Beowulf

I'm not a Tolkien scholar, so this post will reflect my limitations in that regard. I read LOTR once, as a teenager, to find out what all the hoopla was about. Once was enough. It's not a bad novel. It has a travelogue quality that appeals to a boyish sense of adventure, common to many men–myself included. It has a few memorable scenes and characters. But in general it's overrated. He's not a great storyteller like Homer (esp. The Odyssey)–much less the incomparable Dante. It lacks the primitive appeal and elemental simplicity of the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the past I have suggested that it reflects the medieval chivalric tradition. I found the movies enjoyable. Not the highest art, but they work at the level of the material. 

One of the interpretive issues regarding LOTR is the relationship between the story and Tolkien's Catholicism. If it has a Catholic Christian subtext, that's very muted. Not only are the characters not Christian, but they don't seem to be very pious. There's no worship or prayer, that I recall, either individually or institutionally. 

Tolkien wrote a seminary essay on Beowulf:

https://epistleofdude.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/beowulf-the-monsters-and-the-critics/

And one question is whether LOTR was partly moldeled on Beowulf. There's an interesting tension between the worldview of the narrator and the worldview of the characters. The basic story is Viking legend. The product of a warrior culture with pagan values. The Protagonist is something of a demigod, doing battle with monsters. 

The outlook of the protagonist is essentially heathen. Similar to the honor-code of Homeric heroes. Mortality is inevitable, so what matters is to die a glorious death.

However, the narrator is a medieval Christian. So he's retelling the legend from the retrospective standpoint of a medieval Christian. The generates an interesting tension between the pagan, polytheistic viewpoint of the main character and the providential, monotheistic viewpoint of the narrator. The narrator attributes the hidden hand of providence to certain outcomes. There's nothing overtly Christian about the setting, plot, dialogue, or characters. Christian insight is supplied by the editorial asides of the narrator.

This is nicely explicated in a two-part lecture by Scott Masson: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bnuM-WkM50

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTEeBt16orA

So Beowulf reflects a transitional period from Norse paganism to Norse Christianity. Both forward-looking and backward looking. 

There may be an residual element of that same unresolved tension in LOTR, between the Catholic viewpoint of the narrator (Tolkien) and the pre-Christian (?) viewpoint of the characters. 

Of course, Middle Earth has a different history than our world, so there's a sense in which it couldn't be Christian in any direct respect. The Christian faith is the product of a particular world history. That can't be transferred or duplicated as is to a planet with a different world history. At best, Tolkien could create a variation on Christianity. Something analogous to Christianity, but with a different backstory. 

It is striking, though, that Tolkien feels no duty to integrate LOTR into Catholicism. Perhaps that reflects a lay/clerical dichotomy, where he thinks it's the role of the clergy rather than laity to promote the Catholic faith–whereas the Anglican Lewis felt no such inhibition. Cf. A. Jacobs, The Narnian (HarperOne 2006), 199.

It may also go to the stereotypical difference between a cradle Catholic and an adult convert. Lewis had the evangelistic and apologetic zeal of a convert. The need to justify his conversion as well as the enthusiasm to share his discovery with the lost. What they are now, he used to be. He reaches back to bring others into the light. 

I find Beowulf of some personal, autobiographical interest due to my own Viking ancestry (on my father's side). Of course, the Christianity of the medieval narrator is far removed from my Protestant theology. I'm stand at the end of that trajectory.