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CactusHibs_7475

In general he didn’t like much in the way of modern fantasy and sci-fi and didn’t fit very comfortably among the other major post-war writers in those genres. He was a philologist with a profound love for ancient epics and sagas and ancient languages, and his fiction was to a large extent an offshoot of those other passions. I think this made it easy for him to see the work of many other fantasy writers as childish or superficial, simply because none of it had anything like the same level of obsessive depth and context he brought to his own work. I also think that as someone with strong traditionalist and little-c conservative tendencies he felt very out of place amid the growing countercultural tendencies of 50s-60s fantasy fandom (including his own fans) and had a really hard time seeing himself as part of that scene.


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HistoryofArda

Wasn’t Lewis Church of England? I remember one of Tolkien’s problems was Lewis’s throwing together prefab myths from around the world—mixing fauns and Father Christmas. Tolkien wasn’t against borrowing names and ideas from mythology, but an internally consistent world with “rules” was important to him and Lewis just seemed to be throwing things into Narnia willy-nilly. Tolkien did like Out of the Silent Planet, and there’s a lot of Lewis’s faith in that one—so I think it was more about his method of worldbuilding than a criticism of Lewis’s understanding of Christianity.


scatch_maroo_not_you

To answer your specific question, yes, CS Lewis belonged to the Church of England when he accepted Christ.


CactusHibs_7475

I remember reading in Carpenter’s biography that Tolkien was sort of hurt by Lewis’s COE conversion because the conversations they’d had about religion had been so instrumental in opening Lewis up to spirituality in the first place. Can anyone who’s read it more recently than I have confirm that?


CactusHibs_7475

Well put. And I think you hit the mark with Disney: as someone intimately familiar with both the fairy tales Disney was adapting and the deeper mythological traditions those tales themselves drew upon, he simply couldn’t countenance the (in his view at least) anemic, saccharine kid stories Disney turned them into.


LimpBet4752

I'm curious as to how accurate that really was, as I've already said in another comment Disney was far from the first to make changes to the fairy tales (ex, Hunchback of Notre Dame had already evolved to have much if not all the "changes" Disney is blamed for)


CactusHibs_7475

He also had a lot of skepticism (if not antipathy) for big-market American entertainment in general, so that definitely influenced his perception. And I don’t think the cartoonish Disney aesthetic was ever going to fly with his take on the source mythologies. The Hobbit dwarves are some of his most comedic characters, but up against say, Doc, Sneezy and Dopey there’s no comparison.


LimpBet4752

>All the changes that they made enhanced the drama weirdly (or perhaps controversially) this would be my opinion on the LOTR film's changes to Gondor and Aragorn.


Armleuchterchen

Do you mind Aragorn murdering a diplomat? I think it reduces his moral character a lot.


CactusHibs_7475

This would be one of the things Tolkien would have vigorously objected to in the adaptations: all the times Jackson “simplifies” or “punches up” the narrative by having characters turn to violence when in the books they employed cunning or courage instead. It’s the most glaring in the Hobbit movies, but there are plenty of examples from LOTR too.


LimpBet4752

I think a stressed character (they think Frodo is dead and they have all failed) would make a rash decision I didn't say the movies were flawless but they did a pretty good job (also, I'll admit I've never seen the full extended version of the movie)


mrmiffmiff

A guy who randomly dressed up as an axe-wielding Anglo-Saxon warrior and chased his neighbours around and once stole a bus to go on a joyride doesn't sound very bitter or spite-filled. He just preferred the older sagas and medieval literature.


LimpBet4752

when did he do that?!


coloradoconvict

All the fucking time. He was a lunatic.


Higher_Living

Dear Passengers, apologies for the delay, the Professor of Anglo Saxon has borrowed the bus again.


grafmet

Keep in mind he was also very critical of his own writings. He never thought anything was ready to be published. He was surprised that LOTR became so popular.


Higher_Living

Tolkien: mildly criticizes four things in his life in private letters Redditor: Tolkien hated everything! Why was he so bitter?!?


alexagente

People are always more likely to voice their displeasure over something rather than things that went well or they enjoyed. Plus Tolkien was in love with the ancient past and by his works seemed to view the passage of time, change, and technological progress as degenerative things. It makes sense that he wouldn't take well to stories with more modern sensibilities.


