ethnic depth” (194). Middle-earth is rich with diversity, inhabited by various peoples from Men and Hob-bits to Elves and Ents. Each of these groups is further subdivided into different cultures, each replete with its own language or dialect, history, cultural practices, and ethnic interests. This feature of Tolkien’s work has garnered much critical attention, as scholars have explored everything from how Tolkien draws on medieval sources and folklore to create these peoples to how they function in the symbolism and spiritual themes of the legendarium. Among scholars analyzing the applicability of Tolkien’s races to those of the real world, however, the conversation has become deadlocked, polarized over one of the most common criticisms of The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien’s supposed racism. His accusers have ranged from “critics who argue that LotR is a book about whites rising against a tide of black-skinned foes,” as Robert Gehl puts it, to Gehl himself, whose nuanced discussion of the fear of miscegenation represented by Gollum still ultimately comes back to the point that Tolkien’s treatment of race is highly problematic (264). Numerous scholars, such as Sandra Straubhaar, Patrick Curry, Jane Chance, Anderson Rearick, and Shaun Hughes have come to Tolkien’s defense, pointing to the many positive examples of intercultural interaction in the legendarium. Though they offer many helpful insights into Tolkien’s works, they too come repeatedly to a single conclusion, that Tolkien, far from being racist, promotes intercultural interaction and friendship. Chance even places this drive for multiculturalism at the heart of The Lord of the Rings, claiming that “returning the Ring to its origin means refusal of power as domination by the One—by sameness, homogeneity—and therefore acceptance of respect for difference and diversity” (33). However, the destruction of the Ring is an act of renunciation, a “triumph” due to which “many fair things will fade and be forgotten” (FR, II, ii, 282). Tolkien’s works are histories of loss, accounts of the sorrows that ravage a fallen world in the inevitable passing of time. He does not make an exception to this theme to create a singular happy ending in which difference and diversity gain an unproblematic victory, the “carefree multiculturalism” espoused by [End Page 69] many critics (Gehl 264). Instead, racial and cultural interactions in Tolkien’s works repeatedly demonstrate problems and losses that accompany diversity in the real world and the imperfections of even the best efforts to find solutions. Critics have almost totally ignored the fact that these concerns about diversity, rather than either its promotion or disparagement, are the focus of Tolkien’s portrayal of multicultural interactions. This paper explores Tolkien’s critique of multiculturalism, in the sense of cultural intermixing, by looking at the single issue of inter-cultural marriage, which covers a wide range of unions, from those between Elves and Men to those between members of the different microcultures of the Shire. Although this spectrum includes more relationships than would typically fall under the real-world umbrella of interracial marriage, Tolkien frequently blurs boundaries between race and culture and often addresses difference rather than race per se, making intercultural relationships a better focus for discussion. Tolkien’s intermarriages hold a central importance in his works, as shown in the story of Túrin, which represents an example of the dangers of rejecting these relationships and the acceptance of difference that they represent. As we can see in this story, although Tolkien critiques intermarriage, he does not reject it, and indeed it remains essential for dispelling prejudice and creating peace. Nevertheless, numerous problems with intermarriage arise throughout Tolkien’s works, including the threat of outside prejudice and concerns over assimilation and its alternatives, concerns that go beyond racism and into inherent stresses on personal identity. Intercultural Marriage Tolkien introduces concern over intercultural relationships on the second page of The Lord of the Rings, as the Hobbiton hobbits discuss Frodo’s ‘multicultural’ ancestry: “Baggins is his name, but he’s more...

"Ecological Ethics," 2nd ed., by Patrick Curry

"Ecological Ethics," 2nd ed., by Patrick Curry

The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and The Lord of The Rings, and: Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien's Work (review)

