J. R. R. Tolkien's influences

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is a sequel to The Hobbit and so shares influences with it. At the same time, it is a novel which is much greater in scale and scope and so encompasses many other influences as well.

Religious influences

Tolkien once described The Lord of the Rings to his friend, the English Jesuit Father Robert Murray, as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." Many theological themes underlie the narrative, including the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace, as seen with Frodo's pity toward Gollum. In addition the epic includes the themes of death and immortality, mercy and pity, resurrection, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing. Tolkien mentions the Lord's Prayer, especially the line "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil" in connection with Frodo's struggles against the power of the One Ring. Tolkien has also said “Of course God is in The Lord of the Rings. The period was pre-Christian, but it was a monotheistic world” and when questioned who was the One God of Middle-earth, Tolkien replied “The one, of course! The book is about the world that God created – the actual world of this planet.”

Nordic influences

Tolkien was heavily influenced by Nordic/Norse mythology. During his education at King Edward's School in Birmingham, the then young Tolkien read and translated from the Old Norse on his own time. One of his first Nordic purchases was the Völsunga saga. It is known that while a student, Tolkien read the only available English translation of the Völsunga saga, that by William Morris of the Victorian Arts and Crafts Movement and Icelandic scholar Eiríkur Magnússon. The Völsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied were coeval texts made with the use of the same ancient sources. Both of them provided some of the basis for Richard Wagner's opera series, Der Ring des Nibelungen, featuring in particular a magical golden ring and a broken sword reforged. In the Völsungasaga, these items are respectively Andvarinaut and Gram, and they correspond broadly to the One Ring and the sword Narsil (reforged as Andúril). The Volsunga Saga also gives various names found in Tolkien. Tolkien wrote a book entitled The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, in which he discusses the saga in relation to the myth of Sigurd and Gudrún.

Tolkien's Elves and Dwarves are by and large based on Norse and related Germanic mythologies Two sources that contain accounts of elves and dwarves that were of interest to Tolkien were the Prose Edda and the Elder or Poetic Edda. The descriptions of elves and dwarves in these works are ambiguous and contradictory, however. Within the contents of the Völuspá, specifically in stanza 9, the creation of Dwarves predates Man, which is precisely the formula Tolkien uses for Middle-earth. The names of Gandalf and the dwarves in The Hobbit were taken from the "Dvergatal" in the Elder Edda and the "Gylfaginning" in the Prose Edda.

The figure of Gandalf is particularly influenced by the Norse deity Odin in his incarnation as "The Wanderer", an old man with one eye, a long white beard, a wide brimmed hat, and a staff. Tolkien, in a letter of 1946, nearly a decade after the character was invented, wrote that he thought of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer". Much like Odin, Gandalf promotes justice, knowledge, truth, and insight.

The Balrog and the collapse of the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in Moria, is a direct parallel of the fire giant Surt and the destruction of Asgard's bridge in Norse myth.

Old and Middle English influences

Tolkien was a Professor of Old English/Anglo-Saxon and Middle English language and literature, and this literature, particularly Beowulf, influenced his own writings. As Tolley tells us in his Old English Influences on The Lord of the Rings, the ideas of heroism and masculinity that inform the character of Beowulf, can also be seen in Aragorn. Both Aragorn and Beowulf have questionable family lines, and both take on kingship only for the good of the people. Other themes, such as the conversation in The Hobbit between Bilbo Baggins and Smaug the dragon, as well as the antagonism created by the mere mention of gold and even the concept of riddles, are also reflected in Beowulf. Tolkien also based the people of Rohan, the Rohirrim, on the historical Anglo-Saxons, giving them Anglo-Saxon names, customs, and poetry. The Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Wanderer," is paraphrased by Aragorn as an example of Rohirric verse.

Another major influence on Tolkien is riddle poetry from Anglo-Saxon England. Some of the oldest surviving Old English manuscripts contain riddle poems, such as the Leiden Riddle in the Leiden MS. The contest between Bilbo and Gollum is a good example of this.

The Middle English vision poem Pearl also influenced Tolkien's writings. The anonymous poem commemorates the loss of the poet's daughter, who is described as a pearl. In the description of the pearl, we can see elements not only of Tolkien's One Ring, but also of Gollum's obsession with it, even to the phrase "My Precious":

To that spot that I in speche expoun
I entred in that erber grene
In Augoste in a hygh seysoun
Quen corne is corven wyth crokes kene.
On huyle ther perle hit trendeled doun
Schadowed this wortes ful schyre and schene:
Gilofre, gyngure, and gromylyoun,
And pyonys powdered ay bytwene.
Yif hit was semly on to sene
A fayr reflayr yet fro hit flot.
Ther wonys that worthyly, I wot and wene,
My precious perle wythouten spot

Tolkien made translations of both Pearl and Beowulf, as well as other Old and Middle English texts.

