Good afternoon, everybody.
Let's, come to order, shall we?
Happy Thanksgiving to any Americans in the audience.
I'm your speaker for this afternoon, Michael Ward.
I am an associate member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion here at Oxford.
My special area of scholarly interest is the intersection
of theology with imagination, especially in the writings of C.S.
Lewis, but also somewhat, in Tolkien and Chesterton and others.
And this afternoon I'm speaking under this title, C.S.
Lewis, His Influence on the Lord of the rings.
I hope you all have, a copy of the handout,
which contains a letter from Lewis to Tolkien
and to reviews of Lewis's,
which we will come to you
now, Lewis's influence.
Now, how do I advance this?
Just the spacebar. Okay. No.
Thank you.
Lewis's influence on the Lord of the rings
is, in one sense, very well known for most of this talk.
I suspect I'll be telling you things you already know.
However, although I won't be saying much beyond
what will be familiar to anyone who's read Tolkien's letters,
I hope the following remarks may at least serve as a useful gathering
together of a lot of rather scattered information.
In his correspondence, Tolkien repeatedly
acknowledges a particular role played by Lewis.
Let me give you three examples, he said.
The unpayable debt that I owe to Lewis was not influence
as it is ordinarily understood, but rather that sheer encouragement.
He was for long my only audience.
Only from him did I ever get the idea that my stuff
could be more than a private hobby.
But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more,
I should have never brought the Lord of the rings to a conclusion.
In another letter, he said, I owe to Lewis's encouragement
the fact that in spite of obstacles, including the 1939 war,
I persevered and eventually finished the Lord of the rings.
He heard all of it bit by bit, read aloud,
and in a third place, Tolkien confesses, I have never had much confidence
in my own work, but for the encouragement of CSL,
I do not think I should ever have completed or offered for publication.
The Lord of the rings.
Now, those words about how he might possibly never have completed
the work shouldn't be taken as some kind of false modesty,
because Tolkien was, as I'm sure you know,
a notorious non finisher.
The Silmarillion and The Lord and The Lost Road are about
two notable examples from a long list we could draw up of projects
that remained incomplete at the time of his death.
Tolkien son Christopher,
published in 1980 a volume entitled Unfinished Tales,
a title that could stand for so much of his father's work,
and if Tolkien had been left to himself, it's not only possible, but highly likely.
I think that the Lord of the rings would have had to be included in that
unfinished category.
But can we say anything
more about Lewis's influence?
Did it go beyond encouragement?
Can it be shown that Lewis influenced the way Tolkien write?
Tolkien wrote not just that he wrote, but how he wrote.
I think it can, and that's
what I'll be focusing on in the second part of this talk.
Lewis's influence on the writing of the Lord of the rings.
But before we come on to that, we ought to say something
first about Lewis's influence on the author of the Lord
of the rings, his personal impact on Tolkien,
because that also inevitably had some kind
of effect downstream on the sort of work that Tolkien would produce.
And there's a third way in which Lewis
influenced the Lord of the rings, namely by affecting its public reception.
So that's what I'll turn to briefly in the final section of my talk.
First, then Lewis's influence on the author.
What personal impacted Lewis have on Tolkien?
The man that affected what changed or conditioned him in ways
that, in turn would go on to affect change or condition?
The Lord of the rings.
The two men knew each other for more than a decade before Tolkien
began writing The New Hobbit, as the Lord of the rings was originally called.
In that period, they became close friends and colleagues, and
I think sheer friendship is one influence that's worth talking about to begin with.
Tolkien, of course, had had other close friends
before he met Lewis in 1926,
and Lewis was not his only friend thereafter.
But they were extremely close during Tolkiens most creative years.
Friendship with Lewis compensates for much.
Tolkien confided to his diary.
Christopher Tolkien speaks of the profound attachment
and intimacy that existed between the two men.
E.L. Edmonds, an Oxford student of the 1930s, remembers.
It was very obvious that Lewis and Tolkien were great friends.
