Latest / Mythmakers / Twenty-First Century Tolkien: Prof Nick Groom and What Tolkien Means to Us Today—Part 1

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Twenty-First Century Tolkien: Prof Nick Groom and What Tolkien Means to Us Today—Part 1 · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and
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today I am delighted to say that we are joined by Professor Nick Grum. Now amongst the
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many things that Nick has done and we will be touching on some of them is he is the author
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of the newly published and updated 21st century talking what Middle-earth means to us today
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and that is going to be the centre of what we are talking about. But Nick you are actually
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talking to us from Macau because you are at the university there. Do you want to tell us
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a little bit about yourself and how you ended up on the opposite side of the world to talking?
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Yes, sure. I am delighted to be here Julia so thank you so much for inviting me to join you.
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So I started my career at Oxford University where I studied 18th century literature with Professor
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Roger London's Tale. In those days this was in 1980s, early 1990s. Tolkien was pretty much ignored
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by Oxford. So any sort of hope that I had of studying him there were very soon dashed.
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In fact there were no walking tours. There weren't any special areas of bookstores devoted to him
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and one day when I was a graduate student I noticed at the Oxford shop on the
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oncent jails were actually selling Tolkien letters. Sadly I had so little money.
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I couldn't afford to buy any but somebody had clearly sorted out their finding cabinet and
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then just dumps these papers in the Oxford shop. So it was just some regrets about that but as
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I say I had so little money at the time it was impossible. Could I just interject there? There is
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a connection. I don't know if you know this between Tolkien and the founding of Oxfam.
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I didn't know that, no. Which is that his daughter Priscilla was one of the very first
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collectors for Oxfam during the war when they were collecting for relief of the Greek famine.
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Interesting. He helped establish it and one of the very first people to give a sizeable donation
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was CS Lewis. He gave something like a huge amount for the time, like £500 or something.
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So yeah that was very fitting that they were then selling his taxes.
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I wish I could have donated donation myself to a crime and it just wasn't possible at the time.
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So I then moved from Oxford to a teacher at the University of Exeter
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and any hopes of teaching Tolkien were also dashed to the junior lecturer. I worked at Bristol
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and also in Stanford and Chicago. In fact it was just as I was finishing at Bristol and
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bliss before I returned back to Exeter that I thought well I'm just seeing here enough I might as
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well just give it a go see if I can teach Lord of the Rings just at the end of a course on English
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identities and I was delighted for two reasons first of all that the students were very responsive
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and that's clearly what they wanted to be studying and secondly that's the book wasn't a
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disappointment having taught a whole variety of not just modern fiction 18th century poetry
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Shakespeare but I certainly saw that it would stand up to serious critical scrutiny.
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So then when I returned to Exeter I started developing a course devoted to Tolkien using Tolkien as a
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way to introduce the students to Anglo-Saxon and Middle English writings and I taught that for a few
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years and then I began to realise that more and more students were coming to that having seen the
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movies first and rather than say that this was wrong I thought this is actually inevitable
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so I developed the the course so it then included a number of adaptations as well and that's the
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course that I'm actually now teaching in Macau so I moved to Macau in 2020 partly because I wanted
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to change but always been interested in international students and also I've wanted to give myself
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some challenges really and also my children the opportunity to see the world from different perspectives
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so I also found coming here that's the students were just as keen to study Tolkien as they were
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back in Britain so I have been teaching the course on in fact tomorrow I'll be teaching
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the Battle of Molden and then the homecoming after that so we do follow the same sort of pattern
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looking at the Tolkien's influences and some of his other critical and creative work before we
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move on to the Lord of the Rings and then the the various adaptations of it so just that we got a
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non-specialist audience listening so the Battle of Molden is an Anglo-Saxon poem and the homecoming
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of how do you say that beyond North? I think it's so Bayothnoth, Bayothnoth is a drama short drama which
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Tolkien wrote which is like a spin-off. He's adaptation of the Battle of Molden
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so that that's absolutely fascinating so I noticed you said you moved in 2020 and I
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wrong in thinking you were butting up against Covid when you made it? Yeah we're
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within two weeks Covid had followed me here and indeed was spreading around the world so
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wasn't the happiest of times but we made it. Tough, tough beginning so your book charts the writing
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of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings with a sort of academic interest to start with I would say
