Allegory of the Tower

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Here is a post on Tolkien's 1936 British Academy lecture, 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics'.

Tolkien's essay is worth reading in itself, and also gives the blueprint to The Lord of the Rings. But it has been mangled beyond measure in the secondary literature (which consequently has missed its relationship to the tale of Frodo Baggins and the Ring of Sauron). So this post outlines the argument of the essay. In conclusion I return to the tower of the allegory that introduces the argument, and conclude my account of the Anglo-Saxon tower that will become Elostirion, the Elf-tower that housed the Stone of Elendil, the hidden center of The Lord of the Rings.

This is a long post and so I don't expect many people to read it. However, three inducements. (i) @Priya, here is an illustration of my own method of Tolkien scholarship, which seeks insights into his stories in his own scholarly writing. (ii) @Silky Gooseness, the last section of the post completes my account of the map that I posted a while back in the Guide to Stairs, and as such the relationship between pagan and Christian in Tolkien's stories. (iii) @VelvetineZone, hidden in the post is the source of my recent meditations on badgers.

[VelvetineZone]

I'm a bit hungover, unusually, so I can't quite take it all in this morning but I did see a badger reference.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

I did read it around 5am - 5.30am, chipping through the entire text. I cut my night in two parts 12pm - 5am, and then I fell asleep till 11.30am. I was hungry at 5am, ate three bisquits with jam and butter and cup milk. I have to reread once more, but what struck in my mind was this:

Quote: "By the end of Tolkien's argument, the author of Beowulf appears shoulder to shoulder with the Venerable Bede, an illustration of another side of a rare discovery of an idea of History, witnessed at the very beginning of English literacy and identity:

In Beowulf we have, then, an historical poem about the pagan past, or an attempt at one—literal historical fidelity founded on modern research was, of course, not attempted. It is a poem by a learned man writing of old times, who looking back on the heroism and sorrow feels in them something permanent and something symbolical.16
Beowulf is not an actual picture of historic Denmark or Geatland (Gotland in Sweden) or Sweden about A.D. 500. But it is (if with certain minor defects) on a general view a self-consistent picture, a construction bearing clearly the marks of design and thought.17"

The underlined was always my thought and feeling. I had always more interest to the oral telling of 1500 years ago and if you read well, you discover it without the Christian elements. Gotland is the southwestern province in Sweden, you'll find the harbour of Göteborg there, where the ferries from Denmark and Germany sail to.

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives

Over the past few days I’ve been skimming over and then rereading in more detail most of your SWG articles - some of which I have completely missed at issue.

I must say you’ve put an awful lot of effort and particularly thought into them. The information and ideas are certainly provoking, to the point that I can’t quite yet adequately absorb it all. So at the moment I’m not suitably clued up enough to agree with, disagree with or critique (in a positive way) your theories, extrapolations, interpretations and formulations.

Your knowledge of Beowulf and Tolkien’s essay is impressively deep, and certainly deeper than mine. Yes, it is quite possible that Tolkien thought about the final published allegory (beyond the early simple one) somewhere between presumably 1933 & 1936 - even to the depths you have plumbed. Knowing full well that the Professor was an especially deep thinker - I can buy into that without too much hesitancy.

But I have a few questions which might help to kickstart a discussion.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with exploring the ‘internal’ implications of words within Tolkien’s allegory itself. I commend you for doing so. But I’m still a little bit unsure about the ‘external’ aspects of the analogies. Perhaps you can help clear things up for me?

(a) What or who were the ‘steps’ (which no one but the man climbed) meant to represent?

(b) Similarly, what or who was the ‘field’?

(c) Again, in the same vein what/who were the ‘old hall’, ‘old stone’, the man’s ‘own house’, the ‘house of the man’s forefathers’?

(d) For that matter, for completion - I’d be happy for you to finish off with a prognosis of the rest of the allegory.


I’m interested in not only recognized scholar’s opinions/explanations (such as those of Shippey, Chance, Drout etc.), but also your own!

I apologize if I’ve missed them in your multiple articles - if they are buried within - I’d appreciate you pointing me there.

Thanks in advance.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hi Priya, thank you!

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man’s distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man’s own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.

It is notable that the early commentators (Chance, Shippey, Flieger) took the basic elements of this allegory as 'easy' to solve yet gave somewhat different readings - e.g. Shippey says the stones are story-elements like dragons and other monsters, while Flieger sees the stones as elements of language. Only on reading the earlier rock garden allegory did I come to see that the stones = stories from the heathen past, with each stone an individual story.

(a) What or who were the ‘steps’ (which no one but the man climbed) meant to represent?

(b) Similarly, what or who was the ‘field’?

(c) Again, in the same vein what/who were the ‘old hall’, ‘old stone’, the man’s ‘own house’, the ‘house of the man’s forefathers’?

(d) For that matter, for completion - I’d be happy for you to finish off with a prognosis of the rest of the allegory.

(a) The steps = the staircase inside the tower. To climb the steps = to read this story. Tolkien is saying that neither friends nor descendants have grasped the design of Beowulf.

(b) In all these long years I have never once thought about the 'field' as having significance. I have taken it simply as giving a spatial dimension to the allegory. I will now think about this ...

(c) The 'old hall' = 'the house of the man's forefathers', which was built of the 'old stones', = the oral traditions of the heathen English. Some of this old stone from the old hall has already been used in making the house where the man actually lives. Tolkien is drawing in metaphor the conversion of the English, with the idea that conversion was not so much a radical break but rather a fusion, so that the new faith was built up by assimilating elements of the old.

Tolkien sees a general process of cultural fusion in the century or so after conversion, which generates a moment of intense cultural creativity in the age of Bede. He sees the Christian English as developing first Christian poetry and Beowulf as arising out of a Christian schooled in this tradition turning to the heathen oral tales that are still told (even in the monastries). His argument in his essay is that this poet, who had carefully studied the first book of the Bible, pondered long on the native oral stories, perceived their common mythological eschatology, and made a new poem that treated this eschatology of Doom and its correlate of courage, revealing this heathen vision as complementary with rather than contradicted by the new learning and new faith.

The allegory says nothing about the original audience. I presume that when the tower was first built an Anglo-Saxon audience also ascended the tower and looked out on the view. But Beowulf was lost for many centuries and only rediscovered in the 18th century. So the 'friends' and 'descendants' are modern critics (a term of some significance, and not so easy to spell out).

The friends = those (like H.M. Chadwick,Tolkien's opposite number at Cambridge) who deem Beowulf essentially an amalgam of old heathen tales, which has suffered some Christian editing. They fail to see the Christian author (and so fail to consider that every stone in the tower has been chosen because of the design of the tower and fitted accordingly).

The descendants = those critics (like R.W. Chambers) who recognize that this is a poem by a Christian author - yet still fail to consider what this author was trying to do.

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives

Thank you for providing me with your views of the Tower Allegory.
I shall comment on them soon.

One thing that surprises me is a lack of expressed consensus about this aspect of Tolkien’s essay, as well as a detailed analysis about it, among the scholarly community. Perhaps I have missed it? I suspect so.

Over the last 25 or so years, Tom Shippey appears to have taken a lead - and (from my limited knowledge) from a book publication standpoint nobody seems since to have forcefully trodden on his turf except Michael Drout.

Shippey gave what I have deemed as a reasonable but limited explanation of the allegory in his 2000 Author of The Century. He appears to have expanded on it in his later 2003 revised edition of The Road to Middle-earth claiming (which I do not dispute):

“… everything can be equated … “,

while providing additional explanations, in particular for ‘the accumulation of old stone’, the ‘older hall’ and ‘the house in which he actually lived’.

However some of the allegory still seems to me yet to be unearthed, or rather put plainly before us. Also right now, I’m not entirely in accord with Shippey’s views.

To me, reasonably nailing down what Tolkien desired to convey is essential to understanding key parts of the essay itself. So I want to dwell on the allegory a little more, and to that end provide you with my own reading. Once us two are on the same page - then that would be a good time to launch into discussing those SWG articles. If that’s ok with you of course!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hi Priya, thank you for taking this seriously.

Actually, your questioning has made me aware that I have never properly thought through the canonical allegory - I have been too focused on the earlier version (which is in many ways far more helpeful, at least in relation to Tolkien's 1936 argument about Beowulf). In particular, I discover I am not clear about the precise meaning of that part of the accumalation of stone that is used in the making of the house in which the man now lives. I need to think on this some more.

Shippey's claim that the allegory is 'just allegory' = (only) a set of equations to be solved, was first made in 'Road to Middle-earth' (1982) - in the last section of the second chapter. I review his solutions in footnote 4 of my January post and complain, in particular, as to his vanishing of the 'descendants', which in effect aligns his reading of the allegory with that of Jane Chance (1979), who reads the entire essay as a fantasy of Tolkien that he is an artist who must battle the scholarly monsters (the friends) who destroy art!

This vanishing of the descendants was catastrophic for subsequent Tolkien studies because it not only reconstructed the allegory (that is, made it a different story) but also because of the two groups of critics, it is the descendants with whom Tolkien is arguing, so vanishing the descendants in the allegory had the effect of vanishing the argument of 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics'. This, at any rate, is my short explanation as to why the secondary literature has to this day been devoid of insight.

As you say, we need to read the allegory in relation to the rest of the lecture. The lecture is an argument with certain flesh and blood scholars, and the first step in reading the essay is to put proper names on the faces of the friends and, especially, the descendants.

