The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman

by Burke, Jessica

  Gaiman recognizes the importance of interacting with an original tale, discovering something unique to reveal (in his case, through writing about it), and then creating a new artwork based on the reinterpretation of myth, folklore, or more recent authors’ classics. This creative process is analyzed in the following chapters, allowing us to learn more about the writer as well as what has been written.

  The older I become, the more clearly I can see the interconnections among my diverse interests and analyses of a wide range of texts. Not surprisingly, Gaiman is way ahead of me in this exploration of the connections between literature and modern experience, philosophy and action, and authors and characters. His works are, as Anthony S. Burdge suggests in “So Long and Thanks for All the Dents!”, a portal through which we explore other realities and thus make sense of our own.

  The “magic and dreams and good madness” of Neil Gaiman’s many works are reflected in the following 15 chapters. Like Gaiman, these essayists force us to reconsider familiar works from a different perspective and to interact with what we read. Although I have long been a fan of Beowulf, Sherlock Holmes, and Doctor Who, for example, Gaiman and these essayists make me rethink my interpretation of beloved stories. Perhaps that is Gaiman’s, and this book’s, greatest strength. These chapters, like Gaiman’s work, should surprise and inspire us.

  The essayists analyze three types of connections: those between Gaiman and other authors, those between Gaiman and myth or folklore, and those among Gaiman’s works. They reflect on Gaiman’s most famous as well as least discussed stories and cover traditional prose as well as comics, television franchises, and film.

  Gaiman’s Link to Other Authors Chelsey Kendig (“The Problem with Bod”) explains how Gaiman’s childhood fondness for C. S. Lewis’ Narnia books eventually led to his “fix” of sorts to Lewis’ expulsion of Susan Pevensie from Narnia (or heaven). Gaiman’s “The Problem of Susan” is a precursor to The Graveyard Book, in which, as Kendig shows us, original character Bod can be compared with Lewis’ Susan.

  Although Gaiman may not be as clearly a fan of George MacDonald’s stories as he is of Tolkien’s or Lewis’, Melody Green (“Ravens, Librarians, and Beautiful Ladies”) illustrates connections between Gaiman’s character of Death in The Graveyard Book and Death of the Endless in The Sandman series with the North Wind in At the Beck of the North Wind, written by “father of the fantasy genre” MacDonald. Green analyzes where mythology involving ravens and librarians might possibly fit into the ways MacDonald and Gaiman “create new spaces in which old ideas can be challenged and explored.”

  Gaiman not only interacts with authors of the past but with his contemporaries, such as Douglas Adams. As Burdge notes in his aforementioned chapter, the two influenced each other, personally and professionally, but, more significantly, they are catalysts to inspire the writers who follow them. If we, as Burdge wonders, may be living in one of the parallel universes these authors described, then we are indeed fortunate that ours has intersected with both Gaiman’s and Adams’.

  Gaiman, Myths, and Folklore The early chapters of this book often explore Gaiman-as-fan, but the author is an expert on ancient myths as well as twentieth-century stories. Harley J. Sims shows Gaiman “Consorting with the Gods” and creating a “pan-pantheon.” A later chapter, Camillo A. Formigatti’s “The Eternal Carnival of the Myth,” indicates ways that Gaiman challenges our ideas about immortal gods and the way they really might interact with modern humans.

  Folklore is another part of Gaiman’s literary repertoire. Leslie Drury looks at Gaiman as “The Teller of Tales and the Fairy Tale Tradition.” Fables likewise are crucial underpinnings to Gaiman’s works, and Samuel Brooker discusses the “Doubles, Duality and Mirrors” in the author’s fiction.

  Powerful female characters, whether from myth or folklore, include goddesses and witches, and Gaiman makes both the traditionally idealized as well as the more frequently feared seem normal. Tony Keen notes that “The Best Things Come in Threes”—such as the Triple Goddess (e.g., three as one, or three separate beings) found in Gaiman’s writings. In “Women’s Magic: Witches and the Work of Neil Gaiman,” Jessica Burke analyzes the ways that the author writes about witches without stigmatizing them as evil.

