[davem]

I remember Ronald Hutton's comment at Birmingham that while Tolkien may have set out to create a mythology for England, what he had actually done was to create a mythology for America.

I wonder if there's some truth in this. I wonder if the reason for the seriousness with which Tolkien is taken in US accademia is that American culture is such a recent creation (relatively speaking) & is still, in many ways, in formation. Mythology is bound up with a nation's culture & history. For all Tolkien missed England's lost mythology, we do have a long history & a strong cultural identity. I grew up in a village with a medieval church, only a few miles from a ruined Priory & a beautiful old castle (Conisborough, which was Walter Scott's inspiration for Ivanhoe). An hours drive from where I currently live there are stone circles.

What I'm suggesting is that while we may not have a mythology which has survived intact from the pre-Christian period, there are 'echoes' of it all around us, which we can almost 'hear' if we listen hard enough. In that sense we don't need another mythology. So, we love Tolkien as a source of entertainment, 'philosophy', & 'escape', even as a way of connecting us to that 'hidden' mythic world that lies all around us, but we don't need him to provide an 'identity' for us.

I wonder if this is the reason for the 'Tolkien cult' that swept American campuses in the sixties, & lead Tolkien to say that some of his American readers were involved in the stories in the way he himself was not. Americans of European origin in particular don't have such a 'cultural/mythic landscape' - there is, of course, such a thing for the native peoples, but its not truly accessible for non Native Americans. Tolkien's mythology is like a European mythology, but its not a specifically English, Germanic, Norse, French, or Romance one. Therefore its one that all European-Americans can relate to (I note that all of the Accademics Child mentions share a white European Ancestry).

In short, for English readers Tolkien's work is a link to our real historical & cultural identity, our mythology, our living link with our ancestral landscape, whereas for European-Americans it is a substitute for their lack of one. Hence it will have a greater value for Americans than for us, & so they will make more of it.


I'll get me coat.......