Middle-earth Journeys

J. R. R. Tolkien: Saving the Ecosystems of Middle Earth
by Walt Contreras Sheasby

In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy (1955-56) the ring is at the center of an epochal ecological struggle over the fate of Middle Earth. Received as fantasy, in its own way this tale nevertheless encapsulates nearly a century of geological, biological, and botanical lore that followed Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). In particular, Tolkien's work reflected the emergence of a critical ecology that used life sciences as a shield to defend life on earth and to protect every ecosystem. Tolkien's knowledge of nature was derived from the Victorian and Edwardian scientists who revolutionized what had earlier been called Natural History.

It seems that the ideas of Sir Arthur George Tansley (1871-1955), who popularized the term Ecology, had a substantial influence on Tolkien (1892-1973), who was his junior by 21 years.

J.R.R. Tolkien and Sir Arthur George Tansley

In 1925 Tolkien was appointed Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford University, becoming Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945. He retired in 1959 and in 1968 the Tolkiens moved to Bournemouth on the southern coast of England. After his wife's death, Tolkien returned to Merton College at Oxford as resident honorary fellow in March 1972 and died there in September1973 at the age of 81.

While at Oxford, he got to know Tansley. In 1927 Arthur George Tansley was appointed Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford, from which he retired with the title of Professor Emeritus in 1937. Tolkien participated in a standing seminar with the senior founder of the British Ecological Society, who was knighted in 1950 while serving as the first chairman of the Nature Conservancy from 1949-1953.1 Tansley died in 1955 at the age of 84.

Tansley took a prominent part in the development of plant ecology in Britain. In 1901 he founded the New Phytologist, an influential botanical journal which he continued to edit for thirty years. Tansley was also instrumental in founding the British Ecological Society in 1913, and edited its Journal of Ecology for many years.

He published Practical Plant Ecology in 1923. Tansley was the founder of the concept of the Ecosystem in 1935, defined as "a distinct unit of interacting organisms and their surrounding environment" in his book Introduction to Plant Ecology.2 In 1939 he published The British Isles and Their Vegetation.

It is no coincidence that there are 64 species of wild plants in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well as several invented varieties. In a June 1955 letter to his publisher, the author said, "There are of course certain things and themes that move me specially. . . . I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals."3

In a BBC interview Tolkien spoke of his love of trees. Trees abound in his stories -- The Old Forest, Fangorn and Lothlorien. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph of July 4, 1972, he wrote: "In all my work I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved." As to the England of the 1970s, "The savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing."4

It has been pointed out that the flora of Middle Earth is largely that of the English Midlands. From 1896-1900 the family of the young Tolkien found lodgings in Sarehole, at that time a village in Warwickshire. In the biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien is quoted as saying: "To find oneself, just at the time when one's imagination is opening out, in a quiet Warwickshire village, engenders a particular love of a central middle England countryside."5 The handyman mill in Sarehole appears in the Shire Hobbiton, as does the name of the millwright there, Samson Gamgee.

Clyde S. Kilby says, "No book published in recent times creates a more poignant feeling for the essential quality of many outdoor experiences of flowing streams and the feel and taste of water, of light in dark places, of the coming of dawn."6 As Patrick Curry says, "What is most striking about Tolkien's Middle-earth is the profound presence of the natural world: geography and geology, ecologies, flora and fauna, the seasons, weather, the sky, stars and moon. The experience of these phenomena as comprising a living and meaningful cosmos saturates his entire story."7

Tolkien once confessed, "I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. . . . The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary."8 There may be no contradiction when Martha Stevenson Olson says, "But in another sense, the book is nothing except an allegory for the passing away of England -- all England, in every age."9

What gives Tolkien's readers "The experience of these phenomena as comprising a living and meaningful cosmos"10 may reflect Tansley's influence. The concept of Ecosystem developed from Tansley's interest in the plant ecological community, but with the community as an analog of a physical system. Natural systems involved "constant interchange" among their living and nonliving parts. The German theorists called this Stoffwechsel, translated in English as Metabolism.

