The Downfall of the Lore of the Rings - Page 6
© Michael Martinez
Anglo-Saxon literature doesn't resemble Greek literature in theme. "Beowulf" is an individualistic story, not a nationalistic one. It more resembles "The Odyssey" than "The Iliad", but even "The Odyssey" spans a broad landscape which is touched by Greek culture and heritage. "Beowulf" is alien and foreign to Angle-land, and it looks back to an older time. What "Beowulf" shares with the Homeric epics is the form of a tribal memory, a national heritage common to more than one group (even if it is primarily an Anglian heritage, there were several Anglian kingdoms). And Beowulf himself was a Geat, not a Dane, but he came from the older world where all tribes shared the same heritage.
Perhaps the Christian influences on "Beowulf" reflect something inherited from the Greeks. We don't really know what the original poem was like, or even if there was a single original "Beowulf" poem. Like the medieval Robin Hood legends, the "Beowulf" epic might have arisen as separate stories which someone eventually bound together as a whole.
Robin Hood and Beowulf both exhibit those heroic qualities Tolkien loved to find in his heroes, even the tragic ones. These were honorable men, facing unbeatable odds and coming away with some sort of victory. The Scandinavian myths don't pit man against god or man against monster, but rather god against god and monster. The sagas do portray heroic men in action but they are flawed heroes. Turin is the most Norse-like character in Tolkien, but as I mentioned before, he also resembles Achilles in some respects: melancholy, quick to anger, brash in battle.
And so on and so forth. A study of Tolkien's hero archetypes might be interesting to some folks but I lose interest after only a few paragraphs. I can't imagine a book which explores the whole concept (let alone one which has much of a chance of covering all the relevant sources). Tolkien gets pigeonholed by every critic and scholar and all the rebuttals seem to spend half their resources trying to bail him out of prison. Tolkien seems to have looked down his nose at such attempts to define him, and I think he exercised good judgement in doing so.
The search for human relevance in literature is obviously important to a lot of people, but as I've said before I think they miss out on just enjoying the fun of the tale. Sam gets angry when, as Hobbits of the Shire awaken to historical scholarship, they credit three of the four who were responsible for saving them and leave Frodo out in the cold. It was Frodo, in Sam's opinion, who achieved the most. But the Shire-folk were too concerned with the minutiae close to their own parochial agendae to see the bigger picture. We could borrow a page from Shippey and suggest that Tolkien was gently poking fun at his colleagues over their long-winded debates on the deeper meaning of literature.
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