J. R. R. Tolkien included many elements in his Middle-earth writings, especially The Lord of the Rings, other than narrative text. These include artwork, calligraphy, chronologies, family trees, heraldry, languages, maps, poetry, proverbs, scripts, glossaries, prologues, and annotations. Much of this material is collected in the many appendices. Scholars have stated that the use of these elements places Tolkien in the tradition of English antiquarianism.
Other scholars have discussed why Tolkien spent so much effort on these antiquarian-style elements. Some of the materials suggest that Tolkien was just the editor of real materials that had come into his hands. This applies, for example, to artworks like the found manuscript Book of Mazarbul, and to annals that seem to have been edited and annotated by different people over many years. It applies, too, to Tolkien's frame stories for his writings, including the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in the case of The Lord of the Rings, which supposedly survived as the Red Book of Westmarch. All of these elements together form an editorial frame for the book, placing the author in the role of fictional translator of the surviving ancient text, and helping to make the secondary world of Middle-earth seem real and solid.
Context
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English Roman Catholic writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He was professionally interested in the ancient Germanic languages, including Gothic and Old Norse. He specialised in Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons. He spent much of his career as a professor of medieval English at the University of Oxford. Tolkien stated that whenever he read a medieval work, he wanted to write a modern one in the same tradition.
The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954–55; it won the International Fantasy Award in 1957. The publication of the Ace Books and Ballantine paperbacks in the United States helped it to become immensely popular with a new generation in the 1960s. The book has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the twentieth century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC in the United Kingdom, The Lord of the Rings was found to be the "Nation's best-loved book." In similar 2004 polls both Germany and Australia also found The Lord of the Rings to be their favourite book. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium." The popularity of The Lord of the Rings increased further when Peter Jackson's film trilogy came out in 2001–2003.
Tolkien in the English antiquarian tradition
Christina Fawcett writes that by creating his fantasy world of Middle-earth in the way that he did, giving it a history as well as a narrative, Tolkien was following in a tradition that interwove history with literature. She notes that antiquarianism flourished in the 18th century, and that 19th century neo-medieval literature grew out of the Gothic.
Jamie Williamson identifies antiquarianism as an ancestor of modern fantasy. Tolkien was in Williamson's view following earlier authors like William Morris, who in turn was following antiquarians like James Macpherson in the use of devices like a prose style incorporating archaisms and elegy and historical appendices to create a feeling of realism. Carl Phelpstead writes that Tolkien's "prolific creation of the languages, peoples, genealogies, and history that give Middle-earth an unprecedented (and unmatched) sense of reality is calculated to prevent ... disbelief by providing the kind of inner consistency which commands Secondary Belief." Phelpstead states that Tolkien argued against Samuel Taylor Coleridge's description of fiction in his 1817 Biographia Literaria as prompting "willing suspension of disbelief", insisting that the suspension of disbelief was "involuntary" in successful fiction, and that it was "difficult and requires much labor" to achieve this in literature. Phelpstead comments that the "non-narrative aspects of world-building" have largely been overlooked by scholars of literature but are being explored in the less narrowly focused discipline of media studies.
Nick Groom, in A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, places Tolkien in the tradition of English antiquarianism, where 18th century authors like Thomas Chatterton wrote in medieval style, creating a variety of non-narrative materials much as Tolkien did. Finding a lack of suitable material, he "invented his own archaic language and calligraphy; produced his own complex medieval manuscripts, maps, sketches, and heraldry; [and] loaded his pseudo-antique writings with prefaces, footnotes, appendices, and glossaries". Björn Sundmark notes that Tolkien was following authors like Jonathan Swift in his use of maps in his fiction. Will Sherwood, writing in Journal of Tolkien Research, comments that these non-narrative elements "will all sound familiar as they are the techniques that [Tolkien] used to immerse readers into Arda [the world that includes Middle-earth]." Andrew Higgins, reviewing Groom's article, comments that Tolkien, like the antiquarians, invented legends and myths, but not simply as fantasy; he and they "felt they were recording a past that was already there".
+ Nick Groom's analysis of Tolkien's relationship to English antiquarianism Author Dates Artwork Calligraphy Heraldry Maps Manuscripts Genealogies Languages Paratexts Songs/poems Jonathan Swift 1667–1745 yes yes William Stukeley 1687–1765 yes yes yes yes Thomas Percy 1729–1811 yes yes Thomas Chatterton 1752–1770 yes yes yes yes yes yes William Blake 1757–1827 yes J. R. R. Tolkien 1892–1973 yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Catherine McIlwaine writes that Tolkien used his pipe to burn the edges of the Book of Mazarbuls pages, "pierced holes along one side to resemble the holes where the parchment would have been stitched to the binding and washed them with red paint to resemble bloodstains". Groom notes that Tolkien was not a "literary forger" like Chatterton, but that his facsimile pages of the Book of Mazarbul "enlist[ed] the aesthetics of antiquarianism" and that he "adopts the techniques of literary forgery". Sherwood adds that these forgery methods were much like Chatterton's ways of making his documents look realistic. The set of forged and invented non-narrative elements took their place alongside the frame story that Bilbo and later Hobbits had edited, transcribed and annotated the text of the ancient Red Book of Westmarch which Tolkien supposedly found and edited as The Lord of the Rings.
