V. Tolkien’s ‘Germanic’ Narrative of the Eldar
Last week, we saw that defining the ‘Germanic’ in historical and cultural context is problematic. We have seen that society and culture change through time. However, Tolkien’s secondary-world of Arda is not plagued by these problems.
Unlike the Germanic tribes and confederations, the Eldar are, in fact, a static monolithic entity.[1] Their culture does not change. There are specific and ontological reasons for this that do not apply to our primary-world. Primarily, the Elvish state of being is one of immortality. This means that there is no gradual generational change of society, traditions, and customs: Galadriel was one of the original Noldor who rebelled, Elrond was born out of a Great Tale of the First Age. The Elves not only remember, but have witnessed first-hand their history. This allows their culture to remain static, including their ‘Germanic’ Northern courage. The static warrior ethos provides the conditions to consistently narrate its effects and maintain the aesthetic atmosphere of fatalistic northern literature through unchanging and unifying themes and motifs.
(once again, key words and concepts from Part I or that will recur in future diaries of this series appear in bold and are recapped at the bottom under Keywords.)
In Tolkien, the ‘Germanic’ concept is more defined by the “mood and tenor” of heroic courage found in “northern literature.” That is, Tolkien’s theory of Northern courage “whose central thesis is that even ultimate defeat does not turn right into wrong” (Shippey 2005, 136). In light of this theory of courage, – the framework of the following six diaries of the series suggests that J. R. R. Tolkien’s history of the Eldar is an exemplary, illustrative narrative that clarifies Tolkien’s personal and academic views of what he called the theory of Northern courage.
As an Anglo-Saxonist who studied heroic epic, Tolkien felt that the spirit of the north was the greatest contribution of northern literature to mankind. He wrote to his son Michael “… that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light” (Letters, 56). Tom Shippey comments that Tolkien “… wanted in a way to reintroduce to the world ‘the theory of courage’: not just courage, N. B., nor images of courage, but the ‘theory of courage’, which he had said in his Beowulf lecture of 1936 was the ‘great contribution’ to humanity of the old literature of the North…” (Shippey 2002, 149).
Nevertheless, Tolkien had mixed views on this theory of courage. On the one hand, Tolkien was vocal about what he considered the vices of Northern courage, particularly excessive pride and glory for its own sake (Gallant, Original Sin, previously published Diary I). In his exemplary poem, ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’ and its accompanying essay (TL, 121-150), Tolkien criticizes Beorhtnoth for seeking honour, which was “[H]onor sought at risk of his own men” (ibid., 147) and that Beorhtnoth was “most desirous of glory” and displayed the “Heroism of pride and willfulness” (ibid.). It was a heroism that exalted the wish “for glory or glorious death” (ibid., 150). While the consensus at the time that Tolkien was writing his Legendarium was that, as E.V. Gordon (1963, 24, 30) stated, the Battle of Maldon was the “only purely heroic poem extant in Old English” and that it was “primarily not a poem about battle but a poem of heroism.” Tolkien disagreed with its glorification. In response Tolkien wrote his ‘Homecoming’, and Shippey (2002, 294-95) rightly characterizes the poem as being “ not a celebration of the heroic spirit but a deep critique of it and the rash and irresponsible attitudes it created.” Of these rash and irresponsible attitudes was ofermōd in the sense of ‘overmastering pride’ and lofgeornost ‘most desirous for glory’ (TL, 147), as well as, according to Tom Shippey (2007, 274), its inherent cruelty.
On the other hand, Tolkien was also vocal about what he considered the virtues of Northern courage. He referred to the time of the heroic spirit as a “time of fusion.” Tolkien’s “time of fusion” (a fusion of old and new) is also what this thesis asserts is critical for us to understand in the context of Tolkien’s fiction because “[O]ne of the most potent elements in that fusion is the Northern courage: the theory of courage, which is the greatest contribution of early Northern literature” (ibid.). In other words, the Germanic warrior ethos is, for Tolkien, the crucial element drawn from Germanic heroic poetry (in addition, of course, to the monsters).
