The Loremasters of Fëanor: Historical Bias in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Transformative Works Dawn M. Walls-Thumma New York Tolkien Conference, 13 June 2015, Baruch College Everyone in this room right now is probably fairly confident that she or he knows Tolkien's works. We're the people that everyone wants on their trivia team when Tolkien is the subject. We all know how the story goes, down to minute detail. Or do we? I am hoping to show that we don't actually know the story as well as we think we do, not because of gaps in our own knowledge but because of how the story itself is presented: as mythological and historical texts written by in-universe narrators and loremasters. We can't know the full story; we can only know a very limited part of it because of the biases of those narrators and loremasters. I will review the evidence for historical bias in Tolkien's books and discuss the impact of that bias on how the texts can be read. Next, I will discuss a group of Tolkien fans—writers of transformative works, or fan fiction— who not only acknowledge but regularly use historical bias in forming their understandings of the text. The approaches they take to the books could be fruitful ground for other Tolkien fans and scholars to further develop our understanding of these works. The question "Who wrote The Silmarillion?"—or "Who wrote The Lord of the Rings?" or "Who wrote The Hobbit?" for that matter—ridiculous though it may seem on the surface, is less simple to answer than one may expect. Tolkien's books give the impression of a narrator outside the action, omniscient and therefore able to dispense reliable judgments untainted by personal emotions and involvement. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. Throughout the development of his legendarium, Tolkien envisioned and assigned his various works to in-universe narrators and loremasters. Nor was this a mere contrivance: empty names appended to stories to give an impression of depth and historicity. Rather, Tolkien provided backgrounds for these narrators that, in some cases, exceed what we know about some of the more action-oriented characters who appear in the stories. The use of in-universe narrators has always been a hallmark of Tolkien's work. In his earliest work, begun in 1916 and published as The Book of Lost Tales, the story is explicitly presented as an oral tale told to the mariner Eriol. The characters who tell the stories are just that: They are characters who play a role in the story and have a clear purpose for telling their tales to Eriol. As Tolkien progressed in his work on his legendarium, the narrators would recede from the prominence he initially gave them in The Book of Lost Tales, but they would never disappear entirely. The 1930s brought two important developments relevant to the matter of the narrators. In 1937, The Hobbit was published, introducing a new thread into Tolkien's legendarium, which had been confined to this point to the Silmarillion material. Tolkien said of The Hobbit that "I did not know as I began it that it belonged. But it proved to be the discovery of the completion of the whole, its mode of descent to earth, and merging into 'history'" (Letters 145). The Hobbit was presented in the same pseudo-historical mode as Tolkien's stories to this point. The runic inscription on the cover of the first edition of The Hobbit reads: "The Hobbit or There and Back Again, being the record of a year's journey made by Bilbo Baggins; compiled from his memoirs by J. R. R. Tolkien and published by George Allen & Unwin" (Tolkien, Letters 17). For someone who bothers to transcribe the runes, the status and mode of transmission of that story as a historical work is literally front and center. Around the same time, a new in-universe narrator entered the tale: Pengolodh the Wise of Gondolin, who will be the narrator most relevant to my study. Pengolodh emerged in the 1930s, first appearing in the Earliest Annals of Valinor, and would remain through to Tolkien's late work on The Silmarillion (Tolkien, Shaping 325). Pengolodh debuts as follows: "These and the Annals of Beleriand were written by Pengolod the Wise of Gondolin, before its fall, and after at Sirion's Haven, and at Tavrobel in Tol Eressëa after his return unto the West, and there seen and translated by Eriol of Leithien, that is Ælfwine of the Angelcynn" (Shaping 311). Pengolodh would continue to appear, often in the preambles to texts or in marginal or parenthetical notes ascribing authorship to him of certain parts of the text, for the next thirty years. Again, these were not mere contrivances: Tolkien often took care to distinguish which parts of the text
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were written by the loremaster Rúmil and which by Pengolodh (see, for example, Lost Road 125; 127; 129). This suggests consideration of the narrators' relationships to the texts and a deliberate assignment of each text to the most appropriate narrator: Rúmil handles the earlier and more mythological material; Pengolodh handles the later history, the philological materials, and amends Rúmil's work where appropriate. In his 1992 article "Historical Bias and the Making of The Silmarillion," Alex Lewis documented how characters related to Elrond—Bilbo's most likely source for his Red Book of Westmarch, which Christopher Tolkien believed that his father very likely regarded as The Silmarillion—are treated with sympathy, while the Fëanorians and characters associated with them, like Fingon, are at best given merely cursory treatment and at worst are harshly judged. Figure 1 shows the results of his analysis. For example, Thingol—not exactly a font of benevolence and hospitality—is not only given extensive page time in Figure 1. Historical bias according to familial relationship