Christopher Rush

Content Summary and Author’s Perspective

J.R.R. Tolkien’s early essay “On Fairy-Stories” summarizes (in seventy pages) Tolkien’s conception of the nature of fairy-stories, their connection to myths, their audience, and their three main functions of recovery, escape, and consolation.  Fairy-stories, according to Tolkien, are not the safest of places, since they contain “beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords” (33).  Tolkien creates a unique definition of fairy-stories, furthering his distinction from lesser tellers of tales: “fairy-stories are not … about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being.…  Most good ‘fairy-stories’ are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches” (38).  Throughout the essay, which is an apologia sans remorse, Tolkien defends fairy-stories as if they are important literature, as valuable and life-relevant as the poems of Homer or the novels of Proust and Stendahl.

Early in the essay, Tolkien describes various elements of fairy-stories, as just mentioned, such as their danger and characters.  Tolkien also contrasts them with other kinds of stories for clarification: a genuine fairy-tale is always presented as “true,” never as a dream or with similar machinery (42).  Beast fables, like the Three Little Pigs or The Wind in the Willows, while good stories, are not fairy-tales (42-3) according to Tolkien.  Myths and fairy-tales are similar, but Tolkien ascribes to myths an element of divinity and worship in the tales that are lacking in fairy-tales (49-51).  Similarly, contrasting Joseph Campbell’s monomyth conception, Tolkien doesn’t compartmentalize fairy-tales by a standard pattern of events, but instead a “colouring, the atmosphere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story” (46) is what make a fairy-story what it is:

An essential power of Faërie is thus the power of making immediately effective by the will the visions of “fantasy.”  Not all are beautiful or even wholesome, not at any rate the fantasies of fallen Man.…  This aspect of “mythology” — sub-creation, rather than either representation or symbolic interpretation of the beauties and terrors of the world — is, I think, too little considered (49).

Tolkien denigrates the pervasive attitude that fairy-stories are the domain of children.  If a story has quality, it is a good story regardless of who is reading it and why.  The main reason most people think fairy-stories belong to children is because that is the only kind of story available to them in the nursery.  If young ones appreciate fairy-stories, it is because the stories are intrinsically good, not because they are fit only for children.  Similar to that is the notion of “suspension of disbelief” — if a story is told as “real,” like good fairy-stories need to be, according to Tolkien, audiences won’t need to suspend any belief or disbelief: “if [adults] really liked it (the fairy-story), for itself, they would not have to suspend disbelief: they would believe — in this sense” (61).  A fairy-story, if it is a good story regardless of its genre, is good enough for any reader regardless of age.  If it is a good story, it can be analyzed as well as appreciated.

The pattern of “recovery, escape, and consolation” is as close to Campbell’s monomyth as Tolkien gets.  “Recovery” assumes some conflict has beset the community of the story as well as “a re-gaining — regaining of a clear view.…  I might venture to say ‘seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them’ — as things apart from ourselves” (77).  Escape “is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now often used.…  In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic” (79).  The consolation “of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires.  Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending” (85), what Tolkien coined “eucatastrophe.”  The purpose of all this is, for Tolkien, to emphasize the importance of a happy ending, or eucatastrophe, after much believable and serious conflict: what makes a good fairy-story worthwhile is because real life has its own eucatastrophe, Jesus Christ.

Critical Response and Evaluation

“On Fairy-stories” is almost as important to studying Tolkien’s world as reading The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.  It provides great insight to his thinking about the nature of stories, and why he wrote fantasy; it closely resembles fairy-story, especially since his definition of Faërie is beyond the silly supernatural creatures found in poorer-written stories.  Even though the essay never mentions hobbits or dwarves, and only briefly mentions elves and dragons, it is an important place to begin any examination of the world of Middle-earth.

Mentioned above, Tolkien gives a fair amount of freedom to what constitutes fairy-stories.  Joseph Campbell did give a fair amount of leeway in what is a hero, but his focus in The Hero with a Thousand Faces is on what the hero does, not who he is.  Tolkien’s fairy-stories follow the basic “recovery, escape, and consolation,” but they have more variety than mythic heroes according to Campbell, since the authors can change whatever else happens, and to what degree mythic, fantasy, and magical elements appear in the tales.

