Customer Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Shores of Middle-Earth

Of the articles included here, the two most insightful are "A Structuralist's Guide to Middle-Earth" and "'No Sex Please, We're Hobbits': The Construction of Feminine Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings". The former, while written in a very annoying, manner (essentially an alphabetical list of various motifs in Tolkien's fiction, with a brief summary of their meaning and function within _The Lord of the Rings_) nonethless raises some intriguing issues that most Tolkien scholars and pseudo-scholars, either avoid or dismiss (e.g. the way Tolkien's fiction presents issues of race). I'm not sure exactly what's supposed to be 'structuralist' about this article (I certainly don't see any sign of influence of Levi-Strauss, or Jakobson, or Barthes...), and I recognize that it's treatment of every issue is rather superficial-- but it does at least raise some questions that other writers on Tolkien have been too timid to address.

The 'No Sex Please, We're Hobbits' has the same strengths. It raises the question of sexuality in Tolkien's fiction-- and particularly the question of why there's so little of it present. This is another subject about which most Tolkien
fans & scholars shy away from or become defensive about-- but its an important issue, and one well worth scholarly attention. The most intriguing part of this article is its claim that, of all the female character in LotR, only the fearful spider-monster Shelob (who is constantly referred to as a 'she') is at all sexualized-- albeit only incidentally and metaphorically, through imagery, wordplay, and the archetypal motifs symbols. The author then analyzes the Shelob chapter in detail, noting its use of a kind of perverse wedding-night imagery throughout, and the physical description of the battle between Sam and Shelob as a kind of 'inverted rape' in which a female predator seeks out a male victim, but is, in turn, the one who is violated. This sounds like astretch at first, and there are some implausible Freudian interpretations of a few details to be sure-- and I'm skeptical as to just how much in agreement with her I am. Nonetheless, this article makes ample use of enough quotations from the text that show quite compellingly that there *is* something very odd going on this chapter-- and that whatever it is, it does have some rather vague and disturbing sexual overtones (probably unconscious ones on Tolkien's part, I'd wager).

These essays (and the others in the volume) have their faults to be sure-- and I wouldn't call any of them great Nevertheless, I feel they are among the better pieces of Tolkien criticism out there because (1) they address subjects that other folks who've written on Tolkien shy away from, (2) they raise interesting points about those subjects and suggest further questions to be asked, and (3), they're not nearly so "pious" in their approach to Tolkien and his works. This last point (#3), I think, is an especial problem with Tolkien scholarship, which, being driven primarily by fans who idolize Tolkien, tends to be overly rooted in Tolkien's own worldview and which tends to scorn any interpretations that Tolkien himself would not have approved of (*especially* when it comes to hot-button topics like race and sex!). Consequently, I find the essays in _This Far Land_, and especially the two I mentioned, to be a welcome breath of fresh air, full of spirit and originality, in a field (Tolkien studies) that so sorely needs an infusion of fresh perspectives and ideas. Because of that, I'm willing to overlook their faults.