the immensely complex threads of Elves, Hobbits, Men, and Dwarves into his heroic leg-
end of the last great age of Middle-earth, he achieved a valid subcreation, sharing in the nature of what for him was most divine.
243
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Critical Survey of Long Fiction
The History of Middle-Earth
Tolkien’s son Christopher undertook the massive task of editing and commenting on
the many drafts and manuscripts Tolkien left unpublished. These volumes, grouped under
the title The History of Middle-Earth, became commentary of a painstaking, scholarly kind, such as Tolkien himself would have enjoyed, no doubt, though it leaves the average reader rather befuddled. Each volume reprints, compares, and comments on original draft
material in chronological order. One interesting feature is the emergence of the Annals, running alongside the stories; another is the evolution of the Elvish languages and etymol-ogies. Tolkien’s original attempt to make this a mythology of England through the character of Aelfwine, an Anglo-Saxon who had somehow reached Middle-earth and then trans-
lated some of its material into Old English, can also be seen. The Lost Road (1937) emerges as a fragment produced as part of an agreement with C. S. Lewis for a science-fiction story on time travel that would complement a story by Lewis on space. The latter produced Out of the Silent Planet (1938), but Tolkien gave up on his, though the attempt to connect it to the Akallabeth can be seen clearly.
Christopher Tolkien also edited the childhood stories and poetry; others have dealt
with Tolkien’s drawings, illustrations, and mapmaking predilections. The production of
such works is perhaps in some danger of overshadowing the myth that gave them life.
Tolkien saw all of his writings as unfinished and imperfect. As C. S. Lewis saw too in his Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956), our myths can only ever be the first page of the Great Myth that goes on forever.
Mitzi M. Brunsdale
Updated by David Barratt
Other major works
short fiction: Tree and Leaf, 1964 (revised 1988); Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth, 1980 (Christopher Tolkien, editor).
play: The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, pb. 1953.
poetry: Songs for the Philologists, 1936 (with E. V. Gordon et al.); The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, 1962; The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle, 1967 (music by Donald Swann); Poems and Stories, 1980.
nonfiction: A Middle English Vocabulary, 1922; The Letters from J. R. R. Tolkien: Selection, 1981 (Humphrey Carpenter, editor); The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays, 1983.
translations: “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” “Pearl,” and “Sir Orfeo,” 1975; The Old English Exodus, 1981; Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode, 1982.
children’s literature: Farmer Giles of Ham, 1949; Smith of Wootton Major, 1967; The Father Christmas Letters, 1976; Roverandom, 1998.
edited texts: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 1925 (with E. V. Gordon); Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, 1962.
244
Fantasy Novelists
Tolkien, J. R. R.
miscellaneous: The Tolkien Reader, 1966; The History of Middle-Earth, 1983-1996
(Christopher Tolkien, editor; includes The Book of Lost Tales I, 1983; The Book of Lost Tales II, 1984; The Lays of Beleriand, 1985; The Shaping of Middle-Earth, 1986; The Lost Road, and Other Writings, 1987; The Return of the Shadow: The History of “The Lord of the Rings,” Part One, 1988; The Treason of Isengard: The History of “The Lord of the Rings,” Part Two, 1989; The War of the Ring: The History of “The Lord of the Rings,” Part Three, 1990; Sauron Defeated, the End of the Third Age: The History of “The Lord of the Rings,” Part Four, 1992; Morgoth’s Ring, 1993; The War of the Jewels, 1994; The Peoples of Middle-Earth, 1996).
Bibliography
Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Winchester, Mass.: Allen & Unwin, 1977.
Standard biography was written with access to Tolkien’s unpublished letters and dia-
ries; the mostly chronological narrative traces the development of the world of Middle-
earth from Tolkien’s philological work. Includes an extensive section of black-and-
white photographs, a detailed bibliography, a family genealogy, and an index.
Clark, George, and Daniel Timmons, eds. J. R. R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-Earth. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Collection of fourteen essays is devoted to Tolkien’s Middle-earth works. Includes an examination of
Tolkien’s images of evil, discussion of his use of medieval allegory, and comparisons
of his works to those of John Milton and C. S. Lewis.
works.
Curry, Patrick. Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth, and Modernity. New York:
HarperCollins, 1997. Examines the relevance of Tolkien’s mythological creation, es-
pecially in terms of its depiction of the struggle of community, nature, and spirit
against state. Includes discussion of politics, ecology, and spirituality in Tolkien’s
works.
Dickerson, Matthew T., and Jonathan Evans. Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmen-
tal Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. Focuses on Tolkien’s view of the natural world and environmental responsibility, arguing that
the lifestyles of his fictional creations anticipated many of the tenets of modern envi-
ronmentalism and agrarianism.
Drout, Michael D. C., ed. J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. New York: Routledge, 2007. Comprehensive reference volume contains five
hundred entries on a wide range of subjects, including Tolkien’s biography, characters,
influence, and critical reception. Also addressed are the topics of scholarship about the writer and adaptations of his writings to the screen and other media.
