(urth) Allegory

[Craig Brewer]

I think it's important to remember that Tolkien was a scholar of ancient languages who also had to spend plenty of time teaching medieval literature. Apparently, his colleagues say that his reaction to "allegory" was specifically targeted against the strain of _Piers Plowman_/_Confessio Amantis_ brand that was part of his teaching duties and which he was of course familiar with. (I'm getting this from my memory of _The Inklings_ and other stuff from his letters.)

To the point: what bothered him about allegory was what it did to mythology and romance in the middle ages, such as removing it from its original context and placing a veneer of teaching or instruction over it. But Tolkien himself was not averse to literature-with-an-overt "message," if that's what we mean by allegory. The Eddas, Beowulf, even the Bible, all of which he loved for their mythic status, are generally "allegorical" but not allegorical in the same way that _The Romance of the Rose_ or _The Pearl_ is allegorical. They model a way of living, a mindset, an idealized culture, etc., but they aren't allegorical in the reductive way that _Pilgrim's Progress_ has walking personifications and where meanings can be decoded in a this-means-that relationship.

They also aren't topically allegorical, and of course Tolkien hated the idea that LotR was sometimes received as a big anti-Germany "allegory." I think Tolkien was fine with the general idea that his books could be thought of as contributing to thinking about certain situations like that -- after all, what use is myth if it doesn't try to define our outlook? But he resisted the idea that his books were allegory if that meant that you say "Sauron is Hitler" and walk away thinking you solved the puzzle.

Relation to Wolfe? I've always put New Sun in the same category as Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, which is a very non-reductive allegory that uses its symbols to create interesting ambiguities rather than just reduce an icon to a static meaning. New Sun's imagery often works the same way for me.




----- Original Message ----
From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Sat, June 5, 2010 9:14:12 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) traveling north

On 6/5/2010 7:34 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
> He'd whine loudly.

In the interview he said he disliked allegory wherever he smelled it. But that didn't stop him from producing some, however unintentionally.

-- Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >
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