Tolkien’s conclusion, that mankind has had its universal eucatastrophe in the work of Jesus, overtly betrays his Christian perspective.  I wonder if Tolkien’s declaration in “On Fairy-stories” is in part responsible for so many critics (of diverse skill) finding Christian symbolism throughout The Lord of the Rings that really isn’t there.  It is possibly the best defense of the “happy ending,” in contrast to the last few decades of critics who posit tragedy and destruction as superior and “more real” than happiness and true love.

In addition to Tolkien’s interesting concept of the “eucatastrophe,” his general defense of the worth and value of fairy-stories and their like is very refreshing.  He does not apologize for enjoying this kind of narrative, nor does he try to make a case for it being as valuable as other kinds of literature; instead he just analyzes and summarizes as if he is clarifying the misconceptions of the confused.  Like C.S. Lewis, he enjoys what he enjoys and has no qualms about it, but when he tries to convince others to enjoy it, he reasons his arguments lucidly and respectfully to the opposition (unlike the critics who denigrate Tolkien and Lewis).

“On Fairy-stories” provides an important beginning for understanding Tolkien’s creative processes when reading The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.  We can understand these tales through formalist criticism, but this essay gives a deeper perspective behind Tolkien’s motivation and intention.  The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings are not “fairy-tales” exactly, even by Tolkien’s definition of them, but they are close cousins, like the fantasy genre of which he speaks highly in this essay.  His eucatrastophe concept explains why, after much loss and suffering, The Return of the King has a “happy” ending, one that fulfills the expectations of the heroes and sees evil conquered: life is like that because of Jesus, according to Tolkien.  Non-Christian critics and audiences might disagree with him theologically, but it would be difficult to fault the coherence and believability of the trilogy because of external religious differences.  The trilogy’s end is not forced or through an unbelievable deus ex machina (it is a slight deus ex machine, but is consistent within the reality of Middle-earth), fulfilling Tolkien’s ideas of great stories (whether or not they are fairy-tales) found in this essay.

Christopher Rush

Content Summary

Crabbe’s essay analyzes Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings from the perspective that its mythic/epic qualities can be accurately interpreted as a connection to the past.  Obviously, the concept of “myth” is greatly past-centered, and for Crabbe, the success of characters and themes in Lord of the Rings depends in part on how well those characters and themes adhere to the “legends” of the past.  Highlights of ideas presented by Crabbe include the nature of a hero, especially in the hero’s connection to the past; the nature of creation; and the natures of good and evil within the framework of Lord of the Rings, again related to how the “good” and the “evil” maintains its connection to and appreciation for the past.  Crabbe’s overall emphasis, though, under which she uses the aforementioned subtopics for support, is what the title of her essay implies: The Lord of the Rings is a quest story with semi-archetypal quest-like heroes, and the plotted quest of the novels and the character quests of the heroes are connected to the legends of Middle-earth’s past, especially how language distinguishes the “good” from the “evil.”  Crabbe apparently approaches her analysis simply as formalist textual criticism, observing the text itself and understanding it from the perspective mentioned above, focusing on the elements in their connection to Middle-earth’s past.  Though not strictly formalist, in that she does demonstrate an understanding of previous ages of Middle-earth’s history not strictly recounted within the text of The Lord of the Rings proper, her analyses do not extend beyond Middle-earth, except in the application of broad, universal concepts of myths, heroes, quests, legends, and the like.

Author’s Perspective and Purpose

Crabbe does not present any overt biases within this essay, other than her apparent affinity for Tolkien’s sub-created world.  By connecting The Lord of the Rings to “classical” things that matter (myths, heroes, quests), she places a fairly high importance on the story and text itself.  She treats it all seriously, unlike other Tolkien critics who only want to ridicule and denigrate Middle-earth and its inhabitants (especially in Bloom’s collection).  As mentioned above, Crabbe seems to apply only a formalist textual criticism; she does not describe heroes in how they treat or mistreat female characters as a feminist critic might do, nor does she draw parallels to real-life overtones or symbols, as a Christian critic or an eco-friendly critic might do.  She is concerned with what is presented in the text and how that text can be understood in its own relation to Middle-earth’s past.  I have never heard of Katharyn W. Crabbe outside of this essay (though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything), but the edition notes she “has been the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the State University College in Geneseo, New York” and has some other publishing credits, so she does have an academic and critical background and is not just a Tolkien “fan.”