Among the English antiquarian authors, writes Groom, were the bishop Thomas Percy, whose 1765 Reliques of Ancient English Poetry contained songs, paratextual devices such as "prefaces, notes, appendices, [and] glossaries", and William Stukeley, who added genealogies and maps to Percy's range of techniques. The satirist Jonathan Swift enjoyed "invented languages, linguistic systems, and spelling reform", and populated Gulliver's Travels with "false maps and pseudonymous authorship", while the poet and artist William Blake filled his written works with "illuminated pages" containing his own artwork. Sherwood argues that Tolkien intentionally set about improving on antiquarian forgery, eventually creating "the codes and conventions of modern fantasy literature".
Antiquarian elements in Tolkien's writings
In antiquarian style, Tolkien created many non-narrative materials. These are both graphic, such as artwork, heraldry, and maps; and textual, such as appendices, footnotes, glossaries, and prefaces.
Graphic elements
Artwork
Tolkien's artwork was a key element of his creativity from the time when he began to write fiction. He prepared illustrations for his Middle-earth fantasy books, facsimile artefacts such as the Book of Mazarbul, more or less "picturesque" maps, and calligraphy including the iconic Black Speech inscription on the One Ring. Some of his artworks combined several of these elements to support his fiction.
Scripts
Tolkien invented several writing systems to accompany his languages, including Cirth, Sarati, and Tengwar. When his publisher invited him to suggest ideas for the dust jackets of the three volumes, he supplied a design using the Ring inscription in Tengwar for the first book. Although this proved too expensive, a simplified version using the inscription was used for all three volumes. For the title page, he drew a top margin incorporating a Cirth script that reads 'THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRANSLATED FROM THE RED BOOK', and a bottom margin in Tengwar, which continues the sentence 'of Westmarch by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien herein is set forth the history of the War of the Ring and the return of the King as seen by the Hobbits'.
Heraldry
Tolkien described heraldic devices for many of the characters and nations of Middle-earth. His descriptions were in simple English rather than in specific blazon. The emblems correspond in nature to their bearers, and their diversity contributes to the richly detailed realism of his writings, lending colour to the characters' backgrounds and personalities. Scholars note that Tolkien went through different phases in his use of heraldry; his early account of the Elvish heraldry of Gondolin in The Book of Lost Tales corresponds broadly to heraldic tradition in the choice of emblems and colours, but that later when he wrote The Lord of the Rings he was freer in his approach, and in the complex use of symbols for Aragorn's sword and banner, he clearly departs from tradition to suit his storytelling.
Maps
Tolkien made maps depicting Middle-earth to help him with plot development, to guide the reader through his often complex stories, and to contribute to the impression of depth and realistic worldbuilding in his writings. Shippey comments that the maps contribute an "air of solidity and extent both in space and time which its successors [in 20th century fantasy] so conspicuously lack". He suggests that readers take maps and the names on them as labels with "a very close one-to-one relationship with whatever they label". That in turn makes maps "extraordinarily useful to fantasy", as they constantly assure the reader that the places depicted exist and have history and cultures behind them.
Tolkien stated that he began with maps and developed his plots from them, but that he also wanted his maps to be picturesque. He painstakingly constructed his characters' intersecting movements to get each of them to the right places at the right times. He drew his maps, such as the one of Gondor and Mordor, to scale on graph paper and plotted the protagonists' tracks, annotating these with dates to ensure that the chronology fitted exactly.
Verbal elements
Chronologies
The appendices to The Lord of the Rings contain precisely worked-out chronologies of Middle-earth, supporting the narrative with background detail of many aspects of the nations and characters. Appendix A: "Annals of the Kings and Rulers" gives background to the larger world of Middle-earth, with brief overviews of the events of the first two Ages of the world, and then more detailed histories of the nations of Men in Gondor and Rohan, as well as a history of the royal Dwarvish line of Durin during the Third Age. Appendix B: "The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westlands)" is a timeline of events throughout The Lord of the Rings, and ancient events affecting the narrative; in lesser detail, it gives the stories' context in the fictional chronology of the larger mythology. Tolkien used the timeline, in conjunction with his maps of Middle-earth, to align the interlaced threads of the narrative as the different characters progress in different directions through the landscape.