  Connections Among Gaiman’s Works Although several essayists stick with Gaiman’s print stories, Matt Hills (“Whatever Happened to the Time Lord?”) celebrates the value of Gaiman’s contributions to the Babylon 5, Batman, and Doctor Who franchises. Although Gaiman’s scripts often allow him to play in the universes of other creators, these stories may have been considered less significant than those involving Gaiman’s original characters. Hill refutes this notion, asserts that “mythology and fandom are insistently interconnected in Gaiman’s work as a producer-fan,” and explains why the stories created by Gaiman-the-fan are important to franchises’ ongoing myth making and the evolution of fandom.

  Gaiman’s stories often skew linear time and, as Hills illustrates in a discussion of Doctor Who, beginnings and endings are often presented in reversed order. Four essayists—Kristine Larsen (“Through a Telescope Backwards”), Tanya Carinae Pell Jones (“’It Starts with Doors’”), Lynn Gelfand, and Colin B. Harvey—discuss the beginnings and endings of worlds, atypical storytelling sequences, and eternal themes, as presented by Gaiman.

  When delving into these essayists’ analyses of Gaiman’s stories and characters, we are bound to gain a deeper understanding of a single work and its place within popular culture, as well as a greater appreciation of the awe-inspiring breadth of Gaiman’s subject matter. Even long-time fans may, as did I, discover a previously unread or unseen gem and go off to find it. This book provides a fitting tribute to Gaiman’s collection of multimedia stories. It illustrates how deeply Gaiman is embedded in our cultural consciousness and just why he receives all those awards.

  Because Gaiman understands the nature and purpose of myth and modern story, he can re-interpret or create characters and worlds so that they are at once fresh and familiar. He forces us to admit our links to each other and the mythic past while challenging us to make new connections with ideas and to defy societal expectations. He asks us to think, to dream, and to do, even if we make mistakes. As the many Gaiman stories analyzed in this book attest, our entertainment and intellectual lives are never the same once we read or hear his words, and if we follow his example, we too can bring magic to our madness.

  ____________________

  1 Gaiman, Neil. “My New Year Wish.” 31 Dec. 2011. Web. 8 Jan. 2012.

  20 Abbreviations

  TITLE ABBREVIATION CONVENTIONS American Gods—Gods

  Anansi Boys—Anansi

  Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?—Batman

  Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy— Don’t Panic

  Death: The High Cost of Living—High Cost

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders—Fragile

  Good Omens—Omens

  The Graveyard Book—Graveyard

  Mr. Punch: The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy—Mr. Punch Odd and the Frost Giants—Odd

  The Sandman (series as a whole)—Sandman

  The Sandman I: Preludes and Nocturnes—Preludes

  The Sandman II: The Doll’s House—Doll’s House

  The Sandman III: Dream Country—Country

  The Sandman IV: Season of Mists—Mists

  The Sandman V: A Game of You—Game

  The Sandman VI: Fables and Reflections—Fables

  The Sandman VII: Brief Lives—Brief Lives

  The Sandman VIII: World’s End—World’s End

  The Sandman IX: The Kindly Ones—Kindly Ones

  The Sandman X: The Wake—Wake

  The Sandman: The Dream Hunters—Hunters

  Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions—Mirrors

  The Authors and the Critics: Gaiman, Tolkien, and Beowulf

  Jason Fisher “Legend
is always false and always true. History invents facts; but legend can only invent or transpose details […].”1 For many, the lure of Beowulf is irresistible. In spite of occasional complaints by students at being made to labor through the epic poem (the same complaints that have been made against Homer, Virgil, Dante, and so on), there is no denying that readers have found Beowulf compelling for centuries. It is a work that has survived the trials of time and taste—the only surviving copy was almost lost in a fire in 17312—and it continues to captivate and transport readers today. In many ways, Beowulf can be seen as a progenitor of modern fantasy literature. Not only does Beowulf itself feature swords and sorcery, monsters and heroes, kings and villains, but the poem has had a profound influence on some of the giants of twentiethcentury fantasy literature. It is not uncommon for readers to discover Beowulf through their favorite fantasy author, or to discover new fantasy authors through Beowulf. This certainly reflects my own experience.