Reviewed by: The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and The Lord of The Rings, and: Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien's Work Jonathan Evans The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and The Lord of The Rings, ed. Paul E. Kerry (Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011), pp. 310 Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien's Work, ed. Paul E. Kerry & Sandra Miesel (Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011), pp. xii + 220. Is The Lord of the Rings a Christian work? Patrick Curry's answer— "yes, but not only that"1—is probably the best and most succinct response; but the issues implied by the question and Curry's answer are by no means uncomplicated. The 29 essays gathered in these two volumes demonstrate the validity of both sides of Curry's summary: the contributors to The Ring and the Cross explore various dimensions of "the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien's Christianity, even his Roman Catholicism, on his writing" (17), while the essays in Light Beyond All Shadow expand the inquiry to investigate more broadly "how Tolkien's writing opens up the nature of religious experience and the spiritual" beyond the strictly Catholic or Christian to include transcendental values at the most general level (vii). Regarding the first volume, The Ring and the Cross, the fact that Tolkien was a Christian "and indeed a Roman Catholic" (Letters, 255) is undeniable—primary evidence is abundant in his essays and letters; this evidence has been much discussed in recent decades, and much of it is rehearsed over again in this volume. What is deniable, and what some scholars have attempted—without much success—is the degree to which this fact constrained what Tolkien wrote or determined how his works should be read. The vast secondary literature that has grown up around Tolkien's imaginative writing explores virtually every doctrinal, ontological, theological, and soteriological topic extending from this fact, and in light of the tangle through which one now must make one's way, it can be stated in truth that The Ring and The Cross assists substantially in cutting a swath. A similar metaphor, that of mapping spiritual territory, governs Light Beyond All Shadow. The question that hovers over both volumes is just how to measure the influence of Tolkien's religious views and commitments on the products of his creativity and his readers' response to them. Must we regard The Lord of the Rings, the Middle-earth legendarium, or the Tolkienian oeuvre as a whole as exclusively Christian? To that question [End Page 97] one may join Curry and many contributors to these two books in saying, "no," perhaps adding "not necessarily." This question might have been posed just as easily as, "is The Lord of The Rings a pagan work," to which Curry's answer mentioned above would apply just as well. There are essays in these two collections by noted Christian theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, by writers claiming positions sympathetic to atheism, paganism, and by writers trying valiantly to preserve neutrality by positioning themselves (with or without the label) as "agnostic" on the foundational issues. With only a slight modifications either question—"Is it Christian?" and "Is it pagan?"—might be answered justifiably: "Yes—but it is more than that." The power and the brilliance of Tolkien's judicious combination of constituent elements in constructing his work are evident in the breadth of positions exemplified in these two books and in scores of publications preceding them. Both of these questions are posed honestly by the contributors to these two essay collections; they are answered with satisfactory evidence backing up either approach. But, for some, therein lies the problem. In a word, the decisive, underlying issue is that of specificity. In his essay in The Ring and The Cross, Stephen Morillo asks, "why should Christianity have a special claim on ideas common to so many religions," and "where . . . are the specifically Christian features" (emphases mine) in The Lord of the Rings, beyond what he calls "the commons of spirituality"? Are the broader spiritual—arguably, "pagan"—implications of the book necessarily incompatible with the more explicitly Christian doctrinal and theological...

"Monsterized Saracens," Tolkien's Haradrim, and Other Medieval "Fantasy Products"