Indeed, they would like to young bear cubs,
sometimes just happily quipping with one another.
In a letter of 1931, Lewis wrote to his brother
it has become a regular custom
that Tolkien should drop in on me of a Monday morning and drink a glass.
This is one of the pleasantest spots in the week.
Now, it would be absurd to say, and please know that I am not saying that
Frodo and Sam are somehow fictionalized versions of Tolkien and Lewis.
We know that Tolkien was not writing allegory, and we know that
he spoke about the friendship of Frodo and Sam in connection with the camaraderie
that might develop between an officer and his Batman in the trenches
of the Great War.
Never did he speak about it
in connection with the affinity between him and Lewis,
but equally, it would be a stretch, I think, to say that that central
friendship between the
two hobbits in the Lord of the rings had nothing whatsoever to do
with this real life friendship in both middle earth and Oxford.
We can observe how a heavy burden was born to the end of a long journey,
with the help of a loyal and encouraging friend.
Moving from friendship to faith.
We ought also to say something about the fact that Lewis's conversion
to Christianity was in no small part owing to the influence of Tolkien.
In other words, Lewis influenced Tolkien
by letting Tolkien influence him by giving Tolkien
the opportunity to expound his mythic perspective on reality.
In that famous late night
conversation in Addison's walk in the grounds of Maudling in 1931
that led to Lewis's conversion, Tolkien found himself in the role of someone
explaining that Christianity could be seen as a true myth.
Even the true myth.
The conversation would not only impact Lewis,
but also led to Tolkiens poem myth Appear,
one iteration of which was subtitled From fellow
myth us to misery myths, from the myth lover to the myth hater.
Lewis, at that point being the myth hater.
Here's a part of that poem.
He sees no stars who does not see them.
A first of living silver made that sudden burst
whose very echo after music long has since pursued.
There is no firmament, only a void, unless a jeweled tent.
Myth woven and elf patterned.
And no earth.
Unless the mother's womb, whence all have birth.
Myth appear.
Opens. And here I am, drawing upon Holly.
Audrey's, recent book, Tolkiens Faith, and her helpful summary of the poem.
Smith opens by describing a way of looking at the world
that is merely an endless multitude
of forms, an aggregate of objects
to be named and categorized, but without real intrinsic value.
A star, Tolkien says, is just some matter
in a bull compelled to cause it causes mathematical.
And that is a cold and regimented, inadequate understanding of the world.
One can't be said, really, to have seen the stars
unless one sees them as living silver.
Outer space is only a void
unless and until it's perceived as a jeweled tent.
Myth woven.
To be.
Myth woven means that the universe carries
its meaningfulness with it in a sort of sacramental sense,
a sacrament
being something that participates in that which it signifies.
As well as defending a mythic reading of reality.
Myth celebrates human creativity in light of such a reading.
Although human beings have become estranged from the creator,
they can still show forth divine wisdom and truth
in their own literary sub creations.
And so Tolkien pronounces a blessing
on the legend makers, whose stories help to pull people away
from the flatness of numb sacrament and materialism.
In the final lines of the poem,
he affirms that poets, and by extension, storytellers
and artists of all kinds, will still create in heaven.
Be sure they still will make not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head.
A bold image, for here he uses numerological imagery
alluding to the way that the Holy Spirit appeared as tongues of fire
upon the heads of Mary and the apostles on the day of Pentecost.
Myth up
here, then, is a passionate poetic testament to Tolkien's belief
in the meaningfulness both of creation, the divine work of art,
without which there would be nothing at all, and of some creation
the human work of art, which imitates that divine
example.
Now, Tolkien already had these ideas and beliefs.
He didn't get them from Lewis.
Lewis wasn't a source.
But was he an influence?
I think so Tolkien found in
Lewis a receptive audience for these ideas and beliefs.
And not just receptive, but malleable, changeable.
Tolkiens exposition of this myth epic view altered the course of Lewis's life
a few weeks after the Addison's Walk conversation.