Other mythological and linguistic influences

Finnish mythology and more specifically the Finnish national epic Kalevala were also acknowledged by Tolkien as an influence on Middle-earth. In a manner similar to The Lord of the Rings, the Kalevala centres around a magical item of great power, the Sampo, which bestows great fortune on its owner, but never makes clear its exact nature. Like the One Ring, the Sampo is fought over by forces of good and evil, and is ultimately lost to the world as it is destroyed towards the end of the story. In another parallel, the work's wizard character, Väinämöinen, is similar to Gandalf in his immortal origins and wise nature, and both works end with the wizard character departing on a ship to lands beyond the mortal world. Tolkien also based elements of his Elvish language Quenya on Finnish.

The extent of Celtic influence is debatable. Tolkien wrote that he gave the Elvish language Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh ... because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers". A number of the names of characters and places in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have been found to have Welsh origin. In addition, the depiction of elves has been described as deriving from Celtic mythology.

Though Tolkien denied the influence of Arthurian legends, several parallels have been drawn. Gandalf has been compared with Merlin, Frodo and Aragorn with Arthur, Galadriel with the Lady of the Lake.

Modern literary influences

Tolkien was also influenced by more modern literature. The Ent attack on Isengard was inspired by "Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane" in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers has likewise been shown to have reflections in Tolkien.

One of the greatest influences on Tolkien was the Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris. Tolkien wished to imitate Morris's prose and poetry romances, along with the general style and approach; he took elements such as the Dead Marshes in The Lord of the Rings and Mirkwood in The Hobbit from Morris. He was also influenced by the modern fantasy author George MacDonald, who wrote The Princess and the Goblin. Books by the Inkling author Owen Barfield are also known to have contributed to his world-view, particularly The Silver Trumpet (1925), History in English Words (1926) and Poetic Diction (1928). Edward Wyke-Smith's Marvellous Land of Snergs, with its "table-high" title characters, strongly influenced the incidents, themes, and depiction of Bilbo's race in The Hobbit.

The character George Babbitt from Babbitt (novel) was another inspiration for hobbits.

In his biography of Tolkien, Carpenter notes that in the limited amount of time Tolkien could apply to the reading of fiction, he "preferred the lighter contemporary novels". The stories of John Buchan are listed as an example . Critics such as Hooker have detailed the resonances between the two authors.

Another contemporary adventure novel, H. Rider Haggard's She, was acknowledged by Tolkien in an interview: "I suppose as a boy She interested me as much as anything—like the Greek shard of Amyntas [Amenartas], which was the kind of machine by which everything got moving." A supposed facsimile of this potsherd appeared in Haggard's first edition, and the ancient inscription it bore, once translated, led the English characters to She's ancient kingdom. Critics have compared this device to the Testament of Isildur in The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's efforts to produce as an illustration a realistic page from the Book of Mazarbul. Critics starting with Edwin Muir have found resemblances between Haggard's romances and Tolkien's.

Tolkien scholar Mark T. Hooker has catalogued a series of parallels between The Hobbit and Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. These include, among other things, a hidden runic message and a celestial alignment that direct the adventurers to the goals of their quests.

Tolkien wrote of being impressed as a boy by Samuel Rutherford Crockett's historical novel The Black Douglas and of basing the Necromancer – Sauron – on its villain, Gilles de Retz. Incidents in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are similar in narrative and style to the novel, and its overall style and imagery have been suggested as having had an influence on Tolkien.

Tolkien wrote that stories about "Red Indians" were his favourites as a boy. Shippey mentions Tolkien's interest in the primeval forests and people of North America, and speculates that the romantic descriptions of characters in James Fenimore Cooper might have influenced his descriptions of Aragorn and Éomer.

Though he read many of Edgar Rice Burroughs' books, he denied that the Barsoom novels influenced his giant spiders: "I did read many of Edgar Rice Burroughs' earlier works, but I developed a dislike for his Tarzan even greater than my distaste for spiders. Spiders I had met long before Burroughs began to write, and I do not think he is in any way responsible for Shelob. At any rate I retain no memory of the Siths or the Apts."

