Here are the first and last paragraphs of Paul Kocher’s 1972 commentary on
Farmer Giles of Ham. The full essay is here, and I recommend you
all read it.
The publication year, 1949, of this joyously
mock-heroic tale gives us a clue to why it was written. The prewar clouds which
oppressed Tolkien in “Leaf by Niggle” had passed away with victory in 1945,
bringing “days less dark” but “no less laborious” by reason of his final drive
to complete The Lord of the Rings. Though much revision was still in order, the
epic was finished at last in 1949 after eleven years of more or less steady
toil. Only an artist, scientist, or scholar who has suffered the happy bondage
of such years can imagine the relief of the shackles dropping away. There seems
to follow a need to celebrate the new freedom, which can take the form of
poking fun at the type of materials just mastered. Chaucer, caught in the mazes
of The Canturybury Tales, parodied the high chivalric ideals of his “Knight’s
Tale” with their humorous opposites in the Sir Thopas caricature in later
years. Similarly in “Farmer Giles” Tolkien laughs good-humoredly at much that
is taken most seriously by his epic, and not only there but also by his
previous scholarship and literary criticism.
….rest of
essay…
“Farmer Giles of Ham” is an outburst of pure good humor. The fact that it mocks
the heroic does not mean that in 1949 Tolkien embraced the fashionable cult of
the antihero, any more than his fun with his beloved philology meant that he
renounced his devotion to it in the past or its charms for the future. After
that date he gave years of revision to readying The Lord of the Rings for
publication, and he has never stopped work on The Silmarillion. “Farmer Giles”
is simply a vacation from the “things higher…deeper…darker” which these epics
treat. That a writer can laugh at what is dearest to him does not signify that
it has grown less dear. It signifies only that he is able to laugh at
himself.
Kocher’s essay seems to assume that Tolkien wrote Farmer Giles of Ham after
finishing The Lord of the Rings. His conclusion is that Tolkien relaxed after
the serious effort of composing his epic, and had a good time blowing off steam
and making fun of himself with his tale of Farmer Giles. Ah the dangers of
being a critic before the author is dead and his letters published:
A. Farmer Giles was largely completed before Lord of the Rings was begun. In
fact in 1938 Tolkien offered it (and the idea of some sequels, to fill a volume
to book-length) to his publishers in response to the general clamor for a quick
follow-up to The Hobbit. Kocher obviously did not know this in 1972 when he
wrote his essay. Do you think his analysis is invalidated in any way by this
fact?
Tolkien makes numerous references to Farmer Giles in his letters, as edited and
published by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien in 1981. I here reprint
some of the more interesting extracts, as they address some of the questions
about the story that we have been debating in the Reading Room this summer and
fall.
[regarding a Hobbit sequel] …my mind on the ‘story’
side is really preoccupied with the ‘pure’ fairy stories or mythologies of the
Silmarillion, into which even Mr Baggins got dragged against my original
will, and I do not think I shall be able to move much outside it – unless it is
finished (and perhaps published) – which has a releasing effect. The only line
I have, quite outside that, is ‘Farmer Giles’ and the Little Kingdom (with its
capital at Thame). I rewrote that to about 50% longer, last January, and read
it to the Lovelace Society in lieu of a paper ‘on’ fairy stories. I was very
much surprised at the result. It took nearly twice as long as a proper ‘paper’
to read aloud; and the audience was apparently not bored – indeed they were
generally convulsed with mirth. But I am afraid that means it has taken on a
rather more adult and satiric flavour. Anyway I have not written the necessary
two or three other stories of the Kingdom to go with it! –from Letter
31, to C.A. Furth, Allen & Unwin, July 24 1938.
And what about Farmer Giles? You had the MSS.
of the enlarged form in September or October. … The writing of The Lord of
the Rings is laborious, because I have been doing it as well as I know
how…In spare time it would be easier and quicker to write up the plots already
composed of the more lighthearted stories of the Little Kingdom to go with
Farmer Giles. But I would rather finish the long tale, and not let it go
cold. –from Letter 35, to C.A. Furth, February 2 1939.
