J.R.R. Tolkien by Mark Horne;

Author:Mark Horne;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: HarperCollins Christian Publishing
Published: 2011-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

7

LANGUAGE AND LEGEND,

PART TWO (1926–1937)

While Tolkien’s Kolbitar was not a student group, Tolkien started it, in part, for the sake of Oxford students. In addition to enjoyment and promoting the Icelandic sagas for their own sake, the group was a part of Tolkien’s lobbying efforts to alter the curriculum. When Tolkien came to Oxford, he found an English syllabus divided between an emphasis on literature and linguistics. The literature side emphasized Shakespeare and other later canonized works. The linguistic side, which dealt more with the history of the English language, emphasized philological studies without encouraging students to get wide experience in the ancient literature and languages. Each specialty was somewhat stymied by the other because the professors had all continually lobbied for students to take their individual classes. In theory, the curriculum embodied the high-minded principle that graduates would know all aspects of English scholarship. In reality, it may have had more to do with every professor wanting the maximum number of English students.1

Tolkien did not believe the results were adequate. He felt that students of philology needed more time to concentrate on their specialty and more exposure to the languages that were related to Early and Middle English. He also felt that those concentrating on literature should not have to necessarily work through philological studies.

FROM COAL TO INK

To get his way in revising the syllabus, Tolkien needed to convince the Oxford English faculty to agree with him. As a newcomer to the university, it would not be easy. It took six years before he persuaded the faculty to go along with him— “a lightning-strike revision” by the standards of change for Oxford.2

One of the major steps in getting Tolkien’s changes implemented was turning C. S. Lewis into an advocate. Lewis and Tolkien first met on May 11, 1926, at a faculty meeting for the English Department in what appears to have been one of the times that Tolkien advocated changing the syllabus.3 Lewis wasn’t too impressed at the time. He said later that he had been taught by his Protestant family and then his English literature professors never to trust a papist or a philologist.4 Tolkien was doubly suspect to him.

But Tolkien and Lewis had too many shared loves to not become friends. Lewis greatly admired Norse mythology, though he had never before attempted to read any of it in Icelandic. Their common literary interest became more and more evident to both of them. It wasn’t too long after they first met that Tolkien invited Lewis to join the Kolbitar.

In the meantime, as Lewis and Tolkien began their friendship, Edith gave birth to the Tolkiens’ last child on June 18, 1929, Priscilla Mary Reuel Tolkien. Tolkien was a regular attender of Mass who made a point of confessing his sins to a priest as preparation. He raised all his children in that faith even though Edith was not as comfortable with the confessional and did not attend church regularly. While she was a Christian, she was not sure how she felt about her decision to become a Roman Catholic in order to marry one.

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