The Mythopoeic Code of Tolkien by Jyrki Korpua

Author:Jyrki Korpua
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2021-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

Concerning Sidney and Coleridge

Tolkien’s aesthetics in “On ­Fairy-Stories” ponder the concepts of imagination, literary belief, and literary pleasure. All these concepts can be seen to reflect classical theories which are linked to Tolkien’s own theory, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria or Sir Philip Sidney’s The Defence of Poesy.

In her article “Is Tolkien a Renaissance Man?” Tanya Caroline Wood compares Tolkien’s essay “On ­Fairy-Stories” to Sidney’s The Defence of Poesie. Wood argues that Sidney is searching for an original meaning of the word poet (poiein), as a creator—especially as a creator of another “nature.” Wood writes that both Tolkien and Sidney believe that authors create a secondary world with the creative power of imagination that God has given them (T. Wood 2000: 99). As a work concerned with the creative methods and mimetic nature of literature, Sidney’s work was the most influential literary theory of the era, where he both respects the tradition and celebrates the poet’s willingness to experiment.

In a philosophical tone, Sidney’s The Defence of Poesy could be seen as a predecessor of Tolkien’s literary view. And on some occasions, Sidney writes, in his own way, on the same subjects as I do in this study: on constructive (mytho)poetics. For example, Sidney sees the historical character of Solon as a Poet who wrote in “verse the notable Fable of Atlantick Iland, which was continued by Plato,” and quite disappointedly, that Plato’s myth, the Ring of Gyges was just a “meere tale,” not a “flower” of poetry (Sidney 1968: 5).

Sidney (1968: 9), following Plato and Aristotle’s reasoning, sees that “Poesie” is an “Art of Imitation,” mimetic, a “representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth to speak Metaphorically. A speaking Picture, with this end to teach and delight.” But despite this “act of imitation,” Sidney in his work compares the poet with the historian and philosopher, and comes to the conclusion that the poet is better of the three, and that “no other humaine skill can match him” (Sidney 1968: 13).

Sidney’s Defence of Poesie is in one sense “a defence of Plato,” whose attack on poets in The Republic is of course famous. For Sidney, Plato in his attack never meant poets “in general,” but only meant those with erring opinions “of the Deitie.” Sidney’s defense of Plato is justly done in the light of Plato’s dialogue Ion, where Plato gives—as Sidney points out—“a high, and rightly divine commendation unto Poetrie.” Sidney writes that “Plato banished the abuse, not the thing,” and that Plato should be the patron of poets, not the adversary (Sidney 1968: 34). This vision was later shared by many thinkers and writers; for example, in the Romantic period Percy Bysshe Shelley in his theories of poetry connected Platonism and poetry, writing on the “Ideal world of the Poet,” and saw the writer’s imagination in some ways as an ideal “truth” (Schulze 1966: 12).

For Tolkien’s poetics and imaginative writing, both truth and belief are important. In “On ­Fairy-Stories” Tolkien writes about Imagination and the complex human capability to

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