(The second step is to read the books by the descendants that Tolkien engages with in his argument - not so difficult, we are talking only a handful of books. I'm not urging you (or anyone) to undertake all this reading. But I will say that doing so pays off in terms of reading the essay. Because Tolkien is basically engaged in conversation and most of what we read in the essay is a reply to someone - usually R.W. Chambers. Once you hear the conversation going on you are looking in the right place, so to speak.)

[Priya]

Greetings Chrysophylax Dives

Well, I’m sure you’ll agree the ‘final’ allegory of the delivered lecture is of greatest importance, by far. The earlier draft construct certainly has its uses. We may glean some things from it - but we have to be wary.

So let’s start off by discussing various components inside the final allegory - and move on to figuring out what Tolkien intended to convey through them.

I wholly agree with you, Shippey, Drout and just about everyone else that:

The ‘man’ = The Beowulf poet.

The ‘tower’ = The Beowulf poem, as recorded per The Cotton MS.

Now the thrust of this post is to discuss the ‘stones’ and the ‘field’.

From what I can tell, there are two types of ‘stone’. There were the ones of the ‘accumulation’ (a pile off on its own) which were originally part of the ‘old hall’ (the ‘old house’ of the man’s ancestors) and could have been used to restore it. This ‘old stone’ was exclusively used to build the ‘tower’.

However, there also appears to be some other, let’s say, newer stones which were used in conjunction with the old stone to make up the man’s ‘house’ (the one ‘in which he actually lived’). I also note, there were still some old stones left over after completion of the tower.

The old hall, man’s house and tower were all situated in the ‘field’.

This is implied but not an absolute textual certainty. It’s clear that the man’s descendants could see the old hall (or old house as it referred to). And why situate the tower far from the man’s own house? The field, I reasonably conclude, contained all three built structures.

Do you agree so far?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hi Priya, good to see you have the bit between your teeth!

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower.

I accept your important observation that the 'older hall' = 'the old house of his fathers'.

I think your presumptions about two types of stone is probably correct, though one might imagine objections. I do object to 'everything in the one field'.

The house where the man actually lived is 'not far' from the old house of his father = the older hall. But if the man is living in the house when he inherits the field, does this not suggest that this house is not in the field? That at least seems to me the more obvious reading. Also, one might quibble about wood. Certainly the current abode was made with some of the old stone, but the rest could be wood - a more normal Anglo-Saxon building material.

Really, I agree about the two types of stones; but not on locating all buildings in the field that is inherited. The house the builder of the tower actually lives in is 'not far' from the field where is the accumulation of old stone; and we do not know where he built the tower. Maybe he carted the stones back to his garden? Presumably, he built on a high bit of land?

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives

When I attack these sorts of problems, I usually try to employ an Occam’s Razor type approach and attempt to employ the least number of assumptions to fit the known parameters.

I’m sure you’ll agree that a ‘field’ is a relatively large area of land which one could easily conceptualize as able to accommodate a ‘house’, a ‘hall’ and a ‘tower’. That, in my opinion, may well be why Tolkien selected such an expanse.

There is no record of another plot of land voiced in the allegory. It’s an extra assumption to include one for the man’s house. Or even another for a tower. So if the text allows us to fit/locate all three structures inside the field - that’s the one of preference because it’s unnecessary to conjure up other zones.

Also, we ought to acknowledge there is no record of the man seeking permission to cart away the old stone out of the field to build his own house before receiving his inheritance. In other words that would mean he took a valuable part of his inheritance before the text tells us of the bestowal. Illegally done would constitute theft or burglary - as Mr Baggins might say! However no such issues arise if the man’s house is sited within the field.

So to me then, the more logical assumption is that the man built his own house in let’s say a corner of the field which he was due to inherit anyway.

As far as I can see the text does not say:

The house the builder of the tower actually lives in is 'not far' from the field where is the accumulation of old stone

but instead it says:

the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers

which is subtly different.

The phrase ‘not far’ is of course subjective. It could mean within the field or outside of it.

On the matter of construction, you are indeed right, the man’s house was likely built of other materials as well as stone - as are all houses and halls. However Tolkien for simplicity only uses stone for the build of the hall, and similarly I think it’s best if we don’t extrapolate beyond the Professor’s material choice for the man’s dwelling.

Perhaps, my views are hard to swallow. I am not saying you are wrong - for initially I had a similar kind of gut feel to you before I sat down and really thought about it. Mine is just an alternate scenario.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hi Priya,
I quite disagree with you that a field is necessarily a large area - that all depends if it is a big or a little field! But I am willing to put aside my reservations to see where you are going. So, for the sake of argument I will accept that the tower is built in the field and even that (unlikely as it seems to me) the man's current house is also in the field.

What are you getting at with this field? Where are you going here?

By the way, I feel myself currently distraught and at my wits end - the internet archive is offline, and has been for days, and all my research suddenly comes to a stop!

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Priya: I would agree with you as suggest your assumptions. Your detailed writing is quite easy to comprehend, even the matter is bit beyond my scope to give a sensible comment myself.

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives and Aiks

I’m most happy to see some constructive banter.


To digress a little - in constructing his allegory, Tolkien would have, I feel, followed along faithfully with philosophy aired in his Valedictory Address. As I have already voiced in Chrysophylax Dives’s ‘Bombadil’ thread, here was a man who habitually endeavored:

“… to wring the juice out of a single sentence, or explore the implications of one word …”.

– The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford 1959 – pg. 224, HarperCollins, 1983   (my underlined emphasis)

And I am pretty certain that given the honor and privilege of lecturing in front of the British Academy, there was no word within the Tower Allegory that wasn’t deeply thought about. Can you imagine the Professor, after the essay’s airing, being questioned by a peer as to what the ‘field’ signified?

I don’t think Tolkien would have been prepared to sheepishly reply: ‘I haven’t thought about it’. Or hung his head in shame replying something to the effect of: ‘I’m sorry I’ve overstepped my mark - it’s not actually part of the allegory’.

How embarrassing would that have been?



Anyway - on to my thoughts on what I believe was represented. Below, is how I see the three buildings (without discussing sub-components) and the locale in which they’re situated.


The ‘field’ - The milieu of England and a sector of Northern Europe from which the Beowulf poem originally came and traveled to in eventually reaching our poet’s ear. Essentially it constitutes the poet’s European heritage.

The ‘man’s house’ - A locale of England where the poet grew up and traveled, and where existed a plethora of tales (both oral and written); being the ones he had been exposed to and absorbed. Essentially it constitutes the man’s knowledge base.

The ‘old hall’ - A sector of Northern Europe (equivalent to Geatland and the territory of the Scyldings). The ultimate source of the poet’s Beowulf knowledge. Essentially it is the poem’s ancestral root.

The ‘tower’ - the story of Beowulf put into poetic form harmonized into a coherent whole, and wrought to a high finish in the poet’s native tongue.


You can see then, the purpose behind the ‘field’ which in my view encompasses all three structures!

I think that’s enough for discussion purposes right now.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Priya,
I am all with you on every word being carefully chosen. That goes for anything that Tolkien published, not least this allegory. But this allegory is one part of an essay, originally a lecture, and the words of the allegory are carefully chosen in relation to, first and foremost, the rest of the lecture. So any readings proferred must be read, in the first instance, in terms of the rest of the essay. What this means in practice is that I have various pedantic objections to your solutions.

The ‘field’ - The milieu of England and a sector of Northern Europe from which the Beowulf poem originally came and traveled to in eventually reaching our poet’s ear. Essentially it constitutes the poet’s European heritage.

In the terms of the rest of the essay, the Beowulf poem came from the hand of the Anglo-Saxon poet, who is the man who builds the tower in the allegory. Tolkien suggests (and illustrates in 'Selic Spell') that before the poet there were folktales about Beowulf who slew the monster Grendel in Heorot, the legendary mead hall of the Danes. What he argues is that the Anglo-Saxon poet took this folktale and made a new kind of story, one which worked with myth and made its theme the vision of doom that the poet discerned behind all the old Germanic tales that were still told.

In making this new kind of story, a modern working with myth, this author alludes to or incorporates a bunch of the older stories. For example, there is a story of Hrothgar's daughter, Freawaru, who marries Ingeld son of Froda, last of the Heathobard kings and sworn enemy of Hrothgar. Ingeld burns Heorot to the ground but is killed and his tribe destroyed. The poet alludes to this story when Heorot is first introduced, and later Beowulf gives some of the story in a report to his king back home in Geatland. This story R.W. Chambers famously proclaimed more worthy, in the eyes of the old poets, than a wilderness of dragons.

The root idea in both allegories - tower and rock garden, both made of old stones - is that the poem is composed of older stories yet is itself something in itself, something new.

The poet's European heritage is surely the older hall, the house of his fathers, not the field as such. There is no need to grasp the spatial dimension here - no need, that is, for the allegory to reference Northern Europe, Geatland, Denmark, or even 'England' (an entity that did not yet exist). All that is required is one little bit of the British Isles, some Anglo-Saxon kingdom, settled by these Germanic immigrants for a few centuries, for the first of which these folk were heathen. In other words, whatever oral traditions they had in their old homeland they brought over with them in their boats and rebuilt in a new field. Then, maybe 80 years before the birth of the poet, they converted to Christianity - and built a new house, not far away from the old one (using some of the old stones to build their new house).