Since Ms. Crabbe analyzes The Lord of the Rings from the perspective of language and its relation to quests, myths, and heroes, she probably has some background in linguistics, if not just on a personal-interest level: she does not use within the essay any technical terminology in linguistics or mythology, but that could just be her intention of allowing for a wide readership of her essay.  She does demonstrate quite well, though, through the essay a clear understanding of the unity of Tolkien’s work, and her ideas about language, mythic quests, and heroes are very lucid and helpful.  Her other points about the natures of heroes and how they relate to the past of Middle-earth are very well done.  She clearly connects her ideas about language and the (legendary) past and how they are important throughout The Lord of the Rings, both as distinguishing the races of characters broadly, as well as distinguishing elements in heroes and villains within those races finely.

Critical Response and Evaluation

Ms. Crabbe’s overall thesis of language as a unifier of peoples and past in Middle-earth is insightful, if not thoroughly helpful, though I do find many of her other insights very helpful.  Her thirty-page essay was one of the longest and most cohesive essays I have read recently.  Many other essays from, perhaps, more scholarly sources, seem to pad the length through digression or bald topic changes without much relevance to the guiding thesis; Ms. Crabbe’s essay, however, is unified throughout.  Her essay is well-written enough that the ideas most helpful, especially concerning the nature of heroes in The Lord of the Rings, are inherently meaningful and consistent even if separated from her thesis of language’s importance in the legendary past and culturally distinctive present in Middle-earth.

When reading The Lord of the Rings, it is possible (especially in the post-movie version era) to focus only the plot, as it is with any novel.  Crabbe’s essay helps remind us that Tolkien’s purpose is not just to spin an exciting yarn about days gone by, but that he was recalling an extended episode of a place that had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and so did its peoples.  Her idea, “the trustworthiness of traditional and intuitive knowledge is a part of the larger value of respect for the past,” is very helpful in seeing this.  Many other critics have noted Tolkien’s penchant for nature and opposition to technology (in fairly heavy-handed arguments), but Tolkien’s Middle-earth is not just a yearning for a return to Rousseauean/Wordsworthian Natural idolatry — it is, as Crabbe says, a world that values and respect its past.  The most successful, most internally unified heroes in The Lord of the Rings are those who are attuned to that past.  Another good example is her comments about Faramir: “The difference between Boromir and Faramir is an expression of the difference in what they have inherited from their Númenórean past….  It is not only knowledge of the past but reverence for it and understanding of it that set Faramir apart, and that knowledge, reverence, and understanding are his links to the golden age….  By exemplifying a hero who values the spiritual life of a culture as well as its physical life, Faramir links the Rohirrim to Aragorn, King of the Númenóreans.”  Aragorn is obviously one of the main heroes of the novel, but Faramir, according to Crabbe, has similar heroic qualities, in that he, too, understands and reveres his past.  This, more than his father’s love according to Peter Jackson’s movies, is what truly sets him above his brother Boromir, who, unfortunately, has a limited perspective concerning his people and his role in Middle-earth.

Katharyn Crabbe’s essay is a very useful examination of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.  Even though she has a seemingly-narrow focus for her thesis, how language relates to people groups of Middle-earth and their connection to its legendary past, Crabbe has enough examples well-explicated that make it worth reading for a variety of purposes.  I found many of her insights useful to me almost despite her perspective of the role of language.  Her ideas on heroism and the mythical past of Middle-earth are helpful, even beyond the pair of specific quotations referenced above.  Though other essays I’ve read that describe the heroes of Lord of the Rings in more detail provide more ideas, the wide range of examples from Katharyn Crabbe distinguish her essay as useful to all Tolkien enthusiasts or critics, regardless of their linguistic backgrounds.

Christopher Rush

Content Summary and Author’s Perspective

Isaacs and Zimbardo’s collection of Tolkien criticism, their second compilation since the completion of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, offers a variety of essays about diverse issues and themes of Tolkien’s trilogy.  Because of the variety and wealth of critical possibility in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, I will concentrate here on three of the more important and useful essays.  Since the essays were brief, I will summarize their content and discuss the author’s perspective together.  All three of these essays were recollected in the editors’ more recent Tolkien collection Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism from 2004, but the page references are to the 1981 collection.