I have never quite ceased work on the sequel [to
The Hobbit]. It has reached Chapter XVI. I fear it is growing too large.
I am not at all sure that it will please the same audience… I wish you would
publish poor ‘Farmer Giles’ in the interim. He is at least finished, though
very slender in bulk. But he amuses the same people, although Mr Furth seems to
think he has no obvious public. He has mouldered in a drawer since he amused H.
S. Bennett’s children when I was in Cambridge last March. Admittedly they are
bright children… –from Letter 37, to Stanley Unwin, Allen & Unwin,
December 19 1939.
[on Unwin's proposal to publish Leaf by Niggle as part of a collection of short
stories by Tolkien] ‘Niggle’ is so unlike any other
short story that I have ever written, or begun, that I wonder if it would
consort with them…Would it be of any use, if I put together in a bundle what I
can find…Were you considering ‘Farmer Giles’ as a possibility? It is rather a
long short…(The sequel is plotted but unwritten, and likely to remain so. The
heart has gone out of the Little Kingdom, and the woods and plains are
aerodromes and bomb-practice targets). But another comic fairy story of a
similar genre, ‘The King of the Green Dozen’, is half-written, and could be
finished without much pain, if ‘Farmer Giles’ is approved. –from Letter
98, to Stanley Unwin, circa March 18 1945.
[Unwin decides to publish Farmer Giles as a separate volume] You will note that, whoever may buy it, this story was not
written for children; though as in the case of other books that will not
necessarily prevent them from being amused by it. I think it might be as well
to emphasize the fact that this is a tale specially composed for reading aloud:
it goes very well so, for those that like this kind of thing at all.
–from Letter 108, to Stanley Unwin, July 5 1947.
[In response to a fan letter in praise of Farmer Giles] As for ‘Farmer Giles’ it was I fear written very light-heartedly,
originally of a ‘no time’ in which blunderbusses or anything might occur. Its
slightly donnish touching up, as read to the Lovelace Soc., and as published,
makes the Blunderbuss rather glaring – though not really worse than all
mediæval treatments of Arthurian matter. But it was too embedded to be changed,
and some people find the anachronisms amusing. I myself could not forgo the
quotation (so very Murrayesque) from the Oxford Dictionary. –from
Letter 122, to Naomi Mitchison, December 18 1949.
[Requesting that the Silmarillion be published simultaneously with LotR] …the Silmarillion and all that has refused to be
suppressed. It has bubbled up, infiltrated, and probably spoiled everything
(that even remotely approached ‘Faery’) which I have tried to write since. It
was kept out of Farmer Giles with an effort, but stopped the
continuation. –From Letter 124, to Sir Stanley Unwin, Feb 24 1950.
B. Why does he say here The Silmarillion has “probably spoiled” all his later
attempts at Fairy stories? Is there any sign in Farmer Giles of a
“effort” to keep that story free of Middle-earth?
[on the extent of the Silmarillion mythos in his fiction, to a prospective new
publisher] Of course, I made up and even wrote lots
of other things (especially for my children). Some escaped from the grasp of
this branching acquisitive theme, being ultimately and radically unrelated:
Leaf by Niggle and Farmer Giles, for instance, the only two that
have been printed. –From Letter 131, to Milton Waldman, Collins Books,
late 1951.
C. Tolkien remarks that this tale of The Little Kingdom “escaped” being
absorbed into the Silmarillion-world -- the eventual fate of The Hobbit, The
Lord of the Rings, Tom Bombadil, and most of his other poems. Why do you think
he used this word “escape”? Is it the same “escape” he talks about in “On Fairy
Tales”?
D. How important is Farmer Giles of Ham to Tolkien, and to our
consideration of Tolkien’s life work? I won’t ask why he wrote it, but why do
you think Unwin published it only in 1949? Do you wish he had completed the
sequel in 1938, and published perhaps a series of Little Kingdom mock medieval
tales that were demonstrably not in the world of the Silmarillion? Would they
have sold as well as The Hobbit? How might that have changed the world’s
perception of his Silmarillion/Rings
books?
Farmer Giles of Ham - the complete text
squire online:
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