Intended for both newcomers who are curious about video games and experienced gamers who want to reflect on their passion, this course will explore what happens to stories, paintings, and films when they become the basis of massively multiplayer online games. The Lord of the Rings trilogy—the novels, films, and video game—are our central example of how “remediation” transforms familiar stories as they move across media. The course is designed as a university-level English literature class—a multi-genre, multimedia tour of how literature, film, and games engage in the basic human activity of storytelling. Our journey will enable us to learn something about narrative theory, introduce us to some key topics in media studies and cover some of the history and theory of video games. It will also take us to some landmarks of romance literature, the neverending story that lies behind most fantasy games: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, a bit of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and poems by Keats, Tennyson, Browning, and others. Drawing on centuries of romance narrative conventions, the twenty-first century gaming industry has become a creative and economic powerhouse. It engages the talents of some of our brightest writers, artists, composers, computer engineers, game theorists, video producers, and marketing professionals, and in 2012, it generated an estimated $64 billion in revenue. Anyone interested in today’s culture needs to be conversant with the ways this new medium is altering our understanding of stories. Join me as we set out on an intellectual adventure, the quest to discover the cultural heritage of online games.
Tolkien on Allegory
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From the course by Vanderbilt University
Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative
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From the lesson
Romance and Realism
This week we journey into the Mines of Moria, comparing a scene in Tolkien's novel, Peter Jackson's film, and "The Lord of the Rings Online." Then it's back to romance literature to delve into the intricacies of allegory, plot, theme, and character. The week closes with a look at John Keats' haunting ballad, "La Belle Dame sans Merci." ***For details about this week's Readings, go to the Syllabus page in your Resources tab.
Meet the Instructors
Jay ClaytonProfessor
English
[MUSIC]
>> Tolkien clearly-
>> [LAUGH].
shares Coleridge's disdain for allegory.
As you know, Tolkien hated it when people
read meanings into his work that he didn't intend.
He objected to that in his letters.
And and forward to the second edition of The
Lord of the Rings that that he published in 1966.
That's when he published the second edition.
He made several comments disparaging
allegorical readings, readings of his novels.
Here's the most explicit one.
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done
so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.
I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its
varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.
I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in
the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
[LAUGH] He, he always make allegory sound like Sauron
out to dominate the reader with, his dark meanings so.
>> One reading to rule them all.
>> Yeah, one meaning, that is so right [LAUGH].
Thank you, thank you Chelsea for that comment, "One meaning to rule them all."
Exactly, that's what, that's what Tolkien is suggesting in,
in his subtext in that, in that attack on allegory.
So why do you think he disliked Heligrace so much?
>> It's curious that, I mean, I'm just thinking about
the structure of the novel itself, specifically Fellowship of the Ring.
You got all these references to what's history for the, for the characters.
Which seems perfectly in line with Tolkien's preference for
the historical value of things rather than the allegorical value.
>> So, what Blaine, what do you think he
means between about distinguishing applicability from allegory?
>> My sense is that, he really wants that freedom for the reader to
find their own meaning in it and that an allegorical reading is too narrow.
And what's interesting about that to me is
by having it open then it actually, there's even
more this, this text could have even more
of an impact on the reader because they can.
Connects it to their lives in any way that they find you know, meaningful.
>> Right.
That's a really great answer.
Don is this odd phrase here, cause really, true or feigned history.
What's the distinction there meant?
>> Well I think most basically it means
the distinction between history as constructed by someone.
Like Tolkien.
An imaginative inventor of histories and languages and then
literal history as we understand it and know it.
>> Right.
The word famed of course is picking up its rather literary allusion, in that he.
Hopes some of his readers will get.
Sir Francis Bacon's, famous comment defining poetry as, but a form of history.
But he calls it feigned history as opposed to true history.
And he's, Bacon is saying that poetry can be narrative.
And can tell a historical story that's something, it's generally
a feigned story, like Tolkien's story of, of Middle Earth.