Lionel Basney’s “Myth, History and Time in The Lord of the Rings” presents in twelve brief pages a look at three crucial though often neglected aspects to Tolkien’s Middle-earth.  Basney is quite literate concerning mythological structure, teleology, and social progression, which becomes clear quickly in his brief essay; however, Basney subsumes his knowledge for the less-educated reader well, allowing the lay reader (who, though, should be more than a passing Tolkien fan) to get a sort of beginning look at applying teleological analysis to Tolkien’s Middle-earth.  Basney is also conscious throughout that a design in the Middle-earth universe, with a consistent and coherent cosmogony, might lead certain readers to posit a Christian/Biblical worldview or design upon Middle-earth, but Basney cautions against such a reading.  To Basney, Tolkien has explicit, coherent design and natural progression from age to age and people to people but also a “causal vagueness” (16) that should warn readers away from reading too much into it as a work of God or divine providence.  (Certainly The Silmarillion is more explicit about the supernatural powers at work in and around Middle-earth, but that is beyond Basney’s focus; The Lord of the Rings is much less explicit or dependent on Tolkien’s “God” Eru/Ilúvatar or “angels” the Valar.)

Verlyn Flieger’s essay “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero” does what its title implies, in that it examines the two major (obvious) heroes of The Lord of the Rings, from both their characters and actions.  Flieger draws on medieval and fairy-tale criticism to distinguish these two heroes, implying more than declaring that Tolkien did the same when he created them.  Aragorn is the typical medieval and mythical hero, the lost/forgotten king on his quest to restore his throne and marry his princess.  Frodo is the typical fairy-tale hero, an unusual creature who becomes embroiled in gargantuan tasks but survives and succeeds through cunning, luck, and magic.  Flieger’s key insight, though, is noticing that Tolkien inverts the culmination of both of these heroes’ quests: Frodo, the fairy-tale hero, suffers the loss of his finger and estrangement from the world he once loved; Aragorn, the medieval/mythic warrior who travels through the underworld and reunites the nations against the evil one gains the more typical fairy-tale ending of the restored kingdom and happily-ever-after marriage to the princess.

Third is Patrick Grant’s essay “Tolkien: Archetype and Word.”  Obviously Grant uses archetypal criticism: “Frodo moves through a process equivalent to Jung’s individuation, which is charted by the main action of the book” (93).  Grant also looks to Jung when analyzing Gollum’s role as Frodo’s shadow.  Throughout Grant’s analysis, he finds Tolkien’s counterpoint of light and darkness symbolic of identity: “Saruman’s multicolor, like the facelessness of the riders, indicates a dissolution of identity.  White is whole; fragmented, it is also dissipated” (98-9).  Grant’s conclusion relates somewhat to the “Word” component of the title, finding, like Basney, design in the archetypes of the story: “Tolkien plainly indicates throughout The Lord of the Rings that on some profound level a traditional Providence is at work in the unfolding of events.  And in a world where men must die, where there are no havens, where the tragedy of exile is an enduring truth, the sense, never full, always intermittent, of a providential design, is also a glimpse of joy” (103); the archetypes and design lead through the darkness into a saving light.

Critical Response and Evaluation

It is not surprising that these three essays were reprinted in the editors’ “best of” collection, since they were the cream of the crop from 1981’s collection.  Basney’s essay has great potential, given his obvious understanding of the interpretive framework by which he analyzed The Lord of the Rings.  I would have appreciated a longer, more advanced analysis from him; as it was, the essay provides only a few useful ideas — very useful, definitely, but not as many as the title suggested before I read it.  I appreciate Basney’s underlying perspective that, despite the pervasive teleology of Tolkien’s world, Tolkien was not creating an allegory of the Biblical story of creation nor was the “God” of Tolkien’s sub-creation, Eru/Ilúvatar, causing everything to happen, but instead was allowing growth and choices.  Basney’s insights, few though they were, are helpful: “One of Middle-earth’s governing cosmic conditions is the growth of legend into history” (16).  Structural repetition is essential in demonstrating how heroes in The Lord of the Rings, especially Aragorn, are types of the heroes that came before them discussed in The Silmarillion.  Another of his good quotations, “It is through the transformation of certain myths into experience that the free peoples recognize each other, and their common destiny and enemy” (13), helps us understand the mythical foundation of The Lord of the Rings.