  In this essay, I propose to consider two of the twentieth century’s best-loved authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and Neil Gaiman, and their respective responses to and borrowings from the oldest surviving English poem. Seventy-five years ago—almost to the very day as I write these words— J.R.R. Tolkien described Beowulf as

  not a ‘primitive’ poem; it is a late one, using the materials (then still plentiful) preserved from a day already changing and passing, a time that has now for ever vanished, swallowed in oblivion; using them for a new purpose, with a wider sweep of imagination, if with a less bitter and concentrated force.3

  Another way of putting this is to say that Beowulf is both old and new. It is a work perennially renewed and recontextualized. It is perennially fresh because of ongoing reinterpretation in the light of our evolving culture, and yet it stands as a perpetual reminder of where we came from. It moors us to our past while yet pointing to new and distant shores. Beowulf feels almost inaccessibly remote; yet somehow it remains fresh, exciting, and vibrantly human. To this last point, it is in their striking contrast with the monsters and other supernatural elements in the poem that its kings and thanes seem the most like us. We can relate to their fears and aspire to their courage. The poem has earned a primacy in the Western canon that simply refuses to diminish.

  Tolkien’s Beowulf It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Beowulf to Tolkien and of Tolkien to Beowulf. It is scarcely exaggerating to suppose that without either one, we might not have had the other; at least, not as we know them. Of course, Tolkien the man would have lived and breathed without Beowulf, but he might never have become the academic and fantasy writer remembered today. Likewise, Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon text, would have existed without Tolkien, but it might never have come to be appreciated as a work of art, indeed one of the greatest works of art ever made in English.

  From our perspective today, with Tolkien’s impact on Beowulf studies taken for granted, this is a difficult possibility to grasp. Isn’t it inevitable, we might ask, that Beowulf would have come to be recognized for the work of art that it is? But this did not look inevitable at all before the first half of the twentieth century. Poetic works of the type and period as Beowulf, perhaps even particularly typified by Beowulf, were once regarded as “a raving or rambling sort of wit or invention, loose and flowing, with little art or confinement to any certain measures or rules,” which “served […] to charm the ignorant and barbarous vulgar;” but “the true flame of poetry was rare among them, and the rest were but wild-fire that sparked and crackled a while, and soon went out with little pleasure,” no more than “a sort of jingle that pleased the ruder ears.”4

  This was the view about a century before Tolkien encountered Beowulf. But surely the latter part of the nineteenth century brought new appreciation for the poem? Well, yes and no. As difficult as it might be for those with a post-Tolkienian perspective to believe it, this impression was not much improved by the time Tolkien was preparing to enter the fray. The emergence of comparative philology over the course of the nineteenth century had brought a new appreciation for Beowulf, but this appreciation was mainly limited to deconstructing the poem for what it could reveal about the Old English language. It was not much more than an extended glossary to further the aims of comparative philologists. It is almost singlehandedly thanks to Tolkien that the tide in Beowulf studies turned. How did this happen, and why?

  Tolkien first encountered Beowulf while in secondary school at King Edward’s in Birmingham. Under the tutelage of George Brewerton, an anglophile if ever there were one,5 Tolkien’s interests broadened from Latin, Greek, French, and German to Welsh, Old English, Old Norse, Middle English. He began to read anonymous medieval romances, Chaucer—and Beowulf, which he found, even as a teenager, “to be one of the most extraordinary poems of all time.”6 He studied the poem even more closely as an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, and then he lectured on Beowulf at Leeds and Oxford. Around the same time, C.S. Lewis was embarking on his own teaching career. Lewis understood the difficulty of the material and intuited the most effective way to approach it, perhaps rather better than Tolkien,7to whom it came so naturally. Around 1928, Lewis began organizing “Beer and Beowulf ” evenings, where his undergraduates “chanted Beowulf aloud, and passed around the beer jug.”8 He had met Tolkien a couple of years before, and one must imagine that Tolkien participated in at least a few of these béorscipan.9

