Christian influences[edit]
Tolkien once described The Lord of the Rings to his friend, the English Jesuit Father Robert Murray, as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."[1] Many theological themes underlie the narrative, including the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace, as seen with Frodo's pity toward Gollum. In addition the epic includes the themes of death and immortality, mercy and pity, resurrection, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing. Tolkien mentions the Lord's Prayer, especially the line "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil" in connection with Frodo's struggles against the power of the One Ring.[2] Tolkien has also said "Of course God is in The Lord of the Rings. The period was pre-Christian, but it was a monotheistic world" and when questioned who was the One God of Middle-earth, Tolkien replied "The one, of course! The book is about the world that God created – the actual world of this planet."[3]
Norse influences[edit]
Tolkien was heavily influenced by Norse mythology. During his education at King Edward's School in Birmingham, the then young Tolkien read and translated from the Old Norse on his own time.[4] One of his first Norse purchases was the Völsunga saga. It is known that while a student, Tolkien read the only available English translation[5][6] of the Völsunga saga, that by William Morris of the Victorian Arts and Crafts Movement and Icelandic scholar Eiríkur Magnússon.[7] The Old Norse Völsunga saga and the Old High German Nibelungenlied were coeval texts made with the use of the same ancient sources.[8][9] Both of them provided some of the basis for Richard Wagner's opera series, Der Ring des Nibelungen, featuring in particular a magical golden ring and a broken sword reforged. In the Völsunga saga, these items are respectively Andvarinaut and Gram, and they correspond broadly to the One Ring and the sword Narsil (reforged as Andúril).[10] The Volsunga Saga also gives various names found in Tolkien. Tolkien wrote a book entitled The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, in which he discusses the saga in relation to the myth of Sigurd and Gudrún.
The figure of Gandalf is particularly influenced by the Norse deity Odin[11] in his incarnation as "The Wanderer", an old man with one eye, a long white beard, a wide brimmed hat, and a staff. Tolkien, in a 1946 letter, nearly a decade after the character was invented, wrote that he thought of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer".[2] Much like Odin, Gandalf promotes justice, knowledge, truth, and insight.[12]
The Balrog and the collapse of the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in Moria, is a direct parallel of the fire jötunn Surtr and the foretold destruction of Asgard's bridge in Norse myth.[13]
Germanic influences[edit]
Tolkien's Elves and Dwarves are by and large based on the elves and dwarfs of Germanic mythology[14][15] Two sources that contain accounts of elves and dwarfs that were of interest to Tolkien were the Prose Edda and the Elder or Poetic Edda. The descriptions of elves and dwarves in these works are ambiguous and contradictory, however. Within the contents of the Völuspá, specifically in stanza 9, the creation of Dwarves predates Man, which is precisely the formula Tolkien uses for Middle-earth.[16] The names of Gandalf and the dwarves in The Hobbit were taken from the "Dvergatal" section of Völuspá in the Poetic Edda and the "Gylfaginning" section of the Prose Edda.[12]
Tolkien was a Professor of Old English/Anglo-Saxon and Middle English language and literature, and this literature, particularly Beowulf, influenced his own writings.[14] As Tolley tells us in his Old English Influences on The Lord of the Rings,[17] the ideas of heroism and masculinity that inform the character of Beowulf, can also be seen in Aragorn. Both Aragorn and Beowulf have questionable family lines,[citation needed] and both take on kingship only for the good of the people. Other themes, such as the conversation in The Hobbit between Bilbo Baggins and Smaug the dragon, as well as the antagonism created by the mere mention of gold and even the concept of riddles, are also reflected in Beowulf.[14] Tolkien also based the people of Rohan, the Rohirrim, on the historical Anglo-Saxons, giving them Anglo-Saxon names, customs, and poetry.[14][18] The Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Wanderer," is paraphrased by Aragorn as an example of Rohirric verse.
