II. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

II. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

One may wonder why, in the search of an English mythology, would a man inspire in foreign cultures. But in his will to find out the former English myths and legends, Tolkien came across Norse and German tribes. It seems quite a nonsense for purists. Strange as it may seem, Tolkien was not a purist. Tolkien accepted foreign sources as original material. When critics point out that Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for England, they are not completely right. He was creating something by re-visiting old legends and genres, adapting, as the writer of Beowulf did with the already ancient materials of his time. For Beowulf was not an original, that is to say, written from canvas, but a compendium of old stories collected as a heirdom. So to a certain extent, The Lord of the Rings was 20th century's Beowulf. As explained by Wilson in The Lost Literature of Medieval England, Bede considered the first Christian poetry to have its source in ancient German pagan and heroic poetry. Emperors from the early Christian age refused German poetry, though, for it was too harsh and barbaric. So with the introduction of Christianism, Latin interrupted the continuity in the influence the ancient tongue kept on its evolved current form, same as what happened with French after the Norman conquest. Tolkien may have refused language interaction for it ended up in blends, perverted mixtures 'unhealthy' for both the original and the influenced language. But he didn't refuse German nor Old-Norse to be the origin of English for they (or some sort of dialects) were the first understandable languages used in contemporary England. This obvious explanation is necessary insofar 'origin' and 'influence' are absolutely different concepts, for origin looks like something following a natural evolution of its own and influence implies changes from another complete system interrupting the natural evolution of the former.

Then, fortunately, scholars and critics agree about Tolkien's interest in re-building or creating a mythology for England. Tolkien's attempt was to recreate the most accurate model of mythology possible after the Anglo-Saxon period. At this point we may wonder why does it seem that no-one was interested in noticing Romanization as a disrupting moment for young Britain at the same level they did with Hastings. The apparition of Roman culture was a first disruption between the former Celtic and the later Anglo-Saxon period, given the fact that Celts already had languages and legends and so they had 'imported' them to their new country. On the other hand, there was an advantage for research in Christianization, for its texts adopted pagan mythological models which allowed the modernization of ancient records and the possibility/chance to access them and their sources more or less accurately.

What did Tolkien, and the T.C.B.S. and the Inklings find, so they felt so urged to recover it and bring it back to life? It is said and totally agreed that post-Hastings England experienced the greatest loss of autochthonous culture ever. Below there is a brief state of affairs after Hastings, supplied by Professor John Hudson (professor of Legal History at the University of St. Andrews, specialised in the Anglo-Norman period):

How, then, did the identity of the English emerge, given the imposition in 1066 of a continental governing class? Some, such as William the Conqueror's archbishop of Canterbury, said they hoped to learn to be Englishmen. However, such immediate and deliberate adoption of a culture - even if it was whole-hearted - appears uncommon. Rather the assimilation was more gradual, and had many causes of which the following are just three. In part, assimilation resulted from aristocratic families dividing their lands between different branches, with separate English and Continental branches developing. In part it stemmed from inter-marriage with the English. In the late 1170s the royal treasurer could write that 'with the English and Normans living side-by-side and intermarrying, the peoples have become so mingled that no-one can tell - as far as free men are concerned - who is of English and who of Norman descent.' And in part it derived from process whereby the inhabitants of England distinguished themselves from those in less economically developed parts of the British Isles, who were condemned as ecclesiastically, socially, and culturally backward.
At the same time, other elements we might suppose to be characteristic of national identity were absent. Land-holding crossed borders, not just between England and Normandy but also between England and Scotland - the contenders for the Scottish throne the 1290s were descendants of major Anglo-Scottish families. Language was still less an indicator of identity. The supposedly barbarous twelfth-century Welsh lord might display feats of multilingualism which few today could rival - with knowledge of Welsh, French, English, and perhaps Latin. French indeed unified the aristocracies from the Capetian realm of France to southern Scotland. It was in French that much of their entertainment literature was written, for example the great epic The Song of Roland, the earliest manuscript of which has an English origin.

Dr. J. Hudson. What did the Normans do for us?

The question is: what was English culture made of until Hastings? What were the influences? Where did they come from? Why after being invaded so many times a victory from neighbouring Normans would be so dramatic?
Tolkien's love for Beowulf is no secret. But sometimes it feels as though it was the only source for him, it looks as if Beowulf was some sort of complete guide to ancient English literature for Tolkien. Its importance in literature is doubtless, as it is the most complete text of written poetry in Old English. But in fact, it is simply a compendium of ancient epic and lyric tradition and not a completely 'original' work concerning its content. Anyway, it may have been Tolkien's most valuable starting point/model for blending language and literature.
As important as Beowulf for Tolkien's inspirational models were the Norse Sagas contained in the Eddas, but they followed a complete mythology of their own, so they were neither unfinished materials nor properly English.