The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski Page A
Authors: Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski
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own creative daemon. One senses, in these early pictures, no organized artistic or intellectual program, no deliberate project to explore the possibilities of abstraction, simply a young mind expanding beyond the confines of realism, energetically sending out root and branch into black soil and bright sunlight.
Tolkien needed to make the same bold leap in his academic studies. Learning new languages and cultivating his own invented ones brought frissons of joy but failed to assuage his disappointed tutors or his own conviction that he could (and must) do better. Flubbing the Honour Mods had been a severe blow; the saving grace was the splendid “pure alpha” that he had earned for his exam in comparative philology. With this in hand, he successfully petitioned, with the support of his tutors and the classicist Lewis Richard Farnell, rector of Exeter, to switch into the English Honours School, with a concentration in language.
It was a brilliant move, flinging open the gates to his scholarly career. Now he could study Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse “lang. and lit.” along with the more standard fare of Chaucer and Shakespeare. He came under the influence of Rhodes Scholar Kenneth Sisam, a New Zealander who would become his tutor in Old and Middle English. Sisam was not an easygoing man, and Tolkien and he would butt heads on many occasions in subsequent decades, competing in 1925 for the Professorship in Anglo-Saxon and disputing in the 1960s over aspects of the Beowulf epic. But Sisam was a splendid scholar and Tolkien, as an undergraduate, benefited greatly from his ideas.
In the spring of 1914, Tolkien won Exeter College’s Skeat Prize for excellence in English. He spent the five-pound prize on a Welsh grammar and three books by William Morris: a translation of the Völsunga saga and two narrative poems, The Life and Death of Jason and The House of the Wolfings . Purchasing the Morris volumes proved to be another watershed, profoundly affecting Tolkien’s understanding of what literature could do. Most likely, he had been aware of Morris while still at King Edward’s School, where in 1909 the Literary Society sponsored a talk on his work, or perhaps even earlier, for Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement and its neomedieval sensibility were much discussed in late Victorian and early Edwardian society and it is likely that both Tolkien and Edith, with their shared interest in calligraphy and other decorative arts, came under its spell. In Oxford, at any event, the great Pre-Raphaelite’s presence was unavoidable. Along with Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Morris had painted the tempera murals, now fading like old ghosts, that adorn the Oxford Union library, and his magnificent tapestry, the Adoration of the Magi , with its Catholic theme, elflike angel, and haunting forest backdrop, hung in the chapel of Exeter College.
Tolkien was thrilled by his purchases, in particular by The House of the Wolfings , with its blend of prose and poetry recounting an epic war between Goths (a Germanic people) and Romans. From it he drew nomenclature that will be familiar to his readers—in Morris’s tale, the Goths inhabit the Mark, in Mirkwood—and, more significantly, the overarching structure of a bitter clash between a bucolic, peaceful people and an imperialist military power, which would become the framework for The Lord of the Rings . Catholicism had already nudged him toward a belief in lost Edens and an associated love of nature as the imperfect mirror of God; Sarehole had given him faith in the moral integrity of simple agrarian folk. Morris now taught him how these values could be expressed in hauntingly beautiful, elaborately constructed fantasy fiction. Unfortunately, Morris also taught Tolkien a deliberately archaic style, filled with inverted syntax and outmoded expressions. This “heigh stile” (the expression comes from Chaucer) permeates both The House of the Wolfings and, to the chagrin
Tolkien needed to make the same bold leap in his academic studies. Learning new languages and cultivating his own invented ones brought frissons of joy but failed to assuage his disappointed tutors or his own conviction that he could (and must) do better. Flubbing the Honour Mods had been a severe blow; the saving grace was the splendid “pure alpha” that he had earned for his exam in comparative philology. With this in hand, he successfully petitioned, with the support of his tutors and the classicist Lewis Richard Farnell, rector of Exeter, to switch into the English Honours School, with a concentration in language.
It was a brilliant move, flinging open the gates to his scholarly career. Now he could study Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse “lang. and lit.” along with the more standard fare of Chaucer and Shakespeare. He came under the influence of Rhodes Scholar Kenneth Sisam, a New Zealander who would become his tutor in Old and Middle English. Sisam was not an easygoing man, and Tolkien and he would butt heads on many occasions in subsequent decades, competing in 1925 for the Professorship in Anglo-Saxon and disputing in the 1960s over aspects of the Beowulf epic. But Sisam was a splendid scholar and Tolkien, as an undergraduate, benefited greatly from his ideas.
In the spring of 1914, Tolkien won Exeter College’s Skeat Prize for excellence in English. He spent the five-pound prize on a Welsh grammar and three books by William Morris: a translation of the Völsunga saga and two narrative poems, The Life and Death of Jason and The House of the Wolfings . Purchasing the Morris volumes proved to be another watershed, profoundly affecting Tolkien’s understanding of what literature could do. Most likely, he had been aware of Morris while still at King Edward’s School, where in 1909 the Literary Society sponsored a talk on his work, or perhaps even earlier, for Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement and its neomedieval sensibility were much discussed in late Victorian and early Edwardian society and it is likely that both Tolkien and Edith, with their shared interest in calligraphy and other decorative arts, came under its spell. In Oxford, at any event, the great Pre-Raphaelite’s presence was unavoidable. Along with Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Morris had painted the tempera murals, now fading like old ghosts, that adorn the Oxford Union library, and his magnificent tapestry, the Adoration of the Magi , with its Catholic theme, elflike angel, and haunting forest backdrop, hung in the chapel of Exeter College.
Tolkien was thrilled by his purchases, in particular by The House of the Wolfings , with its blend of prose and poetry recounting an epic war between Goths (a Germanic people) and Romans. From it he drew nomenclature that will be familiar to his readers—in Morris’s tale, the Goths inhabit the Mark, in Mirkwood—and, more significantly, the overarching structure of a bitter clash between a bucolic, peaceful people and an imperialist military power, which would become the framework for The Lord of the Rings . Catholicism had already nudged him toward a belief in lost Edens and an associated love of nature as the imperfect mirror of God; Sarehole had given him faith in the moral integrity of simple agrarian folk. Morris now taught him how these values could be expressed in hauntingly beautiful, elaborately constructed fantasy fiction. Unfortunately, Morris also taught Tolkien a deliberately archaic style, filled with inverted syntax and outmoded expressions. This “heigh stile” (the expression comes from Chaucer) permeates both The House of the Wolfings and, to the chagrin
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