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives

‪I quite disagree with you that a field is necessarily a large area - that all depends if it is a big or a little field!‬

‘Big or little field’ - I don’t have difficulty imagining either of them accommodating a hall, house and tower of typical Anglo-Saxon design. I suspect a majority of folk would not have any issue too.

‪There is no need to grasp the spatial dimension

I find it a little strange that so far you haven’t expected the ‘field’ to possess any allegorical implication, or upon recent pondering provided your own considered thought on what it might represent. I do not have an issue, if it is different from mine. But I think outright resistance is misplaced. I think it’s more scholarly to look for an allegorical explanation than not. Especially when the relayed story is so brief.

And to that point - the initial words of a short story, as the Tower Allegory is, are invariably given deep authorial consideration. At least that is my opinion.

To Tolkien, starting out with “A man inherited a field …” might have been of as of much importance as those other famous words in the story soon to be released after the Academy lecture of 1936. In 1937 The Hobbit was published with that most famous opening line:

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Mr Baggins too had an inheritance handed to him - a hole in his case. And I doubt Tolkien missed the parallel with the Tower Allegory.


On the matter of pedantry:

(a)

‪The poet's European heritage is surely the older hall, the house of his fathers, not the field as such.

Given the poet’s command of the Anglo-Saxon language - my use of ‘heritage’ is consistent with dictionary definitions where it is considered to be:

“a person’s racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural background”
- Online Cambridge English Dictionary (my underlined emphasis)


So the poet’s heritage includes Anglo-Saxon England as well as Northern Europe. The ‘field’ is thus appropriate per my reading.

(b)

‪‘England' (an entity that did not yet exist).

I find it unnecessary to qualify ‘England’ as ‘ancient England’, Anglo-Saxon England’ or ‘early England’ in the same vein that Tolkien found it superfluous in his Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics essay:

“… Ingeld’s legend in England …”
“But in England this imagination was brought into touch with Christendom, …”.

You and I know what I mean, just as Tolkien knew that his peers understood what he meant.

At this point - I think bringing Sellic Spell into the mix is unhelpful. I don’t remember reading anywhere within the lecture paper that Tolkien thought there was once a ‘fairy tale’ behind the folk tale of Beowulf. His peers would have demanded explicit evidence. In any case was Sellic Spell even in existence at the time of the Academy lecture?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Priya,

I find it a little strange that so far you haven’t expected the ‘field’ to possess any allegorical implication, or upon recent pondering provided your own considered thought on what it might represent. I do not have an issue, if it is different from mine. But I think outright resistance is misplaced. I think it’s more scholarly to look for an allegorical explanation than not. Especially when the relayed story is so brief.

As I said, I have not thought about the 'field' before, and as I have also said, I am with you on the importance of every word. I am happy to seek an allegorical explanation for 'field'. My point was only that I do not go with your suggestion. Or rather, my point is that the literary heritage that you refer to (if I read you correctly) is better accounted for by the stones of the older hall.

At this point - I think bringing Sellic Spell into the mix is unhelpful. I don’t remember reading anywhere within the lecture paper that Tolkien thought there was once a ‘fairy tale’ behind the folk tale of Beowulf. His peers would have demanded explicit evidence. In any case was Sellic Spell even in existence at the time of the Academy lecture?

What Tolkien says in his lecture (p.29 in my edition) is:

... the old tale was not first told or invented by this poet. So much is clear from investigation of the folk-tale analogues. Even the legendary association of the Scylding court with a marauding monster, and with the arrival from abroad of a champion and deliverer was probably already old. The plot was not the poet’s...

Generally, I have a sense that you do not get the point I made in my last post. Again, I am open to considering the allegorical meaning of the field. But I also agree with you on Occam's razor. And it seems to me that the meaning you are putting onto the field is already taken by the old stones.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Hi Priya: What if after looking scholarly over it, there is no allergorical explanation at all? Have you asked yourself that? Resistance is not needed then as well, just treat it as an historical document. I did read Beowulf over a year ago, and in it length and adventures, it was quite fun. If there has to be referenced to the lord for the readers and listeners, the poet literally names God in the text.

The allergory as word and genre was first attested in 1382AD in England, few hundred years after the the development of Beowulf. In a world where people believed magic was real as well, I doubt people would have understood what this kind of use of language was in the 12th century. It is further development in the way language can be used in the 14th century, where the rise and power of the cities became important (in Italy for starters). And the renewing of interest in classical works in the 15th century. The conscious use of veiled language, figuratively, meaning something else, is not used as a genre before the end of the 14th century. You find also much of it in paintworks from that time period (14th/15th century). In that time the influence of the Catholic church was waining against the political power rising in towns and cities, that slowly led up to the discovery of new continents and the establishment of colonies in distant lands. Columbus happened around 1492AD.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks,
Our discussion of allegory is not a discussion of Beowulf the poem but rather of a short story told by Tolkien about the poem. The story introduces Tolkien's argument in 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics', and he names the story an 'allegory'. I quoted the whole of this story a few posts above, and will quote it again below.

It is not the case, however, that allegory is developed only in modern Europe. The parables that Jesus tells in the New Testament have an allegorical component. More generally, in the centuries either side of the birth of Christ allegorical readings of older religious texts were common, and this mode of writing/reading was certainly not unknown to the Anglo-Saxons. Of the Old English Exodus, for example, Tolkien writes:

It is at once an historical poem about events of extreme importance, an account of the preservation of the chosen people and the fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham; and it is an allegory of the soul, or of the Church of militant souls, marching under the hand of God, pursued by the powers of darkness, until it attains to the promised land of Heaven. (p.33)

And the 'allegory' we are discussing, by J.R.R. Tolkien, of which my own reading is that it is less of an allegory than it appears, and is actually the germ of a fairy-story (The Lord of the Rings, in the sequel). But to argue this we need to reach the sea at the end of the story, and so far we are stuck on the field of the first sentence!

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man’s distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man’s own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Priya,
I have not well expressed myself, and try again. From your post above:

The ‘field’ - The milieu of England and a sector of Northern Europe from which the Beowulf poem originally came and traveled to in eventually reaching our poet’s ear. Essentially it constitutes the poet’s European heritage.

The ‘old hall’ - A sector of Northern Europe (equivalent to Geatland and the territory of the Scyldings). The ultimate source of the poet’s Beowulf knowledge. Essentially it is the poem’s ancestral root.

First of all, I don't see how field and old hall are different, according to your accounts. And Occam's razor would cut out one or the other, unless I am missing some key difference between milieu and sector.

Second, my pedantic point is that the allegory should accord with the rest of the essay of which it is one part. But the whole tendency of the lecture is localization, and the allegory as it were cements this particularity - it presents us with an author at a moment in time making the particular work of art the aesthetic merit of which Tolkien has stepped up to the podium to defend. Certainly, these various 'stones' were carried over by the Germanic immigrants a few centuries back, they are the tales told in the old homelands and as such told of the old homeland. Tolkien in his lecture presents Beowulf as a work of 'historical fiction' (my term) - a poem about a past that has now vanished, a foreign country, the world of the heathen ancestors - the names of the tribes and the places are all known, but only from the old stories. This man ponders these old stories and sees something in that lost world that he works up in a new kind of poem. But all of this pondering the old stones, conceiving a new design to be made with them, and the making of this tower, is done elsewhere.

My pedantic point is that this is a little field in some corner of a little Anglo-Saxon kingdom, which is Christian, and doing well for itself (no Vikings on the horizon as yet), but still in love with their old poetry and with a wish to see the field as you describe it, brought to life again before their eyes. You are not wrong to point to the arena of the action of the poem, 'the named lands of the historical North' where myth walks incarnate, as Tolkien puts it. But this vision of a secondary world, if you will, is said by Tolkien to be a product of art - the art of one English artist of the age of Bede, who had a profound idea of his own art. And it is this artist at work who appears in the first sentences of the allegory.

[Priya]

Hello Aiks

I think Chrysophylax Dives has explained the matter pretty well. But I did enjoy reading about the origins of the word ‘allegory’. That was quite informative! Thank you.


Hello Chrysophylax Dives

Region-wise, the representations are imagined by me as follows:

Field = Denmark/Sweden + England

Old Hall = Denmark/Sweden

Man’s House = England

Tower = England


Hope that helps. But while pondering upon this you might also reflect on my thoughts below on other parts of the allegory I haven’t yet given an opinion on.


The stones lying in ruin = the tale of Beowulf, migrated from its source. Lying in a pile - the story might well have been deemed to have been in a bit of a muddled state with much extraneous information that needed sorting. That is before the poet assembled it into a coherent masterpiece.

The left over stones after building the tower, symbolize that there was more to the story, which there always is, which the poet was unaware of.

Stones of the tower = Gathered information by the poet behind the wrought poem, which actually made it into the poem in poetic form.

Stones of the man’s house = The man’s knowledge base, comprising:

(a) The migrated tale of Beowulf.
(b) Other unknown/unidentified tales the poet was exposed to prior to assembling/composing Beowulf. The poet, after all, was a learned man.

The stones of the hall - the true and original tale of Beowulf undiffused.

The steps of the tower = a journey into understanding the tale of Beowulf. The further up the stair, the greater one’s understanding of the poem.

The roof = the attainment of a full understanding of the details making up the poem.

The sea = An arrival at an appreciation of the poem beyond the details. Understanding the poem from the poet’s point of view and thus the poet’s purpose.

The desire to restore the old house in the view of his descendants = to put the outsized very long tale into proportion in their point of view; to knock out the monsters from the poem - in their opinion, stuff of irrelevance.

