Tolkien and the Study of His Sources (review)

J.R.R. Tolkien is that rare sort of writer who makes us intensely curious about the texts that he liked most. Therefore it seems oddly contradictory that the man who did so much to point his readers to the sources of his own inspiration for The Lord of the Rings had a hearty dislike of literary source criticism. In 1966 Tolkien compared a source critic to "a man who having eaten anything, from a salad to a well-planned dinner, uses an emetic, and sends the results for chemical analysis."¹ A long-held opinion, Tolkien had expressed it in another culinary metaphor more than three decades earlier. Quoting in his essay "On Fairy Stories" a metaphor coined by George Webbe Dasent from Popular Tales from the Norse Tolkien says "we must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled," and then changes Dasent's meaning (Dasent was discussing philological analysis) when he glosses the metaphor: "By 'the soup' I mean the story as it is served up by the author, and by 'the bones' its sources or material." (OFS 47). Tolkien preferred attention focused on the new work, not on its sources: "To my mind it is the particular use in a particular situation of any motive,² whether invented, deliberately borrowed, or unconsciously remembered that is the most interesting thing to consider" (Letters 418).

Given the evidence of Tolkien's censorious view of source criticism, a collection such as this volume might seem to start out at a moral disadvantage; and, indeed, Jason Fisher and his co-contributors in Tolkien and the Study of His Sources appear, at first blush, to be overly apologetic and deferential to Tolkien's pronounced opinions. "If Tolkien wished to proscribe our rooting around among 'the bones of the ox' out of which his works were made," Fisher cautions, "what right do we have to gainsay him?" But this impression quickly dissipates when Fisher follows his hesitant query with a refreshing declaration of his own: "I believe scholars have every right . . . with all due respect to the author, we can, and should proceed" (1). Then Fisher and his colleagues turn a potential vulnerability into a strength by tackling the issue head on. "This collection of essays is concerned with both the theory and practice of source criticism," says Fisher, and, accordingly, the first forty-five pages are devoted almost purely to theory, with an Introduction by Tom Shippey and essays by E.L. Risden, and Fisher.

Shippey's Introduction, "Why Source Criticism?" serves to introduce the whole work. He surveys the contributions on a high level and finds three veins of source criticism in the collection: essays on the cultural background for Tolkien's work, essays on Tolkien's professional interests as scholar and philologist, and essays on the global traditions of narrative and story. It might be tempting to characterize Shippey's introduction simply as bestowing on this book an avuncular blessing of legitimacy from the world's foremost Tolkien scholar, but Shippey always rewards close reading, and even his asides provoke thought, such as, for example, when he describes Tolkien, professionally, as "a controversialist all his life" (7). Here Shippey addresses, with valuable insight, the reasons why Tolkien disliked source criticism, and yet in concluding he supports Fisher's prefatory declaration for the validity of the pursuit, and tells us, in a gentle riposte to Tolkien's culinary metaphors that "you can learn a lot from seeing what a great cook has in his kitchen" (15).

Risden's essay, "Source Criticism: Background and Applications," focuses on the scope of source criticism as a method and points out examples of its applicability, ranging from Biblical studies to Shakespeare, and he distinguishes source criticism from biographical and historical criticism. To the extent that Risden discusses Tolkien, he generally reiterates information provided...