The virtues of this code, for Tolkien, was “an ancient and honoured expression of heroic will” (TL, 124): an indomitable will in the face of defeat, where the heroes, “men of old, hæleð under heofenum, remained and still fought on” which created “[T]he shadow of its despair, if only as a mood, as an intense emotion of regret … The worth of defeated valour in this world is deeply felt” (ibid., 22-23). This is the recurring theme of the “sad light of fatalism” (Stanley 2000, 94) of “the long defeat” (FR, II, vii, 372; Letters, 255) and the “despair of the event, combined with faith in the value of doomed resistance” (BMC, 23). Tolkien felt the words spoken at Beorhtnoth’s last stand in The Battle of Maldon summed up the heroic code (TL, 124):
‘Heart shall be bolder, harder be purpose,
more proud the spirit as our power lessens!’ (Tolkien’s translation)
As a comparison, Theoden’s speech shows the same mood and tenor of Northern courage so well, that it could have easily been part of the above alliterative speech from Maldon.
Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
Fell deeds awake, fire and slaughter!
spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!
— RK, V, v,112
For the eye-candy and alliteration...
This is not a contradiction on Tolkien’s part. He did see the heroism in The Battle of Maldon as summing up the heroic code: only not on the part of Beorhtnoth, who sacrificed his men for the sake of personal glory. Rather, the exemplary heroism was demonstrated by his comitatus, in whose situation the heroism was “superb” (TL, 147). Tolkien refers to these two sides of Northern courage, as he saw them, metaphorically as an “alloy”:
For this ‘northern heroic spirit is never quite pure; it is of gold and an alloy. Unalloyed it would direct a man to endure even death unflinching, when necessary: that is when death may help the achievement of some object of will, or when life can only be purchased by denial of what one stands for. But since such conduct is held admirable, the alloy of personal good name was never wholly absent… Yet this element of pride, in the form of the desire for honour and glory, in life and after death, tends to grow, to become a chief motive, driving a man beyond the bleak heroic necessity to excess – to chivalry. (TL, 144)
These two sides, or the two components that make up the alloy, of the Germanic warrior ethos become evident in the narrative discourse of the history of the Eldar. Tolkien shows us both the virtues and the vices through a Musterbeispiel of the House of Fëanor and the House of Fingolfin where Fëanor is a sort of Erzeihungscharakter who embodies and shows us the vices of Northern courage and the Fingolfians embody its virtues (Gallant, ‘Wyrdwrīteras’, forthcoming in Diary III).
Shippey writes that “… a major goal of The Lord of the Rings was to dramatize that ‘theory of courage’ …” (Shippey 2005, 177). This same goal is evident in the Silmarillion and the Great Tales through the Fingolfian virtues and Fëanorian vices and perhaps to even a greater extent than The Lord of the Rings. The dramatization of Northern courage, the Germanic narrative, is furthermore set within the framework of an intradiegetic historical narrative which is told by secondary world narrators to a secondary world audience with their own inherently biased points of view. Indeed, the narrative of the Eldar is a history as well as a story. Christopher Tolkien in his forward to The War of the Jewels, wrote
But we come now to the epoch of the Elder Days, when the scene shifts to Middle-earth and the mythical element recedes: the High-elves return across the Great Sea to make war upon Morgoth, Dwarves and Men come over the mountains into Beleriand, and bound up with this history of the movement of peoples, of the policies of kingdoms, of momentous battles and ruinous defeats, are the heroic tales of Beren One-hand and Túrin Turambar. (Jewels, viii, bold mine)
In other words, a great migration period — a Heroic Age (Gallant, Noldorization, forthcoming in Diary IV). And this is the point at which we begin our examination of the Germanic narrative structure. This is a history of a fictional world yet the level of detail, the inter-textuality, the depth, and verisimilitude lend such an aura of authenticity that it may be examined as one would examine our own history. History and Northern courage are intertwined within the narrative. Tolkien, corresponding to Amy Ronald in 1956 (while speaking in the context of Frodo as a hero and his Catholicism) wrote a more general statement which may apply here. He wrote “… I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’…” (Letters, 255) which is precisely the arc of the Eldar’s narrative. It takes Northern courage to face the ‘long defeat’ – to face history.
Jan de Vries (1963, 252) notes that the theme of defeat is a significant one and he illustrates the choice of this theme with the examples of two poems meant to urge armies on to victory: the Song of Roland (which we consider forthcoming in Diary VI) and Bjarkamál. “A strange choice one would think,” de Vries writes, “yet on closer inspection the choice is understandable. The pathos of courage, contempt of death, and self-sacrifice is nowhere praised more gloriously than precisely these two poems about defeat” (ibid.). Tolkien’s history of the Eldar is one such narrative of defeat, praised gloriously within the framework of Northern courage.
