# Talk:Tolkien's prose style

Burton Raffel’s 1968 article in “Tolkien and the Critics” is referred to several times in this article. Since I reread Raffel’s article today I have quite a clear picture of the article and its argument. It is thus NOT true that Raffel “attacks” Tolkien’s style. In fact, his discussion — mostly positive to Tolkien — is calm and nuanced, making use of extensive quotations from LotR, and arguing clearly and objectively for the points he makes. Neither is it true, as the article claims, that Raffel argues “that Tolkien wrote so simply, without the sorts of effect to be expected in a novel.” (In fact, it is hard to understand what this sentence means.) Raffel instead argues convincingly that Tolkien’s story is “a magnificent performance, full of charm, excitement, and affection, but it is not — at least as I am here using the term — literature.” (p. 218) As a result, the impression this Wikipedia article gives of Raffel’s article is  misleading and suggests that the writer of the Wikipedia article has either  misunderstood Raffel’s article or not read it at all. I am not acquainted with much of the other literature the article discusses, but when the Wikipedia article claims that Catharine R. Stimpson “supported her argument by _inventing_ what she asserted were Tolkienistic sentences” (my emphasis), this gives me a bad feeling about the whole article. 84.212.81.79 (talk) 19:55, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

On Raffel, we certainly agree that he wrote that LoTR was "not literature"; but I'm not sure that contributes anything useful to the discussion, so I've removed the sentence. On Stimpson, the next paragraph describes Rosebury's point-by-point rebuttal of her claims, which are not editorial inventions. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:17, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Does any other author on Wikipedia have such a detailed discussion of his/her prose style? It seems excessive.
It also seems to me that there is quite a bit of “original research” in this article. 84.212.81.79 (talk) 20:07, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

On your first question, what "other stuff exists" has no relevance here; each article must cover its own topic, as researched by scholars, critics, or writers of other sorts. That leads neatly to the answer to your second question, to which the answer is no, everything here is a summary of what the cited sources say. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:02, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi all. I'm not usually an editor, but I read this article and was quite surprised by the lack of references to Tolkien's deep understanding of OE. Particularly in reference to the quote beginning with "Hador", which is stylistically consistent with the introductions of lords and leaders in the surviving body of OE literature. 
Discussions of Tolkien's manipulation of syntax should also reflect this OE understanding OE has a characteristically more free word order than Modern English. Tolkien's freer word order is also stylistically consistent with of OE. 
Additionally, his alliterative style is consistent with the common style of OE poetry. Treebeard's lament of the entwives comes to mind as an example of Tolkien's prose influenced by both the alliterative and stress patterns of OE poetry.
I will research to source these ideas, but the lack of OE in this article as it currently stands is glaring given his well-documented relationship with that language. Does anyone else share this opinion or can more readily source these connections to OE? Thanks! Cmwinter (talk) 20:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Many thanks for your thoughts. This article focuses on style, and the scholars who've written specifically about style have looked at the effect rather than Tolkien's influences, in the main. That article of course gives quite a lot of space to Old English, especially to Beowulf and Middle-earth, "the bit Tolkien knew best", but mentioning the influence of several other important sources. A fair amount of the Poetry in The Lord of the Rings is alliterative, some of it very carefully in Old English metre, style, and subject matter: but an article on prose probably shouldn't say much on poetry, really. More broadly, Tolkien and the medieval looks at the many interlocking uses of Old English and other contemporary materials that Tolkien wove into his Middle-earth writings. I certainly wouldn't want to try to put all of it into this intentionally rather specialised article. On the 'Hador' sentence, it sounds a little archaic in style but not necessarily Old English to me: but we can't reason like that ourselves, we need to go with what the scholars have written. Thinking about why you may have asked about Old English, it seems to me on re-reading the article that you have have read the Shakespeare section and asked where's the OE section... but actually, I'm not convinced that we should even mention Shakespeare here, as Drout was straying into influence, not style as such, just there: so I've removed it: it's discussed elsewhere (not least Shakespeare's influence on Tolkien, which is the place for it, not this article). All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:26, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
@Cmwinter:, I agree that more could be said about Anglo-Saxon; not as an influence, but as a vocabulary choice made by Tolkien, and hence part of his prose style. I was aware as a young teenager that the "Flammifer" of Westernesse stood out to me as Latinate within Tolkien's normal vocabulary (I also thought the 'louver' in Meduseld was strange, probably thinking of the Louvre - more fool me, as louver 'probably' has a Germanic root, says the SOED). I have yet to find a solid treatment of this - Walker brushes past it when discussing Tolkien's archaisms (pp153-4). Possibly the Digital Tolkien Project will turn up some hard numbers. -- Verbarson  talkedits 14:09, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
I'll have a think about it and come back on the main question. Walker indeed elides a lot of years when talking about archaisms; I'll note that "Old English" (aka Anglo-Saxon) is not the same as old/archaic English, which could mean Chaucer's language, or Shakespeare's, or almost anything else. Tolkien got the "louvre" from William Morris's "luffer"; it's via French, whether or no there's anything Germanic aback of it. It's discussed at Rohan, Middle-earth#Capital. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:20, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
OK, it seems to me that we need to increase the article's coverage of "old" diction. It currently has a section "Ancient clashing with modern" which explains Tolkien's use of archaic style for characters such as Elrond and Glóin, contrasting with modern style for the hobbits and Saruman. I'll extend this to speak of Old English style – older than "archaic" – for the Rohirrim, and I'll mention their use, too, of a few actual Old English ("Anglo-Saxon") words into the bargain. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:08, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Done. I've extended "Ancient clashing with modern" and added a new section "Incorporating the archaic, even Old English". Hope you guys all like it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:01, 13 November 2023 (UTC)