VIDEO: J.R.R. Tolkien and the Invention of Fantasy

Did Tolkien invent fantasy? Well, yes and no ...

Finally, after much promising, our first video essay is live! With more to come soon. You can find The Magical Humanist over at YouTube—please subscribe!—and the video is here.

What follows is the transcript. I will always post the text, and if I’ve needed to edit the essay down for length, I’ll post the unedited version here, along with footnotes and references.

Did J.R.R. Tolkien invent fantasy? Well, in the words of a famous priest-scholar, short answer: yes with an if; long answer: no with a but.

Hello and welcome to the inaugural video of The Magical Humanist. Because this is our first instalment, a bit of table-setting is in order: I’m Christopher, a professor of English. I’ll be writing and narrating these videos, while my beautiful and talented wife will produce and edit. Also, any original artwork you see here is hers.

What we’ll be doing here and on the accompanying Substack page of the same name is exploring a wide range of topics pertaining to fantasy and speculative fiction and related genres. Our first clutch of videos will be about Tolkien and LotR. After that? Well, you can expect a fair number of video essays on Terry Pratchett and Discworld, and I have a few ideas in the hopper about Game of Thrones, galactic empires, fantasy and cartography, post-apocalyptic visions, perhaps a zombie or two here and there, weird fiction and the legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, and hopefully much more. So stay tuned! And—I promise this will be the only time I say this—please consider liking and subscribing.

Now, back to my opening question.

Did Tolkien invent fantasy? Short answer: yes, IF you ignore all the fantasy that preceded Tolkien, the fantasy that was contemporaneous with his own composition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, or for that matter all the myth, legend, and medieval literature that influenced Tolkien’s world-building.

So … did Tolkien invent fantasy? Long answer: no, BUT … Tolkien did not invent fantasy in much the same way William Shakespeare did not invent Romeo and Juliet. The story of the star-crossed lovers of fair Verona existed more or less exactly as Shakespeare wrote it in a handful of other tellings. Most notably, as it was Shakespeare’s principal source, was English author Arthur Brooke’s 1562 poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. Brooke in his turn based his poem on the novella Romeo e Giulietta by Matteo Bandello, published in 1554.

And yet when you think of that tale of woe, that is, of Juliet and her Romeo, I’m guessing you’re not thinking of Brooke or Bandello. You’re thinking: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, you’re thinking, What light through yonder window breaks, you’re thinking, A plague on both your houses! Shakespeare did not invent Romeo and Juliet, but his version of their story has become the definitive version—as indeed have almost all the stories he told, virtually none of which were original to him.

Tolkien may not have invented fantasy, but he certainly invented it for me, even if he wasn’t the first fantasy author I read. When I was twelve, I read the Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis; it’s fair to say I grew obsessed, rereading them over and over and prattling on about them to anyone who’d listen (as only twelve-year-olds can do). Usually adults responded with a glazed look and a distant, “Oh. Yes. Interesting.” Then one day when I was enthusing to our neighbour, he looked at me keenly and said, “Well, C.S. Lewis is OK. But he’s got nothing on Tolkien.”

I was taken aback—because it was the first time (1) an adult who wasn’t my parents actually seemed to pay attention to my enthusing,¹ and (2) he had the temerity to question the basis of that enthusiasm. Though this was momentarily confusing, there was nothing else for it. I now had to read this LotR book, either because my neighbour was right and something better than Narnia existed, or he was wrong and needed to be told as much.

When I found it at the bookstore, the single-volume edition was so dauntingly big I nearly balked. But I was able to convince my mother to buy it for me, swearing up and down that, yes, I would read the entire thing. And I did! And—all apologies to C.S. Lewis fans (among whom I still count myself)—our neighbour was absolutely correct. Narnia had nothing on Middle-earth.

I lost myself in LotR for two months, and when I finally read the last sentence, and then devoured all the appendices, I sank into a deep funk. It was over, and the part of me that realized I could never read it again for the first time was consumed with grief.

My mother, however, growing impatient with my moping in the days that followed, went to our local bookstore and explained the situation to the helpful woman working there. “I’ve got just the thing,” said the bookseller, and shortly after than my otherwise endlessly patient mom slammed a thick paperback down in front of me and snapped, “There. Read that. And cheer up!”

The book was The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I tore through it in a few days, happy to find myself in a familiar fantasy landscape. But … it was very familiar. Two reluctant adventurers, rousted by a wizard from their sheltered village and sent on a quest? A Dark Lord slowly rebuilding his power? A magical talisman that will defeat the Dark Lord? Elves and dwarves? A fellowship formed and fractured? Even at the callow age of twelve, I thought, Wow, this is totally ripping off LotR. The best description I’ve ever heard of Terry Brooks’ Shannara novels is that they’re Tolkien methadone²—not the pure, uncut product, but something that will ameliorate your withdrawal symptoms. It did the trick in that respect, as did the countless fantasy novels I read over the following years.

