Ritual Participation, and a Lent Reading of Lord of the Rings

An interesting point brought up in an Amon Sul podcast (episode #24), in relation to myth and story:  in our modern world, people often focus on “how can I relate to this person?” and similar questions.  As for example, which character in Tolkien’s world am I most like, or which one do I want to be like?  Modern people often ask, how do I relate to such people who are not ordinary, who do not have “ordinary” lives such as mine?  So it is in our modern, very psychologized world.  This can be seen as a symptom of modernism with its stress on individualism and lack of community.  A key part of community life, in contrast with our age, is that of ritual participation: the repeated, common experiences of a group of people, such as in observances in the calendar each year.  Such was the experience in pre-modern societies, whether pagan or in the early and then medieval Church.

In our age, science fiction and fantasy fiction lend themselves to a type of ritual participation: dressing up in costume, going to Star Trek or other sci-fi or fantasy conventions, for instance.  I remember my early days attending such events every year.  Lord of the Rings is another entry into ritual participation:  Doxamoots and related convention gathering events, but also the simple pleasure of the repeated experience found in re-reading through Lord of the Rings every year or at set times of the year.

On this note, I have even come across a reading schedule for Lord of the Rings.  It’s like a yearly Bible reading schedule, but for all the days of Lent (about 2 months) – and with specific chapters for assigned reading each day.  The schedule is even adjusted each year, with the 2023 reading schedule available here.  Various blogs have followed the Lent schedule, with posts related to the reading in the Lent schedule, such as this post from a few years ago, and also this post from 2015.  There’s even a Lenten Lord of the Rings podcast that provides daily updates, brief “devotional” thoughts on each day’s reading.

It’s certainly an aggressive schedule, one that I’m not sure if I’d be able to complete every day, but I think I’ll give it a try.  I may include audio book reading, with the audio book version (unabridged) I have (read by Rob Inglis).  Of course, Lent season is still four months away, and I completed this year’s reading of Lord of the Rings a month or so ago, to start on The Silmarillion now.

What are some other ideas and reading schedules for Lord of the Rings reading, or for reading of Tolkien’s other works?

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The Books That Eustace Had Not Read (Chronicles of Narnia)

In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis makes quite a point in describing Eustace, that he had read all the wrong books.  From the first page of the story we learn that Eustace liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.  Then, after Eustace ran off by himself and then ran into the dragon’s cave, this special note:  Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon’s lair, but as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books.  They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.

A similar plot scenario comes up in the sequel, The Silver Chair, though implied rather than directly stated.  Since that adventure only happened within 2-3 months of Eustace’s return from Narnia, and he still lived with his parents and still had to attend that progressive school, it could not be reasonably expected that Eustace would have had the time to acquire and read enough of the right books to prepare him for his second visit to Narnia.  Jill, likewise, by the fact of attending the Experiment House, no doubt had parents similar to Harold and Alberta, who had not allowed her to read the right type of books.  Thus we find that both Eustace and Jill think it would be a great idea to visit the “gentle giants” and apparently had no clue of the possible danger of being eaten by giants.

All of this raises an interesting point: what books should Eustace have been reading, to have been prepared for entering a dragon’s lair?  Voyage of the Dawn Treader was published in 1952 (and The Silver Chair a year later), but the England side of the story is set during World War II, the summer and fall of 1942.  On an Amon Sul podcast that I listened to recently  (episode #022), the guest Richard Rohlin mentioned Eustace not having read about dragons.  He then said that a few people he knew had looked at this question and concluded that the only book of that type that was around, that the children in Lewis’ day could have been reading that would have told them about dragons, was The Hobbit.  Thus, Rohlin saw this mention in Lewis’ book as a coded reference to his friend Tolkien’s writing; and then to follow the chain, Tolkien himself of course, in The Hobbit, had allusions to Beowulf.  (In this previous post I mentioned one interesting allusion to Beowulf, from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.)

That is an interesting idea, and could be true to a point.  Certainly elsewhere C.S. Lewis included references to Tolkien’s works, and much more direct ones.  The main character in his Space Trilogy, Ransom, after all, was a philologist.  And C.S. Lewis mentioned “Numinor” in his Space Trilogy — a reference which Tolkien said (in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) came from the audible sound of the word as Lewis had heard Tolkien’s writings, when Tolkien would read aloud to the Inklings — and thus a misspelled version of Numenor.  But in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis mentions Eustace reading “the wrong books” and that is “books” (plural), which would indicate that Lewis knew of many other books that Eustace could (and should) have been reading.

Certainly the general books of pagan mythology have been around, though school children in mid-20th century England may not have been reading those.  A look at Goodreads and its lists of popular children’s fantasy books, by decade, gives us additional possibilities from the 1930s list.    Yes, The Hobbit is on that list, along with familiar titles including Mary Poppins, and a King Arthur collection, T.H. White’s Sword in the Stone; this Arthurian legends book includes one reference to dragons, the legend of “St. George and the Dragon.”  Earlier that decade, though, another book was published, The Book of Dragons: Tales and Legends from Many Lands.  Since this book was an anthology of existing tales, it may not have become as popular over the years, but no doubt it served its purpose for that generation of children: retelling the existing dragon lore, to the next generation of English-speaking children.

So, while it’s nice to think that C.S. Lewis intended a reference to The Hobbit in his description of Eustace not reading the “right” books, it seems that in this case C.S. Lewis was thinking in more general category terms.  Certainly The Hobbit would be included, as a book published just 5 years before Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace had their adventure.  But a school boy in that era would have had at least a few other choices of books, so that he could have learned something about dragons.  Sadly, though, Eustace’s parents had kept such books away from him, and also thoroughly brainwashed the kid so that he did not even have the desire to read them.

Readers, are there any other fantasy books that you are familiar with, published in the 20th century, to add to the list of books that Eustace should have been reading?  Any further comments about the books that Eustace and Jill ought to have read?

 

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