The friends = those academics who had purely used the poem to quarry information.

The descendants = Modern day English critics

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, I've been thinking more on your post above. This stuff is very difficult to think about, or I find it so, but I think it also touches on the very heart of what is going on with this particular 'allegory' told by J.R.R. Tolkien one Wednesday in London in November 1936.

The allergory as word and genre was first attested in 1382AD in England, few hundred years after the the development of Beowulf. In a world where people believed magic was real as well, I doubt people would have understood what this kind of use of language was in the 12th century. It is further development in the way language can be used in the 14th century, where the rise and power of the cities became important (in Italy for starters). And the renewing of interest in classical works in the 15th century. The conscious use of veiled language, figuratively, meaning something else, is not used as a genre before the end of the 14th century. You find also much of it in paintworks from that time period (14th/15th century). In that time the influence of the Catholic church was waining against the political power rising in towns and cities, that slowly led up to the discovery of new continents and the establishment of colonies in distant lands. Columbus happened around 1492AD. [/color]

As I said above, allegory is ancient. The Greeks have it as well as the ancient Israelites and the early Church Fathers and the Gnostic heretics (who go to town on it; I have no sense of India and China). Without being too sure at all, it seems to me that it is a mode of reading - and then imagining and writing - that arises at moments in history when a people or peoples have possessed a textual literature for a long time; the result is that the literal meanings of the text now seem a bit weird, either because the meaning of words has changed or because the world itself, together with how people think about it, has changed. Allegory as a mode of thinking seems to arise when ancient myths are read by literate socities.

From this perspective, Tolkien's naming his story 'allegory' is a sign of diffidence to the Anglo-Saxon poet, who he proclaims uses myth properly - not allegorically, and seeing what this means is to see the genius of this poet and this poem.

But there is an additional perspective to take on board here, a meta-perspective that you do not seem to consider, which is the scholarly environment in which J.R.R. Tolkien was operating. He is telling a story at the British Academy in London. His allegory is told not to fellow Professors of Anglo-Saxon literature (they appear in the story) but to the academic aristocracy of the nation. He is adressing the Academy, and the British Academy of the 1930s was composed of learned men who had devoted their lifetimes to thinking about the Bible critically, which is to say that by the 1930s British academics had been going through a 'crisis of religious faith' for seven decades, and in the process had dedicated an astonishing amount of careful thought as to how one should read ancient texts that appear as blend of symbolical and literal meanings, historical records attesting to many miracles. One principle result of all this earnest thinking about the allegorical and literal dimensions of these ancient texts in what was after all their holy book, was a very acute framework for imagining or picturing the mental scaffolding of authors and editors of different texts at different moments of history.

You are completely correct to turn to Beowulf and consider the question of allegory - Beowulf the hero battles monsters, and this might seem the stuff of allegory. Because as Priya says, every word is carefully chosen - and in this case the word carefully chosen is allegory, and what Tolkien is showing with his story presented as 'allegory' has a carefully considered bearing on what he thinks about the allegorical and the Beowulf poem.

What he is pointing to with his short story (the allegory of one paragraph) is an event in history, over a thousand years ago, when someone authored a long poem about the heathen past. What he is saying in main body of his lecture is that this someone was learned, extremely talented, and visionary; and that this author had a very clear idea on the relationship between all this symbol and literal stuff - far clearer, as a matter of fact, than the most of us today,

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Priya,
On your reading of the allegory I don't have anything to add to my last post. I think you are following in the footsteps of the classical secondary literature and considering the story as a thing in itself, as opposed to a thing embedded - carefully - in something else. As a maxim, it seems to me that the closer our reading of the allegory is to our reading of the argument of the essay, the better.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

(1) The left over stones after building the tower, symbolize that there was more to the story, which there always is, which the poet was unaware of.

(2) The stones of the hall - the true and original tale of Beowulf undiffused.

(3) The sea = An arrival at an appreciation of the poem beyond the details. Understanding the poem from the poet’s point of view and thus the poet’s purpose.

[My numerals]

(3) I like.
(2) 'the true and original tale of Beowulf undiffused' - suggests to me that you do not take the argument of the essay and so do not see the tower as it is. Concretely, what meaning do you give to these words?
(1) Can be read in different ways, and I concur with the thought that Tolkien believed that he could see some aspects of the poem more clearly than did the poet; but I sigh and sorrow at the prospect that this unawareness relates to 'the true and original tale' of the diabolical (2).

TLDR: (2) sucks.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Hmm, I wonder sometimes why people feel ancient things should have some kind of proper explanation, to put what they think is the 'right historical context'. But is it? In some form I find it highly annoying. Leave it in the form as it is, and let the people decide about the contents for themselves.

Well my post from Sunday is somewhat superfluous and don't touch the discussion that's going on. Sorry for that. I think what you talk about is Tolkien's translation of Beowulf. I combed through that last year. And thus unnecessary to do once more. On Beowulf self found above it. I can't say why I constantly return to the original poem, and leave all other thoughts of later date out? I don't remember that passage about "the field etc" coming across in his book lecture of Beowulf: Monsters and Critics, the Translation after it, or from his speech Fairy-stories on 8 March 1939, at the point of reading all lectures and summarising them. Where is this one paragraph found?

About that particular paragraph in a literal sense: The friends point on what kind of culture they had, how they lived, who the inhabitants were, would they have been like them, what kind of tongue they spoke, did they leave writing behind, what kind of carvings and inscriptions, the sources where the materials came from to build a hall against the natural elements? Could the friends connect to their ancestors? It is search for human connection, so pivital to human nature. It is about archeology and anthropology. The tower and the sea are not about connection, it is about division. The man as the descendents are not sensical, when it comes to searching for this connectivity, but on rambling about proportions (the descendents) and about the sea (the man).

Honestly I don't like to poet the word allergory to works before it's birth in 1382AD. I don't think we do right those older works by putting paint layers over them or dissecting them, while it is not necessary. If you have to read the Old and New Testament, take it in a literal sense, read the beauty of the tales and seek not more of it. But you're free to consider what you want.

Priya: Sure. I just wanted to know the historical context of the word.

Chrys: The world in the 12th century was perceptively far more diabolical than it is today in the 21th century.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

where is this one paragraph found?

Around page 8 of 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics'. I copy and paste this short story by J.R.R. Tolkien once again.

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man’s distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man’s own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.

On this below, I think you presume that all ancient texts have purely literary value, and exist for our reading enjoyment, to enchant us, and that is all. That may be the case for The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, but for the last two thousand and more years has not been the case for the books of the Bible, nor many other books.

Hmm, I wonder sometimes why people feel ancient things should have some kind of proper explanation, to put what they think is the 'right historical context'. But is it? In some form I find it highly annoying. Leave it in the form as it is, and let the people decide about the contents for themselves.

Have you heard of the Donation of Constantine? Some people talk about its reception as the birth of the critical science of philology, the art of reading an old or ancient text in its context. The text was forged by the papacy in the 9th century, purporting to be from the days of the Emperor Constantine some 500 years earlier. The text describes how Constantine gave power to the Pope and was used by the papacy to justify their claims of authority over the secular kings of medieval Europe. By the 15th century, the humanists had developed the art of textual criticism - reading a text in context - sufficient to demonstrate that the document could not date to the time of Constantine. It is this same critical science of philology, now having passed through the 19th-century reading of all of the books of the Bible, that Tolkien learned and practiced in his reading of the surviving texts of the old North.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Thanks for the page number. There was no need to repost it again, but I found it in the text over page 7 and 8 of Christopher's edited book of the seven essays with Tolkien on the front. It is presented example of an allergory, but since I didn't put a pencil line along it, or pencil line under the sentences, I deemed it not worthy to use in the summerising with quotes. When you read two pages further, the example is forgotten from the mind. That explains why I don't recall it. The opening of the essay is the very first alinea, of: "In 1864 the Reverend Oswald Cockayne wrote.... original books are nearly buried". Tolkien gives there an expression of what is to be expected about The Beowulf later on his critical essay, when he delves methodically in it.

No, I haven't heard of this Roman decree, but they do have the Acts of Sylvester. Donation of Constantine is forged, not real. The actual sources comes from he Acts of Sylvester wiki site.

Background

Constantine's deathbed baptism by the Arian Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia was well-documented by a number of sources. The first record came from his contemporary biographer, Eusebius of Caesarea in his Life of Constantine.[3] Jerome's Chronicon (380 CE) also mentions the Arian baptism.[4] Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 374–97, mentions the deathbed baptism but omits the name of the minister administering the sacrament in an attempt to present a more orthodox version in De obitu Theodosii (40:8).[5] Augustine, bishop of Hippo, 395 to 430, easily the most influential of all the Latin fathers on Roman Catholic doctrine, in City of God (Book V, 25) simply omitted the inconvenient truth of the Arian baptism: 'He died at a great age, of sickness and old age, and left his sons to succeed him in the empire.'[6] - Wikipedia

[Chrysophylax Dives]

When you read two pages further, the example is forgotten from the mind.

Yup. I think you capture the secondary literature - and as such the limitations of 'Tolkien scholarship' - in a nutshell. This is why I have devoted so many years to keeping the story in mind as I read the rest of the essay. It does take an awful lot of work not to forget one part of the essay as you digest another.

