Jason Fisher

I found it slightly ironic that, in view of Tolkien's expressed views on source criticism, the editor found enough genuinely enthusiastic scholarly Tolkien fans to compile this book. I was pleased to find this dilemma directly and, I judged, validly addressed. Putting that out of the way, I felt free to enjoy the book and I enjoyed it a great deal. Most of the essays were quite insightful, which I found a refreshing change from other Tolkien criticism I have read in the past. My favourite show more essay was Thomas Honegger's "The Rohirrim: Anglo-Saxons on Horseback?" which was extremely enlightening and very readable. The essay on Rider Haggard was also excellent; I have promised myself to reread all the Rider Haggard books on my shelves as soon as possible. Although I'm neither a completist Tolkien fan (I've read LotR many times but very little of what was published after the author's death) nor in any sense a scholar (BA in Classical Chinese with a minor in linguistics, 1980, marked the end of my formal education), I found the book as a whole quite accessible and, as I hinted in my comments above, it is an inspiration to further reading - which is one of the best things a book could be. show less

This is, I think, a tale of the good, the bad, and the ugly. In the spirit of charity, let's start with the ugly want work upward to the good.

So what's ugly? In a phrase: Thompson motifs.

This book, as its subtitle says, is a series of essays on the sources used by J. R. R. Tolkien in his writings. Now it should be said that source criticism is a very complex thing, covered briefly in the first couple of essays in this book. These are basically sound but hardly sufficient to understand the show more field. For there are many ways to use a source. You can simply quote it at length, as Livy quoted Polybius or or the gospels of Matthew and Luke quote Mark. You can paraphrase (at any of several levels) or epitomize, as the books of Chronicles paraphrase and epitomize the books of Samuel and Kings. Or you can simply take particular elements from various sources and assemble them together, as one makes a collage out of tiles or a bridge out of girders. In such as case, the result uses the smaller elements but is of different kind. A bridge is not a girder!

Similarly, a fairy tale is not a motif, but it is made of motifs. Motifs are such things as a dragon, or a king in disguise, or a magic ring.

And, guess what, folks: There is an index of these things. It's by the late, great Stith Thompson (expanding on an earlier work by Antti Aarne). The index of motifs alone is almost 900 pages. So Dragons are motif B11 and following; the King in Disguise is K1812, and so forth. All of these are based on actual folk material.

And if you're going to look at the writings of a folklorist -- and J. R. R. Tolkien was a folklorist, even if it wasn't his profession -- before you get all wound up in looking for literary sources, you need to look for the folklore motifs. And nowhere in this book do we see that. Folklore is Tolkien's biggest source, and instead of studying that, we get silliness about the history of Constantinople and the like.

As I say, UGLY.

If you set that aside, and relabel the book "Tolkien and the Study of His LITERARY Sources, even though they're not as important as his folklore sources" (which would be a good title), then the quality is mixed. Librán-Moreno's attempt to squeeze out parallels from Tolkien to the history of the Byzantine Empire is more forced than a high-pressure water hose; every parallel it adduces is found in folklore, and the chronology doesn't work. I eventually stopped even trying to read that essay. (It's probably the worst written as well as the most wrong-headed.) I wasn't too impressed by the links to the "Golden Legend," either -- the parallels are there, but the Golden Legend is itself folklore, so is the Legend the source, or the folklore? I'd guess the latter.

On the other hand, Thomas Honegger's look at the Rohirrim strikes me as good work, and Kristine Larsen's "Sea Birds and Morning Stars" brings out some classical legends that I wouldn't have thought of. John Rateliffe's look at the works of H. Rider Haggard is clearly valuable if perhaps pushed a little too far (I'm far less sure of Mark T. Hooker's link to John Buchan's works; again, that all looks as if folklore could be the common element).

So: If you don't know anything about source criticism, this might lead you to bigger and better things. And if it doesn't, there is still useful material here. But some of it shouldn't be included, and this is pitifully far from being a study of all of Tolkien's sources. Bottom line: I learned several useful things from this book. But I spend about as much time being irritated as being enlightened. Your patience may vary. show less

As a student of English Literature at Penn State years ago, and since then as a student of the Bible, I have developed a deep distrust for those who claim to know the "real" meaning and intentions behind an author's work, especially through the "arts" of the source- and form-critics. I tended - both then and now - to agree with, and sometimes even naively to share with my mentors, Gandalf's warning to Saruman that "he who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom" (to show more which my mentors, like Saruman, would often retort, "I have not brought you here to be instructed by you"). When I found out later through reading his letters that Tolkien shared that same distrust, I felt justified. So I must admit I felt like a traitor as I waited for my copy of Tolkien and the Study of His Sources (ed. Jason Fisher) to arrive in the mail. Having received it, I have perused its pages as greedily as the dragon on the cover examining, counting and guarding his treasure. First I must say I wanted this book because it was about Tolkien and The Rings, and that is enough to recommend any such book to me. Ever since reading (no, devouring) The Lord of The Rings I have, like Tolkien, "always looking for something I can't find." (p. 145, quoted in John D Rateliff''s contribution, 'She' and Tolkien, Revisited). But I must say have been a little surprised and much relieved to discover that the book actually opened new worlds to me - worlds known to Tolkien but not to myself. The contributors seem respectful of the sources, of Tolkien himself, and of the real process of human creativity, where things that touch us deeply become a part of us and as such naturally permeate those things we create which touch on the same ingredients (something like "the distinction between what (Tolkien) called 'the bones' and 'the soup,'" as explained on page 84 by Miryam Libran-Moreno in her contribution, "Byzantium, New Rome!") Still, source criticism is by nature open to abuse and distortion, and it is well-nigh impossible for personal biases not to impact the process, as some of these essays warn and others demonstrate. While this book isn't a sequel to The Rings, some of its essays nevertheless open my eyes (and heart) to source material I have yet to explore, and through which perhaps - just perhaps - under some reference or in the leaves of some yet-unexplored story, something of what I am looking for that I can't find might yet be discovered, and I might experience anew the same thrill I had upon first meeting hobbits. show less

Since Tolkien didn’t care for source criticism, or people spending hours trying to decide where he got his ideas, it seems strange that this book should come together. The author makes it clear from the beginning that there is indeed value in wondering what influences might have been present when Tolkien wrote his most famous work. One of the most valid reasons to me is that the time period has changed, education has changed, and the world has changed. We aren’t as familiar today with show more the literature of Tolkien’s lifetime as he was, for example. If for no other reason than this one, it is worthwhile considering source criticism. With that in mind, I set off to read this book. Some of the essays are better than others. A couple of them are little more than endless comparisons between various works of Tolkien and obscure writers that may have been familiar to Tolkien. It is interesting in one respect: these writers are unknown to most of us today, so I suppose there is value in learning a little about them. The last essay, "Biography as Source", is the one that I enjoyed the most. These essays are not light reads; I suspect they are geared more for the Tolkien scholar rather than those of us who enjoy Tolkien's work for what it is. But, if I am understanding Tolkien correctly, he intended only that we enjoy Middle Earth and not try to second-guess how it came into being. show less