with Elond. The Silmarillion but has his hostile (Source: Lewis, "Historical Bias and the Making of The Silmarilion.") actions deemphasized. Maedhros, on the other hand, is given slapdash attention to his heroic or benevolent deeds with the emphasis falling on his history as a kinslayer. Lewis argues that Elrond—as a likely source for Bilbo's Red Book— portrayed his relatives more positively and subjected those opposed to his family—namely the Fëanorians—to political violence, giving them less page time and a more critical assessment in what space they were allotted. Thingol, Lewis would argue, is an ancestor of Elrond; Maedhros is not. The correlation he identifies between characters receiving positive bias and ancestry with Elrond is welldefended and makes sense. However, one doesn't even need to go as far as Elrond's familial affections and Bilbo's well-intentioned but naïve authorship of The Silmarillion based on Elrond's authority to explain the biases found in The Silmarillion. The same biases that Lewis observed would have also belonged to Pengolodh. We actually know quite a bit about Pengolodh's background, and it makes him an interesting and in many ways unlikely narrator for the Quenta Silmarillion. In the essay Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien identified Pengolodh as "an Elf of mixed Sindarin and Ñoldorin ancestry, born in Nevrast, who lived in Gondolin from its foundation" (War 396). Using the most recent timeline for the First Age, found in the Grey Annals, there were about 110 years between the Noldorin exiles settling their realms—and I am presuming that Nevrast was likewise settled around this time—and the migration of Turgon's people from Nevrast to Gondolin. This is an interesting window in which to place the preeminent loremaster of the Eldar for the simple reason that not much happens during these hundred-odd years. Pengolodh is born after the Noldorin exile and the death of Fëanor. He was at most a young child during Fingolfin's Feast of Reuniting and so very possibly never met any of the sons of Fëanor at all—nor Fingolfin, nor Fingon— and by the time the great battles of the First Age began, he was safely tucked away behind the walls of Gondolin. Pengolodh's status as a resident of Gondolin makes him a subject of Turgon and complicates the political situation surrounding his authorship of the Quenta Silmarillion even further. During the crossing of the Helcaraxë, Turgon lost his wife Elenwë when she fell into the frigid waters of the north, carrying their daughter Idril. Turgon was able to save Idril, but Elenwë was buried in falling ice and perished (Tolkien, Peoples 345-346). Thereafter, he is understandably described as "unappeasable in his enmity for Fëanor and his sons," but this enmity very likely contributed to a political and intellectual climate that 2
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would have not only cemented a bias against the Fëanorians in a young Pengolodh but also placed certain historical inquiries off-limits (Tolkien, Peoples 345). After the fall of Gondolin, of course, Pengolodh would have witnessed much of the tumult that brought the First Age to a close, and Quendi and Eldar states that he collected stories from the Elves living at the mouth of the River Sirion at this time (War 397). Among the refugees of the kinslaying at Doriath, he would have found enmity possibly even less appeasable than that of Turgon. At no point would he have even been presented with the opportunity to speak with anyone associated with the House of Fëanor, aside from perhaps Aredhel in Gondolin, who was friends with Celegorm and Curufin. Tolkien gave consideration to the impact that Pengolodh's sheltered circumstances would have had on his development of linguistic knowledge, writing in Quendi and Eldar that, "owing to the isolation of Gondolin," Pengolodh didn't have much experience with the languages of the other peoples of Beleriand (War 397). It is fair to assume that he realized that the same would hold true of Pengolodh's historical knowledge. Yet this was how he chose to characterize his primary loremaster of the Quenta Silmarillion materials: an interesting choice, to be sure. One wonders at the intention behind it. What all this means, though, is that the primary written source of the history that would become The Silmarillion was dreadfully ill-informed and biased. Many of the events that Pengolodh describes he could not have witnessed, and it's unlikely that he ever spoke to anyone who did. One can only conclude that he fell back on conjecture in those instances, perhaps adding moral coloring that supported his preconceived ideas of various characters or that offered the possibility of political advantage. The burning of the ships at Losgar, the Battle-under-stars, Fëanor's death: where did Pengolodh find information about these events? Silmarillion fans sometimes wonder why Maglor and the other sons of Fëanor didn't do more—didn't do anything, if we assume the account in The Silmarillion to be correct—to rescue Maedhros after his capture by Morgoth. Their failure to attempt to save their brother and king is one of many blights to their reputations, implying cowardice and the insidious influence of their Oath. Perhaps they did try to save him—how would Pengolodh know if they had? And would he have revealed this knowledge, even if he'd come upon it? And if he did take such a politically perilous chance, would Turgon have allowed the glory of Fingon, his brother, to be shared by the sons of Fëanor, his enemies? Take nearly any episode in The Silmarillion and subject it to similar analysis, assuming Pengolodh as the source, and the account of that episode almost always becomes problematic. One could of course argue that Pengolodh doesn't appear anywhere in the published