Tolkien remarked, I've just passed on from believing in God
to definitely believing in Christ, and Christianity.
My long night talk with Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.
If you find
someone who listens to what you say and thinks it important,
it encourages you to regard your beliefs and ideas as worthwhile.
He'll be more inclined to communicate them to other people too.
So this, I think, is an aspect of Lewis's personal influence on Tolkien,
and therefore indirectly on the Lord of the rings.
Lewis inspired Tolkien to retain and develop
the philosophy and spirituality that undergirds his epic fantasy.
The whole of middle earth could be described as a mythic product,
something illumined with light from an invisible lamp.
As one of Tolkien's more sympathetic readers put it.
But if we were looking not for a general, but for a particular example of this
mythic capacity, a good place to turn would be Gandalf's fight with the Balrog.
In chapter five of The Two Towers, a fight that reaches its climax.
As you recall, on the
pinnacle of a mountain top out, the Balrog sprang,
and even as I came behind, he burst into new flame.
There was none to see.
Or perhaps in after ages, songs would still be song of the battle of the peak.
Suddenly Gandalf laughed.
But what would they say in song?
Those that looked up from afar thought that the mountain was crowned with storm.
Thunder they heard. And lightning, they said.
Smote upon them level.
And leaped back.
Broken into tongues of fire.
Is not that enough?
Tongues of fire again?
Interestingly, if you see thunder and lightning on a distant mountaintop,
are you just observing a meteorological event?
Is it nothing more than weather?
Or are you just possibly also witnessing
the contention of mighty spiritual forces?
Is there conceivably a sacramental dimension to reality?
Or is everything apprehensive or only on the material plane?
C.S. Lewis, simply by
being the convert that he was under Tolkien's influence,
must surely have done something to invigorate Tolkien's
mythic tendency and the seriousness with which he developed it.
In his fiction.
So they were friends.
They were fellow myth lovers.
The third thing we should note about Lewis's influence
on the author of the Lord of the rings is that it made him more open
to constructive literary criticism.
Tolkien shared
with Lewis a draft version of The Lay of Leafeon.
In the late 20s, Lewis read it, liked it,
but also suggested ways in which it might be better.
And he sweetened his advice by proposing his edits under the guise of five
imaginary critics named Bentley, Peabody, pumpernickel,
shuffler, and Chick.
And Christopher Tolkien notes that in many cases, Lewis's proposed
emanations or modifications of them are incorporated
into the text of the play, including a rewrite of the opening.
Tolkien was somewhat shy about sharing his work,
and also not easily persuaded into making changes.
Lewis, however, was able
to praise open the Tolkien in Oyster
and to propose alternative ways of transmuting grit into pearl,
some of which ways Tolkien was prepared to accept.
And this, of course, paved
the way for a similar dynamic to operate between the two men.
When it came to the writing of the Lord of the rings.
Lewis was not always and only a critic, of course.
He served also as an example of an author who wrote extensively
in modes, both fictional and non-fictional.
Lewis was prodigious in his output.
He published more than a book a year on average, from 1933 till his death.
36 standalone titles in 30 years.
And although
Tolkien was never able to imitate that level of productivity,
he was surely put on his mettle by the standards Lewis modeled.
Lewis is very present in Tolkien's life
as a standing rebuke to Tolkien's procrastinator
and perfectionist ways.
Friends, fellow myth lovers,
literary critics, or other authors together.
The final thing I want to say about Lewis's influence
on Tolkien, from a personal point of view, is that he helped what we might call
with the dry run of the Lord of the rings,
namely the writing of The Hobbit.
Lewis not only encouraged the writing of that earlier work,
but also wrote glowing reviews of it in both the times and the TLS.
And you can find those reviews reprinted in this volume.
Image and imagination.
Without the
success of Tolkien's first foray into fiction.
The New Hobbit as the Lord of the rings was
initially called, would never have even been conceived,
I suspect, let alone seen the light of day.