"Monsterized Saracens," Tolkien's Haradrim, and Other Medieval "Fantasy Products" Margaret Sinex (bio) In 1995, Virginia Luling suggested that Sauron's Easterlings and Southrons "draw on inherited images of 'paynims' and other enemies" (56-7). Others, such as Patrick Curry, have noted the geographical parallel between the Haradrim living to Gondor's south in the "Sunlands" and medieval Christendom's perceived enemies to the south and east. Curry writes: "Tolkien's evil creatures are frequently 'swart, slant-eyed' and tend to come from the south ('the cruel Haradrim') and east ('the wild Easterlings') both threatening directions in [his] 'moral cartography'" (30-31).1 Most recently, Dimitri Fimi contextualizes Tolkien's notions about race by examining theories advanced in the late Victorian period and early twentieth century in several fields (physical anthropology and philology among them) as well as the influences of Social Darwinism and the Eugenics movement.2 Writing from a multi-cultural perspective, Brian McFadden and Jane Chance have examined relations among the Races of Middle-earth and have illuminated the Haradrim's indebtedness to the sigelwara or Ethiopians of Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. In this essay, I wish to explore the contributions of later English texts, Middle English romances in particular. Tolkien did not simply select traits from the "monsterized Saracens" (Cohen Giants 78) of English romance and the French epics and bestow them unaltered on his Men of Harad. Within the terms of his fiction, Tolkien mirrors the Western Europeans' methods of constructing their imaginary Saracen.3 I say "imaginary" because, as many have noted, in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's words: "'Saracens' are fantasy products of the Christian imaginary, that, like all monsters, could take on an uncanny life of their own" (Cohen "Hybrids" 88). He makes this remark in the context of analyzing the process of "othering" in the letters of John of Salisbury (1115-1180). In these letters, John represents the Welsh people in ways that Cohen demonstrates: "are manifestations of an othering impulse also visible behind the racialized representations of Islam disseminated throughout the Latin West" (88). "Impulse" conveys an urgency, a drive perhaps, to demarcate "the Welsh" or "Muslims" as the Other distinct from European Christians. When pondering this othering impulse, Paul Freedman cautions that the viewpoint of the European Christian elite was neither perfectly unified nor unchanging over the centuries. Such a claim oversimplifies the [End Page 175] matter as "cracks" in this viewpoint are readily apparent (11). Freedman offers the further caveat that the term "Other" itself is not perfectly stable: A second problem is the tendency to treat alien or Other as if they were stable terms denoting complete and consistent rejection when in fact there were degrees of marginality, so much so, that seemingly contradictory positions could be held simultaneously. (10) We should, he warns, remain conscious of the range of types and gradations of marginality (11). One such degree or gradation might rest on the geographical distance between the targeted group and the European intellectual. There was a distinction to be made, the learned believed, between lepers who lived in Christian Europe (and yet were set apart) and pagan Saracens who lived outside of Europe in remote, ill-defined lands to the east. Keeping Freedman's cautions in mind, when I assert that Tolkien mirrors the Western Europeans' methods of constructing their imaginary Saracen I am suggesting that he is necessarily mirroring the othering process of the Christian West. Three characteristics of the othering processes of medieval Europe are especially relevant to the Haradrim it seems to me. The first is the reliance on binaries (inner/outer, light/dark, Scythian/Ethiopian, saved/damned). Both medieval Church authorities and ethnologists reconceptualized pairs of opposed elements that they had inherited from the classical period. The second feature is the determining power of climate on various races and thus the crucial significance of geography in racial theorizing. And the third is the use of color as a tool with which to guide audience response to characters in literature and the visual arts of the late Middle Ages. The issue of gradations of marginality has a bearing on the Haradrim as well. They appear as one term or component of...

Contributors to This Issue

Reviewed by: Flora of Middle-earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium by Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd Lynn Forest-Hill Flora of Middle-earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, by Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 406 pp. £26.49/$34.95 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-19-027631-7. In 1982 Tom Shippey remarked that throughout Tolkien's work "there runs an obsessive interest in plants and scenery" (120). With the single exception of his created languages, there is arguably nothing more fundamental to Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth than his conceptualizing of landscapes and their flora. Together and independently they go beyond merely creating atmosphere to confer mythological and symbolic meaning and to define the familiar or alien nature of characters and cultures through their forms. In addition, as Patrick Curry remarks in the Tolkien Encyclopedia, in Tolkien's fiction: [End Page 215] the natural environment … is treated in a way that clearly conveys a concern for its integrity independent of human interests. … Furthermore, the instrumental exploitation and destruction of nature is identified as integral to moral evil in this world (163). Nevertheless, recognition of the multifaceted significance of plants in the legendarium has been slow to develop among Tolkien scholars. Dinah Hazell's charming Plants of Middle-earth: Botany and Sub-creation gives some consideration to their symbolism and historical and mythological significance. Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans' Elves, Ents and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien and Susan Jeffers' Arda Inhabited reflect the trend for ecologists and ecocritics to regard him as a pioneer in his treatment of the intimate connection among plants, landscapes, and their inhabitants. Apart from these books, critical analysis of Tolkien's flora remains limited to essays such as those in the collection edited by Martin Simonson, Representations of Nature in Middle-earth. The narrative significance of the natural world in the legendarium is such, however, that a new book on the flora of Middle-earth should be a welcome addition to the small but growing list of publications on the topic. Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd (father and son) are credited as joint authors of Flora of Middle-earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, but Walter Judd is clearly the lead author of the text. A professor of biology whose professional work has focused on the systematics and evolution of flowering plants, he has in this book produced an extremely detailed survey of the plants that create the distinctive landscapes of Middle-earth. Each plant is treated with the same botanical precision. The scientific detail with which everything is described, from the delicate flowers of niphredil to the ominous trees of Mirkwood is, so Judd declares, intended to focus the reader's appreciation on the diversity of the primary world as this illuminates, and is illuminated by, Tolkien's created world. To this end, the book is intended to create "a visual reference—and legitimacy—for both the plants growing in our forests, meadows, and marshes, as well as those that we have received as gifts from Tolkien's imagination" (5). Why legitimation of either group should be necessary is not discussed, but this is an honest declaration of the focus of the book: it really is more interested in primary-world botany than in the wealth of symbolism, meaning, and narrative functions offered by the abundant plant-life of the legendarium. In its rigorously scientific approach Flora of Middle-earth will, no doubt, satisfy all those readers of The Lord of [End Page 216] the Rings of whom Tolkien himself observed: "Botanists want a more accurate description of the mallorn, of elanor, niphredil …" (Letters 248). Flora of Middle-earth goes far beyond Tolkien's own explanations, such as his observation that elanor would be "a pimpernel (perhaps a little enlarged) growing sun-golden flowers and star-silver ones on the same plant" (Letters 402). Flora of Middle-earth supplies botanical details for all these plants and for others which exist unnamed in the legendarium, through a process of speculation and extrapolation from primary-world species. Seven chapters...

