 | |
| Author | Verlyn Flieger |
|---|---|
| Subject | The Silmarillion |
| Genre | Literary criticism |
| Publisher | Wm. B. Eerdmans |
Publication date | 1983 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 167 |
| Followed by | A Question of Time |
Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World is a 1983 book ofliterary criticism by the leadingTolkien scholarVerlyn Flieger, in which she argues thatlight is a central theme of Tolkien'sMiddle-earth mythology, in particular inThe Silmarillion. It has been admired by other scholars to the extent that it has become a core element of Tolkien scholarship.[1][2]
J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author andphilologist of ancientGermanic languages, specialising in Old English; he spent much of his career as a professor at theUniversity of Oxford.[3] He is best known for his novels about his inventedMiddle-earth,The Hobbit,The Lord of the Rings, andThe Silmarillion. A devoutRoman Catholic, he describedThe Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work",rich in Christian symbolism.[4]
Verlyn Flieger worked for over 30 years as a Tolkien scholar, becoming accepted as one of the foremost authors in that field.Splintered Light was her first book, establishing a reputation that increased with her later monographsInterrupted Music andA Question of Time, and two edited collections of essays.[5]
Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World was published byWm. B. Eerdmans in 1983. A revised edition was issued in 2002. The work is not illustrated.
The book begins with a chapter onJ. R. R. Tolkien as "a man of antitheses", of faith and doubt. It then compares and contrasts two of Tolkien's best-known essays, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and "On Fairy Stories", the one essentially dark and fateful, the other bright, embracing the possibility of good fortune. The next pair of chapters examine theInklingOwen Barfield's philosophy ofmythology and Tolkien's view offantasy assub-creation, and then their view of language, with the idea that it was once whole, and is now fragmented.
Three chapters then examine thesymbolism of light in Middle-earth as divine creation, showing with close analysis of the text ofThe Silmarillion that the created light is successively fragmented by interaction with the forces of darkness and the choices of the free peoples,Elves andMen. The story ofThe Lord of the Rings is covered in "One Fragment", in which, after the many disasters ofThe Silmarillion, the small remnant of the light survives to combat the remaining darkness.
A final chapter reviews the book's findings, noting two necessities, change and language, which is an agent of change.
| Age | Splintering of the Created Light[6][7] |
|---|---|
| Years of the Lamps | Two enormous lamps,Illuin andOrmal, atop tall pillars, give light toMiddle-earth, butMelkor destroys them. |
| Years of the Trees | The lamps are replaced by theTwo Trees of Valinor,Telperion andLaurelin, lighting the blessed realm ofValinor for theElves, leaving Middle-earth in darkness. |
| Fëanor crafts 3Silmarils with light of the two Trees. | |
| Melkor and the giant spiderUngoliant kill the Two Trees; their light survives only in the Silmarils. | |
| Years of the Sun | There iswar over the Silmarils. |
| One is buried in the Earth, one is lost in the Sea, one sails in the Sky as Eärendil's Star, carried in his ship Vingilot. | |
| Third Age | Galadriel collects light of Eärendil's Star reflected in her fountain mirror. |
| A little of that light is captured in thePhial of Galadriel. | |
| TheHobbitsFrodo Baggins andSam Gamgee use the Phial to defeat the giant spiderShelob. |
InA Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, the Tolkien scholarBradford Lee Eden writes thatSplintered Light was the first scholarlymonograph onThe Silmarillion. He describes it as "the most important and influential book on both language andmusic in Tolkien's works", discussing how music and light are interwoven as "central themes" throughoutThe Silmarillion, and viewing Tolkien as a "musician of words".[1]
In theRocky Mountain Review, the scholar and fantasy authorBrian Attebery notes that Flieger shows how Tolkien followedOwen Barfield's views on myth-making, including the idea of a gradual fall from grace over the course of history. In Attebery's view, Flieger successfully links Tolkien's Middle-earth writings to his scholarship, with a "well researched and sympathetic reading ofThe Silmarillion, a work whose importance she goes far towards demonstrating",[8] showing that even though it contains numerous short tales written decades apart, it is "a unified whole with a deeply felt meaning".[8] He writes that she is "less successful in tying his creations to [Tolkien's] biography". He argues that even if the reader accepts her thesis that the paired opposites in his Middle-earth writings – between light and dark, or between redemption and fall – derive from a temperament that oscillated "between hope and despair", that would not explain why those feelings resulted in fantasy "rather than ... metaphysical verse or realistic fiction"; and it wouldn't explain, either, whyThe Silmarillion is overwhelmingly dark, whileThe Lord of the Rings is largely optimistic. Attebery suggests that the reasons might be the works' different origins – in his view, Beowulf and Norse legend versus fairy tale.[8]
The scholar of English Janice Neuleib, reviewing the work inChristianity & Literature, writes that it both illuminates Tolkien's philosophy and analyses his "creative genius",[9] much of it in territory unexplored by other scholars. The forces of light and dark might, she writes, have been the subject of doubt to the man, but in his writing they are "equal forces held in tension by their opposition to and dependence upon one another ... at once literal, metaphoric, and symbolic".[9] She comments that where his celebrated essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" showed the certainty of fated disaster, his other famous essay "On Fairy Stories" considerseucatastrophe, the happy turn of fate in a story. In her view, "the tension of these two opposing forces produced the action ofThe Silmarillion."[9] However, the core of the book for Neuleib is in the 3 chapters onThe Silmarillion itself, in which Flieger traces the progressive splintering of the light created byEru Iluvatar through themusic of the Valar and on down to the Elves, Men, and Hobbits who people Middle-earth.The Elves too are sundered into peoples with differing languages as they agree to approach the light of theTwo Lamps or theTwo Trees, or reject this. Their languages, too, represent the light, and the original and higher language,Quenya, is spoken only by the Elves who have seen the light ofValinor. The most prized artefacts of the Elves, theSilmarils, capture a little of the splintered light; their maker,Fëanor, is therefore for both Flieger and Tolkien the most significant of the Elves; and he is destroyed by his creation.[9]
The scholar of theology and literatureRalph C. Wood, reviewing another of Flieger's books forVII, writes thatSplintered Light is "an indispensable work for any serious study of the great fantasist, especially ofThe Silmarillion".[10]
Flieger was nominated for the 1986 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award forSplintered Light.[11] The scholar of humanities Deidre Dawson comments that the book has become a core element of Tolkien scholarship.[2]