From what we know of Tolkien’s reading habits, Verlyn Flieger is almost undoubtedly correct, at least in her analysis, if not the implications that Tolkien consciously created two discrete heroes both necessary to the completion of his tale.  Perhaps he was not consciously utilizing a medieval and fairy-tale hero, but Flieger’s analysis fits well.  She is, after all, probably the leading voice in Tolkien criticism, especially concerning the History of Middle-Earth series.  One somewhat lengthy quotation from her is worth the entire essay, and worth more than most of the essays in the collection:

Aragorn’s is a true quest to win a kingdom and a princess.  Frodo’s is rather an anti-quest.  He goes not to win something but to throw something away.…  Aragorn’s is a journey from darkness into light, while Frodo’s is a journey from light into darkness — and out again.…  To Frodo come defeat and disillusionment — the stark, bitter ending typical of the Iliad, Beowulf, and Morte d’Arthur (42).

She develops those ideas very well.  Like Patrick Grant, she highlights the importance of Gollum, with his role in the story more psychological than physical even though he leads Frodo and Sam through Mordor.  He is what Frodo could become, and Frodo must fight the psychological battle against the call of the Ring as well as fending off his own devolution into another Gollum.

Grant seems to discuss his archetypal approach to the trilogy more than the “Word” component, but at other times “Word … is a primary archetype” (88) throughout Tolkien’s work, so it gets a bit confusing.  Other than that, Grant’s Jungian archetypal analysis is quite interesting — were one to focus more on the archetypes of Tolkien, one would definitely need to read more Jung, but Grant’s introduction here is helpful — elaborating more than Flieger on Gollum’s role in the book.  Frodo and Gollum are opposites, but Sam is the stalwart center.  Another opposite crucial to Grant’s Jungian approach is Galadriel and Shelob, a connection I had never thought of before.  In addition to the generalized opposites, Grant emphasizes that characters aren’t really either good or evil but have components of both, and, as Galadriel’s scene by the mirror and Frodo’s entire journey illustrate, must choose to be either good or evil.  His comments and viewpoint are different from how I’ve read the books before and are quite useful even to Tolkien fans who are not interested in psychological or archetypal criticism.

Christopher Rush

Preface

Of the essays in the collection, I found eight to be useful to varying degrees in addition to Mr. Commager’s introduction.  I will briefly highlight the content of each of these eight essays as well as each author’s perspective together (as they are too short to treat well separately), and conclude with a critical evaluation of the essays.  Many of the essays are either abridgements from their original lengths or reductions of chapters from entire books by the authors.  Since I read only what was made available in the collections, I must refer to the essays by the titles given to them by the editor.

Content Summary and Author’s Perspective

Steele Commager’s brief introduction to the collection of essays, unlike Harold Bloom’s introductions to the Modern Critical Interpretations series, is not a précis of what the following essays concern (ironically, what I am doing now), but mostly a brief treatment of Aeneas as an epic hero, and how he through Virgil distinguished himself from Homer’s heroes.

C.M. Bowra’s essay “Some Characteristics of Literary Epic” does exactly what its title implies: he briefly discusses the nature of oral epic, its purposes and forms, and its heroes and representation of a heroic world.  He distinguishes briefly between Homer’s heroic world and Virgil’s heroic world, one key difference being Homer’s heroes live and die for their own glory, while Virgil’s heroes have a higher calling for a social ideal (61).  Bowra’s guiding perspective on the epic is the different purposes for the heroes: whether it be self-centered or others-centered.

C.S. Lewis’s essay “Virgil and the Subject of Secondary Epic” is extracted from his Preface to Paradise Lost.  While the extract does not make much sense by itself — atypical of the Twentieth Century Views series, since most chapters re-forged into short essays make sense as presented — Lewis’s chapter/essay offered some helpful ideas on Virgil’s presentation of the epic, as distinguished from earlier author-less epics.  His fuller discussion on the difference between “primary” and “secondary” epics, while quite trenchant, was not included in this selection, which is odd since it was Lewis’s main purpose in addressing Virgil in a work more devoted to Milton.  Fortunately, that difference is not relevant to our purposes here.

