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Tolkien and the Beowulf Saga
jackalski sent in this story about a translation of the Beowulf epic by J.R.R. Tolkien being discovered and which is now set to be published next year. Tolkien found Beowulf inspirational.
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unless he took a dramatic twist of the text, you're still forced reading the same epic that you were forced to read in highschool... if you are looking for a good twist on the topic, read john gardner's grendel.
It'll be on #bookz (undernet) long before it's ever ebook, without DRM!! Long live warez
First and foremost I think that Tokien was inspired by the war he fought in, WW1: Huge battles and complex alliances between murky powers in which little English folk from the countryside get caught up, don't fully understand, and yet trust that somehow they are acting for the better--meanwhile massive slaughter, marshes full of dead people, and so on.
On the literary side, though, he does seem to have borrowed from all sorts of great legends. I'm sure Beowulf must be one, as the LOTR, etc., are quests. Tolkien clearly believes (in his stories anyway) in caste society: dividing people up into noble classes, low classes, and so on--the line of kings figures prominently in his work.
Moreover his creation mythology interestingly enough mixes the Christian mythology of Lucifer into a Norse mythology setting. You have Melkor rebelling against Eru much as Lucifer rebelled against God, and the whole Melkor/Morgoth/Sauron thing sounds remarkably like the story of Lucifer's fall from grace. And you have the Elves being kicked out of Valinor much as Christian mythology has men being kicked out of the Garden of Eden--with the twist of free choice.
And yet the whole thing is in a Norse mythological setting--with the gods living in great halls across the ocean--and you could even sail there if you were a good enough seafarer, and a range of gods who are somehow a higher caste than men, and yet somehow also their equals. (The Vala, Elves and Men all having been created by the same maker, Eru).
In a way I think much of British quest literature has been an attempt to weave the old tales of Beowulf into the fabric of Christian mythology, and I think that's exactly what Tolkien does.
Absolutely.
The first Tolkien book I read was the Silmarillion. It was... a wonderful read, for me. There was beauty. There was ugliness. There was tragedy. There was triumph. There was absolute glory and utter defeat. Not only on human scales, but cosmic ones as well. I think, of all the "stories" about the mythical creation of a universe, I find it the most real and most beautiful.
The sub-creation of a universe is no easy task. I think Tolkien is one of the few people who understood what was necessary to make a believable one, and was able to exceute it so well.
While the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are awesome stories, knowing the true setting of the world that they partake in makes them that much more real and entertaining. The immersion is really, in my experience, an order of magnitude higher than if I had not read the Silmarillion first.
Of course, not everyone will share that view; that's OK. Some people don't like fantasy, period, either. To each his/her own.
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