The last fifteen years of Tansley's life were spent promoting nature conservation in Britain, and although Tolkien was not famous as an ecological activist, there is little doubt that he supported Tansley in these efforts.

Tansley had been a student of Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, FRS, the English translator of Ernst Haeckel (who had coined the term Ecology). Through his father, Edwin Lankester, M.D., this Lankester had been a friend since boyhood of Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley and became very close to Karl Marx by the 1880s. Through a combination of these influences, Lankester put together a radical ecology that was passed on to his students, including Tansley, who identified with a Fabian-style socialism.

Lankester was also a friend and admirer of the Marxian theorist, environmentalist, craftsman, and writer of medieval fantasy, William Morris, whose influence on Tolkien was very profound. That debt is often acknowledged, but never placed in the context of Tolkien's ecology. Indeed, the radical roots of scientific ecology (or scientific fantasy) are seldom revealed when cultural icons are inducted into the Halls of Fame of the conservative establishment.

But the word still seems to be slow in getting out even in this new era of animal and plant extinctions, planetary degradation, and ecological catastrophes. As John Amodeo says: "Since the trilogy's initial publication in 1954, many have analyzed, debated, and deconstructed Tolkien on the topics of linguistics, history, anthropology, sociology, mythology, and war, but rare is the discussion on Tolkien's environmental commentary, though all the signs are there. Although Tolkien, who died in 1973, vehemently discouraged using his books as an allegory for real events, he favored use of them in ways that are applicable to readers' own thoughts and experiences. Looking beneath the fun, the action, and the mysticism of Tolkien's fantastic creation, landscape architects need only observe the ways in which the forces of good and evil treat Mother Earth to discover that Tolkien wove a conservationist morality tale within its pages (evident in the films as well) that resonates strongly in the society in which we practice."

© mrzine.monthlyreview.org

Lindariel wrote:
I would think that Shippey would also have objected to PJ having the Host of the Dead mop up the fight on the Pelennor Fields. The CGI was nifty, but it made the victory on the Pelennor Fields a little too pat. In the book, the Host of the Dead only assisted Aragorn in capturing the Corsair fleet, at which point he released them. Aragorn manned the captured fleet with released prisoners and the men of the surrounding regions who rose to his side. The army that Aragorn brought to the Pelennor Field was NOT made up of the Host of the Dead. It consisted of Legolas and Gimli, his remaining friends from the Fellowship, the sons of Elrond, the company of the Dunedain, and the men who flocked to his banner from the coastal fiefdoms.

The victory on the Pelennor Fields was won by the might and valor of men -- the race that will inherit Middle-earth. Aragorn truly earned this victory, and in so doing, achieved the first of many accomplishments that secured his Kingship. That point was completely lost in PJ's interpretation.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS MOST POPULAR BOOK IN BULGARIA, AHEAD OF HARRY POTTER
19:59 Fri 16 Nov 2007 - Elitsa Savova


JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings turned out to be the most popular book in Bulgaria, research by the Helikon bookstores showed.

Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling followed in the ranking, netinfo.bg reported.

Bulgarian Dimitar Dimov’s novel Tyutyun (Tobacco) was the best-ranked Bulgarian literary work. It landed seventh place.

Dimitar Talev’s Zhelezniyat Svetilnik (The Iron Candlestick) ranked eighth.

John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince, Dan Brown’s The Leonardo Code, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 are other titles, high in the ranking.

The research was done at the occasion of Helikon’s 15th anniversary. Nearly 28 000 people took part in the research. More than 400 books were suggested for the ranking.

Getting to the bottom of the hobbit's tale

KELLY MCMANUS

November 24, 2007

THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT

Part One: Mr. Baggins

By John D. Rateliff

Staunch J. R. R. Tolkien fans will view this as dirty heresy, but the truth is some of his stories are ... well, boring.

