This book will open your eyes to the Tolkien you never knew.
Written: Aug 08 '02 (Updated Jun 18 '07)
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Pros: Readable. Achieves its goals. A must whether you're a fan or critic.
Cons: If you're not into scholarly reading, don't pick this one up.
The Bottom Line: If you've read Tolkien, you already have an opinion. This book contains insights that will force you to reevaluate that opinion on a more profound level.
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| panguitch's Full Review: T. A. Shippey - J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Ce... |
The jacket reads, "The definitive critical study of J. R. R. Tolkien's greatest works."
Fans of Tolkien have long been brow-beaten into inferiority complexes by those who wear the blinders of contemporary literary tradition. Tom Shippey has forged a key which can release his readers from the fetters of that narrow-mindedness, and open the door to a more accurate and valuable understanding of Tolkien's work.
Perhaps no one is more suited to address the topic than Shippey. In fact, Shippey was Tolkien's successor at Oxford. He is intimately familiar with where Tolkien was coming from. Of course, this casts suspicion on Shippey as a partisan. This concern he addresses in the forward. Interestingly, he does not dismiss it. Instead, he recasts it in an intriguing light: along the lines of the long-standing division in academic English departments between the linguists, or philologists, and the litterateurs.
At the risk of oversimplifying, the litterateurs believe students of English should study literature, and linguists believe they should study language. Philologists, Shippey asserts, take literature as the means to study language. Who's right? No one, of course. But the tug-of-war has resulted in a dichotomy that has proved the practical extinction of philology, and in some cases, the marginalization of the linguistic study of English to the Linguistics departments.
Tolkien was a philologist of the first order (and, as it turns out, of the last). His fiction can best be understood from that context. But the contemporary literary tradition has not the ability to approach such work as his (precisely because, Shippey would argue, of the extinction of philology). And so we see appreciators of Tolkien lambasted regularly by the elite.
Such is the problem Shippey wrestles with. Disappointingly, or perhaps thankfully, Shippey actually spends little time defending the eyebrow-raising assertion his book title makes. Only in the forward and afterword do the gloves come off and the critics receive a sound thrashing. Shippey states this is because they haven't really shown up to the fight, after having talked the talk. In my opinion, it is because Shippey has more important work to do in this book.
In the forward, Shippey explains three criteria by which Tolkien can be considered deserving the title "Author of the Century". They are:
1)Democratic. None can argue the popularity of Tolkien.
2)Generic. It is commonplace to ascribe to Tolkien credit for fathering the Fantasy genre, which, despite its youth and the derision it receives, has become as important as any other (including the genre of 'literary' literature).
3)Qualitative. This last is the hot one; the one contested. And Shippey devotes the body of his book to examining the quality of Tolkien's work.
Chapter one examines The Hobbit as a bringing together, dare I say atonement, of the England of Tolkien's day (or the modern reader) and the mythology England had lost centuries before, or at least Tolkien's attempt to recreate it. This chapter is laden with philological explorations. It gives an idea of what Tolkien was actually doing, besides writing a children's novel.
The Lord of the Rings is addressed in chapters 2-4, each addressing the intricacies of plot, morality and philosophy, and mythology respectively.
In detail he examines the "complex neatness" of the novel's plot, going as far as to favorably compare it to Joyce's Ulysses. This, I'm sure, draws cries of blasphemy from the establishment, but I urge you to read Shippey's support for this comparison, which he makes at several levels throughout the book.
Chapter three explores "Concepts of Evil" in the Lord of the Rings. Even taken alone, this chapter can quell every suggestion that Tolkien's work lacks depth, meaning, or important insight into moral or philosophical matters. Tolkien's dual approach along the two primary views of evil, Boethian (ultimately there is no such thing as evil) and Manichaean (despite abstract musings to the contrary, evil does exist), reaches a complex compromise, where both are paradoxically shown to be true. Such a treatment of the problem of evil rivals anything I have read, whether in literature or religious writing, and the complexity of Tolkien's conclusion has more credibility than any of the easy answers lesser authors or religionists often put forward.
Shippey also evaluates the novel from the "mythic dimension", both as an attempt by Tolkien to recreate the lost mythology of England, and as a mythology for the England of Tolkien's day, or our own world. This is done in light of Tolkien's own statements regarding allegory, eucatastrophe, etc.
The Silmarillion and various other works of Tolkien are also given attention by Shippey, though the meat is derived from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
As one who has always loved Tolkien, and often felt to call his work 'great' without always having better justification than instinct, I am grateful for Shippey's work. While his style is readable for the layman, his matter is worth serious consideration by the most highly trained of minds.
If you read only one book about Tolkien and his work, this should be it. If you haven't read Tolkien's own fiction, much of Shippey's work will, of course, be lost on you, so don't expect this book to convince you to read Tolkien. But if you've read Tolkien and loved him, and are stunned into disbelief by the derision he at times receives, Shippey will show you that you're right--Tolkien's fiction is of the highest quality. And he'll do it in ways you probably have never imagined. If you've read Tolkien and weren't impressed on literary grounds, Shippey can equip you with the tools your 'education' denied you. While he might not convince you to like Tolkien, you'll be forced to reevaluate the man's work in a more serious, appropriate way than you have before.
- Panguitch
My reviews of other Tolkieniana:
• The Two Towers (movie): http://www.epinions.com/content_84595936900
• The Return of the King (movie): http://www.epinions.com/content_122274745988
• The Tolkien Reader: http://www.epinions.com/content_83305205380
• Meditations on Middle-Earth: http://www.epinions.com/content_100388015748
• Tolkien: A Biography: http://www.epinions.com/content_220187037316
• The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays: http://www.epinions.com/content_221694496388
• Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism: http://www.epinions.com/content_226921975428
• The Children of Hurin: http://www.epinions.com/content_374810250884
Recommended:
Yes
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