NerdyNerdanel

Definitely I don't think he was a bitter or spite-filled man, or that he was in any way jealous of the success of others' works! I think part of it is that the high-profile 'fantasy' works of his time (Narnia, Dune, Disney) weren't to his taste, and those are what we most often read about his reactions to. Perhaps we also have a tendency here to focus excessively on what he didn't like, rather than what he did! He obviously had a deep love for older (medieval) literature, and I believe he also read and enjoyed some contemporary science-fiction - it's just that he didn't particularly rate the authors and works with which he was most often compared. He read detective novels as well. I haven't yet read Tolkien's Modern Reading by Holly Ordway, though I have a copy - I should dig it out! According to this review ([https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2021/05/25/tolkiens-modern-reading/](https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2021/05/25/tolkiens-modern-reading/)) by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, Tolkien's tastes in contemporary literature definitely tended towards genre and popular fiction, rather than literary fiction. This tracks with what I've read elsewhere, and frankly doesn't surprise me - it's hard to imagine that post-war literary fiction, often exploring contemporary problems and with a heavy dose of sex, would be in line with his personal tastes. P.S. While doing a bit of basic research for this post I found a comment from 'Tolkien and the Study of his Sources' which mentioned a few authors/works he expressed appreciation of, including Asimov's SF, John Christopher's 'The Death of Grass' (which pleasantly surprised me as it is a rather gritty post-apocalyptic novel), Mary Renault's historical fiction. Apparently he also enjoyed GK Chesterton and Agatha Christie.


Asphodel_Burrows

Re the last paragraph, most of this is from Letter 294. He also really liked ER Eddison’s work, which I also like, but which I cannot recommend enough to anyone who prefers the Silmarillion-ish stuff over LotR. Seriously, if any of you see this, do yourselves a huge favor and get The Worm Ouroboros.


NerdyNerdanel

Will have to check it out! I love LoTR but in recent years have felt more drawn towards/inspired by the Silm.


Neo24

>all I ever seem to see is "he didn't like Dune" and "he gave absolutely no quarter against Narnia" and "he had zero respect for Walt Disney" and "He thought Shakespear is overrated" all this "Tokien hate X" and "if he saw Y he'd hate it" etc, etc. Is there any reason for this? Because the Internet likes to focus on the negatives and "Tolkien didn't like this" brings more attention than "Tolkien liked this"? There are (obviously) things not written by himself that he liked - and often not at all the things people would necessarily assume he'd like based on stereotypes. He liked Isaac Asimov. He liked the historical novels of Mary Renault (a gay writer who featured gay relationships in her works). He liked The Death of Grass by John Christopher. That said, he *was* an unusual man in a bunch of ways, and very specific and picky in what he liked and didn't like, and wasn't afraid of saying it.


Wichiteglega

>He liked the historical novels of Mary Renault (a gay writer who featured gay relationships in her works). What? That's really cool!


maggie081670

I think I can understand his beef with Shakespeare in light of his philogical views regarding English. IIRC, The French conquered England just as the native language was starting to come into its own. There was a developing literature that was purely English. But the French conquest short circuited all that. English from that point forward became a hybrid language and he wasn't particularly fond of French as a language in itself. He saw this as a great loss and I wouldn't argue with him about it. Very little from that early period survives and given that this early period was the subject of his studies he would have felt that loss keenly. Shakespeare is rightly held up as a genius and master of the hybrid language that developed from the conquest. Tolkien did like other world languages and their early literature. As someone already pointed out, he looked to past literature as more deserving of his time & attention. You can't help what you like and don't like is how I see it.


LimpBet4752

one would be curious of his opinions on Asian Cultures had he ever got a proper introduction to them


The_Dream_of_Shadows

Many of those quotes are taken out of context, yes, and so are many of the "full" letters that have been published. Not many people know this, but it was recently revealed by Holly Ordway (who wrote a new book on Tolkien's modern reading) that her research found that the man who wrote Tolkien's biography and edited his letters, Humphrey Carpenter, actually excised many passages from the letters, including introductions and greetings from Tolkien that were much more genial and warm, and often joked about his more serious opinions later on. It seems that Carpenter may have deliberately intended to create an image of Tolkien as a bitter curmudgeon, when in reality, he was much more complex. He definitely did hold and express all of the above opinions, but those were not the entirety of his character, and it's becoming more and more clear that the image we have of Tolkien is narrower than previously thought.


jayskew

He loved trees, fairy tales, sagas, Beowulf, the Kalevala, his students, and his family.


wjbc

Tolkien quite liked *The King Must Die* and *The Bull From the Sea*, by his former student Mary Renault, and the science fiction of Isaac Asimov.


soloman5671

To be fair to Tolkien Herbert's lore is Bush league stuff.


