So, here's an interesting thought experiment: what would fantasy literature look like if there had been no J . R. R. Tolkien?
To which my immediate reply wd be to paraphrase Mark Twain's response when asked what men would be like without women, to which he replied that they'd be 'mighty scarce'.
A more measured response wd note that we'd certainly still have fantasy if Tolkien had died in the Somme in 1916 (as he v. nearly did). Morris and Dunsany and Eddison, et al. wd still have written THE WELL AT THE WORLD'S END, THE BOOK OF WONDER, THE WORM OUROBOROS, &c. But we'd have very little sense that these books belonged together in a genre called 'fantasy'. Aside from writing THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Tolkien's greatest contribution to fantasy was to create a sense that there was such a thing. In THE LORD OF THE RINGS he provided the paradigm that transformed all the rest into precursors and followers. That is not to say THE HOBBIT and THE SILMARILLION were not important. They were. But they lacked the transformative power of his masterpiece.
A second take on this wd be to assume Tolkien survives the Somme and writes all the works he did write in the real world up until circa 1930. That year he for the first and, as it wd turn out, only time in his life, had a complete draft of all the constitute parts that he intended made up the 1930 Silmarillion: the Quenta, the Annals of Valinor, and the Annals of Beleriand. What if Tolkien had devoted the years 1930-1932 to polishing, submitting, and getting published his mythology?
The result, I think, wd have been that THE SILMARILLION wd now be remembered as one of those rare, quirky works like LUD-IN-THE-MIST or THE BOOK OF THREE DRAGONS, magnificent in their isolation. We'd have no HOBBIT, no LORD OF THE RINGS, no 'Tolk-clones but also no shelves in the bookstores labelled 'fantasy/sci fi'
Anyway, here's the link to the original publication; Thanks to Paul W. for the link.
https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/fantasy-without-tolkien/
--John R.
current reading: Evageline Walton's THE CHILDREN OF LLYR (1971)
Another interesting take that I like to think of, is if we look at when Tolkien worked on THE FALL OF ARTHUR and THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRUN, it's possible he may have seen those through, rather than working on THE HOBBIT (and eventually, THE LORD OF THE RINGS.) This, of course, would fall into the 'what if there was no HOBBIT?' 'What if THE LORD OF THE RINGS didn't happen?'which is of course quite similar in approach.
ReplyDeleteI believe that there were factors to THE FALL OF ARTHUR not being completed and published, and THE LEGEND OF SIGURD not being published which include: THE HOBBIT, being a father, his profession, as well as his work on his mythology at that time (also outlined in your post itself). As they say, something had to give.
For the record, I believe that THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRUN may very well be his best posthumous non-Middle-earth publication. If not 'the', then 'one of' for certain.
I'd say rather that we'd have had "fantasy," but its development into three (to us) distinct genres might not have occurred, surely wouldn't have occurred in the way it did happen at least.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on a long bibliographic essay for the New York C. S. Lewis Society, due to appear later this year, on the quarter-century 1885-1912 as the Golden Age of modern fantasy. At that time, what we may think of as "fantasy," science fiction, and dark fantasy or horror were (I take it) all just "fantasy." A very impressive host of works, even seminal works, in each category was published in that period. Among other works:
"Fantasy": Morris's romances, Lang's "color" fairy books, MacDonald's Lilith, Haggard's She, Dunsany's tales, Rackham's illustrations to Wagner's Ring, etc.
Science fiction: All of Wells's classic sf novels, from The Time Machine to The First Men in the Moon, etc. Hodgson's House on the Borderland, The Night Land. Doyle's The Lost World.
Dark fantasy/horror: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Turn of the Screw, The King in Yellow, Dracula, James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Blackwood's "Wendigo" and "Willows," etc.
Dale Nelson
I look forward to Wurmbrand's essay, that sounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteI too think we would have had "fantasy" but I think it would be even more firmly identified, at least in the States, with Swords & Sorcery. After all, Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith would have all three still published there work much as it is now...
but would Howard's Conan have seen a 1960s resurgence without Lord of the Rings creating a market? Maybe not.
Perhaps the Matter of Britain would have been even more influential, the musical Camelot would have still occurred, after all.
Dear Dale
ReplyDelete--I look forward to seeing the whole article, if it's available to non-subscribers.
--John R.
Dear Insurrbution:
ReplyDeleteI think THE FALL OF ARTHUR is a fascinating work, one of my favorites outside his Middle-earth writings.
But I don't think it wd have made a big splash, or attracted a large audience.
For one thing, I think he was a century too late to connect with more than a small audience, given that he was writing in verse. If he'd written it in prose there's an outside chance it might have joined White and Steinbeck. As it is, I think it'd be much admired by very few, unknown by the many (think Robinson's or Ch. Wms verse Arthurian cycles).
Not sure how to even guess with SIGURD: is there anything out that anything like it to compare with? It's so alien to the great verse of its time (e.g. Yeats, Eliot) that I don't know how to judge.
Oddly enough the only major poet of the era I can see as doing something with this material wd be Ezra Pound, and there we'd be straying into someone even more notorious than Tolkien for abandoning his great life's work unfinished.
--John R.