Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits

by Dimitra Fimi

Fimi explores the evolution of Tolkien's mythology throughout his lifetime by examining how it changed as a result of his life story and contemporary cultural and intellectual history. This new approach and scope brings to light neglected aspects of Tolkien's imaginative vision and contextualizes his fiction. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Books About Books

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 25, 2008

About the author

I am Senior Lecturer in Fantasy and Children's Literature and Co-Director of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow. I write on, research, and teach the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, children's fantasy, and fantasy and folklore.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dimitra Fimi's work here is excellent. What she has written reads much like a cultural history of the creation of Middle-earth. She not only explains Tolkien's fascination with mythology and language and how they came together in the (sub-)creation of his legendarium, but explores the ways in which, across his long life, the world Tolkien lived in affected the shaping of the world he wrote about. At no time is Fimi's work heavy-handed. Her touch is always as light as it is far-reaching. Her writing is clear, concise, and persuasive. Her handling of evidence is fair and honest. Her knowledge of Tolkien and of the scholarship on his inner and outer worlds is hard to match. The expert and the newcomer to the study of Tolkien will each find much to learn and much to reflect upon in this essential work.

[Jackson Compton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn’t think I’d give this 5 stars but I did. I decided this book deserves it because I tend to dislike reading literary analysis yet I enjoyed this book very much. This is probably the third literary analysis of Tolkien’s work I have read, the first two being Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World by Verlyn Flieger, and Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth by John Garth. Both of those did not keep my interest or open my eyes to some interesting takes to the level that Fimi did in this book.

I should clarify that this very well could be due to the fact that I am a different reader now than when I read the other two books mentioned above. I have read very many Tolkien books now and have more of a foundation of knowledge to draw from. However, Fimi is very clear about her points and the structure of her analysis allowed me to follow her train of thought and research much better than Garth or Flieger.

There are a good number of prerequisite reads that an interested reader should complete before picking up this book: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings (obviously), Unfinished Tales, the entire History of Middle Earth Series, Tales from the Perilous Realm, as well as Tolkien’s essays On Faery Stories and A Secret Vice. More would of course be even better. Fimi draws from all of these works among others and without this background first you will probably miss out on some points. However, my background lacked a couple of the History of Middle Earth books and I enjoyed it just fine.

I’m always conscious of the fact that a literary analysis such as Fimi’s is one reader’s takeaway from Tolkien’s work (although much researched). There are many good points but I always keep in mind that diving too much into the author and his influences could ruin or at least change the reading experience of the original material. But what I found in this book is that there is also fun in the process of a literary analysis as well as a growing appreciation of Tolkien and his stories.

[Wesley Schantz · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as Tolkien scholarship, two of the most well-regarded books to come out in recent years are Tolkien and the Great War, by John Garth, and Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History, by Dimitra Fimi. The one is a biography, the other a survey of fairy-elements, and so while there is some overlap, they're really complementary, and well deserve their de facto status as required reading. Both highlight some of the lesser-known sources of Tolkien's inspiration: Chesterton, MacDonald, and Peter Pan, but also William Morris, whose romances were widely read at the front, and Francis Thomspon, about whom Tolkien said revealingly in an early essay:

'one must begin with the elfin and delicate and progress to the profound: listen first to the violin and the flute, and then learn to hearken to the organ of being's harmony.'

Both approach the topic of racial overtones with much more circumspection than, say, Barfield. Fimi gives more attention to Tolkien's languages, though Garth does deal with them illustratively enough without digging in quite as much--in each, the integral role they play in Tolkien's thought comes through, and so it's clear how Barfield's musings would have been of significance to him. Still more with respect to Tolkien's own beliefs about what he was up to: recovering a lost truth through his stories. In Garth, copious research is brought forth to trace the role of WWI and his friendships with the members of the TCBS in developing Tolkien's philosophy, whereas Carpenter's earlier biographies understandably focused on the Inklings; in Fimi, a balanced background of myth, popular culture, linguistics, and sociology is fused in a compelling context for Tolkien's activity. Stirring stuff for the aspiring or amateur scholar, to be sure.

[Liz]

The author LIVES. Sorry, Barthes.
Tolkien criticism is so interesting because it so obviously resists an approach that lets the author be dead and that is both to its credit and occasionally its detriment.
Neither of which matters because Fimi tells us precisely what her stance is here. Like biblical criticism, she's untangling the layers of Tolkien's life and how that leads to complexities and contradictions and just the interesting evolutions that happens to Arda as it grows.
My favorite part, by far, was her refusal to take Tolkien at his word on things like his disdain for fairies, his order of operation between the literary and the linguistic.
But it general it was a super interesting portrait of both a man and his texts and how knowing the context for the former can enrich the latter.

[Matie *Cat Lady* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently, I am that kind of nerd.
Interesting, informative and still entertaining.

[Katherine Sas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though the account of the evolution of Tolkien's mythology is fairly basic and would serve a newer reader of Tolkien very well, Fimi takes the time to develop in detail several less well-worn topics which have only been peripherally discussed by other scholars: Mainly Tolkien's complex relationships with the Victorian fairy tradition, the concept of "race," and the language-invention movement of the early twentieth century. Thus this book works equally well for fans and scholars, newbies and experts alike.