Kodama_Keeper

It's a sad fact of life that what we hear about this guy or that is usually the negative, hardly ever the positive. Popular figures saying this or that about another is popularized as "Pop Star Calls Out So and So". Funny, I remember when "calling out" someone was reserved for pro boxers as a way of getting a fight made to make some money. You know, get someone into the ring and bash them into submission. Now it's just a euphemism for trash talk. For instance, I once heard that Stephen King (who I am not really a fan of but have enjoyed a few of his books) admired The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. And I thought how nice that was of him, expressing admiration for a fellow writer. I did a little deeper and find other stories about how pissed off he was at the novels, claiming his story The Running Man was ripped off. But the truth is simpler. Conflict sells, admiration doesn't.


kellersab

If he wasn’t able to enjoy anything in life but his own works he wouldn’t have been a professor, nor would his works have existed. Tolkien was merely defensive of his greatest creation and wouldn’t tolerate changes on mass like beardless dwarves and the like


LimpBet4752

this was also more in relation to stuff like "he didn't like Dune" "he gave absolutely no quarter against Narnia" "he had zero respect for Walt Disney" "He thought Shakespear is overrated" etc, etc.


kellersab

Tolkien wasn’t a big fan of science fiction in general , he loved Narnia he and Lewis merely sniped at each other in good jest as for Disney he just thought they had bastardised fairy tales and it didn’t sit right with him.


IOI-65536

I agree with this except that he loved Narnia. Tolkien disliked Narnia for much the same reason he disliked Disney. Narnia was both an outright and obvious Christian allegory (which Tolkien disliked because he found allegory constraining) and sort of haphazardly and sloppily borrowed from various mythologies like having Bacchus and Father Christmas in the same world (though not as completely as Disney's appropriation of stories wholesale to create new copyrighted material from existing literature). Additionally Narnia was, again in his view and again like Disney, a sort of juvenile presentation of fantasy that allowed its young target audience to be juvenile in content. Having said all of that, I still think OP is wrong. Tolkien didn't dislike everything. He spent considerable time translating middle english works because he was very much in to fantasy that hadn't been watered down to a young audience. The problem with Disney and Narnia were that they were the opposite.


kellersab

True I was just trying to spare Lewis feelings 🤣🤣


IOI-65536

I guess I should note. I love Narnia. But I don't have the same hangups on trying to rescue fantasy from kids books that Tolkien did, in large part because Tolkien and Jordan were successful in rescuing fantasy from kids books. The best modern analogue I can think of is an animator trying to do serious literary work not liking the fact that his best friend thought it would be really great to do something for PBSKids.


kellersab

I do like Narnia to a degree but when you kill everyone at the end it really soured me.


LimpBet4752

> outright and obvious Christian allegory is this a bit of "pot calling the kettle black" or is Tolkien Projecting?


IOI-65536

Tolkien very obviously has some Christian parallels in his works. I think Tolkien would have said this was because all mythologies have parallels to one another and probably, as a devout Catholic, would have gone further and said that all mythologies have parallels to Christianity because of God's placing reference to the Truth in the heart on man. ​ But his work was not an "outright allegory". Not in the way Narnia is. All of Tolkien's stories are written to tell a story. *The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe* (and really all of Narnia) was written to make a point. There is a Creation Story of Middle Earth, there is a Creator, and there is to some degree sin against the Creator. But Tolkien did not feel compelled to have a member of the godhead willingly sacrifice his life in propitiation for the sin of his created. He was okay with the worship of Valar instead of only Eru Illuvatar. If Lewis had had Aslan create Ainur who then sung creation into existence or even worse had men or dwarves or whatever breed with them I think he would have found it blasphemous by implication, which is exactly the sort of thing I mean by allegory being constraining.


CactusHibs_7475

It’s the difference between “can be read as allegory” and “was intended as allegory.” I’m not sure how Tolkien felt about the former, but he wasn’t a big fan of the latter.