Book Review: Ecological Ethics: An Introduction

Review of Ecological Ethics: An Introduction, by Patrick Curry

ECOLOGICAL ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTIONBY PATRICK CURRY

Reviewed by: Ecological Ethics: An Introduction David Keller (bio) Patrick Curry , Ecological Ethics: An Introduction . Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2007, 173pages. Were I in Bath having drinks with Patrick Curry, we would have much to agree about. Explaining his choice of title of his book, Ecological Ethics, he rightly points out that the more common descriptor "environmental ethics" presupposes a dualism between human beings and the nonhuman environment—an assumption which is itself anthropocentric (p. 4). For philosophers interested in studying the human/ nonhuman dynamic, the legitimacy of anthropocentrism is itself an open question. Because the word 'ecology' treats humans, as biota, as integral parts of ecological systems, the phrase "ecological ethics" is less presumptuous and hence more accurate. The word 'ecological' also has the benefit of conveying the message that the subject is notgoing to involve extending moral considerability from humans out into the "environment." Instead, ecological systems as the locus of value provide the starting point for the elaboration of ethics (p. 2). For Curry, as for Leopold (1960) and Callicott (1989), "ecological community" is coextensive with the ethical community. To correlate the ethical community with the biotic community within the rubric of "ecological ethics" is nothing novel. Curry's claim that "there is something ancient about an ecological ethic" (p. 7) got me thinking: [End Page 153]prior to Abrahamic monotheism and Greek rationalism, ancient peoples, particularly nomadic hunter-gatherers, probably considered themselves as integral parts of what encompassed them, moving with herds, in concert with meteorological and seasonal changes, seeing themselves as one amongst other living beings. They probably did not see themselves apart from the "environment" as we have learned to do. Then with the advent of agriculture, linear furrows and controlled inundations must have fostered an addictive sense of security from flood and famine. Later, the innovations of industrial civilization further distanced us from the caprice of nature's wild vicissitudes. Yet that comfort comes at the expense of lost awareness of our responsibilities as bioticcitizens. Therefore, Curry says, following Sylvan (1973), we need a new ecological ethic since traditional Western morality "is no longer up to the job" (ibid.). Curry remarks that ethics, cast in this light, is not something "optional," something to be addressed after one's belly is full, debts settled, and lodging secured. Rather, ethics cuts directly to the core of human action, of all human activity (p. 5)—a claim reminiscent of Socrates' exhortation to Thrasymachus that it is no small matter that they are discussing, nothing of less importance than the right way to live one's life (Plato 2005, p. 603). Over the first sips of ale, I would praise him for giving his book a simple and straightforward structure that makes a challenging subject accessible, especially to students. After laying down the groundwork of basic concepts in moral philosophy (chapter 3)—objectivism versus relativism, the problem of the is/ought gap, religious morality and environmental philosophy (domination, stewardship, and managerialism), and virtue and rule-based ethics (chapter 4)—Curry addresses axiology (chapter 5). Are humans the sole locus of value (anthropocentrism), or are there other entities worthy of some sort of moral consideration who themselves do not carry the burden of moral responsibility (zoocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism)? Curry answers the latter in the affirmative, arguing that ontological interconnectedness of humans with other living beings within ecological systems discloses that something greater than humanity is the locus of value (p. 46). The most useful part of the book for my students out in Utah would be the middle chapters (6–8) in which Curry casts degrees of nonanthropocentrism [End Page 154]in shades of green. These shades range from light green or "shallow" anthropocentric ethics such Bookchin's Social Ecology (p. 50), Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics (pp. 52–54), and mainstream environmentalism (p. 51), through medium green ethics based on the extension of traditional human-oriented moral philosophy to nonhumans such as Singer's Animal Liberation (pp. 56–59), Regan's Animal Rights (pp. 59–60), and Taylor's Biocentrism (pp. 60–62). Curry proceeds to the dark green ethics of ecocentrism, such as Land Ethics (pp. 65–68), the Gaia Hypothesis (pp. 68–71...