And in the preface to his novel That Hideous Strength,
Lewis tried to gin up an appetite for Tolkien's work by saying,
those who would like to learn further about Numenor spelled wrong
and the true West must, alas, await the publication of much
that still exists only in the manuscripts of my friend professor J.
Tolkien,
as well as generously gesturing
towards the gestating work of his friend here.
Lewis was perhaps more calculating calculatedly, hoping to exert
some indirect pressure upon Tolkien to get his stuff into print.
Lewis very loved his friend and sometimes impatient
with the with his unproductive ness, describing Tolkien as dilatory
and as having the work rate of a coral insect.
Let's turn now to
Lewis's influence on the writing of the Lord of the rings.
And here we would do well to start by inspecting the dedicatory
note to the first edition of The Fellowship of the ring.
I take it that I dedicate the book to all admirers of Bilbo,
but especially to my sons and my daughter, and to my friends, the inklings,
to the inklings, because they have already listened to it
with a patience, and indeed with an interest.
That almost leads me to suspect
that they have hobbit blood in their venerable ancestry.
To my sons and my daughter, for the same reason,
and also because they have all helped me in the labors of composition.
This dedication, by the way, is dropped from subsequent
editions of the Lord of the rings.
But he dedicates it to the inklings.
Not really.
In fact, to all the inklings, because not all the inklings
did listen to it with patience and interest.
God, not another effing
elf or words to that effect.
The famous or infamous response of Hugo Dyson on one occasion,
Lewis at times had to suppress
Tolkien's hostility, saying, shut up, Hugo.
Come on toddlers.
So that Tolkien wouldn't wilt in the face of such opposition.
And Dyson was not the only member of the group who didn't care for
middle earth.
Owen Barfield never finished reading the Lord of the rings.
Carl Ren believes Tolkien had wasted his professional career
writing a trivial literature.
And John Wayne said that the Lord of the rings
presents no picture of human life that I can recognize.
More positive responses came from elsewhere in the circle.
Warren Lewis confided to his diary, golly, what a book!
The inexhaustible fertility of the man's imagination amazes me.
Charles Williams read drafts with appreciation,
but died in 1945, well before the work was finished.
Jehovah's Matthew helped Tolkien find an alternative publisher
when negotiations with Allen and Unwitting temporarily broke down.
But none of these inklings came close to Lewis's
hearty appetite for Tolkien's sub created world.
Tolkien himself reported that CSL had a passion for hearing things
read aloud, the power of memory for things received in that way,
and also a facility in extempore criticism, none of which were shared,
especially not the last in anything like the same degree by his friends.
So when Tolkien dedicates the fellowship to the inklings,
it's pretty clearly one particular inkling
who stands out as exhibiting Hobbit blood in his ancestry.
But here we touch
on an irony of Lewis's influence on the book, which is that
Lewis had comparatively little patience for hobbits.
Lewis thought the opening chapter of the Lord of the rings
had too much conversation on hobbits talk, which tended to make it lag a little.
Tolkien himself was, as he put it, personally, immensely amused by hobbits.
As such, he said, he could contemplate them
eating and making the rather
fatuous jokes indefinitely.
But I find that this is not the case with even my most devoted fans, such as Mr.
Lewis.
Mr. Lewis says hobbits are only amusing
when in unknown hobbit like situations.
And when Rayner and Wynn
seconded Lewis's criticism, Tolkien said
I must plainly bow to my two chief and most well-disposed critics.
The trouble
is that hobbit talk amuses me privately
and to a certain degree also, my boy Christopher, more than adventures.
But I must curb this severely.
And this Tolkien did.
I cut out some passages of light hearted hobbit conversation, which Lewis found
tiresome, thinking that if he did, most other readers
would feel the same.
So here we have evidence that Lewis's influence
on the Lord of the rings did go beyond encouragement.
Here's an example of influence, as it is ordinarily understood.
How much Lewis himself
realized he was influencing Tolkien is a moot point.
In a letter of 1959, Lewis declared, no one ever influenced Tolkien.
You might as well try to influence a Bandersnatch.