“Odysseus and Aeneas” by Theodore Haecker was a short (roughly the first eight essays in the collection were generally fewer than twelve pages long; the final four were much longer) contrast of the two heroes, though his insights treat Aeneas more than Odysseus.  He, like most of the authors of these early shorter essays, did not have any overt “perspective” in the sense of approaching the poem from psychology, archetypes, feminism, or the like, but instead was more formalist, addressing primarily what was in the poem, not external to it.  At least, that is the impression I got from the essay originally.

Wendell Clausen’s “An Interpretation of the Aeneid” acknowledges the prerequisite of knowing Homer before understanding Virgil: “any response to the Aeneid will depend in good part on an intimate knowledge of the Iliad and the Odyssey” (75).  Most critics of Virgil (that I’ve read recently) reference the connection of the two authors in what ways such knowledge suits their particular foci, but Clausen’s general admission seemed unique, not saying Virgil is a copy or modifier of Homer, but just the idea that the reader’s success with Virgil is in some way determined by the reader’s prior success with Homer.  After that, Clausen focuses mostly on the character of Aeneas, highlighting his burdens and the tragic circumstances he surmounts in his poem.  Clausen’s emphasis on the emotional states of Aeneas borders on psychological interpretation but does not give the reader any overt references to it.

Brooks Otis’s “The Odyssean Aeneid and the Iliadic Aeneid” begins the final third of essays much longer than the previous grouping.  Otis begins with a structural approach to the Aeneid, offering a kind of map with a two-fold purpose: first it lists the general content of each book of the poem in a brief three- or four-word phrase, labeling books one through six as “Odyssean” and books seven through twelve as “Iliadic”; second it draws (literally) connections from one book to another, indicating its mostly chiastic pattern — similar to Cedric H. Whitman’s structural diagram of the Iliad referenced by Peter Leithart in Heroes of the City of Man.  The rest of his essay elaborates on the pattern, how the first half (Aeneas’ Odyssey) is preparation for the “Iliadic Fulfillment” of his quest in the second half of the poem.

The title of Adam Parry’s essay “The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid” is at times akin to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers, in that the reader is not always sure to which voices/towers the author is specifically referring.  For Parry, sometimes the two voices are those of Aeneas and his rival Turnus; at times it is what Otis called the two halves of the poem, the Odyssean and Iliadic halves; at other points in the essay Parry seems to be referring to two different moods of the poem itself: the tragedy of Aeneas’ personal losses contrasted with the empowering hope for the future surety of the Roman Empire.  Regardless of the oft-times ambiguous title, the content of the essay provides a distinctive approach to Aeneas’ character in light of Virgil’s authorship and audience: sometimes Aeneas is a Roman version of Homer’s Greek Achilles and Odysseus, sometimes he is a model of his supposed successor Octavius-Augustus; Parry also suggests the possibility that Virgil temporarily casted Aeneas as Octavius’ enemy Mark Antony, when Aeneas entangles himself with Dido, Queen of Carthage (who becomes a type of Cleopatra, in that Egypt and Carthage are both enemies of Rome).  Parry spends much time analyzing Aeneas as a servant of History/Fate/Destiny; because he serves an “impersonal power,” he cannot be a hero (123) — an interesting conclusion.  For Parry, though, Aeneas is saved “as a man” because he is so unrelentingly self-sacrificial and suffers through so much for others.

Bernard M.W. Knox (who, along with Mortimer Adler, would undoubtedly be on the Mt. Rushmore of Influential 20^th-century Classicists — using “classicist” as an encomium) contributed “The Serpent and the Flame: The Imagery of the Second Book of the Aeneid” to this collection.  While interesting and excellent, as Knox usually is, it was limited in focus, as its title makes clear.  Unlike other classicists, such as Gilbert Murray, Knox does not assume the reading audience is familiar with Greek and limits his use of it while thoroughly analyzing an intentionally narrow component of Virgil’s epic.