Silmarillion. This is true, but the reason is not straightforward, and while Pengolodh's identity as the writer of the Quenta Silmarillion became less pronounced in late revisions, there is no evidence to suggest that the texts themselves were revised with another loremaster's perspective in mind. The removal of the in-universe loremasters from the published Silmarillion was an editorial decision by Christopher Tolkien in response to discrepancies between the various drafts used to compile the published Silmarillion. The Quenta Silmarillion was identified as predominantly authored by Pengolodh until 1958, when Tolkien wrote on a scrap of paper that "[i]t is now clear to me that in any case the Mythology must actually be a 'Mannish' affair … handed on by Men in Númenor and later in Middle-earth," possibly in response to the growing prominence of The Lord of the Rings in the legendarium (Morgoth's 370, emphasis in the original). And, indeed, Tolkien removed all mentions of Pengolodh in the B-text of the Later Quenta Silmarillion, which was revised between 1958 and 1960, very likely carrying out his intentions as expressed in the 1958 note. The texts themselves, however, were not revised to suggest a change in narrator. The 1958 note— like most of the texts preserved in Myths Transformed—was never carried to fruition, and Christopher Tolkien later described his decision to remove the in-universe narrators from the text as "an excess of vigilance" (Peoples 153). Since the Quenta Silmarillion was written with Pengolodh in mind as its narrator and never revised to suggest it should be read otherwise, it can be analyzed with Pengolodh's background and biases in mind. I conclude from all of this that Tolkien carefully constructed his legendarium as a tradition passed down by in-universe loremasters and narrators, those loremasters and narrators possessed their own biases, and those biases shaped the narratives. This conclusion seems central to understanding and analyzing Tolkien's texts, yet I have been hard-pressed to find much of anything in Tolkien scholarship 3
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that takes historical bias into account when discussing the texts. Alex Lewis documented the historical bias of The Silmarillion, making a good case supported by ample evidence, in the 1992 Centenary Conference volume copublished by Mythlore and Mallorn—not exactly an obscure source, in other words—and yet his paper has been cited only six times, mostly in theses and dissertations by graduate students and never in a peer-reviewed journal. This really isn't surprising: For one, it immensely complicates things when working with an already vast canon to assume that the texts one accepts as part of that canon may not even be entirely correct. And it is relatively easy to dismiss historical bias under the assumption that Tolkien carefully selected which in-universe loremasters would inform his books, and that the version he presented was most consistent with what he wanted readers to see and understand of his world. Nonetheless, I believe that ignoring the historical bias behind Tolkien's books has a flattening effect on those narratives. Early critics disliked what they saw as black-and-white, good-versus-evil simplicity, and this criticism continues even today. Tolkien didn't agree with these critics: He saw the theme of The Lord of the Rings (and of course The Silmarillion, although the latter was still unpublished at the time) as more complicated than that and dismissed such critiques as the result of people "in a hurry, and with only a fragment to read," not a correct characterization of his works as a whole (Letters 197). And it is no wonder: He viewed his stories as mythological or historical works, subject to all the flaws, omissions, and single-sidedness to which such works are prone. When we read, for instance, an account of a battle in a medieval chronicle, we understand that the actors on the other side are rarely evil—even though they may be depicted in that way—but rather possess their own perspectives and motivations unimportant or inscrutable to the author of the chronicle. Because they are depicted within a historical tradition, Tolkien's novels can be read in the same way but for the fact that readers aren't necessarily inclined to take the facts of a novel as anything less. Once one does begin to mistrust those "facts," however, and see the stories as merely a single viewpoint of many potential viewpoints—and that viewpoint very often further constrained by political and social pressures within Middle-earth—the story deepens; the black and white so many critics see meld into shades of gray and the stories of characters maligned or erased in the narrative begin to move to the fore. Take the House of Fëanor, for example: the subject of Lewis's paper and the focal point of my study as well. Acknowledging Pengolodh's bias against the Fëanorians leads one to question which details were selected and which were omitted—and which were never known at all—in telling their story. This does not dismiss their misdeeds, but it does open the possibility of more complicated motives and contexts than Pengolodh's account acknowledges. For example, the Fëanorians are condemned in The Silmarillion for the kinslayings at Doriath and Sirion—and recall that Pengolodh used the people at Sirion as sources for his writings (Tolkien, War 397). Very little attention is given to the fact that, before making those attacks, in both instances, the seven sons attempted to resolve their grievance peacefully (see, for example, Silmarillion 284; 296). Yet the leaders of Doriath and Sirion are not condemned for knowingly placing their people in harm's way rather than attempting a diplomatic solution. Also unmentioned is the case for the leaders of Doriath and Sirion keeping