Patrick Curry, Ecological Ethics: A Critical Introduction

Patrick Curry, Ecological Ethics: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006). ISBN/SKU 0745629083.

Reading "The Lord of the Rings": New Writings on Tolkien's Classic (review)

Reviewed by: Reading “The Lord of the Rings”: New Writings on Tolkien’s Classic Patrick Curry Reading “The Lord of the Rings”: New Writings on Tolkien’s Classic, edited by Robert Eaglestone . London and New York: Continuum, 2005. vi, 214 pp. £45.00 / $75.00 (hardcover) ISBN 082648459X; £12.99 / $24.95 (trade paperback) ISBN 0826484603. My first impression of this book evoked uncomfortable memories of an earlier effort: J.R.R. Tolkien: This Far Land (1984), edited by Robert Giddings. This deeply eccentric if pioneering collection included papers which verged on parody, evoking images of earnest young academics, mostly in polytechnics, for whom Tolkien functioned mostly as grist for new critical mills. It is clear from the present volume, however, that things [End Page 297] have moved on. Compared with two decades ago, there have been two signal improvements: Eaglestone and his contributors evince much greater theoretical sophistication, and they take Tolkien's work more seriously. In short, Reading "The Lord of the Rings" realizes its goal—"to reintegrate The Lord of the Rings into the broad sweep of current literary critical and theoretical interests" (2) —with impressive success. Eaglestone's introduction offers a useful supplement to Shippey's analysis of The Lord of the Rings as a quintessentially twentieth-century work, including new insights into Tolkien's rhetoric. His own chapter, "Invisibility," draws on Emmanuel Levinas and Alasdair MacIntyre to reveal the integral connection between evil and invisibility. This point is ably contextualized in terms of the modernist and especially Cartesian valorization and project of instituting a freedom which is radically non-participative—and, as such, ontologically inauthentic if not impossible. Michael Drout's offering, "Towards a Better Tolkien Criticism," offers some valuable pointers in that regard although, being confined to chapter-length, it is unavoidably more programmatic than substantive. Even so, it is highly refreshing to encounter Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Stanley Fish, all skilfully handled, in the context of Tolkien studies. And one can only agree that "Tolkien Studies" (by scholars) and "Middle-earth Studies" (by fans), instead of indulging in mutual hostility, should be mutually enriching. Drout also criticizes some scholars as "over-invested in the truth of [Tolkien's] Letters" as "a transparent, unambiguous guide to the 'real meaning' of Tolkien's literature" (20). That would indeed be a mistake; however, is such a use of the Letters really that common? And surely it is defensible to use them as a guide to Tolkien's own conscious intentions, beliefs and values, and how those affected what he wrote. That, at any rate, is my practice (which, in addition, does not extend to equally naïve assertions of "real meaning" of The Lord of the Rings). Certainly Barry Langford, in the following chapter on "Time," has no hesitation in drawing on the Letters in order to break down the "narrative extension" of The Lord of the Rings into its linguistic, geographical and temporal components. He then uses this analysis to identify Jackson's films as "relentlessly present-tense and ruthlessly goal-oriented," the effect of which is to close down the possibility "for critical reflection or ethical engagement" that is such a distinctive mark of the book (43, 46). Again, it is hard to disagree. One bad academic habit is in evidence here, however, if not egregiously so: if specialist jargon such as "lisible" and "scriptable" is going to be used—neither of which appear in the Shorter OED—then it should also be explained. (True, one could infer the meaning; but with technical terms that is not always reliable.) Sue Zlosnik's "Gothic Echoes" is one of the weaker papers in this [End Page 298] collection. In distinctively modernist manner, she refers to "those who find solace in Tolkien's fake mythology" (58; a phrase repeated from page 50). Not only is this the sort of dismissively patronizing attitude we know too well from Germaine Greer and Auberon Waugh et al., it also betrays a curiously positivist attitude. What is "real" mythology, from which the contrast must draw its force? Even Homer and Herodotus were interpreters of myth. But in that case, what is "fake"? And her remark that The Lord of the...

