The White Council

Re: Arms,Armour and Costume: was where is Aragorn?

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: Tolkien was well-versed in the classics and his stories show that. He even admitted to being influenced by them.

: Hence, the Rohirrim have a very "Gothic" feel to them, providing a great cavalry force as allies for an ancient but declining empire; the Numenoreans build on a massive scale; the classic battles are mounted by armies many times larger than those of the Medieval period.

* Many historians date the inception of the Mediaeval period as far back as the period of Constantine the Great which would put most of Gothic history in a Mediaeval setting.

: If one assumes that Middle-earth must be Medieval, then one overlooks the overwhelming array of evidence to the contrary. Relatively little of Middle-earth has any direct parallels in Northern Europe's folklore. Tolkien certainly pointed to the influences he drew upon for Dwarf-names, but he denied modelling the Dwarves on Norse mythology's Dwarves (in fact, he even compared them to Jews). He admitted to basing the tale of Turin in part on the tale of Kullervo, but the story of Numenor is based on the Atlantis legend. And so on and so forth.

* The Jewish connection of the Dwarves was, I think, mainly linguistic; though their wanderings after the fall of Moria is admittedly another.

: : He said he wanted to give the English a fully realised mythos, : : which they to some extent lacked, hence the background of his : : works are grounded in a vaguely British cultural setting.

: But that really had nothing to do with THE LORD OF THE RINGS and its connection with THE SILMARILLION is at best quite vague. Tolkien abandoned the mythology (documented in THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, parts one and two).

I would think that one grew out of the other.

: : As an academic Tolkien's main interests were in Anglo-Saxon and : : Middle English. It is no surprise that the feel of his works : : has echos of Beowulf, the Arthurian legends, and even the Robin : : Hood cycle of tales, all Mediaeval. Of his other interests in : : Celtic, Norse and Finnish legend, though undoubtedly having : : roots in far prehistory, all are viewed by us through a : : "Mediaeval lens."

: And yet there are echoes of Troy, Alexander, Rome, Egypt, and ancient Greece emanating from all corners of his works. Tolkien himself pointed out many of these influences. And when comparing Quenya to a "real" language he chose Latin, not one of the Celto-Germanic languages, or even the Finno-Uralic family.

* I'm splitting hairs here but Italic (including Latin) and Celtic were sibling linguistic groups (eg. modern Irish for 1000 is mile = Spanish/Italian). I thought I read that Quenya was based on a synthesis of Latin and Finnish elements. Of course Sindarin is certainly Welsh based.

: : I would not argue that Tolkien did not have other influences : : on the formation of his heroic vision. Homer, Virgil, even : : the unknown author of the Gilgamesh epic may also have had : : their influence. But I would contend that none of these types : : of possible influence affect the core feel of Tolkien's writing : : which is that of Mediaeval Britain.

: I get very little sense of Medievality in Tolkien. He was not interested in providing a specific feel for his world. He only wanted it to be familiar to the reader. And one should note that in order to draw in the mythology itself one must abandon Medievalisms altogether, as the northern mythologies were formed before the medieval period (considerably before it).

* Yes, but as I said virtually all European mythology, and its folklore offshoot, is seen though a distorting lens due to its being recorded by Christain Mediaeval scholars. Even the Norse Myths in the Edda were written down by Mediaeval Icelandic Christians.

: The stories of these mythologies which were preserved were written down in the Middle Ages, but they are drawn on older traditions.

: [snip]

: : The analogies with ancient Egypt seem to affect the resonance : : of the Numenorian tales relatively little. That Gondor could be : : the offshoot of a society closely resembling ancient Egypt is : : hard to envisage.

: [snip]

: And yet that is exactly what Tolkien suggested -- that their culture was Egyptian, not Byzantine. Tolkien never once compared Gondor to Byzantium, except in a geographical reference. Culturally he drew no comparisons between the Dunedain and the Byzantines.

: : Gondor's structure seems firmly embedded in a Mediaeval : : feudalism (Denethor was a Steward not a Vizier!) not something : : which could be easily derived from a culture centred on a : : god-king like Pharaoh.

: There is no real evidence of feudalism in Gondor. No ceremonies of homage are mentioned, no ceremonies of enfeofment, no contracts of mutual obligation exist between any two lords. A number of people have unsuccessfully argued for feudalism in the newsgroups but they've never been able to cite evidence from Tolkien's works, whereas there is considerable evidence contrary to that view.

* Tolkien calls the sub-divisions of Gondor fiefs - a telling word (from Mediaeval French - a gloss of the latin term Feudum). He does not call them provinces, satraps, or the Egyptian term nomes. They are not ruled by governors, viceroys or nomarchs - but by hereditary princes and lords. This is less directly applicable, but the heavy cavalry of Dol Amroth are termed knights, not cataphracts or cabalarii or a similar name.

: : The parallel in the crown and diadem, though symbolically : : perhaps valid, falls down physically. The crown of Gondor was : : an impressive object, a winged helmet of precious metal : : decorated with jewels, the diadem was a mere fillet or : : brow-band and whatever the size or the jewel in it would not : : have made a great impression from a distance.

: [snip]

: A physical correlation is not necessary. Tolkien felt the symbolic relationship was worthy of mention. He never once refers to Medievality in Gondor. Gondor was the last visible extension of Numenorean civilization. It simply could not be Medieval in scope and concept. It was grand, imperial, and ancient.

* Mediaeval Byzantium was all of these things.

However, this is straying from my point, I used the words "Feel" and "Resonance" with some deliberation. It is the background and core of Tolkien's work that I think smack of both Mediaevalism and North West Europe - not the details. I think I should say that it is the collective folk-memory of the Mediaeval, rather than its actuality, that Tolkien evokes.

A few examples of what I mean:

The non-human sentient beings in Tolkien are elves, dwarves, trolls, goblins, werewolves, dragons and such, all rooted in the North Western European psyche. They are not djinns, satyrs, nymphs, lares, manitous or the product of any non-North Western European folklore.

The trees the Ents herded are oak, ash, rowan, yew - not palm, date, olive, teak, acacia or redwood for that matter. The latter have no resonance in British folklore.

His sociology is also telling, none of his peoples have a form of government which would be alien to Mediaeval Britain. Most seem to have hereditary monarchs, there is little trace of democracy or of any other form of government amongst the Free Peoples. The city state on the Greek model is missing. The monarchs are kings and princes not emperors or sultans. The monarchs, like in Mediaeval Britain, though powerful are seldom able to be totally despotic, they have to respect the wishes of their people to some degree.

The material culture of the various peoples, ignoring any "Magical" elements, can all be fitted into a Mediaeval European setting. King Bard is called "The Bow Man" not Bard the Atl-Atl Man, Bard the Blowpipe Man, Bard the Pilum Thrower or even Bard the Arquebusier.

I am taking the examples to their extreme but I thik it illustrates what I am trying to convey. That Tolkien's works have the feel of Beowulf, The Morte D'Arthur, The Tain, The Elder Eddas, The Icelandic Sagas etc. much more than they have the feel of The Iliad, Aeneid, Rig Veda, The Book of the Dead, The Tales of Rustam, Thousand and One Nights or any other product not arising from or filtered through the culture of Mediaeval North Western Europe.