The Lord of the Rings: Impetuous of an Age

Adam Andreason

Dr. Cynthia Hallen

ELANG 324 Sec 1

November 30, 2009

The Lord of the Rings: Impetuous of an Age

Language and culture are inexorably tied parts of the same whole. They circle around one another like currents of hot and cold air. It’s uncertain where one pulls or pushes the other, but they are much of the cause of the invention and expansion of terminology and lexicon, shifts in and creation of connotative meaning, and the overall evolution of language itself. In fact, “language cannot be used without carrying meaning and referring beyond itself” (Gao 58).

Literature presents us with a singular opportunity—language crystallized in physical form, complete with much of its original background, history, and cultural basis intact, especially when presented in the form of a full story. It is these gems of narrative that can be passed from person to person, the integrity of their language unmaligned by word of mouth, influencing the views, perceptions, language and culture of each reader, each mind. So the greatest way a piece of writing can affect language is by way of culture, in a perfect circle—language moving culture creating language.

And John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote something that changed our culture. Like many great works of art, The Lord of the Rings grew on the cultural conciseness of English speakers slowly, in waves of interest and participation, finally breaching forth on a worldwide stage of recognition in the 1960s, and growing an increasing large amount of appreciative scholars and readers as time went on. As early as Georg W. Boswell’s article “Tolkien as Litterateur” in 1972 it was viewed in many circles with esteem, even though only now is it finally making its way into the halls of great epics, establishing much of what we see as the fantasy genre today. As early as 1954 the idea of “Tolkienian” aspects began to take root in our language and literature conceptualization (OED).

In terms of direct language contributor, a lot of things could be attributed to Tolkien. Reinvention and conceptualization of things such as elves, dwarves (not only their nature as imaginary beings, but also their pluralization altered because of him, being elfs and dwarfs previously, and dwarrow archaically—Let. of Tolkien, 23-24) as well as thousands of other mythical features that as a philologist he so thoroughly and purposefully included into his story’s tongues and writings. Like Shakespeare before him, much of the wonder readers find in Tolkien comes less from what he says than how he says it. The specific phonological influence of his works brought numerous connects to forgotten forms and styles, and more so the entire cultural phenomenon became a well spring of thought that his writings created.

In fine, Tolkien did two things that altered our language. First, he forged a connection to the culture and style of the old Germanic tribes and the forms of Old and Early Modern English. His direct lexical and syntactical influences are less a reinvention of the language, and more a revival. Second, he awoke our culture to a contemplation of the extraordinary. He was not the first or only writer of his time to broach on what we now call “fantasy” (its idea as a genre was developing during his time with authors like C.S. Lewis, Lord Dunsany, Edgar Rice Burrows and others) but more definitively and in more widespread ways than any other author he made myth something human and touchable, and served as an inspiration for an entirely new world of writing and fantasy.

A favorite piece of language falls from Gandalf’s lips in The Two Towers:

‘The wise speak only of what they know, Grima son of Galmod. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lighting falls.’ T.T., 118

This single paragraph is rich in lingual history and syntax formerly lost to common speech— resurrected in blasting fashion in Mithrandir’s ultimatum. Notice first the way he refers to Grima in reference to his paternal line—an aspect brought back to life by Tolkien in an age where the last name of a person has substituted such a use. Notice the unique prepositional phrase used—although the modern-day equivalent form of ‘You have become a witless worm’ is almost universal in its current common usage, the statement using the older syntactical style was so striking in this piece that it has by association become a labeled form for “grand, ancient speech.” Here’s a fun game: Take a simple average sentence, and then transform it using the same pattern of object, subject, verb. The sentence ‘He borrowed my book’ becomes ‘my book he has borrowed’, ‘pass the mustard’ changes to ‘the mustard you will pass’ and ‘you have become powerful, I sense the dark side in you” is ‘powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.’

I hope that last one might sound familiar.

The use of the idiomatic phrase “keep your forked tongue behind your teeth” is not only a poignant and powerful way of telling someone to shut up, but instead of the faster and duller modern phrase it uses specific imagery to convey a less direct and more rich denunciation. The passage continues to use ancient forms: when Gandalf mentions “passed through fire and death” he means it literally, but also uses the old language feature to mean ‘all trials that could have befallen.’ Finally, the paragraph rounds out with a unique phrase in “bandy crooked words”—not only resurrecting a word all but unheard modernly (and amusing to ask people to define—‘bandy’ is often known by reference, but people seldom have a clear way of demarcating it) but continues to use older forms of speech that relied less on direct statements and more on imagery and different verb phrases that is now common.