Elsewhere in the forward, not in this quote, but before it and a little bit
after it, he makes a big point of saying that he composed lots of this.
Trilogy before the build up to World War Two.
And that he was much scarred by his experiences,
of all of his friends but one being killed in World War I.
What, what's the significance of his claiming that.
That he wrote it well before anyone was thinking about World War II.
I think going back to even Coleridge's remarks about allegory this, this
resistance to reducing the text to a set of events that are outside of it.
>> But why would.
Claiming I wrote it well before anyone was thinking about World War II.
Be a way to say it's not an allegory of World War II.
I'm really driving at a rather simple point about the composition of the work.
>> But it's tied to the author's biographical experiences.
>> Yeah.
And he's saying I didn't mean it that way.
But in a way, I think that Tolkien is falling into the intentional fallacy.
He says, I didn't mean World War II, I was thinking of World War I.
>> Yeah.
I think that one of the big sort
of problems when you come to interpreting literature is
to get away from the idea of a
right answer rather than a bunch of perfectly compatible.
Interpretations of the same text and, you know,
it, it's interesting that Tolkien is so stuck
against this one particular interpretation at the same
time he's encouraging us to find our own.
>> Yes.
Great.
But any time you begin to interpret Tolkien, it, it becomes hard to resist.
Allegorical readings.
That's just very tough not to read things in there.
Even when I was a boy reading these novels for the first time, I found myself
thinking about they symbolism of good versus evil,
and I really did think about World War II.
And I didn't have a lot of knowledge about when the novels were written, but
it just secretly hard for me not to to interpret
this world wide struggle [LAUGH] between the forces of darkness
and the allies of the elves and the dwarves and the hobbits and the wizards.
As is, as having some kind of allegorical relationship with titanic forces out in
the world, and the one I knew about as a, as a kid was the
World War II, fascism versus the allies.
Chelsea?
>> Well, I think what that speaks to is, is less the
assumption that we must, that, that Tolkien is being dishonest with us or
with himself, and more that this story has all these themes that
are highly applicable to these things,
whether or not that's his actual intention.
>> Yeah, so, that, that's a good way to frame it.
Which chimes right in with Tolkien own preference for the term applicability.
So, would you find that reading it that way, that
the allegorical meaning would restrict your freedom as a reader?
>> Yes >> Tell me more.
We'll when you were talking about your own
experiences of reading this as a young person.
I thought of mine.
And I think that when I first read the books, I was most drawn to the kind of
intensely, elaborate, fictional world or Cosmos that Tolkien created.
I use to have I remember I had a, a book called the Tolkien Bestiary and I
would, this, this was the part of the,
the universe that I was most interested in, right?
And so I think for me the moment that
we start saying, well this kind of corresponds to this,
I begin to lose some of that so for me and for my memory I really don't want that.
[LAUGH] >> Chelsea?
Well, I have to say that, that's, that that's certainly
one way in which, in which it's possible to sort
of take that, but then, I mean, also, what I'm
thinking about is like when the Harry Potter movies came out.
And some people didn't want to watch them, because
they were like, no I have this idea in
my head and in time you start like showing
the images that's going to take away from that.
And I wonder to what extent it's possible
for us to keep sort of not to compartmentalize,
but to keep like separate ideas of what, multiple
interpretations rather than just collapsing in on any one.
>> Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I was thinking about that in terms of allegory applicability, again where you
can, you, i, it's normal to say, oh, that has so much applicability, right?
But you wouldn't really say, that has so much allegory.
Like, it just doesn't-
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
Because, and, and it's not that I think that allegory is
necessarily, so limiting, for everyone, cause if you kind of come upon
this idea and you have a theory about the text
it can be really exciting to sort of search out that meaning.
But it is perhaps more exhaustible, if you sort of, once you figure it out.
Which character maps to which historical figure, maybe it's a little
bit less, it's a little bit less open to those multiple interpretations.