Another major influence on Tolkien is riddle poetry from Anglo-Saxon England. Some of the oldest surviving Old English manuscripts contain riddle poems, such as the Leiden Riddle in the Leiden MS. The contest between Bilbo and Gollum is a good example of this.
Other mythological and linguistic influences[edit]
Finnish mythology and more specifically the Finnish national epic Kalevala were also acknowledged by Tolkien as an influence on Middle-earth.[19] In a manner similar to The Lord of the Rings, the Kalevala centres around a magical item of great power, the Sampo, which bestows great fortune on its owner, but never makes clear its exact nature. Like the One Ring, the Sampo is fought over by forces of good and evil, and is ultimately lost to the world as it is destroyed towards the end of the story. In another parallel, the work's wizard character, Väinämöinen, is similar to Gandalf in his immortal origins and wise nature, and both works end with the wizard character departing on a ship to lands beyond the mortal world. Tolkien also based elements of his Elvish language Quenya on Finnish.[20][21]
The extent of Celtic influence is debatable. Tolkien wrote that he gave the Elvish language Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh ... because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers".[22] A number of the names of characters and places in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have been found to have Welsh origin.[23] In addition, the depiction of elves has been described as deriving from Celtic mythology.[24]
Though Tolkien denied the influence of Arthurian legends, several parallels have been drawn.[25][26][27][28] Gandalf has been compared with Merlin,[29] Frodo and Aragorn with Arthur[30] and Galadriel with the Lady of the Lake.[25]
Modern literary influences[edit]
Tolkien was also influenced by more modern literature. The Ent attack on Isengard was inspired by "Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane" in Shakespeare's Macbeth.[31] Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers has likewise been shown to have reflections in Tolkien.[32]
One of the greatest influences on Tolkien was the Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris. Tolkien wished to imitate Morris's prose and poetry romances,[33] along with the general style and approach; he took elements such as the Dead Marshes in The Lord of the Rings[34] and Mirkwood in The Hobbit from Morris.[35] He was also influenced by the modern fantasy author George MacDonald, who wrote The Princess and the Goblin. Books by the Inkling author Owen Barfield are also known to have contributed to his world-view, particularly The Silver Trumpet (1925), History in English Words (1926) and Poetic Diction (1928). Edward Wyke-Smith's Marvellous Land of Snergs, with its "table-high" title characters, strongly influenced the incidents, themes, and depiction of Bilbo's race in The Hobbit.[36]
The character George Babbitt from Babbitt was another inspiration for hobbits.[37]
In his biography of Tolkien, Carpenter[38] notes that in the limited amount of time Tolkien could apply to the reading of fiction, he "preferred the lighter contemporary novels". The stories of John Buchan are listed as an example . Critics such as Hooker[39] have detailed the resonances between the two authors.