Many, many years ago a friend gave me a hamster as a birthday present. Maybe I was 14? Anyway, hamsters pouch, as in they store food in their cheeks. If you put 4 green peas before the hamster he would get stuck in a loop. He would pick up one pea and pop it into his mouth. Then a second - and now one cheek was filled. Then a third - now both cheeks were filled with one in the middle. Then he would eye the 4th pea,pick it up, and pop it in. But there was no more room! And so as the 4th pea went in one of the others would drop out. Then the hamster would eye this pea, pick it up and pop it in, and one would fall out. It did not end.

Alas! The hamster and the peas is an allegory for today's readers of 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics'.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: How cute you had a hamster. Did it have a good life? Perhaps it could serve as allergory, I don't know. Cheeky little creatures they are. I took care many years over cats, whose owners went on vacation. But that included sometimes rabbits and other animals as well.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Talking of cats, the Adamanta Chubb Librarian over in Undertowers was calling for Nukomtdeaapuitdemouw, whose name may ring a bell.

The OP of this thread concerns 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics', with a link to my recent post on this essay. I would request that any further talk of cats and hamsters, unless it serves the purpose of devolving the allegory of the hamster and the 4 peas in relation to the named authors of the secondary literature, or otherwise illuminating the content underlined in the OP, be conducted on the linked thread in the Shire, or otherwise elsewhere.

Alternative venue: If you believe that hamsters or cats may have some bearing on the badger-question, you may consider penning a post on The Further Adventures of Fairbairn, also in the Shire.

Thank you!

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: You brought up the hamster yourself, not me. And it would be rude not to say, how cute that is and thoughtful of a friend (taken it is true). I had expected a thank you or something along that line, and the sock would be finished so to say, and the room open for further new dialog when Priya gets online and dives in on the Beowulf matter at hand. I don't know what you are further referencing to, but I take it is true about the hamster, you had one when you were fourteen years old. So yes there is my answer.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Dear Aiks, I apologize if I have offended you. In my heart, I welcomed your contribution before pointing any continuation of it elsewhere. I will explain about the hamster.

Firstly, yes of course the story is true! I am offended that you question this. FYI, the hamster was named by my friend Mr. Splodge O'Spladge, so I called him Splodge. He was always trying to escape. Once he escaped and I found him in the foundations at the bottom of our house. A second time he escaped and I never found him. Quite possibly he met his doom in the shape of one of our cats, Sammy and Jessie.

Secondly, this true story of Splodge and the four green peas was not told by me for the sake of telling a story but to draw an allegory, and as such illustrate a scrap of the art that Tolkien essays with his one paragraph tale of the tower. As such, 'Splodge and the peas' is an invitation to explore a metaphorical mode of furthering discussion of 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics'.

Now, it is of the nature of a decent allegory that the literal story has appeal in itself. So I welcome your expression of cuteness, which suggests that the story in and of itself sparked a light within you. Nevertheless, I must insist that any further discussion of the literal story and the cuteness of various domesticated animals be continued in the Shire, the home of cutesy.

Discussion of 'Splodge and the peas' from a metaphorical perspective is welcome. And a mythical perspective would be wonderful. However, even here I feel that such discussion might better occur on Fairbairn's thread in the Shire, which is in essence a postscript to my October SWG post on the subject of badgers. I feel that hamsters and badgers are sufficiently similar that discussion of their metaphorical place in Middle-earth on two separate threads would be redundant.

Hope that is clear.

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives & Aiks

Well I’ve given my opinion on elements of the Tower Allegory. There’s not an awful lot more for me to say. Except I can be coaxed into to changing my mind - if the evidence and arguments are persuasive enough. Especially if some unconsidered written matter from Tolkien himself comes to light. Or if there is an inconsistency in my reading.

As yet - I’m not convinced there is a Christian/pagan juxtaposition within the short story. I’m more inclined to believe Tolkien started out by initially providing a setting for the berating (he believed was apt) and his vision (which he felt was long overdue for recognition among the scholarly community). To do this it’s quite apparent he employed (and other scholars who have tried to decipher the allegory’s have noted, but not expressly relayed it) a great many nouns to metaphorically project the allegory. As such, an analytical breakdown would point the ‘field’ (being a noun) to having some purpose too.

One of the major matters I wrestled with was trying to assign meaning to the old stones making up the tower. If the tower is metaphorically the poem: Beowulf - then I reject the old stones being anything else other than directly and symbolically related to the poem itself. Unrelated heathen/Christian stories have no place. That is my simple way of thinking.

Framing a setting at the beginning of the allegory is a simple lead-in and is part of the build-up for the punch at the story’s end to leave a memorable impact. So I think the Tower Allegory wasn’t overly complex to absorb - but instead it was formulated to get the basic message across that the critics thus far had essentially missed the poetic art behind the tale.

Although not dwelt upon at length in the lecture paper, Tolkien certainly recognized the Beowulf tale was not native to Anglo-Saxon England and had somehow made its way to the poet via migration. A few years later in his 1939 OFS paper (and not too far removed from the 1936 Academy appearance) he spent much effort discussing ‘sources, migration, diffusion and inheritance’ with respect to fairy-stories. I’m pretty sure such ideas had been thought about in the far past and well before his Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics paper was put together. I detect a trace of this in the allegory.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hi Priya,
I am grateful to you for this discussion. I think you are missing something vital about the way that Tolkien is thinking (and so writing) about stories. I am also struck by how your reading echoes the pioneering secondary literature of 40 years ago, which also overlooks this side of Tolkien's thought. So I stand alone here, while your misreading (as I see it) joins the consensus.

Framing a setting at the beginning of the allegory is a simple lead-in and is part of the build-up for the punch at the story’s end to leave a memorable impact. So I think the Tower Allegory wasn’t overly complex to absorb - but instead it was formulated to get the basic message across that the critics thus far had essentially missed the poetic art behind the tale.

Yeah, this is pretty much how Jane Chance read the essay back in 1979. And it is not wrong, providing we are clear on what was the art of the poem.

Although not dwelt upon at length in the lecture paper, Tolkien certainly recognized the Beowulf tale was not native to Anglo-Saxon England and had somehow made its way to the poet via migration. A few years later in his 1939 OFS paper (and not too far removed from the 1936 Academy appearance) he spent much effort discussing ‘sources, migration, diffusion and inheritance’ with respect to fairy-stories. I’m pretty sure such ideas had been thought about in the far past and well before his Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics paper was put together. I detect a trace of this in the allegory.

You talk as if 'the Beoulf tale' told in the North is the essence of the Anglo-Saxon poem that we call Beowulf. Tolkien says there was a folktale about Heorot, a monster, and a hero. You seem to see this folktale as the essential story of Beowulf, but Tolkien is concerned with what the poet did with this folktake - he argues that he worked it up into a mythical tale, made use of various well-known heroic-lays, and made an elegy: a new kind of poem, using the old material in a new way. The key-word for Tolkien is 'design' - he seeks the design of the Anglo-Saxon poet.

One of the major matters I wrestled with was trying to assign meaning to the old stones making up the tower. If the tower is metaphorically the poem: Beowulf - then I reject the old stones being anything else other than directly and symbolically related to the poem itself. Unrelated heathen/Christian stories have no place. That is my simple way of thinking.

Unrelated heathen stories have a place in the allegory because they have a place in the poem itself! This is the basis of both allegories, rock garden and tower, the common theme is the use of the old stones to make something new. I don't think your reading of the allegory can survive this passage of Tolkien's argument (pp. 30-31)

‘In structure’, it was said of Beowulf, ‘it is curiously weak, in a sense preposterous,’ though great merits of detail were allowed. In structure actually it is curiously strong, in a sense inevitable, though there are defects of detail. The general design of the poet is not only defensible, it is, I think, admirable. There may have previously existed stirring verse dealing in straightforward manner and even in natural sequence with Beowulf’s deeds, or with the fall of Hygelac; or again with the fluctuations of the feud between the houses of Hrethel the Geat and Ongentheow the Swede; or with the tragedy of the Heathobards, and the treason that destroyed the Scylding dynasty. Indeed this must be admitted to be practically certain: it was the existence of such connected legends — connected in the mind, not necessarily dealt with in chronicle fashion or in long semi-historical poems — that permitted the peculiar use of them in Beowulf. This poem cannot be criticized or comprehended, if its original audience is imagined in like case to ourselves, possessing only Beowulf in splendid isolation. For Beowulf was not designed to tell the tale of Hygelac’s fall, or for that matter to give the whole biography of Beowulf, still less to write the history of the Geatish kingdom and its downfall. But it used knowledge of these things for its own purpose — to give that sense of perspective, of antiquity with a greater and yet darker antiquity behind. These things are mainly on the outer edges or in the background because they belong there, if they are to function in this way.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: I can't always tell if things are really true. Sometimes there are people who pull a leg, but I know you are not one of them. You haven't offended me, I was bit disappointed. That's all. Sorry that Splodge ran off and you couldn't find him. Splodge was enjoyable to read about, it is just picturing in mind to take all four peas. Sure it's clear.

Priya: No, I neither think that. But that is what I wrote or better dissected in my own reply few posts back. As you say, it is a kind of setting for listeners and readers, (in)directly addressing certain people.

This poem cannot be criticized or comprehended, if its original audience is imagined in like case to ourselves, possessing only Beowulf in splendid isolation. For Beowulf was not designed to tell the tale of Hygelac’s fall, or for that matter to give the whole biography of Beowulf, still less to write the history of the Geatish kingdom and its downfall. But it used knowledge of these things for its own purpose — to give that sense of perspective, of antiquity with a greater and yet darker antiquity behind. These things are mainly on the outer edges or in the background because they belong there, if they are to function in this way.

