Tolkien's modern sources

{{main|J. R. R. Tolkien}}

J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, a philologist and medievalist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of works such as Beowulf shaped his fictional world of Middle-earth, including his fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings.{{harvnb|Carpenter|1981|loc=#131 to Milton Waldman, late 1951}}{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=146–149}} This did not prevent him from making use of modern sources as well;{{cite encyclopedia |last=Buck |first=Claire |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Literary Context, Twentieth Century |encyclopedia=J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment |year=2013 |orig-date=2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1 |pages=363–366}} in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Dale Nelson discusses 25 authors whose works are paralleled by elements in Tolkien's writings.{{cite encyclopedia |year=2013 |title=Literary Influences, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries |encyclopedia=J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment |publisher=Routledge |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA366 |last=Nelson |first=Dale |orig-date=2007 |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |pages=366–377 |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1}} Thomas Kullmann and Dirk Siepmann state that "the tradition Tolkien owes most to ... is nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novel-writing."{{sfn|Kullmann|Siepmann|2021|p=297, and note 2 on page 304}} Holly Ordway, in her book Tolkien's Modern Reading, lists over 200 books, by 149 authors, that Tolkien certainly "interacted with", having written about them, mentioned them in letters or interviews, taught from them, heard the work discussed, owned the work or an anthology containing part of it, gave a copy as a gift, or is reliably reported to have been familiar with the work.{{sfn|Ordway|2021|pp=295–305}}

{{main|Tolkien and Edwardian adventure stories}}

File:ThirtyNineSteps.jpg's stories;{{sfn|Carpenter|1978|p=168}} scholars have compared his writings to Buchan's, such as his 1915 The Thirty-Nine Steps.{{sfn|Hooker|2011|pp=162–192}} ]]

In the case of a few authors, such as John Buchan and H. Rider Haggard, it is known that Tolkien enjoyed their adventure stories.{{sfn|Carpenter|1978|p=168}} Tolkien stated that he "preferred the lighter contemporary novels", such as Buchan's.{{sfn|Carpenter|1978|p=168}} Critics have detailed resonances between the two authors.{{sfn|Hooker|2011|pp=162–192}} Nelson states that Tolkien responded rather directly to the "mythopoeic and straightforward adventure romance" in Haggard's novels. When interviewed in 1966, the only book Tolkien named as a favourite was Haggard's 1887 adventure novel She: "I suppose as a boy She interested me as much as anything—like the Greek shard of Amyntas [Amenartas], which was the kind of machine by which everything got moving."{{cite journal |last=Resnick |first=Henry |year=1967 |title=An Interview with Tolkien |journal=Niekas |pages=37–47}} Scholars have commented, too, on the similarities between Tolkien's monstrous Gollum and the evil and ancient hag Gagool in Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines.{{sfn|Rogers|Underwood|2000}} Tolkien wrote of being impressed as a boy by Samuel Rutherford Crockett's 1899 historical fantasy novel The Black Douglas and of using its fight with werewolves for the battle with the wargs in The Fellowship of the Ring.{{harvnb|Carpenter|1981|loc=Tolkien's footnote to letter 306 to Michael Tolkien, 1967-8}} Jared Lobdell proposes that The Lord of the Rings is "an adventure story in the Edwardian mode", supporting this with multiple parallels.{{sfn|Lobdell|2004|pp=16–20}}

{{anchor|Fantasy|Science fiction}}

{{further|History of fantasy|William Morris's influence on Tolkien}}

File:Snerg with bow.jpg's 1927 The Marvellous Land of Snergs influenced Tolkien's hobbits.]]

Tolkien read and made some use of modern fantasy, such as George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin. Edward Wyke-Smith's Marvellous Land of Snergs, with its "table-high" title characters, influenced the incidents, themes, and depiction of hobbits.{{harvnb|Tolkien|1937|pp=6–7}}{{cite book |last1=Gilliver |first1=Peter |author1-link=Peter Gilliver |last2=Marshall |first2=Jeremy |last3=Weiner |first3=Edmund |title=The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bszM-uwEQOkC&pg=PA54 |date=23 July 2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-956836-9 |page=54}} Books by Tolkien's fellow-Inkling Owen Barfield contributed to his world-view of decline and fall, particularly the 1928 Poetic Diction.{{sfn|Flieger|1983|pp=35-41}}

H. G. Wells's description of the subterranean Morlocks in his 1895 science fiction novel The Time Machine are suggestive of Gollum. Parallels between The Hobbit and Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth include a hidden runic message and a celestial alignment that direct the adventurers to the goals of their quests.{{sfn|Hooker|2014|pp=1–12}} Tolkien acknowledged MacDonald's 1858 fantasy Phantastes as a source in a letter. He wrote that MacDonald's sentient trees had "perhaps some remote influence" on his tree-giant Ents.Tolkien, J. R. R. Letter to L.M. Cutts of 26 October 1958, Sotheby's English Literature, History, Fine Bindings, Private Press Books, Children's Books, Illustrated Books and Drawings 10 July 2003 (Auction Catalogue), Sotheby's.