the Silmaril in the first place, probably because they had no case: stealing an item that has itself been stolen from someone else doesn't confer ownership on the person who recovered it. Legally and morally, returning a stolen item to its correct owner is the proper thing to do, even if one underwent great hardship in recovering that item, as Lúthien and Beren certainly did. This, of course, goes unmentioned, although it is noted that the people of Sirion enjoyed extraordinary prosperity, which they attributed to the Silmaril: a seeming red herring designed to direct attention away from the injustice of their keeping the Silmaril and the especial foolishness of doing so with full knowledge that it was being pursued by a band of skilled warriors acting under the influence of a dangerous oath (Silmarillion 296). None of this, perhaps, makes the Fëanorians' recourse to violence a just or good act, but it does locate that act in a context that makes it much more complicated than merely an act of evil. Historical bias in Tolkien's works is widely acknowledged by one group of Tolkien experts: writers of Tolkien-based transformative works, or fan fiction. Although not generally recognized as such by the scholarly side of the Tolkien fandom, many of these writers are experts with considerable 4
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knowledge of Tolkien's world. As part of my work on Tolkien fandom studies, I am conducting a survey, still ongoing, of readers and writers of Tolkien-based fan fiction. Some of the preliminary • average time writing Tolkien data, shown in Figure 2, shows that Tolkien fan fiction writers have fanfic: 6.1 years significant experience with the texts, both in terms of years working • number writing Tolkien fanfic with the texts and the difficulty of texts they use. for 10+ years: 32% Perhaps this high level of comfort with texts like The History • number using posthumous of Middle-earth series partly accounts for Tolkien fan fiction writers' sources for fanfic: o The Silmarillion: 76% awareness and use of historical bias. Fan fiction writers often plumb o Unfinished Tales: 49% the lesser-known texts for details on characters, groups, and events o History of Middle-earth: 50% that didn't make the cut into the published Silmarillion or Tolkien's • only 0.5% of writers used only other major works. During this process, it is almost impossible to the films as sources. avoid encountering references to Pengolodh or the other in-universe loremasters. Furthermore, because these texts consist of Figure 2. Source: Walls-Thumma, contradictory details, it is possible that fan fiction writers become "Tolkien Fan Fiction Survey" more comfortable with the idea of the texts as fluid and unreliable; after all, a different editor than Christopher Tolkien would have produced a different Silmarillion, and had Tolkien lived even a few years longer, we would have very likely ended up with a still yet more different book. It is difficult to quantify the extent to which writers of Tolkien-based fan fiction employ historical bias in shaping their interpretations of the texts and, therefore, their stories based on those texts. Although historical bias is a particular interest of mine and has been for over a decade now, I did not ask about it directly in my survey. In an international community, the members of which have varying educational and academic backgrounds, the term historical bias is understood differently—sometimes misunderstood entirely—even by writers who use the concept (absent the terminology) in writing their stories. Looking at the stories themselves is perhaps even more unproductive, as a writer's motives cannot always be gleaned from the story itself. Instead, to document this phenomenon in the Tolkien fan fiction community, I chose to examine trends in which characters authors are writing about. Using Alex Lewis's article to identify which
Expertise of Tolkien Fan Fiction Writers
Figure 3. Character popularity in fanfiction by historical bias. 5
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characters receive positive and negative bias in The Silmarillion, I then looked at the popularity of those characters among fan fiction writers. I chose two archives to conduct my investigation. The Silmarillion Writers' Guild, as the only Silmarillion-only fan fiction archive on the Internet, necessarily includes a large number of stories based on The Silmarillion. The site's culture encourages heterodox interpretations, allows open posting, and places no content restrictions on stories. Stories of Arda is a more conservative site, placing restrictions on story content and requiring new authors to be approved before they can post their work. Both sites have been in existence for at least eight years, making it less likely that a brief trend would skew the data, and were relatively easy to collect character data from. The graph you see in Figure 3 is rather complex but shows that writers of Tolkien-based fan fiction very often seem to prefer writing about those characters who are subject to negative bias in the texts. Those characters whom Lewis identified as receiving negative bias in The Silmarillion are shown in red. As you can see, these characters have considerable more stories written about them than those who are positively depicted, shown in blue. Take the Fëanorians, for example. With the exception of Amrod and Amras, every member of the House of Fëanor had over 100 stories about him on the Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Maedhros alone had over 500, so one in eight stories on the SWG involves Maedhros. In contrast, consider those characters whom Lewis describes as receiving a positive bias. With the exception of Fingolfin and Elrond himself—whom I will discuss further in a moment—none of these characters