The Song of Middle-earth: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Themes, Symbols and Myths

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David Harvey. The Song of Middle-earth: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Themes, Symbols and Myths

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THE SONG OF

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Themes, Symbolsand Myths

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Myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of the ‘beginnings’. [It] tells how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality – an island, a species of plant, a particular kind of human behavior, an institution. Myth, then, is always an account of a ‘creation’; it relates how something was produced, began to be … In short, myths describe the various and sometimes dramatic breakthroughs of the sacred (or the ‘supernatural’) into the World … Furthermore, it is as a result of the intervention of Supernatural Beings that man himself is what he is today, a mortal, sexed, and cultural being.4

Eliade himself has been the subject of controversy and his views have been subjected to vitriolic academic denigration or paeans of critical praise. The difficulty is that ‘there is no agreement as to what the myth and ritual pattern actually is’.5 Each scholar who has established expertise in the field inevitably comes into conflict with others – Frankfort cannot tolerate the views of Frazer; Rose savagely attacks Graves and Graves gores Carl Jung. And if this academic carnage were not enough, there is no agreement as to the meaning of myth. Whalley describes it as a direct metaphysical statement beyond science; Watts believes that the purpose, source and end of myth is revelation; Wheelwright opines that myth is a set of depth meanings of per-during significance within a widely shared perspective; whereas Frazer says that they are mistaken explanations of phenomena founded on ignorance and misapprehension – they are always false for if they were true they would cease to be myths.6

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