Curious
Half-elven
Mar 24, 6:05pm
Views: 22541
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Tolkien grieved the loss of Anglo-Saxon literature.
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In Letter 131 Tolkien said:
“Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff.”
Why is there so little Anglo-Saxon literature, and almost none that is pre-Christian? Even Beowulf is given a Christian facade.
Some blame Christianity, but the Celtic people retained many of their pagan tales despite converting to Christianity. So did the continental Germanic people. So why did the Anglo-Saxons in England lose such tales?
One theory that seems plausible is that the Normans suppressed such tales not because they were pagan, but because they glorified their Anglo-Saxon subjects. Instead the Normans favored the French tales of a Celtic King Arthur fighting the cruel and barbarous Anglo-Saxon invaders. Tolkien was not a fan of the tales of King Arthur, in large part because Arthur and his knights were not Anglo-Saxon — that is, they were British but not English. As Tolkien said in that same Letter 131:
“Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is not perfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal."
Maybe the Normans did not deliberately suppress Anglo-Saxon stories, but simply let them die along with the Saxon nobles who were gradually executed for rebellions and replaced with Normans. Without patrons, the Anglo-Saxon poets, bards, and storytellers adapted to Norman tastes or found another line of work.
Where Belloc welcomed the influence of the French, and dismissed the Anglo-Saxons as unimportant, Tolkien resented the influence of the French, preferring “that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.” (Letter 45, in which Tolkien told his son about his grudge with Hitler for “[r]uining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed” that noble northern spirit.)
(This post was edited by Curious on Mar 24, 6:08pm)
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