Finally, Viktor Pösch’s “Basic Themes” concludes the collection.  One of the major themes for Pösch is the sea, which for him is “an overture” to the other motifs in the poem (165).  Other themes (at times Pösch seems to use “theme,” “symbol,” and “metaphor” interchangeably, as I am, unfortunately, wont to do in my classroom) include love as the “motivating force in all that Aeneas does” (166), the Aeneid as a “poem of humanity” (173), and Aeneas’ journey to the underworld as a symbol of “a trial of the hero” (176), this last quite aligned with Joseph Campbell’s journey of the hero.

Critical Response and Evaluation

Though my elongated summary connotes some of my responses to the essays, some final evaluations are appropriate here.  On the whole, I have found the older Twentieth Century Views series of essays far superior to Harold Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations series.  That is not an attack on Professor Bloom, nor an overt diatribe against recent scholarship contrasted to earlier scholarship (I am a much younger, poorer, and unpublished scholar than those published in either series); it is merely a generalized reaction.  I prefer (and trust) the Twentieth Century Views series so much that I will purchase one whenever I can find one in a used book store, even if I have never read the author in question (such as Proust, though he is on my “someday soon” list).  The series also does not, in my acknowledged limited experience with it, include derisive or vituperative essays on the author or subject, unlike what Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations essays occasionally do.  Bloom’s series does offer great essays, certainly, especially the occasional erudite contributions by latter-twentieth-century scholars, so they are not entirely shoddy — I simply prefer the Twentieth Century Views series.

Commager’s introduction, as I mentioned before, aids in the superiority of the series, in that his introduction is a thoughtful contribution to the subject, unlike Bloom’s “introductions” which are synopses of the essays in the collection (I often find Harold Bloom a helpful albeit limited scholar, though in his own books).  Commager sets the tone of analytical appreciation for Virgil and his poems, giving insights I found helpful, such as his remark “… in the Aeneid, duty and inclination are constantly opposed” (11).

C.M. Bowra’s essay provided good generalized descriptions of epic poetry.  His precise comments help introduce the nature of epic poetry before focusing on epic heroes, more so than the typical high school definition of an epic poem as “a long, narrative poem usually focusing on one hero.”  Bowra’s essay emphasizes the differences in values of Homer’s epic and Virgil’s epic, an invaluable insight in the distinction of the heroes.

I knew about C.S. Lewis’s essay (unlike the other “essays” transplanted from their original sources) because I have read Preface to Paradise Lost.  As mentioned above, the extraction of this one chapter does not make too much sense, though I did find some useful comments from Lewis (not a third face with Adler and Knox, since Lewis was more of a medievalist than a classicist).  With the profundity of useful ideas from the other essays in this collection (and other sources), one needs not revisit Lewis’ book, even for his distinction between “primary” and “secondary” epics — unless one wants to read a good work about an even more important work, and thus gain a better understanding of Western Civilization.

A title like “Odysseus and Aeneas” offered great promise, in that comparatively so few of the critical works I’ve read had anything to say about the participants in the content of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid.  So many other critics want to talk about the poems’ origins or historicity or animal and nature symbology — which is wonderful, but not all there is.  Unfortunately, Haecker’s essay (at least the version presented in this collection) did not provide as much analysis as I had hoped.  I gleaned three tidbits from him — helpful tidbits, but brief tidbits: “How full of paradox, how dialectical is the inner life of Aeneas!  Does he in this resemble any of Homer’s heroes?” (70)  “Like all reticent men, he (Aeneas) can speak only the truth that is in him, and that only occasionally and darkly.  And again, like all reticent men, be they so from necessity or of their own free will, he makes no such brave figure as Achilles or Odysseus” (Ibid.).  And “the true leader is not he who makes himself leader, but he who is called and dedicated to that end by Fate” (74).  I appreciate Haecker’s perspective that Aeneas might be inferior in some ways to Odysseus and Achilles (unlike most other critics who usually see Aeneas as a better-rounded consummation of “the hero” Homer was trying to create), especially his stress on Aeneas as a “reticent hero” out of necessity — I just wished Haecker had more useful things to say (a thoroughly selfish comment, though it is a well-meant selfishness, unlike Achilles’).

