On Fairy-Stories

Philology as a discipline is built on the preservation and interpretation of ancient texts to understand how language and ideas develop over time. The Renaissance is often cited as a philological event: scholars re-discovered Greek and Roman writings which led to a resurgence in art and science. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, philologists used ancient writings to trace language trees and attempt to reconstruct lost literature and lost languages. Tolkien, as a philologist, focused on Old English, Middle English, and Celtic. Much of the academic methods and foundational theories of philology were born out of German folklore scholarship. In particular, German folklorists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm used philological methods to collect and analyze their volumes of German folklore, known now as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Philology’s ties to Germany and German national pride led to a vehement opposition to the discipline in the Anglophone world during and after World War I. In 1914, 52 British writers, poets, academics, and critics came together to declare their immediate rejection of German philology as a show of national solidarity. Tolkien was not among their number; he rejected the idea that philology was a “purely German invention” (Tolkien, J. R. R., “Philology: General Works.” The Year's Work in English Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 1926, pp. 26–65). He makes only one explicit reference to this context in “On Fairy-stories” when he claims, “Philology has been dethroned from the high place it once had in this court of inquiry” (121). His apparent caution on this subject can be seen as diplomatic. The lecture was delivered in March 1939: Germany had remilitarized and annexed neighboring countries and war seemed increasingly inevitable. Indeed, Britain would declare war on Germany within six months. Although Tolkien takes a subtle approach in his explicit argument, by employing distinctly philological methods in crafting his essay, Tolkien is implicitly campaigning for their continued use, despite their connections to Germany. His approach demonstrates the concept that historical and factual academic endeavor should be separate from contemporaneous political currents. 

In 1939, folklore and mythology were considered by scholars as if they lay on an axis: folklore consisted of stories meant to describe the natural world and everyday occurrences, while mythology connected the natural world to cosmic or spiritual meaning. History existed as the study of factual reality. It was traditionally based on “canonical” historical writings as well as on archaeology, but could be informed by both folklore and mythology, as cultural expressions of past societies. Academics of the time analyzed recurring tropes, characters and themes across these literary traditions, in an attempt to identify historical elements. These attempts were complicated by the fact that folklore and mythology were—by definition—predominantly based in the non-textual, oral past of non-literate populations and, therefore, drawing parallels could involve a good deal of conjecture.