If there is something I might add... If I were part of that audience back when the poet would recite it in the meadhall, then I would fully disagree with the professor. It can certainly be critised and I have no doubt that people have done this. I would be going for the adventures of Beowulf, possibly be awed by all of his accomplishments. While reading I never had that idea of a greater and darker antiquity, as Tolkien voices. I think ithe splendour shimmers through quite fabulously.

I wonder where this whole concept of field, stones and tower really is originating from? Tolkien uses it as metaphor to understand the past first, before understanding the present and the future next. I don't think the allergory is particular original to him, that he made it up himself.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks,
The name of the hamster was Splodge. I had not thought about him for very many years. He was very stupid. He had one of those hamster wheels, but he never once ran inside it. Instead he would try to climb up it on the outside. To be honest, he and I never especially bonded (clearly so on his part, given his desire to escape).

Priya,
I do think it of the utmost importance to appreciate what Tolkien has to say about 'Beowulf'. Obviously, one needs to be clear on this to read the allegory. But more generally, for those of us who like to explore Tolkien's stories I think it well worth the while to see how Tolkien did this kind of work.

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives & Aiks


The point of the Tower Allegory in no uncertain terms was relayed by Tolkien himself with the following sentence:

“I would express the whole industry in yet another allegory.” (my underlined emphasis)

Chrys - this is what I feel you are missing. I think you ought to spend some time dwelling on this.

The Tower Allegory was not meant to reflect his own analysis of the poem or get into a discussion of its details. It’s too early in the essay for him to go there. Instead, before he introduces the allegory there is:

(a) A carefully constructed story revolving around historical academic criticism.

(b) A voicing of the direction that his essay is going to take.


I think, what will help you immensely is some analysis. Try separately summarizing each of the six paragraphs before the Tower Allegory as succinctly as possible. You will see how the build-up revolves around the ‘industry’ and where Tolkien wants to refocus. Then go ahead and re-ponder how the allegory would fit in. I’m hoping the light bulb will then go on!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Priya,

:)

I'll give it a try. How about you try explaining (2) above?

(2) The stones of the hall - the true and original tale of Beowulf undiffused.

The allegory is a history told in two acts. The first tells of the Anglo-Saxon who built the tower in the age of Bede. The second tells of the modern critics (the poem was lost and then rediscovered in 1700). The lecture contains the word 'critic' in the title. The lecture juxtaposes what the man was actually doing - as Tolkien tells it - with what the critics say about what the man made. These critics are divided within the allegory into two groups, friends and descendants. The allegory introduces the argument, which Tolkien directs to those pictured in the allegory as 'descendants'. The argument concerns the design of the poem/tower.

With regard to the paragraphs prior to this allegory, I observe here that the allegory of the tower introduces the descendants as a particular group of critics, so setting the context of the argument (see the first sentence after the allegory concerning justness and recent critics), and in so doing circles back to the first page of the essay where W.P. Ker's statement about disproportion between center and periphery is singled out as a criticism that Tolkien especially wishes to consider. Ker is the chief of the descendants, and it is his specific criticism that Tolkien is focused upon in his argument (see e.g. the first sentence of the last quote from the essay in my post above).

I've read the earlier paragraphs again, as you suggested. I'd be happy to post a summary of each of the 6 paragraphs for us to discuss - or to discuss your summaries, if you prefer. But only after we first read your account of (2), which I am most curious to examine.

[Saranna]

Hello everyone - I would also be anxious to read anything and everything that continues this discussion. For years and years I found that allegory almost impenetrable and am always pleased to find (steal?) anyone's extra knowledge/wisdom. I don't think I have an allegorical mind.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hi @Saranna,

Priya wished to discuss the allegory as allegory, that is, solving each metaphor in the story, which is a good way to start. We have got stuck on various terms, like 'field' and the stones of the 'old hall', but in theory a continuing discussion might resolve these metaphors. This is to follow in the footsteps of Tom Shippey in 'Road to Middle-earth'. But already back in 1983 in 'Splintered Light', Verlyn Flieger pointed out that Shippey had not solved the view of the sea from the tower. Flieger declared the sea unsolvable, a deliberate enigma within the allegory. And there discussion stopped.

For long years as I grappled with the essay and the allegory within it I was irritated that nobody continued this discussion. The three pioneers of Tolkien studies gave somewhat different readings of the allegory, everyone else read the allegory by taking a bit from each of them, but nobody tried to resolve the unresolved reading. Recently I've come to understand that, in addition to a lack of critical thinking among the authors of the subsequent secondary literature, this situation reflects academic territorialism. In a nutshell, Shippey was the authority on all things related to Tolkien's scholarship and to dissent to his reading of the allegory was to challenge his authority in general. Hence the situation that I have ended up in, whereby a year ago I pointed out some of the ways in which Shippey's readings are contradicted by the evidence of Tolkien's texts and Shippey attempted to squash me with his academia.edu paper calling me an 'online troll' and inviting me to step outside for a fight (sic!) For my part, this battle is well overdue because the basic fact of the matter is that Shippey has very little notion of the intellectual concepts behind Tolkien's scholarship, in fact he has very little conception of that scholarship, and for Tolkien criticism to arrive at first base it is imperative that his baneful influence be swept away. But recently I have come to appreciate that I am not so utterly alone in this conviction - and my approach to the allegory and the essay in general - as I had thought.

Back in the early years of this century Shippey and Flieger crossed swords over their readings of Smith of Wootton Major, as can be read in a journal paper titled 'Allegory versus Bounce' (details of which I can provide if you wish). Shippey argues that the story is allegory, Flieger argues that it began as allegory but became a fairy story. Along the way, Flieger makes various points - e.g. that there is no external evidence that Tolkien felt a tension between his scholarship and his art - that actually undermine Shippey on the Beowulf allegory. Flieger is careful to keep the discussion focused on Smith of Wootton Major, but it is obvious when you think on it that she no longer believes (as I think she once did) in Shippey's account of Tolkien's scholarship.

What Flieger says of Smith of Wootton Major holds in general form for the allegory of the tower, or such is my belief. The story certainly begins as an allegory - a straightforward allegory with the poem presented as a rock garden. But already the canonical form where the old stones are made into a tower is half-way to a fairy-tale, which becomes apparent when one considers the sea-view. The Lord of the Rings reveals the original allegory remade in full splendour as a fairy-story.

In other words, that you have found this allegory impenetrable is not so surprising, and this in part because it is not exactly a pure allegory. It is an allegory, but it is also something else.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Priya: You voiced it accurately and recognise this, from when I analysed the text last year. "The Tower Allegory was not meant to reflect his own analysis of the poem or get into a discussion of its details. It’s too early in the essay for him to go there. Instead, before he introduces the allegory there is: (a) A carefully constructed story revolving around historical academic criticism. (b) A voicing of the direction that his essay is going to take." A very good essay had such a construction. And it reads quite pleasant too, let alone to listen to it.

Chrys: Just a pair of type errors on a keyboard. It's corrected.

Saranna: I don't think anyone really has an allergorical mind. You can posses an aptitude for it to dectect and use it. I read things from a literal view, which is the easiest. Literature itself was never the most enjoyable aspect of a language, I loose very often the focus on the matter going on. In the wider arena of argument I was never loved for my halfwitted viewpoints. But on the other hand I don't mind the admittance to be wrong about in my views. It is quite enlightening there is a new viewpoint added to it. I recognise something in your expression: "am always pleased to find (steal?) anyone's extra knowledge/wisdom."

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Saranna, after posting to you above I went back to the Flieger versus Shippey paper and found that Flieger herself weaves her reading of Smith of Wootton Major as fairy-story rather than allegory into her reading of the allegory of the tower. This from the very end of her paper.

I will close with Tolkien's own best-known use of outright allegory, the allegory of the tower in 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics.' After implying one-to-one correspondences between contemporary critical interpretations of the poem and the field of old stone, the older hall, the house, and the tower, he abandons allegory for art in his conclusion that, "from that tower the man had been able to see the sea."
There is no allegorical correlative to the sea, and the vision implied cannot be tied down to a specific meaning. The same is true of Smith of Wootton Major.

Please observe that, with regard to the allegory of the tower, we have three points of view in play.

(1) Shippey introduces the idea of a 'just' allegory, claims that it is Tolkien's idea, and explains that a just allegory is one in which every element is an equation to be solved.

(2) Flieger follows Shippey's idea of the just allegory, but (already in 1983 in Splintered Light) argues that the view on the sea cannot be solved (she is too polite to say that Shippey in Road to Middle-earth failed to solve this equation, though her position implies it).

Observe how Flieger helpfully articulates the nature of the allegorical correlations that she takes herself and Shippey to be seeking: "one-to-one correspondences between contemporary critical interpretations of the poem" - her point is that the sea or the view on the sea correlates with nothing in the critical literature.

(3) My exegesis: the sea does correlate to one instance of Beowulf criticism, namely Tolkien's; if we wish to learn more of the 'shoreless sea' we do well to read on into the essay (all the way to the account of the panoramic view from the top of the tower that Flieger in fact quotes in Splintered Light). With regard to the sea, which is the shoreless sea as characterized in 'The Fall of Numenor' (that which was straight but is now round and the straight can no longer be found), Flieger is wrong to state that Tolkien, as it were, has bust his own allegory. To this extent, Shippey is correct that the allegory is 'just' - just so long as we see what Tolkien means by the Shoreless Sea, which is essentially the sea that Elendil crossed on his journey into the East.

