Before reading this chapter, I thought Tolkien’s hate of allegory implied that he had never used it himself. Shippey clears up my false impression in the beginning of chapter four by telling the reader he didn’t like it because oftentimes people use it inaccurately. I liked reading Shippey’s analysis of Tolkien’s lecture on Beowulf. It is interesting that Tolkien did not think allegories make sense unless you can always insert equal signs between a concept and it’s representation in a work. I like how Shippey points out that with an allegory, feelings can be evoked for a cause that the author promotes, such as Tolkien’s defense of the poem Beowulf through evoking feelings of sympathy for the “tower builder” in his lecture.
Another aspect of this chapter that interested me was Shippey’s discussion about how elements of Shakespeare’s Macbeth found their way into Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I found it funny when Shippey says, “Tolkien usually saw things from a different angle than his literary colleagues,” when he explains Tolkien’s dislike of Shakespeare. Tolkien would have been an interesting character to meet and speak with. I would never have thought to compare the “march of the trees” in Macbeth to the march of the Ents on Isengard, or the prophecy, which says no man may hinder the Lord of the Nazgul, to the apparition given to Macbeth from the witches.
The final section from this chapter that I will comment on is Shippey’s discussion of references to Christianity in The Lord of the Rings. I of course would not have noticed, as Shippey points out that many do not, that the date of Gondor’s New Year, which Gandalf reveals to Sam, has religious significance. I never connected the fact that the twenty-fifth of March is the day of the Crucifixion with Gandalf’s comment. I really do think that after this class is over, it would benefit me to re-read Tolkien’s trilogy. With all this knowledge about Tolkien and his work, which I am acquiring through reading these chapters, reading the books over again would be a completely different and deeper experience.
Emily Marvin? November 05, 2008, at 10:05 PM