Wagnerian influences

Some critics have suggested that The Lord of the Rings was directly and heavily derived from Richard Wagner's opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen which also centres its plot on a powerful ring. Others have argued that any similarity is due to Tolkien being influenced by the legendary Volsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied, which were the basis for the operas.

Tolkien sought to dismiss critics' direct comparisons to Wagner, telling his publisher, "Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases." According to Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien, the author claimed to hold Wagner's interpretation of the relevant Germanic myths in contempt, even as a young man before reaching university.

Some researchers take an intermediate position: that both the authors used the same sources, but that Tolkien was influenced by Wagner's development of the mythology, especially "concept of the Ring as giving the owner mastery of the world that was Wagner's own contribution to the myth of the Ring". Wagner probably developed this element by combining the ring with a magical wand mentioned in the Nibelungenlied that could give to its wearer the control "over the race of men". In addition, the corrupting power of Tolkien's One Ring has a central role in Wagner's operas but was not present in the mythical sources.

Some argue that Tolkien's denial of a Wagnerian influence was an over-reaction to the statements of Åke Ohlmarks, Tolkien's Swedish translator, who in the introduction to his much-criticized translation of The Lord of the Rings "mixed material from various legends, some which mention no ring and one which concerns a totally different ring". Furthermore, critics believe that Tolkien was reacting against the links between Wagner's work and Nazism.

Personal experience

Some locations and characters were inspired by Tolkien's childhood in Birmingham, where he first lived near Sarehole Mill, and later near Edgbaston Reservoir. There are also hints of the Black Country, which is within easy reach of north west Edgbaston. This shows in such names as "Underhill", and the description of Saruman's industrialisation of Isengard and The Shire is explicitly stated by Tolkien to have been based on the industrialisation of England. It has also been suggested that The Shire and its surroundings were influenced by the Iron Age and Roman mineral workings and remains which Tolkien saw in 1929 when working with archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler at Lydney Park in the Forest of Dean; or alternatively were based on the countryside around Stonyhurst College in Lancashire where he frequently stayed during the 1940s.

Contemporary warfare

The Lord of the Rings was crucially influenced by Tolkien's experiences during World War I and his son's during World War II.

After the publication of The Lord of the Rings these influences led to speculation that the One Ring was an allegory for the nuclear bomb. Tolkien, however, repeatedly insisted that his works were not an allegory of any kind. He states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one. Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times. Tolkien had already completed most of the book, including the ending in its entirety, before the first nuclear bombs were made known to the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Bedeviled, a book by Lewis/Tolkien scholar Colin Duriez, discusses in more depth how the World Wars and concepts of evil and suffering influenced the writings of Tolkien and his literary group, the Inklings.

The Silmarillion

The Silmarillion is a complex work exhibiting the influence of many sources.

Finnish mythology

A major influence was the Finnish epic Kalevala, especially the tale of Kullervo. Tolkien admitted that he had been "greatly affected" by Finnish mythologies, and even credited Kullervo's story with being the "germ of [his] attempt to write legends". Tolkien attempted to rework the story of Kullervo into a story of his own, and though he never finished, similarities to the story can still be seen in the tale of Túrin Turambar. Both are tragic heroes who accidentally commit incest with their sister who on finding out kills herself by leaping into water. Both heroes later kill themselves after asking their sword if it will slay them, which it confirms.

Norse mythology

Similarly, the Valar also contain elements of Norse mythology. Several of the Valar have characteristics resembling various Æsir, the gods of Asgard. Thor, for example, physically the strongest of the gods, can be seen both in Oromë, who fights the monsters of Melkor, and in Tulkas, the physically strongest of the Valar. Manwё, the head of the Valar, exhibits some similarities to Odin, the "Allfather".

The division between the Calaquendi (Elves of Light) and Moriquendi (Elves of Darkness) also echoes Norse mythology, which has its own Light elves and Dark elves. The Light elves of Norse mythology are associated with the gods, much as the Calaquendi are associated with the Valar. also the werewolves seem to be inspired by werewolves from Völsunga saga as well as Fenris the Warg

Greek mythology

Influence from Greek mythology is also apparent. The island of Númenor, for example, recalls Atlantis. Tolkien's Elvish name "Atalantë" for Númenor resembles Plato's Atlantis furthering the illusion that his mythology simply extends the history and mythology of the real world. In his Letters, however, Tolkien described this merely as a "curious chance."

Greek mythology also colours the Valar, who borrow many attributes from the Olympian gods. The Valar, like the Olympians, live in the world, but on a high mountain, separated from mortals; Ulmo, Lord of the Waters, owes much to Poseidon, and Manwë, the Lord of the Air and King of the Valar, to Zeus. But the correspondences are only approximate; Tolkien borrows ideas from Greek mythology, but does not model the Valar and Maiar on Greek deities.