Book Notes

Book Notes Douglas A. Anderson (bio) Some recent reissues of older books, in revised forms or with new matter added, deserve brief notice and commentary. Patrick Curry's 1997 Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity, was reissued in the United States in 2004 by Houghton Mifflin in a trade paperback format (ISBN 061847885X). This edition includes a new nine page "Afterword" by the author. Houghton Mifflin has also published in the U.S. a volume edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs titled Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism. This appeared in 2004 in hardcover (ISBN 061842251X), and in 2005 in trade paperback (ISBN 0618422536). A collection of fifteen essays, including one written in the form of an introduction by one of the editors (Isaacs), this is predominately a reprint collection, with seven essays coming from the same editors' 1968 reprint anthology Tolkien and the Critics, and five essays from [End Page 238] their similar 1981 collection, Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives, to which has been added a chapter from the 2001 revised edition of Jane Chance's Tolkien's Art (originally published in 1979), and the concluding essay, specially commissioned for this volume, "Another Road to Middle-earth: Jackson's Movie Trilogy" by Tom Shippey. Thus the only new material to be found in this book is Isaacs's introduction (which is in terms of content an extension to his two previous introductory essays of 1968 and 1981) and Shippey's essay on the movies. The bulk of this volume is composed of material dating originally from 1955 to 1981. Tom Shippey's seminal Road to Middle-earth has now appeared in the United Kingdom in a yet another version, this one revised and expanded beyond the 2003 U.S. edition. Published in trade paperback by HarperCollins in 2005 (ISBN 0261102753), this new edition—labeled the Third Edition but technically the Fourth—adds an Appendix C "Peter Jackson's Film Versions" that is based on Shippey's essay "Another Road to Middle-earth" published in the volume edited by Zimbardo and Isaacs noted above. Lobdell's short 1981 book of criticism, England and Always: Tolkien's World of the Rings, was revised and expanded in 2004 as The World of the Rings: Language, Religion, and Adventure in Tolkien. Published by Open Court, this appeared as a trade paperback (ISBN 0812695690). A second edition of Root and Branch, edited by Thomas Honegger and originally published in 1999, appeared in trade paperback in 2005 from Walking Tree Publishers (ISBN 3905703017). One essay (by Andreas Bigger) from the original edition has been dropped, while two other essays, those by Honegger and Christina Ljungberg Stücklin, have been revised for this new edition. The first issue of a new journal, Hither Shore: Interdisciplinary Journal on Modern Fantasy Literature, appeared in 2004, the yearbook of the German Tolkien society. This trade paperback (ISBN 3000157867) contains Tolkien criticism and book reviews. It is written predominately in German, but there are some items in English, and some editorial matter in both languages. Finally, though it only occasionally discusses Tolkien directly, readers may find useful, as background study to Tolkien, Tom Shippey's new anthology The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm's Mythology of the Monstrous, a collection of eleven essays on mythological creatures including elves, dwarves, trolls, giants and dragons, as originally detailed in Jacob Grimm's compendious Deutsche Mythologie, best known in English in J. S. Stallybrass's four volume translation titled Teutonic Mythology (1882-1888). This anthology appeared in late 2005 in hardcover from the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ISBN 0866983341). Douglas A. Anderson Douglas A. Anderson is co-editor of Tolkien Studies. Copyright © 2006 West Virginia University Press

