I know – it must have been the furious pace of your typing fingers, Curious,
that made you write “Madtheow” but it did give me a good laugh. Now I
figure I’d better try to live up to that name by pursuing my argument:
You ask whether LotR was fundamentally philological or Catholic and suggest it
was neither. I’ll say it was both. I think that Tolkien’s
understanding of philology – the history of the word and the stories it can
tell – is, for him, the way to truth, and that truth is fundamentally
Christian. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories” Tolkien says that the “incarnate
mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval” -- language and story
are fundamental to human life. Spoken like a true philologist! And
the ultimate reason for their importance to Tolkien is suggested, I think, in
his conclusion to that essay where he talks about how the Gospels are a kind of
“fairy-story” that “embraces all the essence of fairy-stories.” He says
that legend and history meet and fuse in the Gospel story which provides the
“Great Eucatastrophe” and that “The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it
has hallowed them.” In writing Fantasy the Christian “may actually assist in
the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.” In looking at
statements like these, I would say that Tolkien's understanding of himself as a
philologist was fundamentally connected to his understanding of himself as a
Christian.
But, as you say, I don’t think you have to be a Catholic or a philologist in
order to appreciate Tolkien’s fiction – but acknowledging the important place –
okay, I’ll say it: primary place – that they held for him helps
immensely, in my opinion, in more fully understanding what he thought he was
doing.
I agree with squire on the opinions of other professors – I think they believed
Tolkien was wasting his philological talents on fantasy fiction, talents which
they thought should have gone into writing more academic articles and scholarly
editions. I never got the impression that they doubted the philological
nature of the work (if they had actually read it, that is). And
maybe, as you say, Tolkien had doubts as well about how he should have directed
his talents throughout his career, but again I don’t read that as evidence that
he doubted that philology was the foundation of all of his
work.
