I recently finished a re-read of The Lord of the Rings, which inspired me to revisit Humphrey Carpenter's authorized biography of JRRT. I'm still in the early/pre-Oxford period of Tolkien's life, covering his days at King Edward's School in Birmingham, and encountered this particular scene:
There was a custom at King Edward's of holding a debate entirely in Latin, but that was almost too easy for Tolkien, and in one debate when taking the role of Greek Ambassador to the Senate he spoke entirely in Greek. On another occasion he astonished his schoolfellows when, in the character of a barbarian envoy, he broke into fluent Gothic; and on a third occasion he spoke in Anglo-Saxon.
It makes one wonder again whether Tolkien did in fact enjoy Robert E. Howard's Conan. I like to think he would have, and did.
4 comments:
I don't know if you read Steve Thompkins The Shortest Distance Between Towers: http://www.robert-e-howard.org/VGNNws02.html
but he makes a case that Tolkien's work and Howard's are not all that different.
So I could see Tolkien enjoying Howard.
Hi Matthew, I'm very familiar with that excellent essay (and have the slightly expanded version, in print, from The Cimmerian Journal). I agree with Steve--different authors but some surprising matters of convergence.
Sorry Brian, but I strongly doubt Tolkien read Howard's stories, and even more strongly doubt he would have liked them if he had.
https://dmrbooks.com/test-blog/2019/3/13/was-tolkien-a-robert-e-howard-fan
Come on Dave, you're raining on my mead-hall!
I suspect you may be right (thanks for linking to the essay, BTW--nice job). Tolkien read very little contemporary fantasy, and mostly considered anything written after The Canterbury Tales as modern and not worth his time. But there were some exceptions--I know he read William Morris and even some H. Rider Haggard, and both made their way into his work.
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