There. I said it. Diehard fans, please don't set the Nazgûl on me.

Many an eager 14-year-old has torn through the action-packed pages of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, moving greedily on to The Silmarillion, only to be completely flummoxed by what they find there. As a history of Middle-earth, the world in which The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are set, The Silmarillion reads more like a work of avant-garde scholarship than a gripping story.

To be fair, many of the works called "boring" were posthumous publications, and were either partially finished or still in plot-note form. But it's certainly fair to say that Tolkien loved the minutiae: complex genealogies, invented languages, meticulous references to the greatest myths and folklore of many cultures.

And so there's a whole, less popular, constellation of tales that tends to remain the realm of Tolkien scholars. The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth and, just recently, The Children of Húrin, published with the help of Tolkien's son Christopher, and also The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien - these works and others present the vast mythology of Middle-earth that Tolkien created over the course of his lifetime.

And there you have the dichotomy of Tolkien fans: the scholars and the laypeople.

In John D. Rateliff's new work, The History of the Hobbit: Part One: Mr. Baggins, the author has created something to please both sides. Combining Rateliff's thoughtful scholarship with the first manuscript of The Hobbit, taken from Tolkien's handwritten 1930s notes, this book is a truly exciting portal straight to the heart of Tolkien's archives.

Rateliff has drawn from his considerable experience in Tolkien studies to explore the manuscript chapter by chapter (although Tolkien wrote the original draft as one long story; Rateliff has made the divisions as they were in The Hobbit), exploring the motifs and themes Tolkien used from Norse sagas, Greek and Celtic mythology, and other classic tales.

But that's not new. Five hundred Smaugs could sit atop the mountainous trove of scholarship about motifs in Tolkien's work. Two things make this book very special: first, direct access to the earliest known version of The Hobbit; second, a treatment of the manuscript that draws succinctly on the very best scholarship, the result of which is an excellent and digestible Tolkien primer. It should also be noted that Rateliff pays tribute to Douglas Anderson's work in The Annotated Hobbit.

This is a very cool read, offering a sensitive and well-researched account of Tolkien's dramatically shifting perception of Middle-earth. Take Gollum, for example, the infamous subterranean wretch Bilbo Baggins meets in the passageways under the Misty Mountains. We know Gollum today as the diminutive, murderous creature driven mad by the One Ring, his "precious."

In Tolkien's first draft, Gollum is a bumbling, web-footed monster who is actually more honourable than Bilbo. When Bilbo wins the riddle contest, Gollum feels bound by his word to give Bilbo his ring of invisibility, although, unbeknown to him, Bilbo has already found it.

It wouldn't be until nearly 17 years later that Tolkien would rewrite Gollum as the twisted ring-bearer who brings Sauron's ring to Bilbo and Frodo.

There are other major insights. In plot notes, Tolkien intended for Bilbo to sneak into Smaug's lair and kill the dragon with a spear "as he sleeps." But, as Rateliff surmises, Tolkien decided the story's moral code might be better served were Smaug to be smote down "in the midst of his villainy," terrorizing the lake town Esgaroth.

Gandalf the wizard goes by the name Bladorthin in the first draft. Thorin Oakenshield, the dwarf leader, goes by the name Gandalf. Smaug is "Pryftan" in the earliest pages. Bilbo refers to "real" places like the Gobi Desert, showing that Tolkien had yet to imagine Middle-earth as a unique universe existing before recorded history.

Part One only takes us partway through the story, to the "Lake Town" chapter, but the book is still 467 pages, with meaty footnotes and textual notes, and careful commentary about each chapter.

The History of the Hobbit also presents eight pages of Tolkien's sketches - of, for example, the Trolls turned to stone at sunrise, Gandalf at Bag End, maps of Mirkwood and outlines of the Lonely Mountain.