File:Jules verne cryptogramme.png's runic cryptogram from his 1864 Journey to the Center of the Earth may have influenced Tolkien's Book of Mazarbul.{{sfn|Hooker|2014|pp=1–12}} ]]

A major influence was the Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris. Tolkien wished to imitate the style and content of Morris's medievalising prose and poetry romances such as the 1889 The House of the Wolfings,{{harvnb|Carpenter|1981|loc=#1 to Edith Bratt, October 1914}} and made use of placenames such as the Dead Marshes{{harvnb|Carpenter|1981|loc=#226 to L. W. Forster, December 1960}} and Mirkwood.{{harvnb|Tolkien|1937|p=183, note 10}} Tolkien read Morris's 1870 translation of the Völsunga saga when he was a student, introducing him to Norse mythology.{{cite book |title=J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography |last=Carpenter |first=Humphrey |year=2000 |publisher=Mariner Books |isbn=0-618-05702-1 |page=77 }} The medievalist Marjorie Burns writes that Bilbo Baggins's character and adventures in The Hobbit match Morris's account of his travels in Iceland in the early 1870s in numerous details. Like Bilbo's, Morris's party set off enjoyably into the wild on ponies. He meets a "boisterous" Beorn-like man called "Biorn the boaster" who lives in a hall beside Eyja-fell, and who tells Morris, tapping him on the belly, "... besides, you know you are so fat", just as Beorn pokes Bilbo "most disrespectfully" and compares him to a plump rabbit. Burns notes that Morris was "relatively short, a little rotund, and affectionately called 'Topsy', for his curly mop of hair", all somewhat Hobbit-like characteristics. Further, she writes, "Morris in Iceland often chooses to place himself in a comic light and to exaggerate his own ineptitude", just as Morris's companion, the painter Edward Burne-Jones, gently teased his friend by depicting him as very fat in his Iceland cartoons. Burns suggests that these images "make excellent models" for the Bilbo who runs puffing to the Green Dragon inn or "jogs along behind Gandalf and the dwarves" on his quest. Another definite resemblance is the emphasis on home comforts: Morris enjoyed a pipe, a bath, and "regular, well-cooked meals"; Morris looked as out of place in Iceland as Bilbo did "over the Edge of the Wild"; both are afraid of dark caves; and both grow through their adventures.{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Marjorie |author-link=Marjorie Burns |year=2005 |title=Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth |title-link=Perilous Realms |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-0-8020-3806-7 |pages=86–92}}

In the 20th century, Lord Dunsany wrote fantasy novels and short stories that Tolkien read, without agreeing with Dunsany's irony, skepticism, or the use of dreams to explain fantasy away. Further, Tolkien found Dunsany's creation of names inconsistent and unconvincing; Tolkien wrote that Middle-earth names were "coherent and consistent and made upon two related linguistic formulae [i.e. Quenya and Sindarin], so that they achieve a reality not fully achieved ... by other name-inventors (say Swift or Dunsany!)."{{harvnb|Carpenter|1981|loc=#19 to Stanley Unwin, 16 December 1937}} The fantasy author E. R. Eddison was influenced by Dunsany.{{efn|Eddison was an occasional member of the Inklings literary group, to which Tolkien and Lewis belonged.{{cite web |title=Web Resources |url=http://www.inklings-studies.com/web-resources.html |website=The Journal of Inklings Studies |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131030070635/http://www.inklings-studies.com/web-resources.html |access-date=13 July 2023|archive-date=30 October 2013 }}}}{{cite book |last=Olson |first=Danel |title=21st-Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-8108-7729-0 |page=xv |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fOyVgu1qElAC&pg=PR15 }} His most famous work is the 1922 The Worm Ouroboros.{{sfn|De Camp|1976|pp=116, 132–133}}{{sfn|Moorcock|Miéville|VanderMeer|2004|p=47}} Tolkien had met Eddison and had read The Worm Ouroboros, praising it in print, but commenting in a letter that he disliked Eddison's philosophy, cruelty, and choice of names.{{harvnb|Carpenter|1981|loc=#199 to Caroline Everett, 24 June 1957}}