had more than 100 stories on the SWG archive. The same trends can be observed on Stories of Arda as well, although less dramatically, since Stories of Arda has far fewer Silmarillion-based stories than the SWG. However, that the same effect can be seen on Stories of Arda is important: I chose to collect data from SoA in part because it is the most conservative of the long-running Tolkien fan fiction archives. The first sentence of SoA's guidelines state that the site "was created as an archive for stories based on and consistent with the world Tolkien created"; if any writers were to take the texts at their word about the relative morality of the various characters, I assumed they would be heavily represented on SoA ("Guidelines," emphasis mine). However, even SoA writers show more interest in characters who receive negative bias over those who receive positive bias, suggesting that this is a phenomenon of the Tolkien fan fiction community, not merely writers who take heterodox approaches. The data in the middle—the orange bar for Fingon and the pale blue bars for Fingolfin, Finwë, and Elrond—are presented separately because they also show how historical bias can indirectly influence a character's popularity. Fingon is presented separately, as a somewhat unique case. Unlike the Fëanorians, he is not directly vilified, but at the same time, his depiction in The Silmarillion doesn't seem to do him complete justice either. Alex Lewis notes that "Fingon for some reason seems to be played down as regards Figure 4. Characters that appear most often his valour," noting that his deeds receive far less pagewith Elrond, Finwë, and Fingolfin on the SWG. time and positive attention than, for example, the 6
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deeds of Fingolfin (162). Lewis suggests that Fingon's strong positive association with the Fëanorians may have resulted in a slight bias against him. If my hypothesis is correct, and fan fiction writers prefer to write about characters who receive negative bias in the texts, then the bias against him that Lewis notes would certainly explain his popularity. Fingolfin, Finwë, and Elrond are also strongly associated with the Fëanorians, although these associations are not as overtly positive as Fingon's. Yet association with the Fëanorians seems to elevate these characters in popularity. To show how the Fëanorians dominate fan fiction about these characters, I compiled a list of all the characters who costar in the stories about Elrond on the Silmarillion Writers' Guild and created a word cloud, shown in Figure 4. This approach isn't particularly scientific, but it makes my point: About half of the stories about Elrond on the SWG also include at least one Fëanorian. Maedhros and Maglor are overwhelmingly the most frequently seen characters in these stories, aside from Elrond's brother Elros. Even though his time with Maedhros and Maglor was but a blip in a long and storied life, they dominate in the imagination of fanfic writers. Likewise, about 60% of stories on the SWG about Finwë include at least one person from the House of Fëanor. But Fingolfin's numbers are the most dramatic: About three-quarters of stories about Fingolfin involve someone from the House of Fëanor, very often Fëanor himself. One can imagine what Fingolfin might say about this: After having moved across a continent to avoid his late brother's family and having distinguished himself with nothing less than single combat with Morgoth, the only way he can reliably get any screen time in fan fiction is as Fëanor's pesky little brother. Take away the stories where these characters co-star alongside Fëanorians and their numbers plummet and better fit among the rest of the positive bias group. There are certainly other factors that determine a character's popularity beyond his or her subjection to historical bias, but I believe that this data shows that they are relatively inconsequential. The number of times a character appears in the text, for example, could determine his or her popularity among writers. In fact, in my survey, 97% of writers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "Writing fan fiction lets me see more and learn more about characters Tolkien didn't focus on." Within each grouping on the graph, I ordered the characters based on the number of times they appear in The Silmarillion, from most often to least often mentioned. As you can see, the number of mentions a character received in the text was not a strong predictor of his or her popularity among fan fiction writers. Writers of Silmarillion-based fan fiction will also assert that they prefer to write about characters that are complex in the books or whose stories are darker in tone. Neither complexity nor tone, however, predicted a character's popularity as well as did receipt of negative bias. Most of the Fëanorians are undeniably complex characters. So, however, is Elu Thingol—a character whose inhospitable, greedy, and sometimes cruel deeds Lewis singles out as proof of a positive bias that favors Thingol—and yet Thingol appears in a mere 46 stories on the SWG and 25 on Stories of Arda. Turgon, likewise, is a character whose sometimes questionable deeds go unquestioned due to Pengolodh's bias, yet despite this complexity, only 80 stories and 22 stories on the SWG and Stories of Arda, respectively, include him. As far as stories that take a darker turn, none can be darker than Túrin Turambar's, yet Túrin appears in only 36 stories on the SWG archive and a paltry 12 stories on Stories of Arda. Clearly, therefore, complexity alone does not predict popularity as a subject of fan fiction.
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Figure 5. Popularity of female characters in the positive bias group compared to male characters in the positive bias group.