245
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Critical Survey of Long Fiction
Foster, Robert. The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth: From “The Hobbit” to “The
Silmarillion.” Rev. ed. New York: Ballantine, 1978. Alphabetical annotated compendium includes entries on each of the proper names in Tolkien’s major works, including
persons, places, and things, with page references to standard editions of the works.
This invaluable reference guide, written from a perspective within the world created by
Tolkien, also provides translations of Middle-earth tongues, chronologies as appropri-
ate, and masterful summaries of complex events.
Haber, Karen, ed. Meditations on Middle-Earth. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Collection of essays by a number of fantasy writers, including Ursula K. Le Guin, pro-
vides discussion of Tolkien’s influence. Also offers an overview of the novelist’s work
by Tolkien scholar Douglas Anderson.
Johnson, Judith A. J. R. R. Tolkien. Six Decades of Criticism. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986. Thorough and well-annotated bibliography of Tolkien scholarship
treats all phases of Tolkien’s work. Well-indexed volume is especially informative re-
garding the more obscure periodicals dealing with Tolkien’s work.
Lobdell, Jared. The Rise of Tolkienian Fantasy. Chicago: Open Court, 2005. Examines Tolkien’s fantasy fiction, discussing the writers who influenced him, the elements of
his fantasy literature, and his literary heirs, including writers Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen King, and J. K. Rowling.
Rosebury, Brian. Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon. 2d ed. New
York: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2003. Traces the development of Tolkien’s writing over several decades, devot-
ing a lengthy analysis to The Lord of the Rings. Also addresses Tolkien scholarship in general and discusses director Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the
Rings.
Shippey, T. A. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Critical review of Tolkien’s work argues that the writer is deserving of both popular
and critical acclaim. Demonstrates how, although Tolkien produced fantasy fiction, he
addressed real twentieth century issues in his works.
246
AMOS TUTUOLA
Born: Abeokuta, Nigeria; June 20, 1920
Died: Ibadan, Nigeria; June 8, 1997
Principal long fiction
The Palm-Wine Drinkard, 1952
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, 1954
Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle, 1955
The Brave African Huntress, 1958
Feather Woman of the Jungle, 1962
Ajaiyi and His Inherited Poverty, 1967
The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town, 1981
The Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts, 1983 (wr. c. 1948)
Pauper, Brawler, and Slanderer, 1987
Other literary forms
Excerpts from the novels of Amos Tutuola (tew-tew-OH-lah) have appeared in numer-
ous anthologies of African literature, but only a handful of short stories have been published. Most of these stories were, until the 1980’s, either earlier or later versions of tales included in the novels. These stories include “The Elephant Woman” (in The Chicago Review, 1956), “Ajaiyi and the Witchdoctor” ( The Atlantic Monthly, 1959), “The Duckling Brothers and Their Disobedient Sister” ( Présence africaine, 1961), “Akanke and the Jealous Pawnbroker” ( Afriscope, 1974), and “The Pupils of the Eyes” ( Confrontation: A Journal of Third World Literature, 1974). In 1984, two new stories about a character called Tort, the Shell Man, were published in a popular fantasy anthology in the United States, indicating the possibility of an entirely new audience in the 1980’s. Those stories, “The Strange Fellows Palm-Wine Tapster” and “Tort and the Dancing Market Woman,” published in Elsewhere in 1984, reprise themes found in Tutuola’s earliest writings.
Achievements
Amos Tutuola, who was unknown to both African and Western readers at the time of
the publication of The Palm-Wine Drinkard, occupies a unique place in the literary world.
While his novels have been praised by serious writers and literary critics, he is, quite literally, one of a kind. Despite a limited command of Standard English (which, coupled with
his depictions of a “backward” and “superstitious” Africa, has drawn the wrath of many
educated Africans), he produced a body of work that stands at the very beginning of the increasingly impressive body of anglophone African literature. Combining the rich folk-
loric traditions of his Yoruba people with a powerful imagination, his stories supply the Nigerian Bushman with heroes and heroines who face television-handed ghosts, half-247
Tutuola, Amos
Critical Survey of Long Fiction
bodied babies, bloodthirsty satyrs, and witch-mothers.
Few writers have achieved such serious attention while remaining as unsophisticated
in their literary style as did Tutuola. There is no question that Tutuola is, in the truest sense of the word, a “natural,” yet he is more than a literary curiosity. In a number of ways, he is a crossroads figure. He succeeded as a writer not by imitating the West but by depending on local sources (mixed with a number of influences from the West but never overwhelmed
by them). This helped create a climate in which other Africans could write about the African experience and be accepted both in their own nations and abroad. His dependence on
Yoruba folk stories, and such Yoruba-language writers as Chief Daniel O. Fagunwa, con-
tinues to draw attention to the richness and variety of African folk traditions.