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that if you want to gen up on a kind of modern way of looking at the writing and reception and
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possible interpretation of the books this is a great paperback to buy but you also then go on
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to do what lots of people really want to read about which is have a serious attention to the various
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adaptations so we're going to start first of all with the material which is the kind of thing that
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you wanted to do at university and were not allowed but are now doing and that is looking at
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how the context of the composition of these novels and where they fit amongst other 20th century
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books at the same time how that's enriched your understanding. I just wanted to particularly
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start this by your wonderful jaw dropping moment, a bit of a mic drop moment where you talk about
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how when you reach the appendices in return of the king if you're following him and you're sticking
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with it you suddenly find out that actually Tolkien admits to having translated his story from
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western common speech English so the shire is not really the shire but Sousa and Sam short for
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Samwise from the Anglo-Saxon is not really Sam but Bann Bann is here all words based on the ancient
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Gothic language and you're making the argument here that you've got a suddenly you're chucked out
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of a familiar world into this unfamiliar and you call it the Miz on Ambeam the idea of suddenly
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you're dropping through a world into the abyss which was great I'd forgotten well forgotten but not
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really thought about it in what a rude shock that is when you read that so what you found by treating
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Lord the Rings as a serious literary work what kind of sides have it has it made you think about the
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book where it sits within 20th century literature well that's a very interesting question because of
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course the tradition of Tolkien criticism and scholarship has really been led by those working
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on early literature on such as Anglo-Saxon medieval period as a way of hunting for Tolkien's
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sources and showing how inventively and creatively he adapted materials and also as a gateway to
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introduce readers to that early period of literature so in that sense the Tolkien's a bit of a
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godsend for medievalists because it encouraged his priest to return to that period but I really
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felt that Tolkien is a stylist as a creative writer had been overlooked because what those studies
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do I tend to take him out of the 20th century and put him into a rather sort of separate or unique
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or an individual category and so he's not treated as part of the literary history of the 20th
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century in fact when you this is changing it's been changing over the past few years but certainly
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when I was studying in first teaching 20th century literature there'd be a focus on what
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we call the modernists and many many writers who you might be familiar with were excluded
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from that these would be an emphasis on you know Elliott Joyce Wolf maybe the D.H. Lawrence
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comes from Contraversial because these days lately perhaps William Golding but you know university
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courses haven't been very good at including not only Tolkien but also writers like George
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Orwell for example who are you know similarly internationally well known so I really wanted to
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see how Tolkien might fit into that literary history but not just through whether he's using
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the same sorts of devices playing the same sorts of language games can he be treated alongside
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somebody like James Joyce but really to delve further into you know the way he writes and his
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in a particular strengths as a writer I really believe in the value of literature and I think
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that's something that for many critics this is sort of something which is seen as I don't know
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being unfashionable or ideological or whatever but I think we have to be able to as critics
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have you know sort of the good to come into our convictions and say when we think a writer
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is good and why they are particularly good and I thought well I must you know take this to Tolkien
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and sort of try to argue that Tolkien is as good a writer as his contemporaries although he may
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be using different techniques have a very different perspective on things so I really wanted to
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think about those elements also Tolkien's readers get very
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is possessive the right word they certainly do very I think it is that Tolkien is a little bit
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talking belongs to them and this does sentimentalize his writing and there's a strong
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identification with the with many of the characters but also when I was rereading it I realized
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not only what a dark book it is but also how it's full of failure and uncertainty and ambiguity
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one of the things that interests me is that Tolkien is described as a world builder
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now of course he has his fantastic linguistic foundation Fuban Lerth he produced maps which
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Christopher to talk in his son then drew he has things like the family trees the genealogies
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even heraldry he was artist as well so there's a big emphasis on how Tolkien creates this
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sort of really sort of thickly woven watertight world but it's not it's full of loose ends and it's
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full of unexplained contradictions because that's what our world is like we don't explain everything
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we don't have answers for every experience or phenomenon or episode and I think to Tolkien