What this is showing us is the exemplary nature of Tolkien’s history of the Elves. While it is well known that Tolkien was not fond of allegory, he did believe that there was no better teaching mechanism than a “good fairy-story” (Gawain, 73). Tolkien does this through the medieval technique of the exemplum, an illustrative narrative that Tony Davenport (2004, 11) defined as
The exposition of a theme by means of a tale is the medieval idea of narrative associated with the tradition of exemplum, an illustrative example in the form of a short story used to confirm a moral point. It is the idea of narrative which accounts for a large proportion of medieval tales.
We are pointing out, of course, the exemplum tradition in Tolkien’s narrative and not any particular “exemplum” for the very reason that most medieval exempla were very short with one of the longest, The Tale of Constance, exceeding only 1000 lines (ibid. 64). Furthermore, exempla are most often thought of as emblematic of the later medieval period (1300-1400). Nonetheless, there are other instances of early exempla in Old English literature, other than the translation of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy) attributed to King Alfred (Gallant, Authority, forthcoming in Diary II). For example, Bede’s account (Historia, II, xiii, 287) of the conversion of King Edwin and his comitatus where the pagan priest Coifi desecrates his own altars after hearing the story of the sparrow in the hall
“Marry,” replied he, “I will. For who now to the good example of all men can better than I myself, by the wisdom given me by the true God, destroy those things which I have myself worshipped by foolishness?”[2]
Whereas Tolkien’s Legendarium is of course, very long, we may still think of the history of the Elves – The Silmarillion and the ‘Great Tales’ – as a sort of Gesta Romanorum (The Deeds of the Romans) — a compilation of assembled stories in which, to paraphrase Davenport, the stories purport to be tales of the classical and distant past, with the deeds of the Eldar moralized (ibid., 59). We may even go so far as to think of Tolkien’s Legendarium as Gesta Noldoraria.
The function of illustrative narrative is to teach various morals through its themes of particular norms and values of a given society. Larry Scanlon (Scanlon 1994, 34, my bold) offers a second and more detailed definition of exemplum
In its narrative the exemplum reenacts the actual, historical embodiment of communal value in a protagonist or an event, and then, in its moral, effects the value’s reemergence with the obligatory force of moral law. For the purpose of this study, I offer a new definition: an exemplum is a narrative enactment of cultural authority … [which] can either be ideological or more directly historical.
The cultural authority becomes clearer when we view the history of the Elves on an intradiegetic level. That is, a secondary world text written by secondary world chroniclers for a secondary world audience. It is at this intradiegetic level that the history is both a lament and a warning against the excesses of overmastering pride and obsessive possessiveness. The Elvish chroniclers are, parallel to Tolkien’s academic writings and correspondence, teaching the vices and virtues within the theory of Northern courage, the Germanic warrior ethos (the ideology), by the examples of the protagonists in the stories (the history). Particularly that of Fëanor and his sons and followers, who act ad malum exemplum of Northern courage whereas other characters, such as Fingolfin and Galadriel in this work, are individually juxtaposed to Fëanor ad bonum exemplum. Fëanor and Galadriel are pivotal characters who provide, through their actions, a beginning and an end to the Germanic narrative of the Eldar.
Because the Germanic tradition is tragic and must end in demise, Tolkien uses what he coined as “eucatastrophe” to upend the Germanic tradition and introduce hope to the Elvish history. The narrative of the Eldar and the long defeat is told in the exemplary tradition until Galadriel successfully resists the temptation of the One Ring through a very un-Germanic means (Gallant, Galadriel, forthcoming in Diary V). Galadriel’s eucatastrophe marks an end to the heroism of Northern courage and the Germanic narrative.
