[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
This compilation of essays explores the place of antiquity in the literary creations of J. R. R. Tolkien from a range of perspectives; reception studies, memory studies, classical scholarship, and linguistics.
The book is presented as the conference proceedings of an international colloquium held at l’École d’histoire de la Sorbonne in 2022. (The programme is available here, and the chronicle of the event by Grégory Sapadacini can be consulted here.) The volume comprises an introduction, three thematic sections, each containing two to three articles, a bibliography, and indices.
In the introduction, the main editor of the volume, Dimitri Maillard, gives a preliminary account of the book’s aim: to explore the influence and traces of Greco-Roman antiquity in the world of Tolkien. His literary creation is generally considered to bear a stronger resemblance to the European Middle Ages than to preceding epochs. In contrast, this volume aims to demonstrate that antiquity is indeed present in Tolkien’s world, both as an identifiable period and as an idea of the past. It is frequently observed that The Lord of the Rings employs a world-setting closely aligned with the medieval era. Consequently, the epoch covered by The Silmarillion could be interpreted as representing classical antiquity. The perpetual dialogue between the present and the past, between lost “other” worlds and contemporaneity, sets the contributors’ primary focus of interpretation and investigation.
The initial thematic section focuses on the topic of ancient age(s). Leo Carruthers’ chapter on Tolkien’s Third Age as a ‘Medieval’ period (Medium Aevum) is dedicated to the epoch sequence in Tolkien’s world. The chapter commences with a delineation of the various Ages in Middle-earth and goes on to address various issues of chronology in Tolkien’s work, drawing upon the author’s letters and works by his son, Christopher Tolkien. Tolkien’s ambition to construct a mythology of England, situated within a fictional world he has created, is evident, yet the preponderance of his oeuvre is in the realm of literary fiction, where its true value lies. By introducing the immortal elves as part of his history, Tolkien shifts the perspective of time and constructs a timeline where the end of life as the core of human temporality is not the only valid point of view. This allows him to introduce topics and problems concerning both the eternity and the more metaphysical aspects of human condition and mortality, rather than simply constructing narrative-driven stories.
Next, Christopher Chinn and Phoebe Thompson explore the resonances of Vergil’s Golden Age within Tolkien’s Legendarium.[1] Their paper is well paired with the preceding paper, since they both address tackle the notion of nostalgia for a lost past. This past is conceptualised not only as a lost paradise, but also as a partially restorable reality. The authors furthermore establish parallels between the depiction of landscapes and characters in the Legendarium and in several Vergilian works; they juxtapose Doriath and Lothlórien with the Golden Age in the Eclogues, and see Bombadil and Beorn as recalling the more human Golden Age of the Georgics and the Aeneid. Chinn and Thompson further posit that, in Tolkien’s perception and, consequently, in his fictional world, time is not merely cyclical but also characterised by elements of loss and restoration.
The second thematic section addresses allusions in Tolkien’s works to a distant past. In the first paper, Benjamin Eldon Stevens contends that the reception of the classical world in Tolkien’s works exhibits parallels with the Gothic presentation of antiquity as “haunting”, where the past lingers in ghostly fashion within fragments dispersed throughout the present. The article explores the nostalgic element of Tolkien’s works using the framework of metalepsis, defined as the ‘impossible crossing of boundaries between separate realities, non-compossible sets of rules, or mutually incommensurable worlds’ (p.69), and ‘darkness as an aesthetic category’. Stevens concludes that Tolkien’s writing revolves around a ‘double ancient history or even double classical reception’. On the one hand, Tolkien employs metapoetic modes, in which fictions appear as remnants of Middle-earth’s past. On the other hand, Tolkien employs tales from our own antiquity, predominantly Greek and Roman, including motifs such as katabasis, the journey to the Underworld, and encounters with the deceased, to achieve these modes. The employment of such motifs as ‘darkened glass’ serves to reflect one’s profound hope for an afterlife.
In several subchapters, Bador discusses the linguistic parallels he identifies between Latin and Quenya. The influence of Finnish is more pronounced in the consonant system, particularly with regard to permitted consonant clusters, but a comparison of the vocalic inventories of the Latin and Quenya reveals a high degree of similarity, and the accentual system of Quenya adheres meticulously to the Latin model. Furthermore, Tolkien has borrowed one of the most significant phonetic changes in Latin diachronic development, namely rhotacism, or the change of intervocalic s>z>r. There may also be some merit in Bador’s observations concerning the parallels in the adverbial systems of both Latin and Quenya, but his comparison between the demonstrative pronominal stems si, sa, ta and the Latin hic, iste, ille calls for a more nuanced analysis,[2] and it isn’t clear that the free word order and placement of words in Quenya can be claimed as a direct influence from Latin. A particularly intriguing subchapter shows that the verbal system of Quenya exhibits characteristics more akin to Classical Greek (i.e. the reduplication in the Perfect Tense). The study concludes with several appendices presenting the consonant inventory in Quenya, some patterns of nominal and pronominal declensions, as well as the conjugation of car– ‘to do, to make’.[3]
The final chapter in this section, by Jean-Rodolphe Turlin, tackles the physical remains of the Middle-earth’s past and the archaic pathways in Eriador around the territories inhabited by the Hobbits. Turlin notes that these remains represent vestiges of a bygone era, inscribed upon the landscape itself. When considered in conjunction with the old paths and bridges between the settlements, they collectively depict an idealised rural landscape in England, which was purportedly the source of inspiration. The incorporation of these elements, representing bygone eras, into the fictional present of Tolkien’s world serves to enhance the sensation of realness and historical depth within the Legendarium, while also fostering a sense of mystery.