We listened to his work but could affected only by encouragement.
He has only two reactions to criticism.
Either he begins the whole work over again from the beginning,
or else takes no notice at all.
Now, that was not the only time
that Lewis likened Tolkien to a Bandersnatch.
And in case it's been a while since you read Lewis Carroll,
what he is referring to is that moment in Through the Looking Glass
when Alice is running with the White King.
Would you be good enough?
Alice panted out after running a little further
to stop a minute just to get one's breath again.
I'm good enough, the king said.
Only I'm not strong enough.
You see, a minute goes by so fearfully quick you might as well
try to stop a Bandersnatch.
Evidently, though, Tolkien could sometimes be influenced.
This Bandersnatch could be stopped
by inducing Tolkien to trim out passages of Hobbit talk.
Lewis clearly influenced the writing of the Lord of the rings,
which
suggests we should parse a little more carefully.
Tolkien statement that I started with
what Tolkien says there is that the unpayable debt
that I owe to Lewis was not influence,
as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement.
So Tolkien is not rejecting the idea that Lewis
influenced him as influences ordinarily understood.
He's only saying or implying
that any such influence would not be considered
part of the unpayable debt that he owed to him.
In other words, Lewis's influence as influence is ordinarily understood.
Was a debt small enough that it could be repaid?
His encouragement, on the other hand, was immeasurable.
Getting clarity on this point helps make better sense
of such statements from Tolkien as this.
When Lewis would say, you can do better than that, better Tolkien, please.
I would try.
I'd sit down and write the section over and over.
But that's influence,
not just encouragement.
One such section that Tolkien rewrote
was the confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman in The Two Towers.
Tolkien described this as one of the very few places
where, in the event, I found Lewis's detailed criticisms
useful and just
Diana glowing in her book The Company They Keep.
Lewis and Tolkien as writers and community,
has examined that passage carefully.
And although she concedes that she can't link any of the known changes
in the Gandalf Saruman passage, direct
to comments made by Lewis, in particular.
Nonetheless, the changes were consistent
with the sorts of opinions Lewis often expressed.
The changes included the removal
to the foreword of A Long Discourse on Tobacco, and the dropping of Sheridan's
lengthy discussion of hobbits and the origin of their name.
Tolkien was
prepared to submit to such advice,
both in the Gandalf ceremony and passage,
and even with regard to a much more important scene.
The very ending of the entire story.
This also underwent significant revision.
Christopher Tolkien notes that the words that end the Lord of the rings.
Well, I'm a back, he said, weren't intended to do
so when my father wrote them in the long draft manuscript.
Tolkien originally wrote an epilog set
16 years after Sam's return to the Shire.
The epilog ties up loose ends, casts a much more reflective
and retrospective mood over the ending, and mentions by name
eight of the Gamgee offspring
Elanor, Frodo, lad, Rose, merry, Pippin, Goldilocks,
Ham and Daisy, and even Sam's mother in law gets a nod.
I'll read the
draft epilog in a moment, but first, let's remind ourselves
how the return of the King as it was published actually
ends.
At last, the three companions turned away and never again.
Looking back, they rode slowly homewards,
and they spoke no words to one another until they came back to the Shire.
But each had great comfort in his friends.
On the long gray road.
At last they rode over the downs and took the east road.
And then Marion Pippin rode on to Buckland,
and already they were singing again as they went.
But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up
the hill as day was ending once more, and he went on.
And there was yellow light and fire within,
and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected.
And Rose drew him in,
and sat him in his chair, and put little Eleanor upon his lap.
He drew a deep breath.
Well, I'm back, he said.
Now here's the equivalent
passage from the draft.
All the children were now in bed.
It was late, but here and there lights were still glimmering
in Hobbiton and in houses dotted about the night.
Folded countryside.
Master Samwise stood at the door and looked away eastward.
He drew mistress Rose to him and set his arm about her.
March the 25th, he said.
This day, 17 years ago. Rose wife.