But of course, once we are standing on the top of the tower looking upon the Straight Road travelled by Elendil we have stepped out of allegory and stand in a fairy-story.

Flieger did not see the whole view from the top of the tower - did not see that one can spy Valinor from the top of this tower. She did not make the connection between this tower and The Silmarillion. But she does everything but... Everything she was intuiting and following was right and on the right path, she just missed the final key by which it falls into place and may be articulated with (relative) ease. The tower and its view into the fiction out of this scholarly essay on an Old English poem is all that Flieger missed. Behind the tower her eye sees all and clearly - the allegory of the tower is a fairy-story waiting to be born, and it is the view on the sea that makes and gives the fairy-story!

All my third position really does is join the last dot to give proper expression to what Flieger has shown. But this joining connects the scholarship of J.R.R. Tolkien with his stories, and so brings everything into view in a way that we already know it! (The penny drops and we finally make the connection between Tolkien's study of an Anglo-Saxon poem and what he thought he was up to as he penned The Lord of the Rings.)

[Priya]

Hello Aiks

You voiced it accurately and recognise this, from when I analysed the text last year." … A very good essay had such a construction. And it reads quite pleasant too, let alone to listen to it.

Wow - thanks, and



Hello Chrysophylax Dives

(2) The stones of the hall - the true and original tale of Beowulf undiffused.

By ‘undiffused’ - I mean the ‘original’ tale as told by its ‘inventor’.
Tolkien, as just about every scholar, recognized that Beowulf had arrived in Anglo-Saxon England after migration from a ‘foreign’ land or even across several countries.

In OFS Tolkien, using fairy-story (though it may be generalized to any tale), delineated how a story, after its invention, spread from its source through the processes of ‘diffusion’ and ‘inheritance’. I sort of used his terminology. Naturally a tale can become distorted, embellished etc. - especially if the method of transmission is oral. It will differ from its original form over time.

I'd be happy to post a summary of each of the 6 paragraphs for us to discuss - or to discuss your summaries, if you prefer.

I will provide a summary when I get a chance (no pun intended Jane).

[Chrysophylax Dives]

By ‘undiffused’ - I mean the ‘original’ tale as told by its ‘inventor’.
Tolkien, as just about every scholar, recognized that Beowulf had arrived in Anglo-Saxon England after migration from a ‘foreign’ land or even across several countries.

In OFS Tolkien, using fairy-story (though it may be generalized to any tale), delineated how a story, after its invention, spread from its source through the processes of ‘diffusion’ and ‘inheritance’. I sort of used his terminology. Naturally a tale can become distorted, embellished etc. - especially if the method of transmission is oral. It will differ from its original form over time.

Hi Priya, you are quite correct that OFS talks of diffusion and identifies an 'inventor' as the start of the whole thing. And you are also correct that Tolkien saw that a folktale about Beowulf and the monster in Heorot was an old story. Where you err and slip is when you write as if Beowulf predates Beowulf. The italicized title refers to the Old English poem, and the whole force of the lecture - everything that Tolkien is saying, basically - is that Beowulf is something far more and quite other than the oral folktale.

Tolkien is saying that the Anglo-Saxon poet took this old folktale and worked it up into mythical form, making use also of a host of other stories - heroic legends - and with his own pattern of all these elements the poet made an historical elegy. If you focus on the old folktale as the 'original' you miss the whole point about the design and intention of the poet, as indeed you miss also the point of the metaphor of the accumalation of old stones and their use in making the tower.

To give a quotation from the essay that you have used before, and continue with a couple that closely follow.

... as if Milton had recounted the story of Jack and the Beanstalk in noble verse. Even if Milton had done this (and he might have done worse), we should perhaps pause to consider whether his poetic handling had not had some effect upon the trivial theme; what alchemy had been performed upon the base metal; whether indeed it remained base or trivial when he had finished with it. (p.13)

Again,

The habit... of pondering a summarized plot of Beowulf, denuded of all that gives it particular force or individual life, has encouraged the notion that its main story is wild, or trivial, or typical, even after treatment. (p. 14)

The term ‘folk-tale’ is misleading; its very tone of depreciation begs the question. Folk-tales in being, as told — for the ‘typical folk-tale’, of course, is merely an abstract conception of research nowhere existing — do often contain elements that are thin and cheap, with little even potential virtue; but they also contain much that is far more powerful, and that cannot be sharply separated from myth, being derived from it, or capable in poetic hands of turning into it... (p. 15)

By reading the account of diffusion in OFS into B:M&C you appear to miss the basic idea of B:M&C, which concerns the treatment of the folktale such that it was worked up into a mythical tale set in the named lands of the legendary North. Tolkien is asking, for example, how placing the historical legends on the outer edges serves the working up of the folktale into a mythical hero at the center. His essay concerns the design of the poem, and the original folktale is but one of various ingredients - one of many stones that make this tower.

At the risk of offending you even further than I no doubt already have done, it seems to me that precisely this conception of an authored story is missing from the Jason Fisher book on source-criticism that you pointed me to. Essentially, Tolkien in this essay asks what the poet was thinking - what was the intention, what was he trying to do? What was his design? The discussion of 'Origins' in OFS shows how Tolkien considered fairy-stories in an oral culture, but 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' shows us how Tolkien engaged in literary criticism - dealing with a story authored by someone writing with a pen. When we come out the other end of his essay, we in a position to ask the same kind of questions of Tolkien. But if we don't ask these kind of questions we end up with the mindless source-hunting of Fisher et al.

[Saranna]

@ everyone

I am aware of the 'sword-play' and of 'Allegory v Bounce' situation between Shippey and Flieger. Another thing that I found rather opaque at the time it was going on..... @Chrysophylax Dives I am glad you said 'Flieger helpfully articulates' as for me that epitomises her approach to scholarship. She both writes with an open mind, and joins in discussion (with anyone interested, not necessarily a known scholar) Why can't more scholars be like that?

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives

Hate to say it - but again the core of my thoughts haven’t been grasped. And again, per your last post, you’ve leapt too forward in extracting quotes further into the essay in making counter-arguments.

I have solely been addressing the Tower Allegory which in my view eloquently and methodically encapsulates what came before it in Tolkien’s essay.

My opinion remains that for the Tower Allegory there was an initial crafting of a simple frame for the short story based upon an acknowledgement of the ancient and foreign nature of the tale originating from ancestors before its arrival in England and meeting the poet’s ear. And my reading of the Tower Allegory, is in contrast to Shippey and yours, in that I feel it’s too simple and brief to include the specific presence of allegorically represented myth, pagan, heathen, Christian, oral, folk-tale or fairy-tale matters, elements or arguments.

Reducing the allegory to an uncomplicated form without reading too much into it is the most defensible assessment in my view. And that simplicity is reflected in Tolkien’s own summation of what it’s about - namely the state of the ‘whole industry’.

[Priya]

As promised - I’ve boiled down the initial part of Tolkien’s essay to a brief summary on each paragraph. Plaza readers may not totally agree, and I welcome other interpretations.


Para 1 - The highlighting of a past accusation by a peer academic that a renowned predecessor of Tolkien’s chair lacked proficiency in understanding the meaning of certain Anglo-Saxon words. The charge is that he failed to read much of the original manuscripts written in Old English.

Para 2 - Following on, Tolkien confirms that he has not only read Beowulf but in addition much written about it. However, little he has seen has discussed its poetic artistry, and this is to be the thrust of his dissertation.

Para 3 - That artistry which he believes is central to the tale, namely the monsters and their structural relation to the poem is going to be the focus of detailed discussion.

Para 4 - A Tolkien devised allegory which captures angles from which the poem has been historically analyzed by academics. The exception has been poetry.

Para 5 - The majority of this historical analysis has actually been focused on the historic nature of the document, instead of poetic artistry.

Para 6 - Concise academic opinions of what Beowulf constitutes are not strictly correct.



It is then that we get into the Tower Allegory, which when given the above paragraph by paragraph summary, sweetly captures preceding discussion.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hello Priya,

I hope I shall show that that allegory is just - even when we consider the more recent and more perceptive critics (whose concern is in intention with literature).

This is the first sentence after the allegory and establishes that the justice of the allegory is to be shown in what follows. The allegory introduces the argument and cannot be disconnected from that argument without substantial damage. (FYI, the more recent and perceptive critics = the the descendants).

You began by lecturing me on the importance of every word, which (I agree) has been carefully considered by Tolkien, but you are now telling me that everything must be read simply and as uncomplicated, and that we are not allowed to read beyond the allegory in interpreting the allegory. You may do very well for a Tolkien scholar.

The Tower Allegory was not meant to reflect his own analysis of the poem or get into a discussion of its details. It’s too early in the essay for him to go there.

This is where your position is now, having moved away from the careful consideration of every word you have decided that it is all very simple and are telling me what Tolkien 'meant' with the allegory. But you have no reason to give for why this is what is meant by Tolkien other than the fact that you don't wish to engage with the argument of the essay! Too early by whose lights? Yours alone.

Beowulf begins with an exordium of 52 lines, telling the life of Scyld Scefing the mythical king of the ancient North who came to his people over the sea. The exordium stands in a certain relationship to the rest of the poem, and one must read both carefully to understand this relationship. In my opinion Tolkien intended his allegory as an exordium to his argument, reflecting the relationship that he discerned in the poem. We don't have to open this relationship up now, my point here is simply that your declaration of the allegory as simple and referencing only what came before is your subjective projection, and one that flies in the face of your initial position of considering carefully every word.

