Tolkien and the Literary Canon: Case for Canonical Status

The Idea of a Literary Canon

Is J.R.R. Tolkien a canonical writer? This depends, of course, on how we define canonical status — or indeed who we acknowledge as our arbiter of canonicity. It is worth noting at the outset the whiff of sanctimony in the very idea of a "canon." The term is originally derived from religion: as Christianity underwent a centuries-long process of defining its own orthodoxy, extant Christian writings were arranged into a canon by religious authorities, separating the essential sacred texts from the inessential. It was these same religious authorities who, in the process of debating which works to include and which to exclude, chose to include the four canonical Gospels found in any copy of the New Testament, while excluding the non-canonical or "apocryphal" Gospel of Thomas — let alone the Gospel of Judas, which was not even translated into English until 2006. By analogy, the literary canon-making process suggested itself to secular authorities — literary critics inside and outside the academy — who were interested in drawing up lists of non-sacred texts that might be regarded as essential.

I think the case of Tolkien can provide an interesting glimpse into the canon-making enterprise and how it proceeds. My contention is that Tolkien clearly is a canonical writer — or should be — but the question of how his status has become established among arbiters of literary taste is interesting in its own right. I hope to address those critics who denigrate Tolkien's status as well as make a positive case for Tolkien as a canonical writer.

To some degree any literary canon is always, at best, an interim affair. New works are being written all the time, and it is possible that a new canonical work might be produced at any moment. None but the most hidebound conservative would believe the canon itself to be closed to new entries — although, as we shall note later, Tolkien himself was just such a hidebound conservative. The important thing is to establish what the criteria for entry into the canon actually are.

Harold Bloom and the Western Canon

As an example of a recent and influential canon-making enterprise that wrongly excludes Tolkien, consider the work of Harold Bloom. Bloom's 1994 critical study The Western Canon ends with a list of essential literary works which, in his opinion, will withstand the test of time. Bloom acknowledges that the idea of a canon is, in itself, an academic invention from the start: "originally the Canon meant the choice of books in our teaching institutions… and the Canon's true question remains: What shall the individual who desires to read attempt to read, this late in history?" (Bloom, 15). At the outset he claims that originality is the criterion for inclusion: "one mark of an originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is a strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies" (Bloom, 4).

But by the end of Bloom's study, when he comes to drawing up his list of canonical works, he has shifted his terminology. His stated criterion for judging canonicity becomes an aesthetic one: "since the literary canon is at issue here, I include only those religious, philosophical, historical, and scientific writings that are themselves of great aesthetic interest" (Bloom, 531). Bloom then proceeds to list just over 1,500 literary works, ranging from the cuneiform tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh all the way to Tony Kushner's Angels in America — which was still entertaining audiences on Broadway when Bloom's hefty tome hit the bookshops. The example of Kushner proves that contemporaneity alone is not reason enough to exclude a work; for Bloom, there must apparently be sufficient aesthetic merit in Kushner's writing to warrant inclusion. And yet Bloom's list fails to include J.R.R. Tolkien among twentieth-century British authors. Tolkien's omission is not one that Bloom deigns to clarify, so we can only assume he considers Tolkien's work to lack "great aesthetic interest."

By way of comparison, we may note that Bloom's list also excludes Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe from its roster of nineteenth-century American authors. Here is a work that was not merely an enormous bestseller in its own day but was also of serious historical and social importance — no less an authority than Abraham Lincoln gave Stowe's novel credit for helping to prompt the American Civil War. If Bloom is excluding Stowe from his canon, it can only be on aesthetic grounds. Yet it is difficult to see how Bloom derives his aesthetic criteria, or can justify them as anything other than hopelessly subjective, if a work of the imagination that is undeniably important, and that moves a significantly large number of readers, can somehow be excluded for lacking aesthetic distinction.

Bloom's criteria are ultimately so whimsical and elastic as to be meaningless. I am inclined to agree with Peter Morris, who writes in an essay included in The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom that Bloom's idea of a canon is — despite the inclusion of over 1,500 works — in itself "small and protective, designed to keep things out" (Morris, 473). And if aesthetics is really all it comes down to, why should we trust the aesthetic sense of Harold Bloom over the aesthetic sense of the vast and devoted readership that Tolkien has inspired — let alone Tolkien himself? Bloom's approach to excluding Tolkien from the canon may be safely disregarded.