Wendell Clausen’s “An Interpretation of the Aeneid” is similar to other essays in the collection in that he highlights the tragedy and suffering Aeneas endures — genuine loss, unlike Odysseus’ temporary abstinence from happiness and contentment or Achilles’ egotistic honor besmirchment (his loss of Patroclus is genuine, though Gilbert Murray cautions us against believing Achilles is completely selfless even in missing/feeling loss at the death of Patroclus).  Of the many helpful ideas from Clausen, two stand out: “Aeneas enters the poem wishing he were dead, the only epic hero to do so” (77); “Aeneas is more burdened by memory than any other ancient hero” (Ibid.).

Certainly Brooks Otis’s structural diagram of the Aeneid’s thematic and chiastic pattern is invaluable.  His explication of that pattern is similarly useful.  Even his summary of the poem is remarkable: “the Aeneid is … the story of death and rebirth by which unworthy love and destructive furor are overcome by the moral activity of a divinized and resurrected hero” (92) — a bit of archetypal criticism added to his structural criticism.  Like other critics, Otis notes Aeneas’ psychological component of his heroic character, though Otis always relates his ideas to the structure of the poem, in that it (Aeneas’ psychology) changes in connection with the structural plot changes: plot and character are intertwined.

I commented above on the elasticity, if not ambiguity, of Adam Parry’s title, “The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid,” though the title was not as important to me as his other insights.  I especially enjoyed his connections to Virgil and Augustus — certainly that is a necessary component to accurately understanding and interpreting this epic poem.  His comparisons of Aeneas to Octavian/Augustus and Mark Antony are enlightening and unique, while completely plausible.  Similarly, his conclusion that Aeneas can’t truly be a “hero” because he is guided/forced/in the service of an impersonal power, but that he is a more complete “man” than the Homeric heroes, offers an interesting perspective.  Yet, Parry’s conclusions are odd, in that he maintains that Aeneas is a fuller man than either Achilles or Odysseus even though he does not have the free will that they have — Aeneas is the plaything of History, which he cannot escape: how does this make him more of a man?  For Parry, the answer is that Aeneas “is man himself; not man as the brilliant free agent of Homer’s world, but man of a later stage in civilization, man in a metropolitan and imperial world, man in a world where the state is supreme.  He cannot resist the forces of history, or even deny them; but he can be capable of human suffering, and this is where the personal voice asserts itself” (121-122).  Possibly: I need to keep pondering these conclusions until I can more readily agree with him.

Obviously I have great respect and admiration for Bernard Knox if I am willing to place him on the Mt. Rushmore of Classicists (along with Mortimer Adler after a fashion, certainly A.E. Housman, and possibly Gilbert Murray — Maynard Mack might be up there, especially if we changed the title to Influential Popularizers of Classics in the 20th century).  Even so, his narrow essay, while stunning in its thoroughness and wealth of knowledge, was mostly extraneous to my personal focus on the heroes of the poems.  He did make some indirectly useful comments on Menelaus and Agamemnon (calling them twins, which no other commentator highlighted — except Gilbert Murray, though also indirectly) as together a force of “merciless destruction” (127), and another interesting comparison of Pyrrhus (Achilles’ son?) to the serpents killing Laocoön as he kills Priam (136).

Victor Pösch’s “Basic Themes” was, like Knox’s essay, interesting, but mostly unsuited for my needs when researching for my Master’s thesis.  His themes quoted above were the themes I found most useful of the many he addressed.  In order to incorporate his dominant sea theme, though, I’d would have had to insert much of his argument, which on the whole is irrelevant to my thesis, so I couldn’t really do that.  However, if one simply wanted to improve one’s ability to understand (and potentially teach) such classical literature, then one of his almost superfluous comments is extraordinarily helpful: “The essence of a symbolic relationship is that the correspondence between the symbol and the thing symbolized is not precise, but flexible, opening up an infinite perspective” (166).  Certainly Pösch’s concise definition is extraordinarily helpful beyond the confines of this article.

As only one example of the many in the history of classical scholarship and inquiry into Virgil’s Aeneid, Commager’s Twentieth Century Views collection is a challenging introduction to one of the most important works in Western Civilization.  The Twentieth Century Views series as a whole is undoubtedly a worthwhile series to investigate, own, and enjoy forever, especially in light of the general and decided decline of scholarship (especially classical scholarship) today — despite the fact my postmodern Master’s professors encouraged me to ignore the older works in favor of the more recent writings on the subject.