Reading TOLKIEN'S LOST CHAUCER by John M. Bowers

So, having finally read enough of Chaucer now that I thought myself able to read John Bower's Tolkien's Lost Chaucer with justice, I did so .... and really liked it. Perhaps the most common critique I've seen in the reviews is that many of the correspondences he draws between Chaucer as source and Tolkien as author are rather weak. These occur mostly in the book's latter half -- the first half is more straight literary history about what went down with Tolkien and that book. At the same time, the Chaucer linkages that Bowers make between Tolkien and the Reeves's Tale and (especially) the Pardoner's Tale are particularly solid -- I thought the last bit about the Pardoner quite strong as well. Maybe the most fascinating part for me, personally, though was Bowers's claims that Tolkien suffered an "anxiety of influence" from 19th-century medievalist Walter Skeat ... something I don't think I've ever read before, but which perfect sense for an ambitious academic like Tolkien.

Interestingly, the reviews from medievalist journals took a much more "professional medievalist" attitude to Tolkien himself, often finding him wanting, although still ultimately appreciative of what Bowers has accomplished. A few notes:
  • This one's a bit hard, but generally true: "Tolkien’s notes show him constantly withdrawing into his comfort zone of philological explication" (Medium Aevum).
  • Although Bowers points out that Tolkien noticed that Chaucer took some influences from his contemporary alliterative poets, the following remark also rings true: "As Chaucer criticism, Tolkien’s comments contain few if any novel insights. .... The most prominent Chaucer books of Tolkien’s day may have been Kittredge’s 1915 Chaucer and His Poetry, Brusendorff’s 1925 The Chaucer Tradition, and Manly’s 1926 Some New Light on Chaucer. All proved critically influential for decades to come, and none seems to figure in Tolkien’s efforts. Even his philology, set against the context of linguistics in the 1920s, displays an orientation from an earlier era, apparently unaffected by the structural or sociolinguistics landmarks of the day, such as Saussure’s Cours (1916) or Sapir’s Language (1921)" (Studies in the Age of Chaucer)."

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