Your odd idea that the allegory only looks backward would serve, at least to get us going into more interesting and rewarding discussion of allegory and lecture, if you actually considered carefully the meaning of the 6 paragraphs prior to the allegory. But your summaries are too crude and overlook what Tolkien is setting up in his first 7 paragraphs, to which I will turn in the next post.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Priya,
I really should reiterate that I am grateful to you for stepping out of your comfort zone and engaging with me on this. In my eyes, your readings are interesting because they quite closely reflect what one finds in the secondary literature and as such indicate a superficial reading. But I do want to underline that, unlike those who have published on this essay and allegory, you make no claims to expertise, and so I don't hold your superficial reading against you.

Your summary of the first paragraph will do fine.

Para 2 - Following on, Tolkien confirms that he has not only read Beowulf but in addition much written about it. However, little he has seen has discussed its poetic artistry, and this is to be the thrust of his dissertation.

This is just the kind of summary one finds in the secondary literature. It reflects a lack of apprehension of the argument of the essay, a sense of which is now being built up. Crucial in this paragraph is:

It has been said of Beowulf itself that its weakness lies in placing the unimportant things at the centre and the important on the outer edges. This is one of the opinions that I wish specially to consider. I think it profoundly untrue of the poem, but strikingly true of the literature about it.

This second paragraph circles the aesthetic criticism of the poem by W.P. Ker, who in 1904 complained that the 'radical defect' of Beowulf is that it puts a silly folktale at the center and the important stories on the outer edges. This criticism by Ker is the heart of this essay, it is what Tolkien dedicates his essay to overturning. Ker is the chief of the group of critics, which includes also Ker's disciple R.W. Chambers, who in the allegory are named 'descendants'.

Para 3 - That artistry which he believes is central to the tale, namely the monsters and their structural relation to the poem is going to be the focus of detailed discussion.

Yes, but note that Tolkien states that he will confine himself to the monsters and "what seems to me the best and most authoritative general criticism in English" - which again points to the descendants: later in the essay Tolkien will give a long quotation from Chambers' essay 'Beowulf and the Heroic Age' from which he will deduce that the monsters are a fusion of Christian and heathen mythologies. These introductory paragraphs are distinguishing Ker and Chambers from the mass of other critics, and Tolkien's strategy in the rest of the essay is to use their own words to overturn Ker's criticism about center and outer edges.

Para 4 - A Tolkien devised allegory which captures angles from which the poem has been historically analyzed by academics. The exception has been poetry.

Here your thumbnail sketch of the paragraph loses the key to its meaning. Two complaints about your summary. Firstly, observe how this allegory is introduced: "There is an historical explanation of the state of Beowulfiana... And that explanation is important... A sketch of the history of the subject is required. But I will here only attempt, for brevity’s sake, to present my view of it allegorically." Here is a clue to what Tolkien means by 'allegory' and what he intends by the use of it (every word is carefully considered, remember?) Here we have the suggestion that once a history is sketched that historical sketch may then be summarized as allegory. Later in this essay, allegory is said to be what happens when myth decays - as the monsters of northern myth become spiritual demons and our battle with the monsters an allegory of the soul and its mortal perils. But here in these first paragraphs Tolkien coins two allegories of his own, and we are to understand his allegories as anchored in history.

Second observation as to what is passed over in your summary of the 4th paragraph.

In 1925 Professor Archibald Strong translated Beowulf into verse; but in 1921 he had declared: ‘Beowulf is the picture of a whole civilization, of the Germania which Tacitus describes. The main interest which the poem has for us is thus not a purely literary interest. Beowulf is an important historical document.’

Now we have before us the friends of the allegory as well as the descendants, and the framework of what follows has been established (awaiting the formal picture of the allegory in a few paragraphs). On the one hand we have descendants, like Ker and Chamber, who have situated the poet as an Anglo-Saxon author writing a poem about the old heathen days - but they don't like the fact that he placed a wild folktale at the center of the poem. On the other hand we have friends, like Strong, who enthuse about Beowulf as a historical document that provides a direct window on the ancient Teutonic forest that is the origin of the English, thereby missing completely the artistry of the Anglo-Saxon author.

Here is now established the paradox that Tolkien works in his essay. The friends and descendants can coexist in relative harmony because both groups of critics dismiss the artistry of the Anglo-Saxon author. Arguing with the descendants, Tolkien will use their own words to demonstrate that this art enacted a fusion of Christian and heathen eschatologies, thereby establishing the seriousness of the 'center' of the poem. But this same demonstration also serves to explain what is going on with the friends, who have mistaken artistry for historicity - the art is so good, Tolkien suggests, that the modern friends have been taken in by it and have convinced themselves that this melding of myth and historical legend by an Anglo-Saxon with a pen is a genuine echo of the world of story of ancient heathen times.

Para 5 - The majority of this historical analysis has actually been focused on the historic nature of the document, instead of poetic artistry.

Again, your thumbnail sketch fails to dig out the significance of the paragraph, which pertains to the relationship between history and art.

It is indeed a curious fact that it is one of the peculiar poetic virtues of Beowulf that has contributed to its own critical misfortunes. The illusion of historical truth and perspective, that has made Beowulf seem such an attractive quarry, is largely a product of art.

You may recall Tolkien writing elsewhere (possibly the Foreword to the 2nd edition of LotR?) that he likes history, real and feigned. Beowulf is feigned history, just as is The Lord of the Rings. But the friends have mistaken the historical fiction of an Anglo-Saxon author for the real thing - a portrait of the Germania of Tacitus. The crude way of the Tolkien scholars in their secondary literature is to read all this as a denigration of history and celebration of art (Chance and Shippey, and all who parrot them). This is to overlook the absolutely fundamental point that Tolkien wants to discover the secret of the old poet's art of writing feigned history.

Para 6 - Concise academic opinions of what Beowulf constitutes are not strictly correct.

Rather, Tolkien declares that all the criticism has been directed at a poem that is not understood for what it is, that is, the art of which is not seen.

Para 7 - It is then that we get into the Tower Allegory, which when given the above paragraph by paragraph summary, sweetly captures preceding discussion.

You are correct that the seventh paragraph, the allegory, builds on what has come before. First and foremost, it is a brief potting of a history - the history of the making of the poem and of its modern reception. With regard to the making, the allegory pictures the conclusion of Chambers (1921), explicitly adopted by Tolkien later in the essay, that the poet was a contemporary of the Venerable Bede. With regard to the reception, the allegory now draws formally the distinction between the friends, who do not see the author at all and believe they are walking in ancient heathen times, and the descendants, who see an Anglo-Saxon author but fail to see his intentions. Finally, the allegory concludes by pointing to Tolkien's own Beowulf criticism, the foundation on which his argument is raised.

But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Hi Priya: Thanks for the summary in your own words. I would have searched for the most important sentence in the alinea and quoted that. That is the deterministic method I learned long ago. If there is an answer to the starting setup of the dissertation, you may find it on page 15:

"The significance of a myth is not easily to be pinned on paper by analytical reasoning. It is at its best when it is presented by a poet who feels rather than makes explicit what his theme portends; who presents it incarnate in the world of history and geography, as our poet has done. Its defender is thus at a disadvantage: unless he is careful, and speaks in parables, he will kill what he is studying by vivisection, and he will be left with a formal or mechanical allergory, and, what is more, probably with one that will not work. For myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected."

I don't believe at all the whole saga of Beowulf is feigned, it is based on older smaller songs that were put together in the Viking oral tradition of remembering an heroid deed of a brave warrior. Yesterday was in the news that the Saga was King Sverre Sigurdsson is also based on true ancient facts. They dug out a drinking well in Trondheim and found the skeleton of the man described in the poem of 800 years ago. The English article from I-Science can be read here: Corroborating written history with ancient DNA: The case of the Well-man described in an Old Norse saga.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I don't believe at all the whole saga of Beowulf is feigned, it is based on older smaller songs that were put together in the Viking oral tradition of remembering an heroid deed of a brave warrior.

Hi Aiks,

I don't pretend any expertise on Beowulf, all I have studied is Tolkien's reading of Beowulf. The idea that Beowulf is based on the putting together of a lot of smaller lays or songs is one of the ideas found in the older literature that Tolkien rejects. Holding this view of the poem places you among the 'friends' of the allegory.

'Feigned' = not real, made up. Beowulf fights an ogre, a hag, and a dragon. These are mythical monsters, which is to say, they are not historical, which is to say that they are made up.

But this mythical action takes place against a historical background of the North in the Migration Age. Beowulf's king Hygelac is historical - his death is recounted by Gregory of Tours, and Beowulf is a main source for those who seek the roots of Scandinavian and pre-migration English history. Nevertheless, Tolkien's point in his essay is that the poet was not doing 'history' so much as 'poetic history', and that is what I meant by 'feigned history' - Beowulf is in this sense the model of The Lord of the Rings.

In Beowulf we have, then, an historical poem about the pagan past, or an attempt at one—literal historical fidelity founded on modern research was, of course, not attempted. It is a poem by a learned man writing of old times, who looking back on the heroism and sorrow feels in them something permanent and something symbolical. (p. 26)

Beowulf is not an actual picture of historic Denmark or Geatland or Sweden about A.D. 500. But it is (if with certain minor defects) on a general view a self-consistent picture, a construction bearing clearly the marks of design and thought. (p. 27)