>> And then it becomes a treasure hunt,
you know, going through the text and trying to
map things on to an event, and, that
certainly, that can be fun in this sort of
treasure hunt-y sort of way.
[LAUGH] But it also it reduces the text I, I think.
Speaking to what Killian was saying.
>> I, I, I can tell that I have a
group of students that are living in the 21st century.
[LAUGH] And have thoroughly, thoroughly have internalized these anti-allegorical
assumptions that Tolkien, shares, so I hear what you're saying.
let's, let me ask about sort of more local allegories.
Blaine, in the novel, there's clearly a rivalry between the dwarves and the elves,
and they seem to have prejudice against one another as a peoples, would you be.
Would you read that allegorically?
>> Definitely.
I think you know, different types of people in combat and differences between
man has, been, you know, throughout our history and has always been a theme-
>> Mm-hm.
>> In literature and our lives.
>> Mm-hm.
So do you think that it's some texts referring to, sort of racial
strive, Or, or, just fear of outsiders in a phobia?
Features like that.
>> Well, the fact that, like in the game, they're different races.
I didn't it, when I was reading it, take it to see racial strife.
But just, kind of, Others, you know.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Just a little bit of being weary of others.
I didn't take it to the extent of racial strife, but that was just my reading.
>> Well you know, in the movies as we'll
see, the, the Orcs and, particularly the Uraki are
very dark skinned and fierce looking.
Now this is the dark lord and it's the dark
tower, so dark has a meaning very specific to middle Earth.
But some people have, have wanted to see that in racial terms.
Well I certainly think it's, it's curious that, I mean, as Blaine
is pointing out, that we have several races that are coexisting with each other.
>> Yes.
>> More or less amicably.
There's a little tension when you get to dwarves
and elves, but like, more or less they're interacting.
But then there's another group of several
species again, where they're all seeming to interact-
>> Right.
>> with each other, but yet these two groups can't interact.
Which I think is.
Is very interesting.
It, it's kind of, it kind of resists
a mapping of, you know, there's one race that
he's singling out which I think is in line
with his not wanting to be mapped onto things.
>> Yes.
The whole subplot of Gimli and Legolas growing to trust one another.
Seems to have applicability to, feelings of
distrust that are so common among different peoples.
And that Tolkien seems to be saying that if you get to know someone.
[LAUGH] You get to actually learn about their values and their character.
You can gain respect for them, and overcome this
kind of, a fear of outsiders, and that's, yes, Chelsea.
>> And yet at the same time Tolkien is definitely
participating in the like evil by birth by race thing.
>> Yes.
>> In a way that is distasteful.
>> We spent a lot of time talking about, Possible allegorical
reason readings that have to do with World War II and with
prejudice against other peoples and no one's brought up the possibly
Christian framework that the, that the poem seems to evoke.
Tolkien himself
wrote in a letter that the Lord of the Rings
is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work unconsciously so, at first.
But consciously in the revision.
Do you find motifs in the novel that are religious in nature?
Yes, absolutely, when, when Frodo finds out that
he has the responsibility for the ring, and sort
of says, but, I'm not sure that I can do it, I'm but a hobbit, right?
There's this sort of humility of
Christ in human form and sort of, resonace.
>> You're comment made me thing about, like the ring, the idea of
the kind of burden, that all the characters do, seem to occupy kind of
postlapsarian state, where no one is totally immune
to the like possibly deleterious influence of the ring.
But what's important is what you're going to do under that influence.
>> Yes, and we will talk about scenes of temptation in another session.
But, let me end today's session by saying that
whatever you think of the complex meanings of Tolkien's novel.
Whether you think of them in terms of applicability to your
own life and experiences as Tolkien prefers us, or whether you use
the more established term allegory, it's clear that the novel,
the film and the game all give us wide freedom to relate our readings.
to Tolkien's original version.
[MUSIC].
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