Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Of Spiders and Elves

2013; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 31; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

0146-9339

Joyce Tally Lionarons,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

In J.R.R Tolkien's two towers ent Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin that orcs were made by Sauron in mockery of elves, as trolls were made in mockery of ents (The Lord of Rings [LotR] III.4.486). A closer look at Tolkien's works, however, would indicate that evil race corresponding to elves not in fact orcs, but rather giant spiders who inhabit parts of Mirkwood that border land of wood-elves, and whose progenitor lurks in Cirith Ungol on borders of Mordor. (1) Although number of scholars have noted and explored binary relationship between Galadriel, lady of elves in Lothlorien, and Shelob, mother of spiders, to my knowledge none have developed their arguments to deal with elven and arachnid races as whole. Peter Goselin and Patrick Grant, for example, see and Shelob as and dark anima figures in their respective Jungian analyses of The Lord of Rings; Mac Fenwick compares to Homeric Circe and Calypso, and Shelob to Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis; while Leslie Donovan sees two figures as representing benevolent and malevolent aspects of what Helen Damico calls Valkyrie Reflex in Old Norse and Old English literature. Marjorie Burns places connection between and Shelob into context of number of and early modern works that Tolkien could have drawn on, and asserts that opposition between them serves primarily to [strengthen] and [define] best of Galadriel (Burns 88); in contrast, Jessica Burke, while acknowledging basic opposition between two, argues nevertheless that herself is not above pride, anger, or will to destroy (Burke 23), citing fact that she joins Feanor in his rebellion against Valar. Here I would like to examine Tolkien's complex web of correspondences between elves and spiders in The Hobbit, The Lord of Rings, and The Silmarillion to show that these associative characteristics extend beyond simple opposition of two characters, that they underlie his construction of feminine and sexuality, and that this in turn prepares for and makes possible images of fecundity and growth that we find in final chapters of The Lord of Rings. Tolkien constructs two races as both opposites and as mirror images. The most obvious opposition between two that between and darkness. As Reno Lauro has demonstrated, Tolkien drew on medieval aesthetics of [...] to express his own aesthetic vision (55), so that consistently related to goodness, divinity, and creation, while absence of associated with evil and sterility. Thus Mirkwood spiders in The Hobbit come out only after dark, when forest pitch-dark--not what you call pitch-dark, but really pitch: so black that you really could see nothing (VIII.193). The air in lair a black vapour wrought of veritable itself (The Lord of Rings [LotR] IV.9.718), for Shelob weav[es] webs of and vomit[s] darkness (IV.9.723). Lauro argues that more than mere lack of ordinary light, but in fact ontological, signifying a privation of being, since in Tolkien's world all true being predicated upon (Lauro 68). Thus Shelob physically harmed by from phial of Galadriel: Shelob's agony undoing of with creative power of light (Lauro 70). Shelob not as powerful as her foremother, original spider Ungoliant, who some say [...] descended from that lies about Arda (Tolkien, Silmarillion [S] 73) and who craved and devoured light; in doing so she was able to undo fabric of Tolkien's universe with her darkness. Fenwick similarly argues Ungoliant and Shelob can be seen respectively as the physical manifestation [...] of Darkness of pre- and anti-creation (22). By contrast, caverns of wood-elves on outskirts of Mirkwood are filled with torchlight, and we are told that on land of Lorien no shadow lay (LotR II. …