VIII Международный конкурс научно-исследовательских и творческих работ учащихся
Старт в науке
The influence of J. R. R.Tolkien’s works on the modern society.
Автор работы награжден дипломом победителя III степени
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I.
Believe it or not, but the previous population census in Russia, which took
place in 2010, revealed that more than four hundred elves and about five hundred hobbits live in our country. It should be admitted that those fellow citizens of ours, who defined their nationality in such an unusual way, played a joke, but this joke shows the influence of fantasy books by J. R. R. Tolkien on our modern society.
Thus, the object of the research work is J. R. R. Tolkien and his most famous works: ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
The purpose of the research is to study life of Tolkien, history of creation of Hobbit and his other works, their value and influence on the previous and contemporary generations. We also want to define the importance of The Middle Earth universe for language and culture studies.
To achieve the purpose we will have to cope with some tasks:
- to find information about Tolkien’s biography and his interests;
- to analyze scientific literature on the research problem;
- to study original books and their film adaptations in order to find certain characters and study their individual importance if they have it;
- to examine the place of the Middle Earth universe in modern life;
- to conduct social studies on the subject and analyze the results of a public-opinion poll;
- to systematize findings and make a quiz on the subject.
Methods of research intended to use:
- the method of study of documents (“The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings books”, scientific and dictionaries);
- the usage of Internet;
- conducting an opinion poll.
II.I
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province in South Africa) to Arthur Reuel Tolkien, an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel. The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel. After his father’s death they moved back to Great Britain in 1896. Mabel Tolkien herself taught her two children, and Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil. His favourite lessons were those concerning languages, and his mother taught him the rudiments of Latin very early.
While in his early teens, Tolkien had his first encounter with a constructed language, Animalic, an invention of his cousins, Mary and Marjorie Incledon. At that time, he was studying Latin and Anglo-Saxon. Interest in the language soon died away, but Mary and others, including Tolkien himself, invented a new and more complex language called Nevbosh. The next constructed language he came to work with, Naffarin, would be his own creation.
In October 1911, after leaving King Edward's School, Tolkien began studying at Exeter College, Oxford. He initially studied Classics but changed his course in 1913 to English Language and Literature, graduating in 1915 with first-class honours in his final examinations.
At the age of 16, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt, who became his wife on March 22, 1916. In 1914, the United Kingdom entered World War I. The War had a crucial influence on Tolkien’s life. After the 11 month training Tolkien was transferred to the 11th Battalion with the British Expeditionary Force, arriving in France on June 4, 1916. His departure from England on a troop transport inspired him to write his poem, The Lonely Isle. Tolkien served as a signal officer at the Somme, participating in the Battle of Thiepval Ridge and the subsequent assault on the Schwaben Redoubt. He later wrote, "Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then... it was like a death."
Tolkien's time in combat was a terrible stress for Edith, who feared that every knock on the door might carry news of her husband's death. In order to get around the British Army's postal censorship, the Tolkiens had developed a secret code which accompanied his letters home. By using the code, Edith was able to track her husband's movements on a map of the Western Front. It is interesting that in the run-up to World War II, Tolkien was earmarked as a codebreaker. In January 1939, he was asked whether he would be prepared to serve in the cryptographic department of the Foreign Office in the event of national emergency.
On 27 October 1916 Tolkien came down with trench fever and was invalided to England on 8 November 1916. In later years, Tolkien indignantly declared that those who searched his works for parallels to the Second World War were entirely mistaken: “One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less shocking an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead”.
During his recovery in a cottage in Little Haywood, Staffordshire, he began to work on what he called The Book of Lost Tales, beginning with The Fall of Gondolin. Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps and was promoted to Lieutenant. It was at this time that Edith bore their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. In 1920, he became the youngest professor of the English Language at the University of Leeds. And in 1925, he returned to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, with a fellowship at Pembroke College. During his time at Pembroke College Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien's 1936 lecture, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," had a lasting influence on Beowulf research. At the time, the scholars criticized Beowulf for dealing with childish battles with monsters rather than realistic tribal warfare; Tolkien argued that the author of Beowulf was addressing human destiny in general, not as limited by particular tribal politics, and therefore the monsters were essential to the poem. In the essay, Tolkien also revealed how highly he regarded Beowulf: "Beowulf is among my most valued sources," and this influence may be seen throughout his Middle-earth legendarium. It is obvious that Tolkien was much inspired by early Germanic, especially Old English, literature, poetry, and mythology, which were his chosen and much-loved areas of expertise. Despite the similarities of his work to The Volsunga saga and The Nibelungenlied, which were the basis for Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tolkien dismissed critics' direct comparisons to Wagner, telling his publisher, "Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases." However, some critics believe that Tolkien was, in fact, obligated to Wagner for elements such as the "concept of the Ring as giving the owner mastery of the world.
