TOLKIEN, J(ohn) R(onald) R(euel)

(1892-1973)

   South-African-born UK writer and philologist who specialized in early forms of English; his academic career was crowned by his appointment as Merton Professor of English at Oxford University in 1945, a post he held until his retirement in 1959. It was at Oxford, before WWII, that he formed a close literary association with Owen BARFIELD, C.S. LEWIS and Charles WILLIAMS, a group which came to be known as The Inklings. It was at their regular meetings that much of their fiction received a first hearing, including draft portions of a long High Fantasy epic by JRRT which put into definitive fictional form his concept of the Secondary World, as embodied in the creation of Middle-Earth, the intensely imaginedland- or world-scape in which the central action of all his work takes place. No reasonable definition of sf would encompass the works of JRRT; but this concept and its embodiment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy have had enormous influence on both sf and fantasy.Although Secondary Worlds, "inside which the green sun will be credible", long predate JRRT, it was"On Fairy Tales" - a 1939 lecture he expanded for Essays Presented to Charles Williams (anth 1947) ed anon C.S. Lewis, and further exp for its appearance in Tree and Leaf (coll 1964; rev 1988) - that first gave legitimacy to the internally coherent and autonomous land of Faerie as part of the geography of the human imagination. For the sf and fantasy writers who followed, and who found in the Lord of the Rings trilogy a model for their own subcreations (his coinage for invented fantasy worlds), this affirmation of autonomy was of very great importance. No longer did fantasy writers feel any lingering need to "normalize" their Secondary Worlds by framing them as traveller's tales, dreams or timeslipadventures, or as beast-fables. For sf writers, especially practitioners of the PLANETARY-ROMANCE, the example of JRRT was equally liberating - though it must be emphasized that Middle-Earth is not in fact a world in any sf sense but an autonomous landscape, and pure High Fantasy.JRRT's profound interest in philology permeated his work from its beginnings, which, as the posthumous publication of a vast assemblage of drafts and fragments (see below) has demonstrated, predated WWI. His first published tale of Middle-Earth, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937; rev 1951; rev 1966), a Faerie-story for children, introduced its readers to an already achieved and named Secondary World, with a history and geography that had already long existed in its subcreator's mind; as The Hobbit, it was made into an animated film dir Arthur Rankin Jr in 1977. The tale of the hobbit, Bilbo, and of his quest through a portion of Middle-Earth to help some dwarves (JRRT's preferred spelling of "dwarfs") retrieve a treasure, gave JRRT the opportunity to reveal some of that history and geography. But it was not until the release of the Lord of the Rings - broken for publishing reasons into 3 vols, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954; rev 1966), The Two Towers (1954; rev 1966) and The Return of theKing (1955; rev 1966), assembled as The Lord of the Rings (omni 1968) - that the full expanse of his world began to come clear. (The first portion of Lord of the Rings was made into an animated film in 1978; the expected conclusion failed to appear.)Middle-Earth is perhaps the most detailed of all invented fictional worlds, rivalled only by Austin Tappan WRIGHT's Islandia (1942), the published version of which (as in JRRT's case)represents only a portion of what was written; JRRT differed from Wright, however, in having a compelling story to tell. Some of the background material appeared in the form of appendices to the Lord of the Rings and in The Silmarillion (1977) ed Christopher Tolkien (JRRT's son); the latter comprises 5 interconnected texts on which JRRT had been working most of his life, and which supply an historical background for all his other work. Poems and songs belonging to the cycle are assembled as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (coll 1962chap) and The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle (coll 1967) with music by Michael Swann. In Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth (coll 1980)Christopher Tolkien continued the long task of publishing his father's literary remains. The main sequence of these works, various volumes containing the History of Middle-Earth, all ed Christopher Tolkien, comprises The History of Middle-Earth \#1: The Book of Lost Tales 1 (coll 1983), \#2: The Book of Lost Tales 2 (coll 1984), \#3: The Lays of Beleriand(coll 1985), \#4: The Shaping of Middle-Earth (coll 1986), \#5: The Lost Road and Other Writings (coll 1987), \#6: The Return of the Shadow: The History of the Lord of the Rings l (coll 1988), \#7: The Treason of Isengard: The History of the Lord of the Rings 2 (coll 1989), \#8: The War of the Ring: The History of the Lord of the Rings 3 (coll 1990), \#9: Sauron Defeated: The History of the Lord of the Rings 4 (coll 1992) and\#10: Morgoth's Ring (1993).JRRT's influence on fantasy and sf has been not merely profound but also - with no discredit to JRRT himself - demeaning. Fortunately for readers of sf, the fairies and elves and orcs and cuddlydwarves and loquacious plants and bargain-counter Dark Lords and kings in disguise and singing barmen have been restricted in general to commercial market-driven FANTASY, caveat emptor; the main exception being hybrid productions like the STAR WARS films, which are filled with blurred and decadent copies of JRRT's own creations. It can only be hoped that the genuine JRRT will survive this assault, the JRRT for whom the heart of the enterprise of Faerie lay in "the desire of men to hold communion with other living things".

   JC

   Other works: Farmer Giles of Ham (1949 chap) and Smith of Wootton Major (1967 chap), assembled as Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham (omni 1975 US); The Tolkien Reader (coll 1966); Bilbo's Last Song (1974 chap); The Father Christmas Letters (coll 1976chap); Poems and Stories (coll 1980); Mr Bliss (1982 chap).Nonfiction: A Middle English Vocabulary (1924) is the earliest of a number of works ofvarying interest, including an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925) with E.V. Gordon.

   About the author: Books about JRRT and his workare numerous. They include J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977) by Humphrey Carpenter, various atlases and concordances like A Guide to Middle Earth(1971) by Robert Foster and The Tolkien Companion (1976) by J.E.A. Tyler; and, among many other biographical/critical works, Tolkien and the Critics (anth 1968) ed Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, Tolkien: A Look Behindthe Lord of the Rings (1969) by Lin CARTER, Master of Middle Earth (1972) by Paul H. Kocher, Tolkien's World (1974) by Randel Helms, J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle-Earth (1976) by Daniel Grotta-Kurska, The Mythology ofMiddle-Earth (1977) by Ruth S. Noel, The Inklings (1979) by Humphrey Carpenter and J.R.R. Tolkien: This Far Land (anth 1983) ed Robert Giddings. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), ed Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien, is a revealing compilation.

   See also: CHILDREN'S SF; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FANZINE; GAMES AND TOYS; HEROIC FANTASY; LINGUISTICS; MUSIC; SWORD AND SORCERY.