I See What You Did There, J.R.R.

When people talk about magic they talk about Tolkien, so naturally I chose The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as the first stop on my magical quest. I read Fellowship many years ago (over ten at any rate) and as my memory is not as sparky as it used to be I decided to read it again. This turned out to be quite a good thing, as I might never have noticed otherwise how similar Tolkien’s introduction into Middle Earth is to medieval histories (which I have since been exposed to).

If you aren’t a super-nerd for medieval literature like me, let me explain what makes Tolkien tick. He has, in the first fourty pages of his text, miles of names and pedigrees and vassals and lands owned and all that jazz. Welcome to the feudal system and a world where names are REALLY important. Listing lots of names of supposedly important people, that there is no way for the reader to remember because they aren’t vital to the story, is a thing I have seen many medieval authors do. Next, welcome to weapons who are just as important as people. Tolkien does not neglect to mention the name of Bilbo’s sword. The last I will list is a really important one, welcome to the author purposefully inserting their voice and bias on you. Those comments on the Red Book and Bilbo’s bias are really interesting.  On page 34 of my edition, “Now it is a curious fact that this is not the story as Bilbo first told it to his companions.” Tolkien goes on to note that Gandalf never believed Bilbo, implying that the audience should trust Gandalf and should be wary of bias, as this is a historical text. He is also implying that we should trust the author because he has looked for other versions of the tale besides the Red Book.

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain is the first thing that I thought of when I read Tolkien’s prologue. While I haven’t had exposure to the entirety of The History of the Kings of Britain I have been exposed to a very interesting piece of it regarding King Arthur. The legendary king, who may or may not be real, is a subject that Geoff really gets in to (becoming more and more obviously biased in favor of King Arthur as this section of the text goes on). At one point he states, “…there were added from the island of Britain alone, sixty thousand armed men. But the kings of the other islands, since they were not accustomed to have cavalry, pledged infantry as each one was obliged, so that from the six islands…one hundred and twenty thousand were enrolled” (Monmouth, The Romance of Arthur, 79). These numbers (adding up to Arthur’s AMAZING army) are preposterous for the time period. I don’t know if that many people existed then, but it would certainly be hell gathering them all in to one place if they did. Mr. of Monmouth continues to insert his voice into the story, getting so worked up when Guinevere cheats on Arthur that he, “will not speak about this” (Monmouth, 91).

Geoff is an early 12^th century writer, but he isn’t the only medieval writer to write a true history in this manner. Wace, another 12^th c. author, wrote a spectacular history on King Arthur that he several times assured me is true. “I do not want to translate his book since I do not know how to interpret it. I do not want to say anything untrue” (Wace, 99). This coming just after a passage about dragons “foaming, with flames shooting out of their mouths.”

Tolkien is trying really hard to make this text authentically feel like it could be medieval. I am wondering if he really needs to. Does this world need to be old in order to be believable? And more importantly to my research, does magic need to be set in the old world to be believable? Even Harry Potter is set apart from the muggle world in a medieval castle. They use quills and ink. Can magic and science exist together?

  To conclude: I have no idea yet, but I would like to give a shout out.

Dear Tolkien,

 I see what you did there. But was it really necessary?

 Respect,

~ Sarah

All quotes from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The Histories of the Kings of Britain and Wace’s Roman de Brut were taken from :

The Romance of Arthur: An Anthology of Medieval Texts in Translation. Ed. James J. Wilhelm. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994.