..." Two of the characteristics possessed by the One Ring, its inherent wickedness and corrupting power upon minds and wills, were not present in the mythical sources but have a central role in Wagner's opera.
In 1945, Tolkien moved to Merton College, Oxford, becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, in which post he remained until his retirement in 1959. He served as an external examiner for University College, Dublin, for many years. In 1954 Tolkien received an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland.
In 1948 Tolkien completed The Lord of the Rings, close to a decade after the first sketches. Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by absolute accident a book called The Hobbit, which he had written some years before for his own children, came in 1936. However, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, and it became popular enough for the publishers to ask Tolkien to produce a sequel.
Tolkien at first intended The Lord of the Rings to be a children's tale in the style of The Hobbit, but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing. Though a direct sequel to The Hobbit, it addressed an older audience. Tolkien's influence weighs heavily on the fantasy genre that grew up after the success of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien considered himself as a part of the world he had created. He had the name Lúthien engraved on Edith's tombstone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. When Tolkien died 21 months later on September 2, 1973, at the age of 81, he was buried in the same grave, with Beren added to his name. The Tale of Beren and Lúthien is the story of love and adventures of the mortal Man Beren and the immortal Elf-maiden Lúthien, as told in several works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
II.II
"I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, unmechanized farm lands, I smoke a pipe and like good, plain food unrefrigerated but I detest French cooking. I like and even dare to wear in these dull days ornamental waistcoats. I'm fond of mushrooms out of a field, have a very simple sense of humor (which even my most appreciate critics find tiresome). I go to bed late, and get up late, when possible." Being an unordinary person Tolkien considered himself a typical Englishman, whereas numerous researchers of his creative work find that his hobbit is the national personification of an ordinary dweller of England who can be compared with another national political cartoon character John Bull, who is usually depicted as a stout, middle-aged, country dwelling, jolly, matter-of-fact person.
The stereotypes found in the text of The Hobbit are regarded as national stereotypes which constitute the English “national character”. The national stereotypes embodied in the Hobbit can be divided into several groups.
1. Reverent attitude of the English to their country which is shown through the respect to traditions, rural peace quietness implying living in the country, practicalness and love to gardening.We can see these features in Tolkien’s descriptions ofthe native land of the hobbits the Shire. It should be mentioned that many names of English lands end in ‘shire’, such as Shropshire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire. etc.
2. Politeness and respect are very important national characteristics. English people are also very helpful on the other hand they are a bit conceited especially when communicating with foreigners. Thus Bilbo begins his first conversation with Gandalf saying “Good morning” several times? Every time with different meaning ranging from “Hello” to “Good riddance!”Also, he is very polite with dwarves that are foreigners for him, until their behavior turns strange.
3. Law obedience, as well as conservatism is considered the bases for success in life which does not exclude such qualities as individuality and even freakery on the other hand. Samuel Marshak once noted: “I do love Englishmen, every fourth of them is odd!” Bilbo, in the beginning of the book, was a well-to-do hobbit. He needed nothing and enjoyed his life. During the journey he changes, and becomes a freak for his neighbors and relatives, but luckily quite a rich freak.
4. Adventurism and the love to travelling is another national peculiarity of the English people. Nevertheless they don’t like to leave their home for a long time concerning their ‘sweet home’ to be their ‘castle’. As it has been mentioned before Bilbo and four other hobbits from The Lord of the rings travelled far too long time for hobbits. They even thought to be dead by their relatives. We should also mention how much Bilbo missed his dear home during the travel ‘there and back again’.
II.III
Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology. It has been already mentioned that he specialized in English philology at university and in 1915 graduated with Old Norse (норвежский) as special subject. He worked for the Oxford English Dictionary from 1918 and is credited with having worked on a number of Germanic words starting with the letter W, including walrus, over which he struggled mightily. In 1920, he became Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of linguistics from five to twenty. He gave courses in Old English heroic verse, history of English, various Old English and Middle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory Germanic philology, Gothic, Old Icelandic, and Medieval Welsh.