Tolkien stated that he derived the phrase "crack of doom" from an unnamed story by Algernon Blackwood. Holly Ordway identifies this as his 1909 novel The Education of Uncle Paul, where the children tell him of the "crack between Yesterday and To-morrow", and that "if we're very quick, we can find the crack and slip through... And, once inside there, there's no time, of course... Anything may happen, and everything come true." Ordway comments that this would have attracted Tolkien because of his interest in travelling back in time.{{sfn|Ordway|2021|pp=234–236}}

David Lindsay's 1920 science fiction and fantasy novel A Voyage to Arcturus{{cite book |last=Wolfe |first=Gary K. |author-link=Gary K. Wolfe |year=1985 |chapter=David Lindsay |editor-last=Bleiler |editor-first=E. F. |title=Supernatural Fiction Writers |publisher=Scribner's |isbn=0-684-17808-7 |pages=541–548}} was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy,{{cite news |last=Lindskoog |first=Kathryn |url=http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=882 |title=A Voyage to Arcturus, C. S. Lewis, and The Dark Tower |work=Discovery}} and through him on Tolkien. Tolkien said he read the book "with avidity", finding it "more powerful and more mythical" than Lewis's 1938 Out of the Silent Planet, but less of a story.{{harvnb|Carpenter|1981|loc=#26 to Stanley Unwin, 4 March 1938}} On the other hand, Tolkien did not approve of the framing device that Lindsay had used, namely anti-gravity rays and a crystal torpedo ship; in his unfinished novel The Notion Club Papers, Tolkien makes one of the protagonists, Guildford, criticise those kinds of "contraptions".

File:Phantastes Title Page 1894.jpg|Frontispiece and title page of George MacDonald's 1858 Phantastes, illustrated by John Bell. The novel was one of the first fantasies for adults.

File:The Well at the World's End MET DP322255.jpg|A double-page spread in archaic style{{cite web |title=The Well at the World's End |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/354288 |publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art |access-date=9 July 2023}} in William Morris's 1896 novel The Well at the World's End, illustrated with woodcuts on vellum by his friend Edward Burne-Jones

File:William Morris on Pony in Iceland 1870 cartoon by Edward Burne-Jones.jpg|Bilbo's character and adventures match many details of William Morris's expedition in Iceland. Cartoon of Morris riding a pony by his travelling companion Edward Burne-Jones (1870)

{{further|Tolkien and the modernists}}

File:Hablot Knight Browne - The Pickwick Papers, Sam Weller with his father, Chapter XXXII (cropped).jpg for Charles Dickens' 1837 The Pickwick Papers]]

Charles Dickens' 1837 novel The Pickwick Papers has likewise been shown to have reflections in Tolkien.{{harvnb|Hooker|2006|pp=117–122}} "The Leaf Mold of Tolkien's Mind" Michael Martinez, writing for The Tolkien Society, finds "similar dialogue styles and character qualities" in Dickens and Tolkien, and "moments that elicit the same emotional resonance".{{cite web |last=Martinez |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Martinez (Tolkien scholar) |title=Tolkien's Dickensian Dreams |url=https://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2015/07/tolkiens-dickensian-dreams/ |publisher=The Tolkien Society |access-date=31 March 2023 |date=10 July 2015}} A longer version of the article is [https://atolkienistperspective.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/tolkiens-dickensian-dreams/ Dickens' short story that inspired a Tolkien chapter]. Martinez gives as examples the likeness of the Fellowship of the Ring's group of nine to Pickwick's group of friends, and of Bilbo's speech at his birthday party to Pickwick's first speech to his group.

The scholar of English literature Anna Vaninskaya argues that the form and themes of Tolkien's early writings fit into the romantic tradition of writers like Morris and W. B. Yeats. In terms of politics, she compares Tolkien's mature writings with the romantic Little Englandism and anti-statism of 20th century writers like George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton.{{harvnb|Lee|2020|loc=Anna Vaninskaya, "Modernity: Tolkien and His Contemporaries", pages 350–366}} Postwar literary figures such as Anthony Burgess, Edwin Muir and Philip Toynbee heavily criticized The Lord of the Rings, but others like the novelists Naomi Mitchison and Iris Murdoch respected the work, while the poet W. H. Auden championed it. Later critics have placed Tolkien closer to the modernist tradition with his emphasis on language and temporality, while his pastoral emphasis is shared with First World War poets and the Georgian movement. The Tolkien scholar Claire Buck suggests that if Tolkien was intending to create a new mythology for England, that would fit the tradition of English post-colonial literature and the many novelists and poets who reflected on the state of modern English society and the nature of Englishness. Ordway notes that Tolkien remained interested in Joseph Henry Shorthouse's "strange, long-forgotten" 1881 novel John Inglesant, and suggests that its "moral conflict and competing loyalties" and its "providentially freeing climax consequent upon the exercise of pity" are reflected in "perhaps the key theme" of The Lord of the Rings.{{sfn|Ordway|2021|pp=236–247}}

