Tolkien and the Book

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

In folk tale and oral literature, the story-teller has a wide variety of tricks-of-the-trade that she or he uses both to remember the story without benefit of literacy and to tell it in an engaging way. These tricks include things like repeated actions and motifs, things happening in threes, the inclusion of songs and rhymes, doubling of parts and characters and – almost universally – structuring the tale around a story of the hero’s journey through a series of challenges, riddles, tests or dangers toward a new sense of him or herself, and then back home to a transformed state of existence.

Sound familiar? It should, since all of these things happen in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Now, I am far from the first person in this forum to make this point, but thinking about it the other day got me to thinking about the role and status of literacy and orality in the tales. And it occurred to me that, interestingly, Elves don’t seem to use books. This was at first surprising to me, as I rather immediately associate an advanced state of culture with literacy, but I don’t recall mention of an Elvish library or a book really anywhere in the legendarium (although I am sure that such references exist…don’t they?). Whether or not Elves read books is not really the point though. What’s intriguing to me is that they don’t seem to place as much stock or importance in books as do other races (Hobbits especially). But then it occurred to me that they don’t really need to. The point of literacy is that it allows people to put down information in a more or less permanent form that will not alter through the years. But Elves, being immortal, don’t need to worry about that so much: if the teller of a tale three thousand years later is going to be someone who was actually there, there’s not much to be gained by committing it to print!

But it’s not that Elves are anti-book. It’s more that they are themselves so bookish that they don’t need books. That is, they don’t need to write things down because they can remember them for hundreds and thousands of years, and they hate change and want always to preserve the past unaltered, so (presumably) the stories as they tell them will not vary or alter – they do orally what mortals can do only in print.

The other ‘type’ for this is the Ents. They don’t need books because they live for so long and have such long memories that they can record their knowledge within an oral tradition that traces its way back through the history of the Three Ages. It’s interesting, too, that they are themselves trees, from which paper is made – it’s like they’re living books already!

So all this leads me to wonder about the status and view of books and reading, literacy and orality in Middle-Earth. We seem, on the one hand, to have a world in which the book – or the idea of the Book – is the highest ideal there is, with the Elves and the Ents being living, breathing books: books as they should be. In this view, peoples like the Hobbits and Men (and Dwarves who provided the only book I can remember from the story proper: The Book of Mazarbul which is only a record of woe) are using books as a kind of poor substitute for memory and orality.

On the other hand, LotR goes to great lengths to present itself as a book: the translator conceit, the appendices, the prologue, the extended history of the Book of Westmarch, etc. So perhaps the book – or the idea of the Book – is being celebrated insofar as after the Elves are gone, and the Ents have departed, it’s up to the mortal beings and their books to record the tales of the oral culture that’s gone.

I’m just intrigued by a book that is written like an oral tale, in which people who have no use for books are celebrated as the highest beings by people who depend upon books for the transmission of knowledge.

[Gurthang]

That's a very interesting thought: how elves really don't need or want books. I'd have to say that, and this is probably obvious, the elves replaced books with songs. Elvish songs were far more potent than books, their minstrels revered above most, and the songs could be preserved in completeness because they had a virtually unlimited time to teach them. This would explain why Hobbits and Men used books, since their skill with song was somewhat less.

I would almost even say that if Middle Earth had video cameras, the elves would not use them. Their songs are even more glorious than movies, since songs can not only give the listener a mental image, but almost put them into the story. With such a powerful form of storytelling, who would need even movies... or books, since that is the discussion.

But this also makes me wonder why elves even had letters and words at all. They were very keen at making script, but they really had little use for it. If they wanted a message sent, they would just use a messenger, or Osanwe(sp). So, if they wouldn't need written language for communication or preservation of history, why have it at all?

