An Unexpected Guest
2006; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0146-9339
Autores Tópico(s)Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
ResumoJ. R. R. Tolkien, always a very private man, was frequently irritated to receive letters suggesting sources or inspirations for Lord of the Rings in the work of other writers. However, he was proud to acknowledge one influence, that of William Morris. Replying to a correspondent who had asked about the effects of his First World War experiences on his work, had this to say about the landscape of Middle-earth, the setting for both Hobbit and Lord of the Rings: The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William and his Huns and Romans, as in House of the Wolfings or Roots of the Mountains (Letters 303). All Tolkien's biographers make a passing reference to the influence of Morris, as does Fiona McCarthy in her biography of Morris. With one notable exception (Burns), most writers have concentrated on studying the echoes of poems, sagas and romances to be found in Tolkien's work. However, two of other works, an account of a trip to Iceland and a utopian fantasy, may also have influenced Tolkien. J. R. R. was born in South Africa in 1892, but spent the bulk of his childhood and adolescence in the industrial Birmingham of the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth centuries. There were also two brief, but important, sojourns in the West Midlands countryside. clever boy, attended King Edward VI School in New Street, Birmingham and then Exeter College Oxford, following the same route as another Birmingham boy whose childhood had been without beauty, Edward Burne-Jones. certainly read fiction whilst at Oxford, and it seems likely that this was the first time he had read any of work. Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter states Morris had himself been an undergraduate at Exeter College, and this connection had probably stimulated Tolkien's interest in him (Carpenter 69). In his third year at Oxford was awarded the Skeat Prize for English, and spent his five pounds prize money on three of works: Life and Death of Jason, translation of Volsunga Saga, and House of the Wolfings (Carpenter 69). (1) In the same year writing inspired the 22 year-old to an attempt of his own. He wrote to tell his fiancee that he was turning a story from the Finnish Kalevala a short story somewhat on the lines of romances with chunks of poetry in between (Letters 7). translation of Volsunga Saga led into the world where he was to spend most of his academic life: he was to specialize, as undergraduate and later as professor, in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English and he had a passion for the Icelandic sagas. As professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford he formed a society called The Coalbiters, which met to read the Icelandic sagas aloud (Carpenter 119-20). However, when reading House of the Wolfings (published in 1888) and late romances such as Well at the World's End (1894), entered a world that was, before the publication of his own novels, unique. late romances are devoid of the childish or twee approaches that beset so many other early fantasy novels; from the first sentence the reader is placed within a perfectly realized and ordered sub-creation: Long ago there was a little land (The Well at the World's End), or A while ago there was a young man dwelling in a great and goodly city by the sea (The Wood Beyond the World). Without rabbit holes or fairy dust the reader is immersed within an actual world. One of Tolkien's biographers writes of Morris's aptitude, despite the vagueness of place and time in which the story is set, for describing with great precision the details of his imagined landscape, and continues, Tolkien himself was to follow example in later years (Carpenter 70). …
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