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from a few writers to actually recognize and identify and express that he's really really good
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at presenting loose ends but in a way that you don't necessarily notice system so an obvious
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example is Tom Bompadou who simply does not fit in the story I mean he is from another world the
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ring has no effect on him he's not interested in it you know that lovely line when
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Frodo says well why didn't we leave the ring with Tom Bompadou and Gandalf says well he just
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lose it he's got no interest in these things independently and Tolkien did say that you know
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Bompadou does not fit he's an inexplicable element of the world he was writing about Tom Bompadou
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before he wrote Lord of the Rings and he continued to write about Tom Bompadou later Lord of the Rings
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but not in a way that really enhances our understanding of Lord of the Rings except to demonstrate
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that when only getting a partial view of this world we only get a partial view of Middle Earth we're
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not seeing it a whole of Middle Earth a more I think subtle example would be the fox that sees
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Frodo and Sam as they're leaving the Shire and all of a sudden you're in the mind of this fox
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who's thinking isn't it strange that these hobbits are out at this time of night and then talking
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to says well why they were out the fox never learnt and so we suddenly realized that sort of foxes
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are sentient they're having their own experiences they're looking at the world in a particular sort
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of a foxy way and so you get a perspective on things that doesn't explain the story
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but it deepens it by showing us there are things that we're not understanding and there are
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things that aren't being explained I think a third of them so hold that I was just going to come in
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at the fox here so I come at it from the point of view of a novelist that's what I do my profession
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and I've been doing a side cast going through Lord of the Rings looking at it
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like you're looking at the back of a tapestry trying to sort of see the joins and the fox episodes
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when you put it alongside the framing device which he settles on towards the end that these are
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the accounts of Frodo and Bilbo and their friends so the idea is that the reason you get the
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multiple points of view and dipping into different people's heads in different moments is because
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they've gathered it all together like a kind of group chat about what happens the thing that
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doesn't quite fit is the fox because this is a friend you know but I think it is showing the
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working of it having started as a children's story so those kind of quirky elements were much
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more at home in the Hobbit yeah they were in the sort of mature Lord of the Rings material
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so I like that framing device is quite radical as well because it does mean that you don't it's not
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even a it's not a universal narrator no no not the dick in style narrative sits above or
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Tolstoy or somebody it's not that it's uh it's always at the point of view of a character but
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someone has um woven the stories together and you and the the play is that you imagine it being
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Frodo in his few years after the end of the adventure before he goes off to the undying lands and then
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Sam so that again going to your literary techniques is a very interesting set of
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narratorial ambiguities shifting focuses which is much more of a modern novel
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modern 20th century novel and practice it is I think you see a lot in Virginia wolf for
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example the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway because we're very frequently given being given those
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perspectives of different characters sometimes it's made clear so I talk about Gimli and Legolas
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in the book that Gimli has what I call a Dwarro centric perspective in which he's thinking about
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is usually the topography of rocks and stone and so forth as a way not only of comprehending
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the world but in terms of defining beauty and and value whereas of course Legolas is
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perception is alvo centric it's the elf view of the world and is much more related to trees
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and to nature and so forth and that's why they can't really see as the other seas they they
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can't appreciate so they try to but they can't appreciate the beauty Legolas can't appreciate
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grottoes and Gimli is right and being in the forest so Tolkien makes that quite clear in that case
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it's clearly self-conscious and aware of it but it also happens in other instances as well
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I think where many times we're not being sort of we're not aware that we're seeing things from
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a character's point of view I think that's really important again another example where we tree
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beard we tree beard talks about nobody cares about the trees he gives the view from the forest
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there's a lovely interview on YouTube where Tolkien says that he'd like to have a chat with the
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tree to see what the tree really thinks about things so you know again he's he's he's aware of that
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one of the more interesting elements of of this is when arrogant is talking about the black
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ridges the rain rays and he says you know they have different senses to us they don't see things
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in the same way they have different senses and so they are experiencing the world in a different