Thomas Kullmann and Dirk Siepmann state that aspects of Tolkien's prose style and language in The Lord of the Rings are comparable with that of nineteenth and twentieth century novelists, giving multiple examples.{{sfn|Kullmann|Siepmann|2021|pp=92–95, 298, 301}}

• Shakespeare's influence on Tolkien
• Tolkien and the Celtic
• Tolkien and the classical world
• Tolkien and the medieval
• Tolkien and the Norse
• Tolkien's impact on fantasy{{-}}

{{notelist}}

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{{Refbegin}}

• {{cite book |editor-last=Carpenter |editor-first=Humphrey |editor-link=Humphrey Carpenter |year=1981 |title=The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |isbn=978-0-395-31555-2}}
• {{cite book |last=Carpenter |first=Humphrey |author-link=Humphrey Carpenter |title=J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography |year=1978 |orig-date=1977 |publisher=Unwin Paperbacks |isbn=978-0-04928-039-7}}
• {{cite book |last=De Camp |first=Lyon Sprague |author-link=L. Sprague de Camp |title=Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers |publisher=Arkham House |date=1976 |isbn=978-0-87054-076-9}}
• {{cite book |last=Flieger |first=Verlyn |author-link=Verlyn Flieger |title=Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World |title-link=Splintered Light |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans |year=1983 |isbn=0-8028-1955-9 }}
• {{cite book |last=Hooker |first=Mark T. |year=2006 |title=Tolkienian Mathomium: A Collection of Articles on J. R. R. Tolkien and his Legendarium |publisher=Llyfrawr |isbn=978-1-4382-4631-4}}
• {{cite book |last=Hooker |first=Mark T. |year=2011 |editor-last=Fisher |editor-first=Jason |editor-link=Jason Fisher |chapter=Reading John Buchan in Search of Tolkien |title=Tolkien and the Study of his Sources: Critical Essays |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-6482-1 |oclc=731009810}}
• {{cite book |last=Hooker |first=Mark T. |year=2014 |title=The Tolkienaeum: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien and his Legendarium |publisher=Llyfrawr |isbn=978-1-49975-910-5}}
• {{cite book |last1=Kullmann |first1=Thomas |last2=Siepmann |first2=Dirk |title=Tolkien as a Literary Artist |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |publication-place=Cham |year=2021 |isbn=978-3-030-69298-8}}
• {{cite book |editor-last=Lee |editor-first=Stuart D. |editor-link=Stuart D. Lee |title=A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien |date=2020 |orig-date=2014 |publisher=Wiley Blackwell |isbn=978-1-119-65602-9}}
• {{cite book |last=Lobdell |first=Jared C. |author-link=Jared Lobdell |year=2004 |title=The World of the Rings: Language, Religion, and Adventure in Tolkien |publisher=Open Court |isbn=978-0-8126-9569-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/worldofringslang0000lobd }}
• {{cite book |last1=Moorcock |first1=Michael |author1-link=Michael Moorcock |last2=Miéville |first2=China |author2-link=China Miéville |last3=VanderMeer |first3=Jeff |author3-link=Jeff VanderMeer |title=Wizardry & Wild Romance |publisher=MonkeyBrain Books |date=2004-01-01 |isbn=978-1-932265-07-1}}
• {{cite book |last=Ordway |first=Holly |author-link=Holly Ordway |title=Tolkien's Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages |title-link=Tolkien's Modern Reading |date=2021 |publisher=Word on Fire |isbn=978-1-9432-4372-3}}
• {{cite book |last1=Rogers |first1=William N. II |last2=Underwood |first2=Michael R. |editor=Sir George Clark |chapter=Gagool and Gollum: Exemplars of Degeneration in King Solomon's Mines and The Hobbit |title=J. R. R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ES0Hs75IVg0C&pg=PA121 |year=2000 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |location=Westport, Connecticut |isbn=978-0-313-30845-1 |pages=121–132}}
• {{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |title=The Road to Middle-Earth |year=2005 |edition=Third |orig-date=1982 |publisher=Grafton (HarperCollins) |isbn=978-0-261-10275-0}}
• {{ME-ref|TH}}

{{Refend}}

{{The Lord of the Rings}}

{{Middle-earth}}

Category:Influences on J. R. R. Tolkien