This leaves a sort of absence of heroic ethos, which now structurally needs to be replaced in the narrative and in so doing, it changes the nature of the narrative. Once again, the exemplary tradition shows up in The Lord of the Rings with Aragorn as the protagonist who functions ad bonum exemplum of a new heroic ethos and represents the virtues of Northern courage that Tolkien espoused, minus the vices. It is a new ethos that moves from the ‘Germanic’ to something that in this context I call ‘proto-chivalry’ (Gallant, Elessar, forthcoming in Diary VI). Shippey notes that Tolkien
...[I]n his creative work … needed a new image for ultimate bravery, one which would have some meaning and some hope of emulation for the modern and un- or anti-heroic world. (Shippey 2002, 151)
Aragorn, his bonum exemplum, and his new ethos provides that very image of ultimate bravery to be emulated. As Galadriel’s eucatastrophe marks an end to Germanic heroism, Aragorn replaces this ethos with one that renews Germanic virtues and fuses them with new found hope rather than despair. The result of this exemplary narrative is a heroism based on “love and obedience” rather than pride and wilfullness.
I would like to address one final note. This work is not only intended to contribute to the field of Tolkien studies with solely an audience of scholars. It is also intended to reach the audience of the casual Tolkien reader, who may be interested in the stories as they are published but who have not delved into the History of Middle-earth series, Unfinished Tales, Tolkien’s letters and other external notes and material, although that approach is highly recommended. Therefore, I try to limit my argument to the stories as published in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and the recently published ‘Great Tales’. This is not always possible as many of the points made here necessarily refer to materials outside of the story-texts. Nevertheless, I have tried to position my argument within the stories as much as possible.
Until next time…
Keywords
exemplum, ethos, pathos, fusion, ontology, mood, tenor, theme, motif, Heroic Age, Northern courage
Notes
[1] One may argue that there are cultural differences between the three branches of Elves, but those differences do not change the fact that they are static, cultural entities.
[2] “Ego. Quis enim ea quae per stultitiam colui, nune ad exemplum omnium aptius quam ipse per sapientiam mihi a Deo vero donatam destruam?”
Citations
Bede. 1930. Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. Translated by J. E. King. Edited by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Davenport, Tony. 2004. Medieval Narrative: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gallant, Richard Z. 2014. "Original Sin in Heorot and Valinor." Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 11: 109 - 129.
— 2019. "The Dance of Authority in Arda: Wyrd, Fate and Providence in the Elder Days of Middle-earth." (paper presented at the 16th Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft Konferenz “Power and Authority in Tolkien’s Work”, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany, October 11, 2019).
— 2020. "The ‘Wyrdwrīteras’ of Elvish History: Northern Courage, Historical Bias, and Literary Artifact as Illustrative Narrative." Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoetic Literature 38 (2 (#136)): 25-44. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol38/iss2/2.
— 2020. "Elessar Telcontar Magnus, Rex Pater Gondor, Restitutor Imperii." Journal of Tolkien Research 9 (2). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol9/iss2/1.
— 2020. "Galadriel and Wyrd: Interlace, Exempla and the Passing of Northern Courage in the History of the Eldar." Journal of Tolkien Research 10 (2). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol10/iss2/5.
— 2021. "The Noldorization of the Edain: The Roman-Germani Paradigm for Tolkien’s Noldor and Edain in Tolkien’s Migration Era." In Tolkien and the Classical World, edited by Hamish Williams, In Cormarë Series 43, 305-327. Zurich: Walking Tree Publishers.
Gordon, E. V., ed. 1963. The Battle of Maldon. London: Methuen & Co. LTD. Original edition, 1937.
Scanlon, Larry. 1994. Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shippey, Tom. 2002. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
— 2005. The Road to Middle-Earth: Revised Edition. London: Harper Collins. 1982.
— 2007. "Heroes and Heroism: Tolkien’s Problems, Tolkien’s Solutions." In Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien, edited by Thomas Honegger, In Cormarë Series, 267-283. Zollikofen: Walking Tree Publishers.
Stanley, Eric Gerald 2000. Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism and Anglo-Saxon Trial by Jury. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1965. The Fellowship of the Ring. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
— 1965. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
— 2001. "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son." In Tree and Leaf, 121-150. London: Harper Collins.
— 2002. The War of the Jewels. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. 12 vols. Vol. 11. Vol. 3 The History of Middle-Earth. London: Harper Collins. Reprint, 2002. 1994.
— 2006. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 5-48. London: Harper Collins. Original edition, 1983.
— 2006. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 72-108. London: Harper Collins.
— 2006. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. edited by Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien. London: Harper Collins. 1981.
de Vries, Jan. 1963. Heroic Song and Heroic Legend. Translated by B.J. Timmer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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