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way than the hobbits or arrogant might so I think that it's a very it's not just a sort of a
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modern it's a very sort of contemporary for the 21st century you're thinking about these alternative
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view points and really trying to show that the human perspective is only one among many it's
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clearly only one among many in in middle earth because there are a number of intelligent species
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and I call them species I'm not going to call them races because I don't think you can say that
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elves and humans are simply different races that's like saying that sort of vampires
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ghosts and humans are different races you know elves are immortal elves will walk across snow
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elves can sleep while they're while they're journeying so they are clearly different species
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to humans I think even within those species there are many different races there are
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clearly many races as the humans in the Lord of the Rings there are different races of elves
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legular series of animals says that the hole in elves are a strange race they're sort of
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unfamiliar to the silver and elves and we end up with this multiplicity a very diverse
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range of perspectives which I think is really exciting and I think we are undervaluing
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talking if we're not really appreciating and enjoying those different perspectives and seeing
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that's yes it is rather rather what is why making the human perspective just
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relicable it's one among many per human read pop it I think that you mentioned rightly the
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amount of poetry and I think the poetry connects to this because some of that poetry
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gives access to the world views of the culture from which they come so Gimli expresses his
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duarocentric view in a number of ways but one of them of course is singing the wonderful song
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of chanting the song in in Moria about the great kingdom of the past and the elves of course
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sing in Elvish and then there's a translation of it which connects with the one sort of extended
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passage of legolas in the first in fellowship of the ring is when he's talking about
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passing of time how it's like ripples on the stream so there is an accessory the poetry as well
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these world views which is I can't think of an up and novel that does that no and I think I
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think you're absolutely right and it's interesting that Wayne Gimli sings his song of course it
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touches Sam's heart the Sam is quite a poetic or poetical character unexpectedly and so there
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are ways in which the different species can communicate through poetry and song because it's
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also worth bearing in mind that there aren't many novels that have so much poetry in them
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and in terms of book sales I mean talking by far and why you did best selling poetry of the 20th
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century but people don't really seem in those terms I might now that the three volume edition
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of the poetry has been has been edited and published but he does show himself to be experimenting
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in a range of different sorts of poetic styles which is again invigorating I think it's wonderful
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to have this novel that contains so many different ways of writing from the mundane frivolity
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of Hobbitan to these you know almost biblical or apocalyptic battle scenes which seem to be guided
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by the hand of fate in the in the third volume so I think he does show himself to have this
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facility for this range of different voices so we could go on talking about Lord of the Rings
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I didn't you know there's so much to cover here but I would really highly recommend people going
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to buy the book and read these arguments at greater length and also in much depth because you really
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do take a serious look respectful look at Lord of the Rings and it doesn't when you look at your
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favorite book you sometimes worry am I gonna go off this if I and you'll find new things to love
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in it I'm sure but the sort of second half of your book if I think it's about the second half
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is looking at adaptations now first of all you make the very good point that we shouldn't treat
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adaptations of Tolkien as if someone's attacking the source material we should treat it like
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adaptations of Hamlet or Macbeth where suddenly it's a Japanese no drama or something that's
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absolutely fine it's let people play with the this material so let's start with that which is
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good introduction to the extraordinary film that was never made by John Bournemann and you go into
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some depth of the treatment here which I had never read about I knew it happened but I'd never
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actually sat down and thought what kind of film would he have come up with can you tell us a little
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bit about this treatment how it almost got made and then what it would have been like as a film
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to watch yeah sure but I'm just preface what I'm saying by with the two important points first of all
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that the first radio version of the Fellowship of the Ring was actually broadcast before
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Tolkien had published the Return of the King so he was fully alive to adaptation you know so
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he wanted to have the works adapted even though he roundly criticises the various versions
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he nevertheless was keen to get it out to a different sort of audience and this is I think reflected
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in the film rights that when he finally sells them and I'd make the argument the I think that
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this is true that he actually has to sell them to pay a tax bill because this is when the Lord