Within the blue positive bias group, one other trend again points to bias as a factor that strongly determines whether fan fiction writers will choose to write about a character. Some of the more popular characters in the positive bias group are women: Lúthien, Elwing, and Galadriel. Figure 5 shows the data for female characters in the positive bias group relative to the male characters. When I shared some early results of my research on my Tumblr blog back in May, I suggested that the women are better able to withstand the effects of the positive bias they receive due to the concerted efforts of some vocal members of the Tolkien fan fiction community in encouraging more stories about women. Certainly, this could be the case, but one of my followers, Stentor Danielson, suggested an alternate explanation, consistent with my hypothesis: Female characters are also subject to bias in the texts. Much like Fingon, Lúthien, Elwing, and Galadriel are not vilified, but their roles are downplayed, in this case because of their gender rather than their positive association with politically unpopular characters. Beren, for example, is depicted as the hero in the chapter "Of Beren and Lúthien" despite the fact that Lúthien performs the more impressive and significant deeds. Likewise, Galadriel—who will become one of the most important characters across the legendarium—receives almost no attention for what she was doing prior to her homeland just happening to get in the way of the (male) Fellowship's quest in Lord of the Rings. She is mentioned only 37 times in The Silmarillion. Once again, the sense that something is being omitted or distorted in The Silmarillion seems to encourage fan fiction writers to take up the cause of those characters, providing a more balanced view of their roles and a deeper picture of the history of Arda. I believe this proves that creating stories in response to perceived historical bias is a relatively common and longstanding approach among fan fiction writers. Documenting when anything unequivocally begins in the fan fiction community is difficult to impossible, since ideas are discussed and recorded in myriad forms online, some of them private or semipublic, others long ago erased or lost during site closures, and many difficult or impossible to search. When I began writing fan fiction in 2004, the concept of historical bias drove my earliest work, although I have no recollection of where I first learned of the concept. As a newly minted Tolkien fan just beginning to grapple with texts beyond The Silmarillion (and unable to tell you who Pengolodh was, even if you paid me to), I doubt highly that I 8
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thought of it myself. That I cannot trace my awareness of it to a single source or defining moment suggests that it was merely "in the air" during my early years in the Tolkien fan fiction community, much as it remains "in the air" today: a concept often discussed by writers in diverse forums or employed in developing stories. Fan fiction writers respond to historical bias in myriad ways in their stories. One of the most straightforward—and a use that Tolkien himself employed, when he revised The Hobbit to better accommodate the plot of The Lord of the Rings—is to explain discrepancies or difficulties in the texts as mistakes or distortions by those transmitting the story. For example, in late May, I posted to a discussion community for the Silmarillion Writers' Guild, asking about how members used historical bias in their stories. Fan fiction author Drummerwench replied, In general, my work is pretty canon-compliant, but ... I always thought it puzzling that the palantír of Elostirion was sent away West, like a sno-globe of the Golden Gate Bridge being handcarried from Iowa to San Francisco. In one of my [stories], someone explicitly states that the Hobbits misunderstood about the palantír leaving. Although this approach doesn't require the historical bias, it does necessitate acknowledging a fallible source—not an omniscient one—at the heart of the texts. The many drafts and version of Tolkien's texts that exist—as well as the vastness of his world—lends his work to this kind of use. Writers can—and sometimes do—assume the array of different revisions to be akin the multiple and varied copies of historical sources that often exist. Their work as authors becomes detecting and presenting the truest version of the story from the several possibilities. More commonly—perhaps most commonly—historical bias is used to develop a character or group beyond how they are portrayed in the text. This approach itself can take a few different forms. It can be used to elevate a character or group beyond their status as a villain. I take this approach in my stories about the House of Fëanor, for example. As articulated above, Pengolodh's ignorance of their actual affairs and almost certain bias means that his account of nearly anything to do with the House of Fëanor is inherently untrustworthy. When I write about them, I imagine how their story would be told by a loremaster from within their own house. Errors and omissions can be remedied but, most importantly, I can seek explanation rather than condemnation of characters' actions. Along similar lines, historical bias can account for the relative absence of certain characters or groups, even when the texts don't necessarily attribute deviance or malice to those groups. Alex Lewis noted, for example, that the deeds of the Edain during the Nirnaeth Arnoediad received far less positive attention than the deeds of the Noldor, even though the Noldorin army was in shambles, arriving late in Maedhros's case and charging too soon in Fingon's. He attributed this dismissal of the Edain to the Noldorin loremaster and his interest in depicting the Elves heroically. Fan fiction writers using this approach might, for example, write stories about the Wood-elves or the Petty Dwarves, assuming that these groups were merely overlooked by the in-universe loremasters as less interesting or important than the Noldor or Sindar. Similarly, fan fiction writers are