The Cultural Phenomenon

Abstract

Tolkien knew that his work would have an afterlife that he could not control. Indeed, as we saw in the last chapter, he believed that an author should not aspire to such ‘purposed domination’. It may seem strange that this belief did not prevent him from criticising severely various misreadings and distorted adaptations of his works. But there is no inconsistency in Tolkien’s position. He hoped that people who had read and understood his work would freely apply it to their own experiences: he was not waiving the expectation that they would read it with understanding in the first place. Similarly, his youthful ambition that his cycle of stories would ‘leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama’ did not envisage a free-for-all in which the distinctive ‘tone and quality’ of the original invention would be wholly lost.¹ Much of what has happened has disappointed — or is simply irrelevant to — Tolkien’s hopes, but if we look for cultural phenomena which are both of value in themselves and intrinsically and necessarily related to Tolkien’s invention, we will not by any means draw a complete blank.