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of the Rings has finally been published as a paperback and it originally came out as a paperback
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in the US in a in a pirated edition and then there was a campaign to have you know the official
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version said Tolkien would get paid and then he gets paid too much I think it's tax bill and one
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of the things he does is to sell the film rights and he's been discussing the film rights since
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since the late 1950s and there are various treatments sent to him which he poo pooes and
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there comes a point however when he doesn't really have a choice he does have to sell the film rights
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but when he does sell them he has a clause allowing any sort of reworking or adaptation
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so there's no stipulation that it has to remain faithful to the text in fact he said he'd sell
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the film rights either for art or cash so he wanted to have something that was going to be
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high art or it was going to just allow the family to to reap the benefits because in fact
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they still get a royalty point this is also very unusual in movie contracts that the Tolkienist
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state still has a financial interest in any adaptation but Tolkien allowed changes to be made
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I think that's really important thing to emphasize so among the when the when the when the rights
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were acquired one of the filmmakers who's approached is John Baldwin and he's well-known these days
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for films such as Deliverance but what's interesting about him is first of all he was absolutely
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fanatical about adapting Lord of the Rings he was extremely keen to do so he went and took his
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co-writer to a cottage in Ireland and they took several copies of the book and cut the pages out
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and papered the walls with pages so they're literally living inside the book and he you know
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eating drinking breathing middle earth during this period but then the adaptation he comes up with
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is very very unusual and I was lucky enough to get a site of the script under a cup of essays
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about it which are extremely critical because of the the radical changes that that were being
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proposed but what's interesting is it's a it's a detailed script it's very visually effective
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so if you read the script you can actually see the film playing it would have been a short adaptation
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would have just been for one movie so he's going to have to make massive cuts and he actually
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wanted to have Tolkien appear at the beginning almost like a Bilbo character introducing this particular
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work but then it's a very adult film and so for example the scene between Frodo and Glandriel
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which Tolkien has a very slight hint that there's a romantic interest there because the
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mirror of Glandriel's scene takes place on 14th of February that Valentine's Day
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now Tolkien clearly makes a decision to have it on that particular day and if you look at the
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chronology in the appendices that you do get those specific dates and it's significant that the
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company of the Ring leave Rivendell on the 25th of December that the ring is destroyed on the 25th
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of March which was originally New Year's Day in in Britain because it's connected it's
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90 months before before Christmas which incidentally is why we have the taxi that we currently do
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when the calendar is changed and the the banks who wanted to have a 12 month taxi here
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anyway so those sort of hints are there but in the in the Bournemouth film there is actually a
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sex scene between Frodo and Glandriel which is actually reads very musically in the script because
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all of the other characters are jealous I guess if they're taught to have this sort of fantasy
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so he's presenting the characters in in in in these very different ways there's also a scene where
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Gimli has to have the the password of Moria literally beaten out of him it's an ancestral memory
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so they they basically sort of hit him around the head until he sort of had this sort of
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primal moment where he remembers what the password is now I'm suggesting some of these things
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are quite quite frivolous but in fact it does build into what I think is a serious version
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with the film that has great sort of energy and and imagination but also has some very I think
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quite disturbing elements as well the figure of Sarah Manard particularly nasty in the sinister
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and he he ends up being the mouth of Sauron so that's relationship is that's one of the ways in which
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I think Bournem is very good at concisely linking Tolkien's various plots and he also survives at
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the end and there seems to be some strange rather sort of like brutal way he's dealing with the
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other characters the Hobbit source sort of drift away at the end Hippin has been dressed as a
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jester in bloodstained robes by by Denathor suggesting that the previous jester had been murdered
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and he becomes sort of quite a a felon character Sam and and Frodo disappear into the shower and
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about that we're left with at the end are Legolas and Gimli who don't really know where to go
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and they end up walking to the to the seashore and standing on the beach and saying well this
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liminal place this place between the land and sea is as good a place to any to be so I think
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that sort of Bournemon he was trying to find the themes those themes of alienation exile loneliness
