Letter 171

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Letter 171
Recipient	Hugh Brogan, draft
Date	Unsent, September 1955
Subject(s)	Defending the use of an archaic narrative style

Letter 171 is a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Preface

In December 1954, Hugh Brogan, a teenage admirer of Tolkien's works, wrote to him to criticize the archaic style he had used in parts of The Two Towers. He described it as "Ossianic" and concurred with a critic who had called it "tushery". Tolkien did not reply. On 18 September 1955, Brogan wrote to apologize for being "impertinent, stupid, or sycophantic". Tolkien began the following draft, but instead sent a note stating that the matter of archaism would take too long to debate and must await their next meeting.

Brogan wrote again on 4 December 1955 to say that he was so worried that he had been stupid or tactless that he was experiencing "recurrent nightmares". Tolkien reassured him in Letter 179.

Summary

Tolkien says that he did not notice any impertinence in Brogan's letters, and that in any case, anyone so "appreciative and perceptive" is entitled to make criticisms. He does find it painful, however, to hear critics attack the use of archaisms, particularly in an age in which "almost all auctorial manhandling of English is permitted [...] in the name of art or 'personal expression'". He rejects the charge of "tushery", since this term properly denotes low-quality pastiches rather than "real archaic English". The latter is far terser than modern English, and it is also capable of saying things that cannot be said in the "slack and often frivolous idiom" of today. Tolkien takes as an example a passage from "The King of the Golden Hall" (a chapter that Brogan had singled out for criticism):

‘Nay, Gandalf!’ said the King. ‘You do not know your own skill in healing. It shall not be so. I myself shall go to war, to fall in the front of the battle, if it must be. Thus shall I sleep better [in my grave].’

According to Tolkien, the modern version of this passage would be:

Not at all my dear G. You don't know your own skill as a doctor. Things aren't going to be like that. I shall go to the war in person, even if I have to be one of the first casualties. I should sleep sounder in my grave like that rather than if I stayed at home.

The problem with using modern language to express Théoden's thoughts is that Théoden's thoughts are themselves archaic. Modern people do not think of the dead as "sleeping in their graves", and so putting this thought into modern English creates a "disunion of word and meaning". Théoden comes across as insincere, as though he were using a figure of speech rather than speaking literally.

Tolkien also addresses Brogan's criticism of the passage in which Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli arm themselves for battle. He points out that such a scene would never take place in modern times; thus, it would make no sense to use modern words to describe it. He asks why an author should be restricted to only one style when the "wealth of English" offers many to choose from, without any loss of intelligibility. He can see "no more reason for not using the much terser and more vivid ancient style, than for changing the obsolete weapons, helms, shields, hauberks into modern uniforms". He also defends his use of atypical word order in the sentence "Helms too they chose." It is useful, he argues, to be able to rearrange a sentence so that a particular word comes first, and if the English language has lost this feature, then someone ought to reintroduce it.

Finally, Tolkien expresses disappointment that Brogan has fallen for the "extraordinary 20th-century delusion" that modern usages are better simply because they are modern. He advises him to "shake [himself] out of this parochialism of time!" He also recommends that Brogan learn to distinguish between bogus antiques and genuine ones, "as you would if you hoped not to be cheated by a dealer!"