Babel Guide to Scandinavian and Baltic Fiction200077Paul Binding, Ray Keenoy, Patrick Curry. Babel Guide to Scandinavian and Baltic Fiction. London: Boulevard Books 1999. 221 pp, ISBN: 1 899460 30 6 £9.95 Babel Guides to Fiction in Translation series Distributed in UK and Europe by Kuperard/Bravo, London; and in USA and Canada by Publishers Consortium Inc., St Leonia, NJ

Babel Guide to Scandinavian and Baltic Fiction200077Paul Binding, Ray Keenoy, Patrick Curry. Babel Guide to Scandinavian and Baltic Fiction. London: Boulevard Books 1999. 221 pp, ISBN: 1 899460 30 6 £9.95 Babel Guides to Fiction in Translation series Distributed in UK and Europe by Kuperard/Bravo, London; and in USA and Canada by Publishers Consortium Inc., St Leonia, NJ

Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien: Myth and Modernity, by Patrick Curry

Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien: Myth and Modernity, by Patrick Curry

:Science, Culture and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe

Part I Reconstructing authority: remapping knowledge, reshaping institutions, Luce Giard the history of science and the Renaissance science of history, Stephen Pumfrey rhetoric and science/rhetoric of science/rhetoric as science, Maurice Slawinski natural philosophy and its public concerns, Julian Martin the church and the new philosophy, Peter Dear. Part II True learning, useful arts, foolish superstitions: science, culture and the dissemination of learning, Paolo L. Rossi the challenge of practical mathematics, Jim Bennett doctors and healers - popular culture and the medical profession, John Henry the rational witchfinder - conscience, demonological naturalism and popular superstitions, Stuart Clark astrology, religion, and politics in counter-Reformation Rome, Germana Ernst astrology in early modern England - the making of a vulgar knowledge, Patrick Curry.

“Our Lot is Fallen Into an Age of Wonders”: John Spencer and the Controversy Over Prodigies in the Early Restoration

England during the early Restoration is a fascinating case of the cultural fertility of counterrevolution. The problem of the reimposition of authority following the destruction and revival of such traditional institutions as monarchy, bishops, and nobility led to a variety of new expedients, rather than simply the return to old verities that one might expect from the somewhat misleading term “Restoration.” Historians such as Jonathan Scott and Richard Greaves have remarked upon the continuing challenge posed by oppositional ideologies dating back to the Revolution, republican and/or radical Protestant, in the England of the Restoration. Historians such as James Jacob, Margaret Jacob, Patrick Curry, and Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, have traced the ways in which the new science and Baconian ideology participated in the effort to find new bases for authority in the still unstable England of the time following the Civil War and Interregnum. John Gascoigne, in his recent history of Cambridge University in the eighteenth century, refers to the nexus of establishment politics, rational religion, and natural philosophy that originated in the Restoration and dominated the eighteenth century in England as the “holy alliance.”This article will examine two important, and largely neglected, documents of the early Restoration, theDiscourse Concerning Prodigies(1663) and theDiscourse on Vulgar Prophecies(1665), both by the Anglican clergyman and scholar John Spencer. These works, produced in response to a specific challenge to the Restoration state, contributed to the creation of a Baconian scientific ideology in the 1660s, and its “holy alliance” with Latitudinarian religion. This article also examines, in turn, Spencer's political, religious, and natural-philosophical arguments. By demonstrating the connections between them it demonstrates that the “holy alliance” predated the development of Newtonian physics, and that Spencer, neither a natural philosopher nor one of the well known Latitudinarian divines, contributed to it.

Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England. Patrick Curry

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsProphecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England. Patrick Curry J. D. NorthJ. D. North Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 82, Number 2Jun., 1991 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/355784 Views: 4Total views on this site Copyright 1991 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.