I didn't think I should ever see them again.
But I kept on hoping.
I never hoped at all time.
She said, not until that very day.
And then suddenly I did.
About noon it was.
And I felt so glad that I began singing.
And mother said at last, as ruffians about.
But I said, let them come.
That time will soon be over.
Sam is coming back. And you came.
I did,
said Sam, to the most beloved est place in all the world.
To my rose and my garden.
They went in and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly deep and unsettled
the sigh and murmur of the sea upon the shores of middle
earth.
Now Tolkien left out this epilog because,
as he explained, it had been universally condemned
by all those who had read it universally.
Surely indicates that Lewis was part of the cause of condemnation.
And I, Diana Klein,
is of the opinion that it is likely that Lewis in particular objected
to the epilog, given that he found passages to do with hobbits
outside of the hobbit like situations
tiresome.
Given how we readers have all become
accustomed to the published ending, it's hard to be objective.
I think about the relative merits of the two versions,
but trying
to set aside the comforting familiarity of the known version
and looking as dispassionately as possible at the differences.
I think the published version is stronger.
It keeps the focus more on The Hobbit members of the fellowship, as opposed
to the Gamgee family, and a list of names that mean little or nothing to us.
It keeps the time frame continuous with the action of Sam
as return to the Shire,
rather than jumping ahead more than a decade only
to look back at the moment we've just left.
And it means that the final sentence of the entire
epic is not a line of natural description about the sea,
but a line of dialog from that character who was Tolkien elsewhere.
So it has by this point become the chief hero of the story.
In all these
ways, it's tighter, more dramatic,
more rooted in established character and relationship.
Tolkien was surely right to heed his readers
advice.
In a letter of 1963, Lewis,
slightly modifying his earlier
Bandersnatch remark, told a correspondent
I'm certain I didn't influence Tolkien,
that is, didn't influence what he wrote.
My continual encouragement carried to the point of nagging,
influenced him very much to write at all with that gravity and by length.
In other words, I acted as a midwife, not as a father.
Well, although Lewis is still disavowing influence,
he is nonetheless admitting
that he helped Tolkien write with that gravity
and that and at that length.
And that's no small influence,
I suspect by a gravity, Lewis means that he steered Tolkien away
from the relative levity of undiluted
hobbit tree and Tolkien's fascination
with worldbuilding as distinct from concentrated storytelling.
Tolkien admitted
when he was first
getting to work on the Lord of the rings that the construction of elaborate
and consistent mythology and two languages rather occupies the mind.
He found his invented tongues and nomenclatures
and alphabets of the most absorbing interest,
and said that if I had considered my own pleasure
more than the stomachs of a possible audience,
there would have been a great deal more Elvish.
In the book.
And this accords
with what Walter Hooper reports in one place.
Professor Tolkien told me that he had been reading various genealogies
and appendices to Lewis long before there was any written story.
His interests, he told me, were primarily in those aspects of middle earth,
and that it was Lewis who encouraged him to write a story, to go with them.
You know, Jack, he said to me he had to have a story.
And that story.
The Lord of the rings was written to keep Lewis quiet.
Diana Claire concludes that Lewis's
influence on the writing of the Lord of the rings resulted in less hobbits
talk, more danger, and less dialog, more narrative.
The languages, the histories, the genealogies,
the lexicographers and all had a place in the appendices.
They weren't wasted.
And they do contribute greatly to the eternity of the sub created world.
But left to his own devices, Tolkien would probably have allowed those materials
to seep more into the main text and subtly undermine
its dramatic power.
Excuse me, I need to say two other
quick things about Lewis's influence on the writing of the Lord of the rings.
Before we come to the final section, and the first has to do
with the ents in general, and Treebeard in particular,
Lewis's booming voice.
According to Neville, Cog Hill influenced the home realm
of Treebeard
and, according to the Hollywood way in Tolkiens modern reading,
Lewis's novel out of the Silent Planet
seems to have influenced Tolkien's creation
of the ents and the whole humans.