The question isn’t really whether Tolkien invented fantasy so much as the ways in which LotR becomes indelibly associated with the genre. In the same way you can’t categorically say Tolkien invented fantasy, you cannot have an honest and thorough understanding of the genre that doesn’t recognize him as a central figure (if not THE central figure). This is what my twelve-year-old mind dimly grasped with The Sword of Shannara; but I also probably would have had similar reactions had I read a work of fantasy that preceded Tolkien, like George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872) or Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories (1932-1936).³ I wasn’t at the time thinking about genre or its evolution, about how authors plunder what came before and transform it, and nor did I grasp that genre is all about the expectations you have going into a story—I just had those expectations and was happy to have them satisfied, however predictably.

In some ways there was nothing unfamiliar about LotR when I picked it up. I loved mythology and folklore and had read about King Arthur, so I was familiar with quests and magic and wizards. Hobbits were a novelty, but trolls and Elves and Dwarves were old hat. Articulating to myself what was new and revelatory and indeed life-changing about LotR is the project of a life of letters and scholarship, and thus not something that can be satisfactorily addressed in a ten-minute video essay. But then, that project is why I’m here, why I’m a professor of literature, and why I’m inaugurating The Magical Humanist with this question.

In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien illustrates these issues with the metaphor of “the Cauldron of Story.” Stories emerge from a common pot, he says, all composed of the same basic ingredients. The Cauldron of Story “has always been boiling, and to it have continually been added new bits, dainty and undainty” (27). That simmering cauldron offers different broths and stews at different times, but which all taste similar enough, identifiably from the same pot. But then at times there occurs a miraculous alchemy and the familiar ingredients fuse in a revelatory way.

My use of the word “alchemy” here is specific to its mixed connotations of chemistry and magic. On one hand we can objectively list all the elements that, variously, make LotR a literary masterpiece, a transformative work of fiction that employs a host of well-worn tropes and conventions, or a popular and successful bestseller that spawned countless imitations. On the other hand … much of what Tolkien discusses in “On Fairy-Stories” has to do with the magical elements of language and story. To quote what is perhaps my favourite passage:

[H]ow powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent. And that is not surprising: such incantations might indeed be said to be only another view of adjectives, a part of speech in a mythical grammar. The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. (22)

LotR was published in 1954 and 1955. Stanley Unwin, Tolkien’s publisher, was convinced of the novel’s genius, but less convinced that it would sell. Though Tolkien wanted it published as a single volume, that would have made the first print run prohibitively expensive. And so, the novel became a “trilogy.” The initial print run for The Fellowship of the Ring in July 1954 was a very modest 3,000; The Two Towers’ run was only slightly larger when it came out that following November. Word of mouth enthusiasm more than doubled those numbers for Return of the King a year later to 7,000.

Seven thousand copies was still quite modest, and infinitesimally small compared to the sales LotR would post over the intervening seven decades: as of 2021, it is estimated that The Hobbit and LotR have collectively sold over six hundred million copies.

So … did J.R.R. Tolkien invent fantasy? Perhaps not … but he certainly brought the magic. Or, to use a metaphor he’d probably appreciate, he planted seeds that flourished, and though the forest always lived around him, his great tree provides the shade beneath which fantasy continues to live.

REFERENCES

Tolkien, J.R.R. Tree and Leaf. Harper, 2001.

NOTES

1. I’m sure it’s entirely unrelated that, forty years later, I’ve found my way into a career that involves enthusing over my favourite books to captive audiences who have to listen to me, because exams. Probably just a coincidence.

2. Credit for the expression “Tolkien methadone” goes to Glen Weldon of NPR’s podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour. I cannot remember which episode specifically he employed this excellent characterization, but it was definitely him I heard saying it, and him I mentally cite every time I gleefully steal it.

3. Indeed, I sort of had a similar experience on reading The Hobbit. My neighbour never told me about Tolkien’s first foray with hobbits and the Ring, so I dove straight into LOTR, and all the allusions to Bilbo’s prior adventure were lost on me. On discovering its existence, I promptly checked it out from my school’s library. I finished reading it by the time I went to bed that night. While it was a balm to revisit familiar Tolkien territory, it was also … unsatisfying. Having cut my teeth on Tolkien at his most epic, it felt almost irreverent to then experience Tolkien at his most flip. Trolls that speak like Cockney yobs, Benny Hill-esque goblins who lose their shit when presented with a sword, similarly yobbish giant spiders—these all felt insubstantial after enduring the cave-troll of Moria, the Uruk-hai, and Shelob. Smaug had more substance, and the Battle of Five Armies was appropriately impressive, though even the latter obviously paled in comparison to Helm’s Deep and Pelennor Fields.