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failure despair also the themes of violence and also the romantic themes that run through it
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and really gives them a different twist now the film was never made but the film that he then made
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was Excalibur and he's using similar ideas I think if it had been made it would have looked a lot
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like Excalibur looks which is this what I call romantic realism you get these nights in this
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sort of amazing armour made by Terry English and they quickly realised that this was real armour
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they could use real weapons and they could really hiss each other but the weapons they're using
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are so huge and heavy that they're sort of staggering about under the weight of their arms and
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armour and also under the weight of history and myth and so they can sort of barely they can barely
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function I would I think that if the Bournemon Lord of the Rings would have been made it would have
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been much more it would have used those that the imagery the styling of Excalibur and it would
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have been I think a visual treat that's what is being a thought provoking adaptation of the plot
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yeah if anyone says this is getting really angry about elements of that I think it's worth
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pointing out that it's it tells us a lot about the point at which it is invented so was this
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dreamt up in the late the early 70s yes the early 70s and he was a he was a radical sort of bad
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boy of the film world yeah so yeah but I'm interested you should say to people get angry and of
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course that that's one of the points which I'm trying to make in the book it's the idea that
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people do feel that they own talking they only own a certain they own a version of him there's a
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Tolkien who wrote two Middle-Earth novels in his lifetime although one of them doesn't mention
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Middle-Earth the hobby doesn't mention Middle-Earth it's a Middle-Earth novel because of what comes
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after it there's so that's all he publishes apart from a few interviews and so forth
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people are fascinated by his letters but of course the letters were only sent out to individuals
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and weren't published until the early 1980s but you certainly find that's talking fans but for
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whom I've got a huge amount of respect and remember the Tolkien society well quote things about
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the character golden for example but that only turns up in the letter that Tolkien is writing
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I think to Pauline Baines and then you know from the time of the Silmarillion you've got this
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sort of huge sort of publishing industry of the Silmarillion unfinished tales the history of Middle-Earth
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and a number of subsequent volumes that add a great deal to Middle-Earth but do they add anything
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to your literary appreciation of the Lord of the Rings I don't know and they certainly show you
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how the Lord of the Rings was put was put together but I think that in terms of
35:28
understanding and trying to enjoy these different adaptations we have to be through the card
35:36
open-minded about it now the BBC radio adaptation of the Lord of the Rings is generally
35:42
celebrated yeah of course I think that the work that Brian Sibley and Michael Bakewell did on
35:51
that is a superb yeah very very effective radio adaptation but that takes liberties
36:00
you know from the very beginning it begins with golden being tortured which was an idea that
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they discussed with Christopher Tolkien and of course Tom Bombardil doesn't appear he appears in
36:12
very very few adaptations and there are some sort of striking moments where I think Michael Bakewell
36:20
has re-ristened various passages so it does fit as a radio drama but it's if you try to read along
36:30
with the book it's not going to work at all so I think you just have to accept that going
36:37
into a different medium is going to be a different experience and what you want to do you want
36:42
to stir people you want to stimulate them that might mean provoking them to thinking about the
36:48
book by having a radical interpretation I think it's good that people feel strongly but they need
36:56
to perhaps analyse those feelings and see them as positive rather than dismissing the adaptations
37:04
because whether we like it or not the adaptations are here to stay yeah and I think it may have been
37:09
tough to have that as the first adaptation of Lord of the Rings out there on film but just like
37:16
you're saying we were talking at the beginning about you know Macbeth done by a Japanese company
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or a Russian company is going to be completely different from one done by the RSC so you have to
37:29
not worry about the source material being damaged it's still there it's still going to be there
37:35
still there and I hope that when people if people is you know encouraged to go and read the
37:42
books after seeing the film or to reread the books they will have a much greater appreciation
37:48
of the books because they'll be able to sort of see see around them in different ways and then
37:53
you know but part of the the whole font the enjoyment of literary criticism is to have your
37:59
ideas about character structure plot themes to challenge and to think about characters in different
38:05
ways I'm going to sort of see whether they can be reinsert for it I wanted to add a level of uncertainty
38:11
to the book to a book which many people seem to think is a very definite book about good
38:16
verses even I don't think it is at all I think that there are huge questions about you know many
38:22
of the characters and and their actions their attitudes but that makes a more human it makes us
38:29
be able to relate to them it doesn't diminish them it sort of shows their shortcomings in ways
38:38
which is I think humane yeah so I'm just sort of finished on the BBC radio adaptation I'd like
38:46
to go back to the back she um a cartoon um but I think what they did brilliantly on the radio is they
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did very good job with the music because they had like um hand directors cut extra where if they
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couldn't fit a song into the radio episode they would have a bit at the end where you'd get a
39:07
treated song or something they really lent into the fact that this is poetry song yeah yeah
39:15
as well as drama so I thought it was a wonderful adaptation it's probably probably still my
39:22
favorite actually because I'm free to use my own imagination on the visuals
39:26
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