Tolkien learned Latin, French, and German from his mother, and while at school he learned Middle English, Old English, Finnish, Gothic, Greek, Italian, Old Norse, Spanish, Welsh, and Medieval Welsh. He was also familiar with Danish, Dutch, Lombardic, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Swedish and older forms of modern Germanic and Slavonic languages, revealing his deep linguistic knowledge, above all of the Germanic languages.
Parallel to Tolkien's professional work as a philologist, and sometimes overwhelming this work was his affection for constructing languages. The most developed of these are Quenya and Sindarin, the etymological connection between which formed the core of much of Tolkien's legendarium. Language and grammar for Tolkien was a matter of aesthetics, and Quenya in particular was designed from "phonaesthetic" considerations; it was intended as an "Elvenlatin", and was phonologically based on Latin, with ingredients from Finnish, Welsh, English, and Greek. In late 1945 he created Adûnaic or Númenórean, connected with Tolkien's Atlantis legend.
Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the mythology associated with them, and he consequently took a dim view of auxiliary languages: in 1930 a congress of Esperantists were told as much by him, in his lecture A Secret Vice, "Your language construction will breed a mythology", but by 1956 he had concluded that "Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends".
The popularity of Tolkien's books has had a small but lasting effect on the use of language in fantasy literature in particular, and even on mainstream dictionaries, which today commonly accept Tolkien's idiosyncratic spellings dwarves and dwarvish (alongside dwarfs and dwarfish), which had been little used since the mid-19th century and earlier. (In fact, according to Tolkien, had the Old English plural survived, it would have been dwarrows or dwerrows.)
III.I
Naturally the extreme popularity of Tolkien’s fantasy books in the 1960s brought out the idea of making film versions. Unfortunately, Tolkien went on to criticize the scripts scene by scene. He was not absolutely opposed to the idea of a dramatic adaptation, however, and sold the film, stage and merchandise rights of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1968. United Artists never made a film, and in 1976 the rights were sold to Tolkien Enterprises, a division of the Saul Zaentz Company, and the first movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings appeared in 1978, an animated rotoscoping film directed by Ralph Bakshi with screenplay by the fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle. It covered only the first half of the story of The Lord of the Rings. In 1977 an animated TV production of The Hobbit was made by Rankin-Bass, and in 1980 they produced an animated The Return of the King, which covered some of the portions of The Lord of the Rings that Bakshi was unable to complete.
From 2001 to 2003, New Line Cinema released The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy of live-action films that were filmed in New Zealand and directed by Sir Peter Jackson. The series was successful, performing extremely well commercially and winning numerous Oscars.
On the 20th of December, 2012 the first film of the new trilogy based on the original Hobbit also directed by Jackson was launched at the cinemas all over the world. The film, as well as the previous Sir Peter Jackson’s adaptations, was made in New Zealand which became a matter of national pride for local people and appeared to be extremely beneficial for the popularity, economics, and cultural life of this small English speaking country. It is interesting also that Prince William attended the premier show of The Hobbit in England. It should be admitted that the Royal family have always valued the importance of Tolkien’s works both scientific and literature. He was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours of January 1, 1972 and received the insignia of the Order at Buckingham Palace on March 28, 1972. In the same year Oxford University conferred upon him an honorary Doctorate of Letters (Doctor of Literature).
III.II
Tolkien’s legendarium as well as the mentioned film adaptations created an immense Tolkien fandom. Fandom (consisting of fan [fanatic] plus the suffix -dom, as in kingdom, freedom, etc.) is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the object(s) of their fandom and spend a significant portion of their time and energy involved with their interest.
Tolkien fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. A Tolkienist is someone who studies the work of J. R. R. Tolkien: this usually refers to students of the Elvish languages and "Tolkienology". The term refers to a fan of The Lord of the Rings in general, and of Peter Jackson's live-action film trilogy in particular.
Serious admirers and fans of Tolkien came into existence within science fiction fandom soon after the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien-inspired costumes were worn at Worldcons as early as 1958. Worldcon, or more formally The World Science Fiction Convention, is a science fiction convention held each year since 1939. Some enthusiastic Los Angeles fans had been discussing creating a Tolkien-specific society as early as 1959.
The hippy subculture which flourished in the 1960s gave its own spin to the work's interpretation, such as the Dark Lord Sauron representing the United States military draft during the Vietnam War. The author commented: "Many young Americans are involved in the stories in a way that I'm not" but who nevertheless admitted that “even the nose of a very modest idol cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!”