Another contemporary adventure novel, H. Rider Haggard's She, was acknowledged by Tolkien in an interview: "I suppose as a boy She interested me as much as anything—like the Greek shard of Amyntas [Amenartas], which was the kind of machine by which everything got moving."[40] A supposed facsimile of this potsherd appeared in Haggard's first edition, and the ancient inscription it bore, once translated, led the English characters to She's ancient kingdom. Critics have compared this device to the Testament of Isildur in The Lord of the Rings[41] and Tolkien's efforts to produce as an illustration a realistic page from the Book of Mazarbul.[42] Critics starting with Edwin Muir[43] have found resemblances between Haggard's romances and Tolkien's.[44][45][46][47]
Verne's Runic Cryptogram from Journey to the Center of the Earth
Tolkien scholar Mark T. Hooker has catalogued a series of parallels between The Hobbit and Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. These include, among other things, a hidden runic message and a celestial alignment that direct the adventurers to the goals of their quests.[48]
Tolkien wrote of being impressed as a boy by Samuel Rutherford Crockett's historical fantasy novel The Black Douglas and of basing the battle with the wargs in The Fellowship of the Ring on a battle with werewolves in it.[49] Incidents in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are similar in narrative and style to the novel,[50] and its overall style and imagery have been suggested as having had an influence on Tolkien, and Crockett's villain Gilles de Retz as inspiring Sauron.[51]
Tolkien wrote that stories about "Red Indians" were his favourites as a boy. Shippey mentions Tolkien's interest in the primeval forests and people of North America, and speculates that the romantic descriptions of characters in James Fenimore Cooper might have influenced his descriptions of Aragorn and Éomer.[52]
Though he read many of Edgar Rice Burroughs' books, he denied that the Barsoom novels influenced his giant spiders: "I did read many of Edgar Rice Burroughs' earlier works, but I developed a dislike for his Tarzan even greater than my distaste for spiders. Spiders I had met long before Burroughs began to write, and I do not think he is in any way responsible for Shelob. At any rate I retain no memory of the Siths or the Apts."[53]
Wagnerian influences[edit]
Some critics have suggested that The Lord of the Rings was directly and heavily derived from Richard Wagner's opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, whose plot also centres on a powerful ring.[54] Others have argued that any similarity is due to the common influence of the Volsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied on both authors.[55][56]
Tolkien sought to dismiss critics' direct comparisons to Wagner, telling his publisher, "Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases." According to Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien, the author claimed to hold Wagner's interpretation of the relevant Germanic myths in contempt, even as a young man before reaching university.[57]
Some researchers take an intermediate position: that both the authors used the same sources, but that Tolkien was influenced by Wagner's development of the mythology,[58][59] especially the "concept of the Ring as giving the owner mastery of the world that was Wagner's own contribution to the myth of the Ring".[60] Wagner probably developed this element by combining the ring with a magical wand mentioned in the Nibelungenlied that could give to its wearer the control "over the race of men".[61][62] In addition, the corrupting power of Tolkien's One Ring has a central role in Wagner's operas but was not present in the mythical sources.[63][64]
Some argue that Tolkien's denial of a Wagnerian influence was an over-reaction to the statements of Åke Ohlmarks, Tolkien's Swedish translator, who in the introduction to his much-criticized translation of The Lord of the Rings "mixed material from various legends, some which mention no ring and one which concerns a totally different ring".[65][66][67] Furthermore, critics believe that Tolkien was reacting against the links between Wagner's work and Nazism.[68][69]
Personal experience[edit]
Some locations and characters were inspired by Tolkien's childhood in Birmingham, where he first lived near Sarehole Mill, and later near Edgbaston Reservoir.[70] There are also hints of the Black Country, which is within easy reach of north west Edgbaston. This shows in such names as "Underhill", and the description of Saruman's industrialization of Isengard and The Shire is explicitly stated by Tolkien to have been based on the industrialization of England.[71] It has also been suggested that The Shire and its surroundings were influenced by the Iron Age and Roman mineral workings and remains which Tolkien saw in 1929 when working with archaeologists Tessa and Mortimer Wheeler at Lydney Park in the Forest of Dean;[72] or alternatively were based on the countryside around Stonyhurst College in Lancashire where he frequently stayed during the 1940s.[73]
Contemporary warfare[edit]
The Lord of the Rings was crucially influenced by Tolkien's experiences during World War I and his son's during World War II.[74]
After the publication of The Lord of the Rings these influences led to speculation that the One Ring was an allegory for the nuclear bomb.[75] Tolkien, however, repeatedly insisted that his works were not an allegory of any kind.[76] He states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[77] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.[77] Tolkien had already completed most of the book, including the ending in its entirety, before the first nuclear bombs were made known to the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Bedeviled, a book by Lewis/Tolkien scholar Colin Duriez, discusses in more depth how the World Wars and concepts of evil and suffering influenced the writings of Tolkien and his literary group, the Inklings. An article by Manni and Bonechi addresses the influences of WWII on The Lord of the Rings.[78]
