Fimi, Dimitra. Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits.

Miller, Jennifer L.

Fimi, Dimitra. Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 252 pp. Paperback. ISBN 978-0230-27284-2. $28.95.

In the introduction to her work Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, Dimitra Fimi includes a quotation from J. R. R. Tolkien about whether he approved of the research done on his work by doctoral and master's students. Tolkien said, "I do not while I am alive anyhow. I do not know why they should research without any reference to me; after all, I hold the key" (interview with Harry Resnick; qtd. in Fimi 7). This idea of a key is central to Fimi's book, as not only does she argue that Tolkien's biography is the key to understanding his work, but she also argues that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings serve as the keys to understanding the various transformations and paradigm shifts seen in Tolkien's work over the course of his lifetime. Tolkien, Race and Cultural History provides ample support for both these arguments, demonstrating Fimi's attention to the smallest detail in Tolkien's vast body of work as well as her broad knowledge of the cultural context in which he was writing.

Fimi makes her argument by focusing on three main aspects of Tolkien's Work--his vision of fairies, and then later, Elves; his hobby of language invention; and finally, the evolution of his work from mythology to history and the way his depictions of various races and material cultures reflect this shift. After the introduction, Fimi dedicates a section of Tolkien, Race and Cultural History to each of these topics, providing a helpful introduction at the beginning of each cluster of chapters that neatly summarizes the issues at stake and concisely connects these topics to her overall understanding of Tolkien's work. In part 1, she outlines how Tolkien began writing about fairies in the Edwardian era, and, as a result, his initial fairies take on many of the qualities of Victorian fairies--joyful, carefree, diminutive, and spritely. Over time, however, as he began to work on his "mythology for England" (as Humphrey Carpenter called it in J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography), Tolkien's fairies took on gravitas, physical stature, and immortality as they became a spiritually significant part of his mythology. This section feels repetitive at times and gives the occasional impression that Fimi is trying to make a bigger argument than actually exists, such as her suggestion at the beginning of chapter 3 that in "a post-Tolkienian era it is difficult to grasp the fact that the terms 'elf' and 'fairy' would have been used to signify more or less similar kinds of creatures at the turn of the century" (28). For the most part, though, the focus on the specific image of Tolkien's fairies, and then Elves, provides an engaging opening section to Fimi's work.

Tolkien, Race and Cultural History becomes even stronger near the end of part 1 as Fimi starts to make more explicit connections between the depiction of Tolkien's fairies and his overall vision for his project. Her observation that Tolkien's work differed from Lonnrot's work with the Kalevala in Finland because Tolkien was "'inventing' a mythology nearly from scratch" (55), rather than collecting folk poetry as Lonnrot did, is particularly intriguing, and it would have been interesting if she had more explicitly pursued the implications of such a difference. In part 2 of the book, Fimi examines the relationship between Tolkien's invented languages and his fiction, calling into question Tolkien's claim that he wrote his mythology to provide a way to bring his languages to life. As Fimi demonstrates in this section, although Tolkien used his mythology to justify his "mad hobby" of inventing languages, the relationship between his fiction and his language invention was more complicated, with each "continuously affecting and reinvigorating the other" (75). Both this discussion of the intertwining of Tolkien's languages and his mythology, as well as part 1's discussion of how his mythology shaped his portrayal of the Elves, set the stage for a compelling argument about the evolution of Tolkien's work.

It is in the third section of Tolkien, Race and Cultural History that Fimi makes her largest and most complicated claims and, consequently, that her overall argument becomes clearest. In this section, she argues that Tolkien shifted from writing mythology to writing pseudo-history, and that the closer his work came to fiction, the more he focused on the material culture of Middle-earth's inhabitants, particularly Men. While the Elves were envisioned in a much more mythological way with few artifacts associated with them, Tolkien describes the physical surroundings and rituals of the residents of Gondor and the Rohirrim in much greater detail. Fimi concludes this chapter, and the body of the work, with a discussion of how the material culture of the hobbits reflects the material culture of Tolkien's own childhood. In doing so, she not only effectively follows through on the promise of the subtitle of her book--"From Fairies to Hobbits"--but she also presents a compelling picture of how many of the complexities and seeming (or actual) contradictions in Tolkien's legendarium are a result of the shifts in mode and genre necessitated by The Lord of the Rings.

There are many strong points of Tolkien, Race and Cultural History, but perhaps the most impressive is Fimi's ability to balance close attention to the details of Tolkien's text with more general explanations of relevant cultural issues. In chapter 7, for example, she moves seamlessly from an overview of the myth of universal language to a list of words from Tolkien's Qenya Lexicon that suggest a Christian influence on Tolkien's own invented language. Such moves are successful, rather than disjointed, because Fimi includes concrete details from Tolkien's biography that link the general to the specific-in this case, the fact that Tolkien himself learned the invented language Esperanto as a teenager bridges the gap between theories of universal language and Tolkien's own creations, while also providing an intriguing biographical detail. Fimi's comments in chapter 4 about a connection between Tolkien's involvement in the moral reforms of the "Tea Club"/"Barrovian Society" (TCBS) and the possible "purifying role of the fairies" in Tolkien's mythology are a rare instance where she relies on speculation to connect culture with the particulars of Tolkien's work (41); overall, such claims are firmly grounded in biographical fact. Because of this balance between the general and the particular, Tolkien, Race and Cultural History is appealing to both devoted Tolkien fans and scholars, as well as those who are interested more generally in Tolkien's cultural milieu.

Fimi's tight control over the scope of her work enables her to include both depth and breadth in her study, but this limitation of her study to Tolkien's own historical perspective is at times frustrating as well, particularly in her discussion of race in the third section of the book. She is certainly correct in noting at the end of this section that "accusing Tolkien of racism would de-contextualise his writings from their historical period" (157), but there are many possibilities for addressing race other than accusations of racism. A discussion of the implications of some of Tolkien's portrayals of race would have been a welcome addition to this section, especially given its position as the final and most significant section of the book. This would have been particularly helpful regarding Tolkien's portrayal of the dwarves--a portrayal that he himself noted as one that drew from Jewish language and culture. Given Fimi's discussion of the importance of World War II in shaping Tolkien's own reactions to terms such as "Nordic" and "Aryan," her lack of any examination of the influence of Jewish culture on the portrayal of the dwarves is a notable absence. Her rather off-handed comments in the appendix about Tolkien's place in the fantasy genre (or as she calls it, "the genre of science fiction" [201]) being fully realized in the next few decades also seem to demonstrate an uncharacteristic unfamiliarity with the larger context of scholarship on sf and fantasy literatures.

On the whole, however, such absences primarily point to the possibilities for future scholarship on Tolkien's work, rather than detract from Fimi's book. Overall, Tolkien, Race and Cultural History is an excellent addition to Tolkien scholarship, providing details about Tolkien's biography and legendarium, as well as background about his historical context, in a prose style that is engaging and easily accessible to both Tolkien scholars and a more general readership.