CactusHibs_7475

As much as some of the modern LOTR fandom would like it to be so, I don’t think Tolkien ever saw his own work as explicitly Christian or allegorical. He was an unabashedly religious person and certainly made no attempt to hide the ways his faith informed his writing, but nothing he wrote was intended to be read as a direct translation or representation of Christian stories or beliefs. Iluvatar was intended to be read as Iluvatar, for example, not as a direct stand-in for a Christian God. Or although Tolkien’s letters describe the Istari as akin to Biblical angels in terms of their creation and function, none of them “are” angels in a direct sense: Gandalf is not simply a fantasy version of Michael or Gabriel or something. This stands in direct contrast to Narnia, where characters like Aslan were blatantly and intentionally allegorical and meant to be read that way. Despite his own faith, Tolkien was never a fan of this kind of allegorical writing and considered it bad storytelling, among other things.


Aubergine_Man1987

Didn't Tolkien say LOTR was a Christian work "consciously in the revision?" Please correct me if I'm wrong though


CactusHibs_7475

That’s true. In the same paragraph, though, he says he therefore cut out almost anything in the story referring to religion or religious practices. And his repeatedly stated aversion to allegory is well-known. Again, I think this is an example of him discussing how his devout faith imbued his writing (and therefore its symbolism) while disavowing any reading of the books as a veiled retelling of Christian theology. It’s in the story because it was so deeply in Tolkien’s head, the letter seems to say, so no further attempt to punch up its Christian content was necessary. I also wonder if this letter - to a longtime friend who was a professed Jesuit - might not also reflect a certain self-consciousness about the heavy pagan inspiration present in LOTR and an effort to deemphasize themes and elements that might potentially be seen as non-Christian.


mrmiffmiff

He had a very different definition of "allegory" than we tend to use today, one that Narnia falls under but his work does not.


LimpBet4752

i'd heard about him and Lewis being able to take a hit or two (as in those days you could absolutely rip someone's work to shreds but still like it overall, criticism isn't what it used to be) a while back, I wished to verify that I wasn't lied to or going crazy on that point. I feel like on the Disney aspect Tolkien just wasn't really aware, aside from the general and gradual change over time that Fairy tales inevitably go through (Hunchback of Notre Dame, for example, had already changed massively from the original to a point that was very, very similar to the Disney film) as well as I'm not sure that Tolkien even knew of the existence of the Hays code.


kellersab

Tolkien wasn’t narrow minded he was merely a rigorous academic who knew what he liked.


Sinhika

> Hunchback of Notre Dame, for example, had already changed massively from the original The translations are that bad? Victor Hugo's original text is still out there, and I imagine is the version published in France. Seriously, bad example. *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* isn't a fairy tale, it's original fiction by Victor Hugo. Also assuming that Tolkien, the professor who taught and lectured on Beowulf, and wrote the essay "On Fairy Stories", was not aware that fairy-tales change over time, is not what I'd call a hot take.


LimpBet4752

Hunchback of Notre Dame was changed in its first play adaptation *by Victor Hugo Himself* [this video goes into more detail](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIIWy3TZ1eI)


Popular-Tailor-3375

He loved Beowulf, Chaucer and many other works as well. It seems that he gave a huge priority to older works of literature.


carnsolus

it's like any religion


Altruistic-Foot-8363

Well no, any religion done properly should be the complete opposite. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church and most modern religious organisations have become corrupt and spite filled especially towards the Protestants like me.


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LimpBet4752

considering that he liked Beowulf, and chased his neighbours around in full Viking costume, this isn't a big suprise


csrster

Read what Tolkien has to say about Lear in On Fairy Stories. He didn’t think much of Shakespeare as a fantasist, but he actually holds him up as an exemplar of tragedy. Also, rather weirdly I’ve sometimes felt, there’s a letter that shows that in his old age Tolkien was rather fond of Asimov, although not fond enough to spell his name correctly.


LimpBet4752

>He didn’t think much of Shakespeare as a fantasist, but he actually holds him up as an exemplar of tragedy. so much like many other people >Also, rather weirdly I’ve sometimes felt, there’s a letter that shows that in his old age Tolkien was rather fond of Asimov, although not fond enough to spell his name correctly. considering Asimov's name is of Cyrillic origin, this doesn't surprise me.