Lembas is tastier than you think


So, I have a teacherly friend who's doing a composition course focused on food, and one of her students picked Tolkien's lembas. Since they have to do brief e-mail interviews, Laura asked me if I'd be up for it, and of course it was. It was a fun exercise, who I decided to post the questions as well as my responses.

(1) Which theory [lembas as communion bread or military hardtack)] do you believe is more accurate, and what is your personal belief on this subject? Does it make a difference that one is a military food and the other religious?
  • You're spot-on about the two most common interpretations of the lembas. My answer about the accuracy of one interp over the other will be extremely unhelpful: my answer is "both and neither." The question is something of a false binary. On one hand, lembas are their own thing. Plotwise, it's a convenient way of explaining how Frodo and Sam feed themselves in Mordor. On the other hand, why can't lembas be both military hardtack and communion bread? Tolkien was a devout Catholic and a veteran, and he surely understood the parallels. In my view, in terms of criticism, I'd suggest that a writer be aware of the options ("both and neither") but maybe emphasize the interpretation that works best with their argument.

(2) What does the elves giving of the lembas bread signify about the relationship between the fellowship between the elves, dwarfs, hobbits, and humans?
  • Interesting question here. I suppose you could say that the lembas "sanctifies" the Fellowship. Galadriel has a clear parallel to the Mother Mary, and that whole episode is also the last truly peaceful interlude in LotR. Of course, that sanctifying really doesn't do much -- the Fellowship, which now lacks Gandalf, breaks up relatively quickly. It might suggest that the diversity of the Fellowship is authorially sanctioned even though, ultimately, the long-term viability of a group such as the Fellowship remains in doubt.

(3) Do you have any other theories regarding the significance of lembas bread?
  • Sadly, no. Food is one of those major literary topics that, alas, I've never been much interested in.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Genre Fantasy Bestsellers through 1990

Image
I've been studying Keith Justice's Bestseller Index , which compiles information from two separate bestseller lists -- New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly -- up through 1990, and the results are ridiculously fascinating. For instance, you wanna take a stab at which SFF author has the most individual books appear on a bestseller list? No, it ain't Heinlein, Clark, Herbert, or Asimov. It's not even Terry Brooks or David Eddings. No, the answer is Piers Anthony . And even if you somehow pulled that name out of thin air, I guarantee you'll never guess how truly dominate Anthony was. Up through 1990, Anthony had more than double than number of distinct bestsellers than the next most frequent bestseller, Anne McCaffrey. Whereas Anthony had an astounding  22 different books appear on a bestseller list, McCaffrey had "only" 9.** Now, caveats. These numbers need to be taken with one (or two) grains of salt. For instance, although Anthony had 22 two dis
Read more

Thoughts upon Reading Tolkien's New & Expanded LETTERS

So, I'm reading through the newly expanded version of Tolkien's Letters. One thing I hadn't properly realized is that these letters were part of Carpenter's original manuscript back in 1981, but Carpenter had to cut them due to cost. Turns out that Carpenter had a pretty keen eye on what could bear cutting -- most of this new stuff isn't terribly interesting, but I discovered a few nuggets. VINDICATED!! (Me, sorta) Naturally, whenever you read new primary material, your first instinct is to check to see if anything contradicts something you've said in print ... especially biographically. Well, I've made three big "biographical" claims, and here's my sigh of relief: Concerning my claim that, in 1954, Tolkien and colleagues contrived to create CS Lewis's academic chair at Cambridge in exchange for them nominating EM Forster for the Nobel Prize. Nothing in  Letters  supports or contradicts this. In my recent article for  Notes & Queries ,
Read more

Uncovering CS Lewis's First Religious Poem

 So, with my article's official acceptance by the journal English Text Construction , it's time to let the cat out of the bag. Using a combination of metrical analysis and biography, I've ascertained with near perfect certainty the first religious poem C. S. Lewis poem ever wrote .... a short poem, "Sweet Desire," that scholars have never previously paid any attention to. This poem is firmly datable to early 1930, probably January or February is my guess, and given the poem's subject matter, it's clearly talking about CSL's fears and intellectual trepidation about becoming a theist and abandoning atheism for good. It's basically Lewis's version of Caedmon's Hymn . The full metrical details will have to await my article, but one interesting caveat on my claims to firstness. In my peer reviewer's commentary, they recommended I contact a CSL scholar named  Charlie W. Starr, who's been working on Lewis's handwriting for quite a lon
Read more