I Found the Entwives!

[Ardamir the Blessed]

eowyntje:

I was the one who wrote (or is actually writing) and posted the essay on Minas Tirith. I have not found what Teleporno claimed to have found, but I have made a lot of research on Entwives, and present my findings in my essay, which is still under work. My user name on Minas Tirith is Herendil, Teleporno and I are not the same person.


Child of the 7th Age:

I agree with you that Teleporno has a tendency of finding hidden jokes in Tolkien, and that he probably did think that he found a joke concerning the Entwives, whether it really is a joke or not.

However, he is right about the fact that the Ents were partly inspired by the Great Birnam wood in Macbeth; Tolkien himself tells us that:

Letter #163, note:

Their [the Ents’] part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war. And into this has crept a mere piece of experience, the difference of the 'male' and 'female' attitude to wild things, the difference between unpossessive love and gardening.

Also note the last passage - it might hint at a parody of Tolkien's academic friends and their wives.

It does seem that Tolkien put some traits of the Inklings into the Ents (especially Treebeard). Perhaps the Entmoot was a parody of their meetings at The Eagle and Child.

Biography:

When eventually he [Tolkien] came to write this chapter [LR, ‘Treebeard’] (so he told Nevill Coghill [a member of the Inklings]) he modelled Treebeard’s way of speaking, ‘Hrum, Hroom’, on the booming voice of C. S. Lewis.

Treason of Isengard, ‘Treebeard’:

There are some small particular points worthy of mention in this first part of the chapter. In the fair copy corresponding to TT pp. 66 – 7 … his [Treebeard’s] ejaculation 'Root and twig! ' replaced 'Crack my timbers!'

A note on this:

A pencilled note on the fair copy says that 'Crack my timbers' had been 'queried by Charles Williams'. The same change was made at a later point in the chapter (TT p. 75).

Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams were all members of the Inklings. In my opinion it is not that farfetched then to suspect that the Entwives were a 'parody' of their wives.