often highly motivated by a Fan Fiction as a Corrective desire to bring forth the stories and viewpoints of characters of Historical Erasure traditionally excluded from the historical record, such as women, queer characters, and characters of color. Figure 6 shows how many Percentage of writers who fan fiction writers in my survey agreed or strongly agreed that they agree/strongly agree with “Fan fiction allows me to explore the wrote fan fiction, in part, to explore the perspectives of these perspectives of …” traditionally neglected groups. The data presented above for the relatively high number of stories about Lúthien, Elwing, and • female characters: 78% Galadriel compared to other characters in the positive bias group • characters of color: 41% provides further evidence of this trend as it relates to female • LGBTQ+ characters: 61% characters. Some writers defend the need for more stories about Figure 6. Source: Walls-Thumma, women, characters of color, and queer characters by pointing to the "Tolkien Fan Fiction Survey" tendency of real-world histories to erase their presence and 9
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contributions; the history of Arda, they contend, was possibly documented similarly. Certainly, as far as we know, all of the in-universe loremasters were white males, and given Tolkien's own conservative views of sexuality, it is likely that, if asked, he would have identified them as heterosexual as well. While it was highly unlikely that Tolkien deliberately mimicked real-world erasure in his fictional history, as a heterosexual white male himself—and one steeped in literature and history already rife with erasure—he was likely inclined to maintain the status quo. Fan fiction writers sometimes view their role as remedying that erasure. For example, in real world histories, women often don't exist or are sidelined in the roles of the daughter, wife, or mother of an important man. Tolkien fanfic writer Dwimordene coined the term textual ghost to describe them: "the women who litter the Tolkien histories as textual ghosts, artifacts deduced by the presence of offspring or perhaps a name." My SWG comoderator Elleth identified 616 textual ghosts in Tolkien's works: women nameless but identified by their relationship to a male character or unreferenced women whom we know must have existed, such as the mother of Glorfindel. Fan fiction writers often not only name these women but strive to give them identities and roles within the story beyond their relationship to a named character. Along similar lines, writers also analyze the reasons why a particular in-universe loremaster might have been motivated to depict a cultural group in a particular way, using real-world experience with racism and ethnocentrism to infer that these groups were in fact much more complex than they appear from the biased depictions they receive. Perhaps the most significant example concerns the essay Laws and Customs among the Eldar, which is part of the tenth volume of the History of Middle-earth series. Laws and Customs is a favorite among fan fiction writers for the sheer wealth of details it provides on Elven culture: everything from marriage ceremonies to naming traditions to sexual mores. Like many of Tolkien's texts, it is assigned an in-universe narrator: the Anglo-Saxon mariner Ælfwinë. It presents the Eldar as a morally upright, temperate people and the Avari as untrustworthy and mildly sinister. My SWG colleague Independence1776 has analyzed Laws and Customs in an essay that asks what motives the Eldar might have had for reporting details in a certain way to Ælfwinë and what motives Ælfwinë might have had to recording these details as he did. The potential for distortion, exaggeration, misunderstanding—including potential language barriers—and outright lying exists at multiple points in the creation of a document like Laws and Customs. The complexity of the transmission of this text motivates the creation of fan fiction, as authors infer what Elven culture might really have been like. In another approach, writers consider how the in-universe narrators may have intentionally distorted details of a story for literary or mythic purposes: Thingol stared into Melian's eyes for years on end, Maedhros dangled from Thangorodrim for a half-century, or as my SWG colleague Janet McCullough John has often noted, it seems every other character is identified as the tallest. We are familiar with such mythic hyperbole from our real-world historical and literary records, and some writers pursue stories where they explore what might have really happened during those episodes. Likewise, writers sometimes explore in fiction the realistic basis behind the myths and magic of Tolkien's world under the assumption that the in-universe narrators were correct in their observations but not necessarily in their explanations of those phenomena. Finally, historical bias can generate fan fiction that challenges the moral views of Tolkien's works. Tolkien possessed an explicit moral prerogative in writing his stories as he did, and he clearly invented fictional narrators and loremasters who would advance his moral views of key themes like power, progress, individualism, and technology. Assuming that the in-universe narrator selected and presented the story in such a way as to reinforce Tolkien's views on these themes, however, demotes these themes from moral absolutes with a strictly factual basis to simply one of many views of morality possible within his fictional world. One's values are shaped by culture and experience, just as in life. For example, many fan fiction writers—myself among them—question the notion that obedience to the Valar was virtuous and that characters like the Fëanorians were misguided in choosing not to heed their commands. My SWG colleague Pandemonium has used her fiction to challenge Tolkien's belief that technology is inherently suspect and scientists and technologists liable to moral corruption. Other writers—again, myself among them—have challenged the idea that withdrawing from the world into the West is a morally defensible act rather than an abdication of responsibility to the wider world of which one is part. 10
