Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle”

Today

Sub-creation · Recovery, escape, consolation · A story that resists its own reading

J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892–1973

Professor of Anglo-Saxon and then English at Oxford; philologist first, novelist second. “Leaf by Niggle” was written between The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55).

The Inklings, 1933–1950

Core members: C. S. Lewis · J. R. R. Tolkien · Owen Barfield · Charles Williams

“Our habit was to read aloud compositions of various kinds (and lengths!).” — Tolkien

Tolkien’s three uses of fantasy

1. Recovery — of the vividness of our perceptions
2. Escape — from the quotidian, from modernity, even from death
3. Consolation — the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires; the happy ending

From “On Fairy-Stories” (1939), collected in.¹

Tolkien on making a secondary world

“Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition, ‘inner consistency of reality,’ it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ‘joy’ in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.”

“On Fairy-Stories” (1939).

Stanley Cavell on fantasy and reality

“It is a poor idea of fantasy which takes it to be a world apart from reality, a world clearly showing its unreality. Fantasy is precisely what reality can be confused with. It is through fantasy that our conviction of the worth of reality is established; to forgo our fantasies would be to forgo our touch with the world.”

Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Harvard University Press, 1979), 85.

Allegory

What allegory is, and what Tolkien thought of it

Allegory — a narrative in which every major character and feature stands for something in the real world.

Tolkien famously resisted allegorical readings of his work, protesting for instance that the One Ring had nothing to do with the recently developed hydrogen bomb.

Reading notes: “Leaf by Niggle”

• The story is puzzling because it seems to invite allegorical readings only to scupper them partway through.
• It is almost impossible not to read Niggle as a version of Tolkien himself: a cautious, meticulous, but increasingly ambitious artist having trouble finishing his epic masterpiece. (In life, Tolkien never finished The Silmarillion.)
• It is far less clear how to read Niggle’s journey, his time in the workhouse, and his release into a living version of his own painting:
  • Has he died, or gone to a secondary world?
  • Who are the Two Voices who agree he is ready to move on?
  • What is the purpose of his friendship with Parish?
  • What do the mountains signify?
• The epilogue returns to the primary world — though not quite our world; it has strange laws and customs — and is also difficult to account for allegorically.
• Arguably it is precisely because it resists a totally allegorical reading that the story remains moving.
• Alternatively: can the story be read as an illustration of Tolkien’s three uses of fantasy?

Unit 4 in one question

Machen, Nesbit, Merritt, Howard, Hurston, Tolkien — six writers, roughly forty years.

Which of them is writing fantasy about fantasy?

For Tuesday

Unit 5 begins — the New Wave.

• “Beyond Lies the Wub” by Philip K. Dick (BBSF 215)
• “The Snowball Effect” by Katherine MacLean (BBSF 221)
• “2BR02B” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (BBSF 446)