I don't have time to present audio his argument, but
I find what she says the convincing and recommend that you consult her book
if you want the details.
The other thing I want to say is to put a fine
a point on what we mean by Lewis's encouragement.
Encouragement can simply mean
urging someone on TV, viewing them, badgering them, hounding them.
Now, as just noted, Lewis's encouragement was carried
at times to the point of nagging, but mostly almost entirely.
His encouragement was that of a keen enthusiast who wanted more.
Not that of an exasperated colleague who wanted dumb.
And Tolkien
happily records in letters to Christopher
how various installments that he's recently been reading aloud to
Lewis have been heard with fullest approbation, complete approval.
After hearing the chapters entitled She Loves Land
The Choices of Master Samwise Lewis.
So Tolkien reported approved with unusual fervor
and was actually affected to tears by the last chapter.
So it seems to be keeping up.
Of course, because the two men were seeing each other
so often, not many letters passed between them,
but one letter that was sent in 1953 shows us Lewis's thoughts
after reading the latest draft of the fellowship.
Dear toddlers, I've been trying like a boy with a bit of toffee
to take volume one slowly to make it last.
But appetite over mastered me and it's now finished.
Far too short for me.
The spell does not break the love of Gimli
and the departure from love Lauren is still almost unbearable.
We don't have time to read
what I've put on your handout, the earlier letter to Tolkien that Lewis
wrote after reading the finished draft right through for the first time.
If you didn't read it when you arrived, take it away and look at it afterwards.
It's a marvelous specimen.
I think, of informed, sensitive but not uncritical support
and maintaining critical distance was important,
I think, for Lewis's encouragement to be taken seriously by Tolkien.
For instance, in that letter on the handout,
Lewis remarks all the alliterative verse I liked.
Let the reader understand the alliterative verse.
In other words, all the non alliterative verse he was not so sure about.
And Tolkien knew this, of course, disclosing in a letter that Lewis regards
the verses as on the whole poor, regrettable and out of place.
So Lewis's encouragement was was neither
just a stern cattle prod
nor a butter bath of
indiscriminate approval.
Keeping the balance between warm
praise and cool appraisal was
what made his support of Tolkien so effective and fruitful.
Finally, we turn to Lewis's influence on the reception
of the Lord of the rings.
One of the inklings, Robert Hayward, records the first hearing.
Its reception was mixed.
Lewis himself was loud in its praise, but his view was not shared by everyone.
Time, how about says time has supported Lewis's judgment
and Tolkien has added hobbits to folklore?
Well, true.
Time.
Time has supported Lewis's judgment.
But it wasn't just time, because
Lewis sought to bring about the confirmation of his own judgment
by an assiduous effort to promote Tolkien's work every way he could.
In a letter of 1953,
Lewis told the publisher Stanley Unwin,
I would willingly do all in my power
to secure for Tolkien's great book the recognition it deserves.
Would the enclosed be any use?
If not, tell me, and I'll try again.
The enclosed was a paragraph of lavish
praise designed to serve as a blurb for the book.
You may recognize it. This is how it runs.
It would be almost safe to say that no book like this has ever been written.
If Ariosto rivaled it in invention, in fact, he does not.
He would still lack its heroic seriousness.
No imaginary world has been projected, which is at once so multifarious
and so true to its own inner laws, none so seemingly objective, so disinfected
from the taint of an author's merely individual psychology,
not so relevant to the actual human situation.
Yet so free from allegory.
And what fine shading various in the variations of style
to meet the almost endless diversity of scenes and characters.
Comic, homely. Epic.
Monstrous or diabolic.
In addition to this blurb, Lewis also paid attention
to reviews discussing with Tolkien strategies
for giving the book the best possible launch into the world.
As Tolkien wrote to Alan, and when Mr. C.S.
Lewis, whose two different reviews of The Hobbit had a good deal
to do with its favorable start, he's anxious about reviews.
He would review it better than anyone else I can think of,
and at any rate, knows the book better than anyone but myself.