Tolkien also compared Beren and Lúthien with Orpheus and Eurydice with the gender roles reversed.

Fëanor has been compared with Prometheus by researchers such as Verlyn Flieger. They share a symbolical and literal association with fire, are both rebels against gods's decrees and, basically, inventors of artefacts that were sources of light, or vessels to divine flame.

Christianity

The Bible and traditional Christian narrative also influenced The Silmarillion. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic. The conflict between Melkor and Eru Ilúvatar parallels that between Satan and God. Further, The Silmarillion tells of the creation and fall of the Elves, as Genesis tells of the creation and fall of Man. As with all of Tolkien's works, The Silmarillion allows room for later Christian history, and one version of Tolkien's drafts even has Finrod, a character in The Silmarillion, speculating on the necessity of Eru's (God's) eventual Incarnation to save Mankind. A specifically Christian influence is the notion of the Fall of man, which influenced the Ainulindalë, the Kinslaying at Alqualondë, and the fall of Númenor.

Celtic mythology

Though Tolkien wrote of "a certain distaste" for Celtic legends, "largely for their fundamental unreason", The Silmarillion may betray some Celtic influence. The exile of the Noldorin Elves, for example, has parallels with the story of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Tuatha Dé Danann semi-divine beings, invaded Ireland from across the sea, burning their ships when they arrived and fighting a fierce battle with the current inhabitants. The Noldor arrived in Middle-earth from Valinor and burned their ships, then turned to fight Melkor. Another parallel can be seen between the loss of a hand by Maedhros, son of Fëanor, and the similar mutilation suffered by Nuada Airgetlám ("Silver Hand/Arm") during the battle with the Firbolg. Nuada received a hand made of silver to replace the lost one, and his later appellation has the same meaning as the Elvish name Celebrimbor: "silver fist" or "Hand of silver" in Sindarin (Telperinquar in Quenya).

Another similarity between the Silmarillion and the Lebor Gabála Érenn can be seen by comparing Nuada and Lugh (who possessed a famed magic spear, the Spear Luin) and the outcome of their respective confrontations against Balor of the Evil Eye with the events surrounding Celebrimbor and Gil-galad (whose weapon is the spear Aeglos) and their conflicts with Sauron of the Lidless Red Eye in the Second Age.

Other authors, such as Donald O'Brien, Patrick Wynne and Carl Hostetter, Tom Shippey, David Day have pointed out the similarities between Beren and Lúthien, one of the main storylines of the Silmarillion, and Culhwch and Olwen, one the tales collected in the Welsh Mabinogion.

In both, the male heroes make rash promises after having been stricken by the beauty of non-mortal maidens; both enlist the aid of great kings, Arthur and Finrod; both show rings that prove their identities; both are set impossible tasks that include, directly or indirectly, the hunting and killing of ferocious beasts (the wild boars, Twrch Trwyth and Ysgithrywyn, and the wolf Carcharoth) with the help of a supernatural hound (Cafall and Huan). Both maidens possess such beauty that flowers grow beneath their feet when they come to meet the heroes for the first time, as if they were living embodiments of spring.

The Mabinogion itself was part of the Red Book of Hergest, which the Red Book of Westmarch probably imitates.

Arthurian legends

The Arthurian legends are part of the cultural heritage appearing in Celtic and Welsh mythology. Though Tolkien denied this influence, several parallels between the legends and Tolkien's stories have been found by numerous specialists. Verlyn Flieger, in particular, has investigated the correlations at length and has studied their numerous parallels with Tolkien's creative methods. Flieger points out visible correspondences such as Avalon and Avallónë and Broceliande and Broceliand, the original name of Beleriand. Tolkien himself said that Frodo and Bilbo's departure to Tol Eressëa (also called "Avallon" in the Legendarium) was an "Arthurian ending". Such correlations are discussed in the posthumously published The Fall of Arthur, which includes an entire section, "The Connection to the Quenta", on Tolkien's treatment of Arthurian material and its influence on The Silmarillion.

Another parallel is the tale of Sir Balin in the Arthurian Legend with that of Túrin Turambar. Though Balin knows he wields an accursed sword, he nevertheless continues his quest to regain King Arthur's favour; yet he unintentionally causes misery wherever he goes. Fate eventually catches up with him when he unwittingly kills his own brother, who in turn mortally wounds him. Similarly, Turin accidentally kills his friend Beleg with his sword.