  Just a few years prior, Tolkien had undertaken his own translation of Beowulf. By 1926, Tolkien had completed a prose translation and had made another, incomplete translation in alliterative verse.10 By the 1930’s, with his translations and a series of lectures behind him, Tolkien had formed a cogent theory of Beowulf, a theory which suggested that the critics before him were all wrong about the poem. This theory, embodied in the lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” proposed that the poem should be regarded as art, and indeed a masterwork, rather than merely a quarry for digging up Old English words and nuggets of history. Moreover, Tolkien suggested that the monsters and other fantastical elements—the very elements most critics had been inclined to dismiss as “matter that is really not worth serious attention”11—were in fact the centerpiece of the poem and an essential part of its greatness. The lecture was published in 1936, and Beowulf criticism was forever changed. When you boil the argument down, part of what Tolkien is doing is explaining his own literary tastes and justifying fantasy literature at the same time.

  Tolkien’s own literary invention was profoundly influenced by Beowulfas well. His fiction and poetry are interlarded with allusions to and borrowing from the great Anglo-Saxon poem. There is no need to attempt an exhaustive survey here, but a few examples will help to set the stage. I’ll mention a few lesser-known works first, both to whet the reader’s appetite as well as to demonstrate the breadth of inspiration Tolkien drew from Beowulf. So, before I come to Tolkien’s novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, let me describe a poem, a painting, and a short story. All of these date from a period of rich and varied work before and just after the publication of The Hobbit.

  The poem, “Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden,” was titled and based on a single line from the Old English poem. The earliest version was probably written in 1922, but the poem was published forty years later as “The Hoard” in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil(1962). The title (and the line from Beowulf) means “gold of men of yore, wound in enchantments,” and in the poem, a hoard of enchanted gold brings about the demise first of a dwarf, then the dragon who killed him, then the young warrior who killed the dragon, now an old king. It is cursed, like the dragon’s hoard in Beowulf. The painting, dated 1927, likewise has an Old English title drawn directly from Beowulf: “Hringboga Heorte Gefysed.” It depicts a dragon, coiled and ready to strike, and it means “the coiled dragon’s heart was stirred” to come out and do battle over his hoard of gold. The short story dates to the first part of the 1940s. In “Sellic Spell” (still unpublished), Tolkien sought to retell the folkloric and mythical aspects of the Beow
ulf story, cutting out all of the historical and religious interpolations made by the Beowulf poet. It was a kind of experiment to reconstruct an earlier, purely pagan version of the tradition. Its hero was therefore called “Beewolf.”12

  And so we come to The Hobbitand The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s masterworks. Again, I could easily spend an entire essay tracking down and spotlighting allusions, borrowings, and parodies from Beowulf, but a few representative examples will have to suffice.13 In The Hobbit, the most obvious example comes toward the end of the novel, when Bilbo faces the dragon and the stolen hoard of the dwarves. As readers will recall, Bilbo the would-be burglar creeps into the mountain through a secret entrance and steals “a great two-handled cup, as heavy as he could carry.”14 Virtually the identical episode occurs in Beowulf. About a year after The Hobbit was published, a reader asked Tolkien whether his own cup-stealing scene came from Beowulf, to which Tolkien replied:

  Beowulf is among my most valued sources; though it was not consciously present to the mind in the process of writing, in which the episode of the theft arose naturally (and almost inevitably) from the circumstances. It is difficult to think of any other way of conducting the story at that point. I fancy the author of Beowulf would say much the same.15

  One cannot help but suspect that Tolkien is being a bit coy about not having Beowulf consciously in mind. But even if we take him at his word, the poem was by this time so familiar to him, it would certainly have come unconsciously to mind as he penned the scene—“almost inevitably,” as it were.

  The dragon Smaug himself owes an imaginative debt to Beowulf. In this case, there is perhaps a greater debt to the Norse Fáfnismál, but I will set that aside for now. In his lecture, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien wrote that “Beowulf ’s dragon […] is not to be blamed for being a dragon, but rather for not being dragon enough, pure plain fairy-story dragon.” Rather, his depiction “approaches draconitas rather than draco.”16 Tolkien himself decided to attempt to remedy the Beowulf poet’s failure, and as Tom Shippey has shown, Tolkien put a real, honest-togoodness dragon at center stage in his own novel, The Hobbit.17