Dawn M. Walls-Thumma
I was initially driven to study Tolkien's works by my desire to write fan fiction about them. I was a young twentysomething civil servant with a background in the social sciences. If you would have described to me the research I am doing now, as a graduate student in the humanities, I would have thought you more fey than Fëanor. Because I started in the fanfic community, I was inclined from the outset to read the texts as biased historical works and, therefore, to evaluate the veracity of everything I read. As my interest broadened to include the more scholarly side of the Tolkien fan community, I was surprised that this wasn't a common way to read the texts. Everything in the books was assumed to be factual: Lúthien was the most beautiful woman who ever lived, Túrin was cursed, and Fëanor was evil, full stop. Tolkien fans of all persuasions will often remark that they are attracted to his books because of their sense of depth. Tolkien, inspired by works like Beowulf that have the same effect, deliberately set out to create a fictional universe that suggested deep layers of history and myth beneath every story he told. Alex Lewis suggests that Tolkien may have deliberately employed historical bias to create a sense of realism; I'd go a step further and suggest that the historical bias in Tolkien's books functions to create that sense of depth. Every detail becomes open to inspection from different angles, making the world all but boundless. A story is never fully told and can always be retold from a different perspective, becoming all but new. The historical bias of the original texts seems to invite such retellings. The very existence of the Tolkien fan fiction community attests to that. We are a community of fans who have found great value in analyzing historical bias in the texts and using it to generate stories and art. And although I think that most fan fiction writers believe that they stand to learn from Tolkien scholars, this is one area where I believe that Tolkien scholars could benefit from the writers: In seeing the texts from a new perspective and following where that road may lead.
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Works Cited Danielson, Stentor. Mapsburgh. Tumblr, 27 May 2015. Web. 5 September 2015.
Dawn Felagund [Dawn Walls-Thumma]. Silmarillion Writers' Guild Archive. Silmarillion Writers' Guild. 7 June 2007. Web. 5 September 2015. Drummerwench. "Comment on 'Tolkien-Based Fanfic and Historical Bias.'" Silmarillion Writers' Guild. LiveJournal. Web. 5 September 2015. Dwimordene. "Review of 'Moon of the Sea' by pandemonium_213." Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards Archive. Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards. 2008. Web. 5 September 2015. Elleth. "The Textual Ghosts Project." The Textual Ghosts Project. n.p. Web. 5 September 2015. "Guidelines for Authors." Stories of Arda. Stories of Arda, 24 March 2007. Web. 5 September 2015. Independence1776. "The In-universe Authorship of LACE." Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Silmarillion Writers' Guild, 20 July 2013. Web. 5 September 2015. Lewis, Alex. "Historical Bias in the Making of The Silmarillion." Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992. Oxford: Tolkien Society, 1995. Oshun [Janet McCullough John]. "Reviews For 'Character of the Month Biographies.'" Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Web. 5 September 2015. pandemonium_213. "Member Biography and Story List." Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Web. 5 September 2015. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Book of Lost Tales Part 1. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. New York: Ballantine, 1983. ---. The Hobbit. 2nd Ed. New York: Ballantine, 1966. ---. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ---. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. ---. The Lost Road and Other Writings. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. New York: Ballantine, 1987. ---. Morgoth's Ring: The Later Silmarillion Part One, the Legends of Aman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. ---. The Peoples of Middle-earth. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. ---. The Shaping of Middle-earth. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. New York: Ballantine, 1986. ---. The Silmarillion. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. New York: Ballantine, 1977. ---. The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion Part Two, the Legends of Beleriand. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 1994.
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Dawn M. Walls-Thumma
Author's Note: Survey data used in this presentation comes from the Tolkien Fan Fiction Survey being conducted by Dawn M. Walls-Thumma (http://goo.gl/forms/OMlJKfgDUw). This survey was still in progress when this paper was written and presented. Data used was downloaded on 1 January 2015 and included a sample size of 742 respondents who self-identified as writers and/or readers of Tolkien-based fan fiction. The survey will close on 30 November 2015. At that point, the data will be made available to other researchers who wish to use it. Inquiries or requests for a copy should be sent to Dawn WallsThumma at [email protected]. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the members of the Tolkien fan fiction community for their support and encouragement across the last decade of my involvement with Tolkien-based fan fiction, especially to my comoderators and the members of the Silmarillion Writers' Guild. These talented and thoughtful people have challenged my thinking at every turn and made me a better scholar than ever I could have been without them. A special thank-you is also owed to my husband Rob Walls-Thumma, whose ongoing support and help makes my research and writing possible. A video of the presentation of this paper can be viewed on YouTube: https://youtu.be/06jN5wTN9JE
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