This embracing of the work by American 1960s counter-culture made it an easy target for mockery, and resulted in The Lord of the Rings acquiring a reputation of a dubious work of popular culture rather than "real literature", postponing the emergence of academic Tolkien studies by some twenty years, to the late 1980s.
The Lord of the Rings also from the mid-1960s acquired immense popularity in the emerging hacker culture, and the technological subcultures of scientists, engineers, and computer programmers, and flourishes there still. It also figured as one of the major inspirations of the emerging video game industry and the evolution of fantasy role-playing games.
The Lord of the Rings became immensely popular in the 1960s and has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the 20th century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC, The Lord of the Rings was found to be the UK's "Best-loved Novel". Australians voted The Lord of the Rings "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by the Australian ABC. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2002 Tolkien was voted the 92nd "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC. His popularity is not limited to the English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found The Lord of the Rings to be their favourite work of literature.
III.III
In Russia The Hobbit was first published in 1976 and The Lord of the Ring followed in 1982. Although only during the Perestroika period the books gained real popularity and became free of censorship. Tolkien’s works were a glowing gem for young people who wanted to escape from the hard reality of the 1990s. Another ‘big bang’ about Tolkien was in 2000s when Peter Jackson’s movies came out and it is still resonating as Tolkienism is still the biggest fandom in Russia.
Many Russian tolkienists study languages of the Middle Earth such as Sindarin and Quenia. They also translate diaries, interviews and stories by Tolkien which have never been published in Russia. The biggest society of these translators is called Tolkien Texts Translation.
Some of Tolkien fans even write fanfics which unofficially expand Middle Earth’s history. Some of these works appeared so popular, that they were published and their authors even became famous writers like Nick Perumov. But most of fan fictions do not follow the canons of Tolkien’s legendarium or even conflict with them. Some of them may be quite ridiculous, but they all show the creativity of fans.
Role playing games in Russia have always been associated with tolkienists due to the open air character of the events. In 1990s “Hobbit Games” took place all over Russia annually. We should also note that the Costume play culture in Russia also evolved from Tolkienism. It should be mentioned that the most famous Russian Tolkien conventions are Zilant in Kazan’, which dates back to 1991 and SibCon (Siberian Convention) that started in 1993.
IV.
Thus, we have profoundly studied the life and works of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and discovered his immense influence on the modern culture and society. During our studies we have analyzed scientific literature on the research problem, studied books and their film adaptations. We have also conducted an opinion poll, analyzed its results and represented them in the form of presentation and the quiz.
So, our research work helped to widen the horizons of the students of our Gymnasium. We found out an interesting personality: a patriot of his country, an outstanding linguist, a polyglot, a creator of elfish and dwarfish languages and the whole fantasy world The Middle Earth. Having shown Tolkien’s creation of the Hobbit, as the national personification of the English character, we managed to reveal his contribution to the culture of English speaking countries, his love to England and his respect to its history.
We have also noted the great influence of Tolkien’s legendarium on the young generation which resulted in the appearing of subcultures not only in English speaking countries but also in Russia. To our mind, Tolkienism helps young people to express themselves and broadens their mind in a very fascinating way. We hope that our research work will motivate students to learn more about the fantasy World of the Middle Earth and even read Tolkien’s books in the original.
V.
We made a research to define the popularity of Tolkien’s works with Russian students. The questions of the opinion poll included:
1. Do you know what a hobbit is?
2. Where did you first find about a hobbit?
(a) from the book (b) from the film
3. Do you want to learn more about J.R.R. Tolkien?
The following diagrams show the results.
Having conducted the research we decided to make a quiz on Tolkien’s life and works in order to widen the horizons of the English language learners. It can be used both as a presentation on topic “Literature” in class and a useful and funny extra material for anyone interested in the subject. The quiz is applied to these papers.
VI. Resources
1. Дж. Р. Р. Толкиен: Хоббит, БратствоКольца, Двекрепости, Возвращениекороля, Сильмариллион. «Полиграфкнига» 1993 г.
2. Николя Бонналь. Золотой век от хоббитов - переворот для хиппи. http://www.pravda.ru
3. Отражение стереотипов в литературной сказке. http://www.refsru.com/referat-2352-1.html
4. J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit. “Harper Collins Publishers” 1991.
5. J. R. R. Tolkien’s interview “Actually I’m a Hobbit”.
6. Wikipedia.