The third section is devoted to an examination of ancient epochs and empires. The first chapter, by Thibaud Nicolas, offers a comparative analysis of the histories of Babylon and Númenor. The author establishes a connection between the initial drafts of Tolkien’s history of a lost and higher human civilisation in 1930 and the concurrent surge in publications concerning Akkadian and Mesopotamian topics. While the Semitic traits of the human languages in Tolkien’s world have already been a focus of attention, [4] Nicolas offers a more in-depth reading of Tolkien’s work in the context of discoveries about Mesopotamia, as well as of the narrative techniques used in his Legendarium. Nicolas concludes that Tolkien seemingly did not intend to strictly represent Accadian sounds in his works, but rather to create a sense of antiquity and historical profundity by introducing images and sounds that appear quasi-antediluvian. The following chapter, by Maxime Emion, explores the connection between Rome and Middle-earth. The Eternal City is evoked in the Legendarium in all of its temporal dimensions: first, references to its image appear overall the whole time-frame of Tolkien’s world, which is situated somewhere between three and six epochs before our antiquity; second, the parallels with the history of Gondor; and finally, literary usages of the image of Rome resembling those we find in authors of late antiquity and reminiscences in all Tolkien’s writings about a glorious past that has been lost. The final chapter in the volume, by Charles Delattre, offers an essay in comparative literary studies, investigating the archaeology of the Galadriel from the Legendarium and Velléda from Chateaubriand’s Les Antiquités . The author places Tolkien within the framework of temporalities utilised by Chateaubriand, drawing upon the hagiographic tradition, a tradition from which Tolkien himself benefited greatly due to his own Catholic background.
In conclusion, the book provides interesting insights into the investigation of Tolkien’s use of ancient languages, his allusions to Greco-Roman antiquity, and his construction of temporality. A notable strength of the volume is the recurrence of topics and themes throughout the individual articles, which distinguishes it from a mere collection of conference proceedings. The thematic recurrence of the past, the creation and utilisation of nostalgia, and the elegiac mode of time construction, all within the framework of philological engagement with earlier historical periods, not only facilitate a more profound comprehension of Tolkien’s world and oeuvre but also have the potential to be extrapolated to non-fictional realities.
Authors and Titles
Dimitri Maillard. Introduction. L’Antiquité et la Terre du Milieu, deux mondes “autres”
Première Partie. Un Âge ou des Âges antiques
Leo Carruthers. Le Troisième Âge comme Medium Ævum. Des Âges de la Terre du Milieu à “nos Jours”
Christopher Chinn, Phoebe Thompson. The Vergilian Golden Age in Tolkien’s Legendarium.
Duxième Partie. Évocations sensibles d’un passé antique
Benjamin Eldon Stevens. “All… that walk the world in these after-days”. Classical Reception as Gothic “Haunting” in J. R. R. Tolkien.
Damien Bador. La langue de la connaissance. L’influence du latin sur le quenya de J. R. R. Tolkien.
Jean-Rodolphe Turlin. Vestiges de l’Antiquité chez les Hobbites.
Troisième Partie. Ères et empires antique.
Thibaud Nicolas. De Babylon à Númenor. La récéption de l’Antiquité proche-orientale et l’usage des sources akkadiennes dans l’œvre de J. R. R. Tolkien
Maxime Emion. Rome et Terre du Milieu. Échos d’un passé à venir
Charles Delattre. Velléda et Galadriel, les Antiquités de Chateaubriand et Tolkien
Notes
[1] A term used to denote all Tolkien’s writings about Arda and Middle-earth.
[2] It could rather be claimed that the forms in Quenya bear resemblance to the Proto-Indo-European pronominal roots *so, *seh2>*sa, *tod), [2] evidenced by extant reflection such as in Germanic (e.g. Gothic sa, so, þata, Icelandic sá, sú, það, Old English se, seo, thæt) and Vedic (sá, sā, tád) among others.
[3] Itself a strong resemblance to the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *kwer- ‘to do, to make, to build’ reflected in all subsequent branches but probably mostly recognizable in the Sanskrit karma(n), from which nowadays internationally known karma.
[4] For example by Helge Fåre Fauskanger, L’adûnaïque: la langue vernaculaire de Númenor, here.