This is all on one single page of The Lord of the Rings. Most of it from one paragraph. The remainder of the books built on the formations of such language features. Especially the people and language of Rohan—where the Lord of the Mark is called in Old English style “Theoden King” and he refers to his niece as “sister-daughter” and there resides classic Beowulf-esque images in the form of the Golden Hall of the Meduseld. Tolkien’s choice in verbiage is frequently archaic, like often taking modern words by their older meaning (i.e. spent as in “He is nearly spent” ROFK 140) and the older, Early Modern English lexis of words like ‘verily’, ‘forthwith’, ‘elsewhither’ and ‘alas.’ This is only a the tiniest fraction of marked, archaic, unique, or new words that Tolkien himself created, that live on rediscovered every year by thousands of readers of every profession and stripe, Tolkien cloaking old language and epic plot in modern narrative style.

All of these language features, although present in other works and historical writings, have become marked forms to us—because of their usage in Tolkien’s books. It sometimes seems that the work must have been completed a century or three ago, but Tolkien did his writing from 1937 to 1955 (Carpenter 265). He has scrawled in indelible ink across our cultural consciousness, so that we immediately understand and associate such phraseology with epic heroism and grandiose speechmaking, and as such produce plays and movies and entertainments in older periods of the world using this kind of language.

It is time to transport yourself mentally to your local bookstore. Under the section label usually garbled with the over-broad misnomer “Sci-fi/Fantasy” you’ll find a range of books of various styles, colors, and backgrounds. Nearly all, if not all, of these hark back to Tolkien. He is the great bar by which every one of them is compared, and his world is the meter by which their worlds are measured. Travel on now to your local video store. Whether you look on the game isle or through the movies, if the title takes place premodernly, involves magic of any kind, has so much as whiff of Elves, Dwarves, Halfings (the less copywrited variation of ‘Hobbit’) or sorcerers, it is more than likely at least somewhat based on Tolkien’s ideology.

Have you ever heard of Dungeons & Dragons? The internationally famous game of role playing using paper, pens and imagination is direct growth off of The Lord of the Rings, and has become a cultural icon and universal symbol for various subcultures. This game inspired books, which bleed into movies, which also in turn inspired hundreds of other similar role playing games, which grew into ideas that spread across the globe. These reverberated as more books, animation, movies, and as entirely new genre of entertainment—RPGs, video game style Role Playing Games, with titles that in turn become iconic, like Final Fantasy or World of Warcraft. In the modern age of technology and communication, these stories along with hundreds of other variants have been the founding seeds for a world culture of fantasy, a realm of escapist and fantastic literature. To our gain or detriment, the world is covered in the decking and pomp of the fantasy genre.

Obviously, these fantastical machinations cannot be solely rooted The Lord of the Rings. The Tempest and The Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Journey to the West, The Tale of Ginji, The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Beowulf and many, many others all predate Tolkien’s epic. The stories and the ideas and the language where these stories grew to fruition were already greatly established by their interpretation, their culture, and their time period. Buy Tolkien himself obviously drew his epic from somewhere.

He drew deep. He brought back language and culture from a forgotten age—Germanic tribal ideas, Old and Early Modern English syntax, lexicon, and ideology. He imbued his characters and plot and world with modern reflections of the ancient myths, and gave them new breath, and the form of a modern novel to walk around as something tangible. He struck so deep a chord with the story of human existence, the Trial and the Battle of Good and Evil, that he influenced or inspired a new genre of literature, and a new era of Romantic thought. He put the extraordinary on the bookshelf, and into the minds and hearts of millions. It was yet another great turning in the circle of language and culture, culture and language, that altered the way we think, the way we speak, and the way we storytell.

On my shelf, there are a small number of leather-bound volumes. To each I go when my wisdom seems barest, and when my thoughts linger longest in the dark. Reading them brings me hope, lifts me out of the slough of self-doubt, and helps me believe there is good in the world. One of them is an epic; a great old story of a Hobbit and a Ring. This story has brought on a new age—a place where language is reborn, where old is new, where good still lies in the hearts of Men.

Works Cited

Carpenter, Humphrey. “J.R.R. Tolkien, a Biography.” Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.

Gao, Fengping. "Langage is Culture - On intercultural communication". Journal of Language and Linguistics 2006: 58-67

Tolkien, J.R.R.. “The Lord of the Rings.” Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.

Tolkien, J.R.R.. “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.” Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981. 23-24.

“Tolkienian” Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 2002.