Forty years ago, I published A Tolkien Bestiary, the first fully illustrated reference book and guide to Middle-earth and the Undying Lands. It was written shortly after the publication of The Silmarillion in 1977: the book that first revealed the immense scope of Tolkien’s vast mythology and cosmos. Since that time, I have published a dozen books on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. And the one consistent perspective I have kept throughout these books has been to view Tolkien’s tales in this context of the mythologies and literatures of other nations and cultures. It is a perspective that Tolkien himself understood and cherished over his entire life.
For those who may have read any of my subsequent books, such as The Hobbit Companion or Tolkien’s Ring published in the 1990s—or any of my more recent Tolkien reference library series—the approach taken in this compendium will be a familiar one. An Encyclopedia of Tolkien is a compilation that draws heavily and directly on the writing and illustrations in these earlier published works. However, it differs in its purpose as it is not a general guide, but is specifically a dictionary of sources. It is organized in an easily accessed single volume of alphabetically listed sources of J. R. R. Tolkien’s writing.
This book is intended for those general readers of J. R. R. Tolkien who wish to learn more about the genius behind this awesome body of literature and the origin of some of the author’s remarkable ideas. For in his construction of the Middle-earth, Tolkien drew on an enormous range of sources, from the mythological to the historical, the literary to the linguistic, and the personal to geographic. It is hoped that through An Encyclopedia of Tolkien, readers may both broaden their appreciation of this extraordinary author, and understand a little more of the sources of his inspiration. In this compendium, readers may discover something of the myths and legends with which Professor Tolkien was intimately acquainted, and about which he often despaired because so few of readers were even vaguely familiar with them.
The focus of this book is an examination of the heroes, villains, creatures, peoples, and geography of Tolkien’s world, as well as his archetypal themes and motifs, in order to understand how they compare and relate to the literature, history, and mythology of other nations and cultures.
“I am interested in mythological invention, and the mystery of literary creation,” Tolkien once wrote in a letter to a reader. “I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own, not of the quality that I sought, and found in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish; but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff.”
This was Tolkien’s life ambition. So great was this obsession that it could be argued that the undoubted literary merits of Tolkien’s epic tale of The Lord of the Rings were almost a secondary concern. Important as the novel is, any analysis of Tolkien’s life and work makes one aware that his greatest passion and grandest ambitions were focused on the creation of an entire mythological system for the English people. In his own words, we learn: “I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogenic, to the level of romantic fairy-story … which I could dedicate simply: to England; to my country.”
As I have often observed, the enormity of this undertaking is staggering. It would be as if Homer, before writing the Iliad and the Odyssey, had first to invent the whole of Greek mythology and history. The degree to which he has actually succeeded is remarkable. In large part, Tolkien’s invented mythology in the popular imagination has definitely become that of England. Furthermore, it is certainly the most complex and detailed invented world in all literature.
Naturally, Tolkien’s world didn’t come out of nowhere. It was a composite of all Tolkien was: creative author, philologist, historian, folklorist, mythographer, geographer, philosopher, and artist. It was once written of Dante: “Well nigh all the encyclopedic erudition of the Middle Ages was forged and welded in the white heat of an indomitable will, into the steel-knit structure of the Divine Comedy.” Similarly, of Tolkien it can be said that a compression of everything he read knew, dreamed, and believed of Western history and culture went into the creation of his world of Middle-earth and the Undying Lands.
To understand the creative process of Tolkien’s mind, it is interesting to look into his lecture and essay “On Fairy-Stories.” Tolkien suggested the process by which fairy-tales were traditionally created was well encompassed in the homely metaphor of soup-making: “Speaking of the history of stories and especially of fairy-stories we may say that the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling, and to it have continually been added new bits, dainty and undainty.”
Tolkien rather warns us off the task of examining the bones in an attempt to determine the nature of the ox from which the soup is made. “The history of fairy-stories is: probably more complex than the physical history of the human race, and as complex as the history of human language.” He warns us that “the intricate web of Story is now beyond all the skill but that of the elves to unravel it.” Certainly, the recipe for Tolkien’s “Cauldron of Story” was very, very complex. Its bones and bits were drawn from a vast range of histories, myths, tales, folklore and sagas. To this was added the magical ingredient of pure invention.
This book is essentially an alphabetical dictionary or an illustrated index of ingredients of that Pot of Soup in the Cauldron of Story. It is arranged in such a way as to give anyone from the casual diner to the seasoned gourmet a means of dipping into and tracing a specific taste or aroma of this wonderful soup back to its original bones and “bits, dainty and undainty.”
Through tracing these sources of inspiration in Tolkien’s world—as well as its shared themes and motifs—it is hoped readers may appreciate the archetypal dimension of myth and legend that so enthralled Tolkien throughout his life. The richness of this heritage is evident in his tales and the vast mythological structures of his complex yet minutely detailed imaginary world. Tolkien was deeply committed to the study of the ancient wisdom of the soul as preserved in myth and legend. This was one of the most profound aspects of Tolkien’s genius as an author. He combined a natural storyteller’s ability and inventiveness with a scholar’s capacity to draw on the deep well of myth, legend, literature, language, and history. He breathed life into ancient traditions that but for him, would have remained forever unknown to millions of modern readers.