Critic A.N. Wilson considers the way J.R.R. Tolkien's writings are suffused with a profound sense of memory.
That there was an old world that has now passed away, a heroic world, snatches of which we hear only in half-comprehended song, is an ever-present awareness in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. He is the only modern writer of what might be termed fantasy-literature who conveys this sense – which we find in Virgil and is also present in the Beowulf poet — of a heroic past that is slipping out of memory.[H]e made it his pastime to learn the older languages of northern Europe — Irish, Welsh, Norse, Old English, Gothic. The fragmentary nature of these language survivals, especially Gothic, is itself something that, if meditated on intelligently, could only produce a Tolkienian world perspective. You feel all the time that something has been lost — it has been lost partly through the passage of time, partly through human malice and wickedness. Language and poetry alone keep its half-memory echoing.
It's one of the key characteristics (and far more than a mere technique) of Tolkien's thought and works, yielding for the reader a deep feeling of authenticity and history, as opposed to mere fantasy.
Posted by Alan at February 10, 2007 11:01 AM