The depth of Tutuola’s debt to those folk stories and the writings of Fagunwa has yet to be fully explored. Extensive passages in several of Tutuola’s books appear to be in large part translated or paraphrased from Fagunwa’s The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A
Hunter’s Saga (1950), a title that in itself suggests both Tutuola’s second published novel, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and his first-written novel, The Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts. It cannot be said, however, that Tutuola was merely plagiarizing. In a sense, he continued—on paper—the time-honored storytellers’ practice of drawing on existing and
remembered material to make the old tales new again. Moreover, Tutuola’s stories are
possessed of a human warmth that makes them more than simply entertaining embellish-
ments of the folk heritage. Despite hardships—which sometimes make the sufferings of
Job appear insignificant—his men and women persevere and eventually triumph against
all odds. Like all great cultural heroes, they stand up to a potentially destructive universe and struggle to preserve themselves and their people. Their mythic successes are rather
like Tutuola’s own achievement—wildly unexpected and strangely gratifying.
Biography
There was little in Amos Tutuola’s early life to indicate that he would be a world-fa-
mous author. Born in 1920, in Abeokuta, Nigeria, in the township of Iporo-Ake, he ea-
gerly listened to the folktales told to him in the evenings by his mother and his aunt. At the age of ten, he was enrolled in the nearby Salvation Army school, where he first began to study English. English is the official language of Nigeria (whose people speak many different African languages), but Tutuola’s first language was Yoruba. Furthermore, the ev-
eryday English spoken by uneducated Nigerians is either pidgin or affected by West Afri-
can idiom. Like many other Nigerians, Tutuola combined the deep grammar of his native
language with English surface grammar. “I had no other work more than to drink,” for ex-
ample, the statement made by the Palm-Wine Drinkard at the start of his story, is typical Yoruba syntax.
When his family could no longer afford to send him to school, Tutuola began to work
as a houseboy for a government clerk. In return for his services, the clerk enrolled Tutuola in Ake Central School and, later, in Lagos High School. There, Tutuola became familiar
248
Fantasy Novelists
Tutuola, Amos
with the Yoruba writings of Fagunwa and simplified versions of such classics as John
Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678, 1684). Apparently he was not an outstanding student, for he decided to leave school and learn the trade of blacksmith, finding a job as a metalworker for the Royal Air Force at Oshodi. When this job ended, the only work
Tutuola could find was as a junior messenger for the labor department in Lagos in 1946.
Much of his time was spent sitting in the offices, waiting for messages to carry. To combat his boredom, he began scribbling down stories on scraps of paper. Around 1948, he sent
his first completed manuscript, The Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts, to a photography publisher in London, the Focal Press. The book, he explained to them in a letter, was written to accompany a collection of photographs of ghosts. Those photographs, he said,
would follow shortly. The photographs turned out to be of drawings of ghosts, and Focal
Press dumped both text and “ghost photos” into their files. There they remained for more than thirty years.
Although Tutuola may have been discouraged by that early failure (which he did not
mention to anyone for decades), he continued to write. Upon seeing an advertisement for
books from the United Society for Christian Literature in a newspaper, h
e decided to send to that organization a manuscript, the first draft of which had been written in lead pencil over the course of several days. After three months of enlarging the story, he made a copy of it in ink and sent it off. The society did not publish books but, making one of those small decisions that have unexpectedly large effects, it sent the manuscript to the publishing house Faber and Faber. Slightly more than one year later, in 1952, it was published as The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Three months after its publication, Faber and Faber received a second Tutuola manuscript. After a small amount of editing by Geoffrey Parrinder, it was
published as My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. It is clear now that it drew freely on Tutuola’s memories of his first, “lost” manuscript.
Enchanted by his fresh West African idiom, critics praised the book and went so far as
to urge other African writers to follow Tutuola’s example—a difficult task; indeed,
Tutuola himself found it hard to do. He continued for a time to work as a messenger (who was visited now and then by distinguished white scholars, to the disapproving surprise of his employers) but was now concerned about his own shortcomings. He acknowledged
that his English was imperfect, so he attended night school to improve it. His renown
brought him a great deal of attention, but he remained a shy, retiring person. A job working as a storekeeper for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation was given to him in 1956, and in 1957, he arranged to be transferred to the Ibadan offices of the corporation so that he could work with Professor Collis at the University of Ibadan in producing a play version of The Palm-Wine Drinkard. This version was translated into Yoruba and successfully staged throughout West Africa in the early 1960’s.
Married in 1947 and the father of several children, Tutuola was never comfortable
playing the part of a celebrity. He had little to say to interviewers and did not like to go on lecture tours or even have much to do with other writers (though he was a self-effacing
249
Tutuola, Amos
Critical Survey of Long Fiction
charter member of the Mbari Club, a seminal writers’ and publishers’ group in Nigeria).