[Mister Underhill]

Interesting topic, as usual, Fordim. I unfortunately don't have time to reply at length, but before things get carried away, I feel compelled to mention at least two obvious book references in the story proper that you've missed: Bilbo's extensive collection and his Red Book (natch), and Elrond's books of lore (from which, presumably, Bilbo's "Translations from the Elvish" are translated?):

Then through all the years that followed [Elrond] traced the Ring; but since that history is elsewhere recounted, even as Elrond himself set it down in his books of lore, it is not here recalled...

Aragorn and Gandalf walked together or sat speaking of their road and the perils they would meet; and they pondered the storied and figured maps and books of lore that were in the house of Elrond.

Then again, Elrond is half-Elven...

Originally Posted by Gurthang

Elvish songs were far more potent than books

This is a great point too -- Elvish oral tales and songs, perhaps with a dose of ósanwe, go far beyond what a simple book is able to create:

At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though [Frodo] understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him.

[Formendacil]

Just a couple of reference points:

1) You are quite correct, Master Fordhim, in suggesting that Elves do not make regular use of books. Tolkien confirms this in one of the writings published in one of the later History of Middle-Earth volumes. I believe it is in a discourse that had Pengolodh telling Aelfwine that in the First Age, much knowledge was lost to the Elves, because they did not have their lore in written form, for the most part, since the scholars retained it all in their minds, and so much knowledge was lost thanks to Morgoth. However, from the wording, I seem to recall that it could be implied that Elves had since taken to greater use of books, due in large part to disasters such as that.

2) This is just conjecture on my part, but Elrond's library may well be derived in large part from the archives of the Kingdom of Arnor, since it is said, in the Akallabeth, I believe, that such lore concerning Numenor was preserved mainly in Gondor, namely in Minas Tirith, and in Imladris, where the remnants of knowledge in the north kingdom were deposited. That doesn't conclusively make Elrond's library Mannish in origin, but it DOES support the idea that it isn't really an Elvish idea.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Interesting post, Fordim . My image of Elves and books is quite different than your own. I have always imagined Rivendell as having quite a collection of Elvish works. This is based on the quote that Mr. Underhill mentions as well as another brief comment in the Prologue to LotR in regard to Bilbo's work on the Translations from the Elvish. The italics are my own....

These three volumes were found to be a work of great skill and learning in which, between 1403 and 1418, he had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written. But since they were little used by Frodo, being almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days, no more is said of them here.

The wording in this is such that, to me, it implies the existence of a considerable library of works in Elvish. Sure sounds like the Elves were history buffs, which would go along with their general orientation to things. Unfortunately, we know little about the compilers of these works.

[Bêthberry]

Another intriguing thread with which to embroider our thought! Good to see you returning to the shuttle and loom, Fordim. I hesitate--but not overly long--to say, with a woof and warp.

I have always been intrigued by that description of the effect of the Elven music upon Frodo. But to consider it here under a new light: For Frodo, the visions which the music and singing inspire are of sights unseen and lands unknown. This would seem to imply the experience of fiction--nay, fantasy. Yet at the conclusion of the experience, which Frodo says he begins to understand only towards the end, we find that the final piece has been created by Bilbo and Strider/Aragorn. And it is a tale of history.

Is the elven art devoted entirely to recounting tales of yore, the artistic remembrance of times past. À la recherche du temps perdu? Does elven art include the conscious and deliberate creation of stories that are wholly imagined but presented as if they 'really happened'? I know the demarcation is tenuous between history and fiction, yet we ourselves have this artistic difference, of stories wholly made up and stories that are histories. Did the elves? Is their 'knowledge', their 'lore' only completely associated with their past? Aside from Merry's Herblore of The Shire, which is limited to one botanical species only and is a history at that, are books associated with anything other than history in Middle-earth?

A secondary observation is that the elves don't appear to have something which we might recognise as dramatic productions.

not very entish today... in haste.

[Kuruharan]

While I think Fordim raises an interesting point, I think it is possible to take this idea too far. After all, the Elves invented writing twice. The first time it was specifically for writing with pens and brushes. It is kind of hard to imagine what they used this for if not books or scrolls (which for the discussion amount to practically the same thing).