And now the tough question: Is this a book you can give to a young Tolkien fan? That depends. While the reader has the option of eschewing the commentary and the footnotes, the manuscript pages are embedded in Rateliff's careful analysis. Young readers must be mature enough to separate the scholarship pages from the ones containing Bilbo's adventures.

There's always a good chance that a teenaged reader might peruse some of Rateliff's commentary, perhaps about the history of Sauron and the Necromancer, or the meaning of eagles in Tolkien's work, and be inspired to read a few of Rateliff's references.

Most important, The History of the Hobbit treats The Hobbit as a brilliant work of literature, when so often it's overshadowed by the larger and later The Lord of the Rings.

Eat your heart out, Frodo. It's Bilbo's time to shine.

© Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

Bilbo refers to "real" places like the Gobi Desert, showing that Tolkien had yet to imagine Middle-earth as a unique universe existing before recorded history.

Writing the book on intolerance

Dec 04, 2007 04:30 AM
Mark Abley

When I heard that Philip Pullman's fantasy novel The Golden Compass would be made into a movie, I was thrilled. After all, New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson had succeeded in capturing the essence of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. And in the adventurousness, the moral weight, the sheer audacity of his writing, Pullman is every inch Tolkien's equal.

Not that he relishes the comparison. When I interviewed Pullman in Montreal several years ago, he admitted that The Lord of the Rings is "a very good story." But he added, "It's all schoolboys having a jolly big adventure. It's two-dimensional – the good characters are too good, the bad ones too bad." In short, "it says nothing about human beings."

Pullman's attack on C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia series of fantasy books, went further. "The message of the Narnia books is evil," he told me. "It exalts cruelty and it excludes anyone who is felt to be inferior.

"Lewis had a hatred and fear of sexuality – of the female. At the end of the Narnia books, a moral writer would say, `Go out into the world and make it a better place.' But Lewis doesn't do that. He kills off the children and takes them up to heaven. That's immoral. That's evil."

Notice how Pullman criticized Lewis for not being "a moral writer," and how he used the word "evil" twice. In the current battles raging over his fiction and over the forthcoming movie of The Golden Compass, what's often missing is the recognition that Pullman is a writer of extraordinary moral depth and insight.

Yes, he's an atheist, whereas Tolkien and Lewis were devout Christians. But Pullman's public discussions with Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, reveal areas of agreement far greater than their differences.

Pullman declared, for example, that "the true end and purpose of education" is not to fill children's minds with testable facts but to help them see themselves as "the true heirs and inheritors of the riches – the philosophical, the artistic, the scientific, the literary riches – of the whole world." He praised the ideal of "setting children's minds alive and ablaze with excitement and passion." To which the archbishop replied, "We're entirely at one on that."

Indeed, Rowan Williams has called for "His Dark Materials" – the name of Pullman's entire trilogy – to be taught in religious education courses in British high schools. Such is the hallmark of a Christianity not afraid of diversity, not afraid of debate, not afraid of dissent.

What a sorry contrast to the Toronto-area boards of Catholic education that have pulled "His Dark Materials" off their shelves. Their trustees should know that in the eyes of Donna Freitas, a Catholic theologian in the United States, "His Dark Materials" is a "religious classic." The final novel in the trilogy won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 2001 – the only time a book for young people has been so honoured.

The Toronto skirmishes are small potatoes compared to the furor over the movie. It's clear, I regret to say, that Pullman's philosophical radicalism has been toned down for the screen. Yet in the United States, the Catholic League and Focus on the Family have already denounced The Golden Compass, sight unseen. New Line Cinema is so nervous about the public reaction that the two sequels may never be filmed.

I don't recall hearing the American Humanist Association call for a boycott of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Thank God, so to speak, humanists believe in tolerance.

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007

Merry wrote:They were starting to film this movie in Oxford when Iolanthe and I were there two summers ago, so I have followed its progress.

It's two-dimensional – the good characters are too good, the bad ones too bad.

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.