I think.
And he agrees that at least one sympathetic review, especially by someone
who knows what the total is like and works up to, is very important for volume one,
which might be misunderstood.
So in these conversations,
the two men are having Lewis's effectively talking himself into the job.
He reviewed the fellowship in August 1954.
One of the reviews on your handout.
It seems that one reason Lewis
was so anxious about early responses was that he had doubts
about the opening chapter of fellowship, and feared it might put people off.
Almost the only note of coolness
in the entire review is where he says this.
First, we must clearly understand that though the fellowship in one way continues
its author's fairy tale, The Hobbit, it is in no sense an overgrown juvenile.
The truth is, the other way round, the Hobbit was merely a fragment
torn from the author's huge myth and adapted for children.
Misunderstanding on this point might easily be encouraged by the first chapter,
in which the author, taking a risk,
writes almost in the manner of the earlier and far lighter book.
In private,
Lewis thought the opening chapter was much worse than a risk.
He called it, frankly, a botch.
And you can see how Lewis is strategically trying
to get potential readers over that botch as he viewed it.
One can also see Lewis again
strategically warning against allegorical readings, as he had done in his blurb,
and also against charges of escapism.
In the second review, the follow up review that he wrote
in 1955 for both The Two Towers and The Return of the King,
we can see Lewis taking steps
to forestall other misreadings, to forestall
those who would dismiss the work for being morally simplistic,
and to explain that one of the main messages of the work
is that real life itself can have a mythical quality.
It's not
just a phantasmagoric never, never land.
No, by casting things into fantasy,
we get a better view of reality.
In this, we see how well Lewis had learned his lesson from that life
changing conversation in Addison's walk back
in 1931.
Lewis's influence on the Lord of the rings,
on its author, its writing and its reception was profound.
Although he was right to describe his role
as that of a midwife, not a father,
the midwifery he performed was extensive,
possibly at times lifesaving,
certainly health inducing and undertaken
both while the work was in utero and when it was taking its first breaths.
After publication.
Tolkien owed Lewis a huge, unpayable debt,
and when Lewis died
just a week short of his 65th birthday, Tolkien was grief
stricken, describing his loss as an ax blow near to his roots.
Interestingly, within a week of Lewis's death, Tolkien
wrote to the mutual friend George Sayer,
Sam being,
Tolkien's fellow Catholic.
Imagining how Lewis would now in the afterlife,
be being reconciled with the Blessed Virgin Mary in heaven,
about whom Lewis had held such a low view while on earth.
Lo, at least compared with Tolkien's devout Mary and spirituality.
Tolkien told Sayer that according to my fashion,
and in a remote way, this is an ingredient
in the meeting of Gimli and Galadriel.
Lewis and Mary.
Gimli and Galadriel.
Now that's a posthumous revelation
of influence on the Lord of the rings that Lewis, I presume, did not know about
and would not have greatly appreciated if he had.
And Lewis
exerted his own posthumous influence on the Lord of the rings in his last book,
The Discarded Image An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance
Literature, came out in 64, the year after his death,
and even from beyond the grave, Lewis is helping
bring Tolkien's fictional world to people's attention.
Let me quote you the following passage.
No one who has read the higher kinds of medieval and Renaissance
poetry has failed to notice the amount of solid instruction
of science, philosophy, or history that they carry.
At first one suspects pedantry,
but that can hardly be the true explanation.
Much, though, not all, of the knowledge was too common
to reflect any particular distinction on an author.
Henderson might expect, unjustly, to be admired for
describing the characters of the planet so vividly, hardly for knowing them.
The same objection holds against the view,
which I took when, years ago I first dealt with medieval literature.
I thought that in an age when books were few and the intellectual
appetite sharp, that any knowledge might be welcome in any context.
But this does not explain why the authors so gladly present knowledge,
which most of the audience must have possessed.
One gets the impression that medieval people, like Professor Tolkien's hobbits,
enjoyed books which told them what they already knew.
Thank you very much.