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Tolkien's monsters
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Tolkien's monsters
Tolkien's monsters are the evil beings, such as Orcs, Trolls, and giant spiders, who oppose and sometimes fight the protagonists in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Tolkien was an expert on Old English, especially Beowulf, and several of his monsters share aspects of the Beowulf monsters; his Trolls have been likened to Grendel, the Orcs' name harks back to the poem's orcneas, and the dragon Smaug has multiple attributes of the Beowulf dragon. The European medieval tradition of monsters makes them either humanoid but distorted, or like wild beasts, but very large and malevolent; Tolkien follows both traditions, with monsters like Orcs of the first kind and Wargs of the second. Some scholars add Tolkien's immensely powerful Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron to the list, as monstrous enemies in spirit as well as in body. Scholars have noted that the monsters' evil nature reflects Tolkien's Roman Catholicism, a religion which has a clear conception of good and evil.
The word "monster" has as its origin the Latin monstrum, "a marvel, prodigy, portent", in turn from Latin monstrare, "to show". Monsters in medieval Europe were often humanoid, but could also resemble wild beasts, but of enormous size; J. R. R. Tolkien followed both paths in creating his own monsters.
Some of Tolkien's monsters may derive from his detailed knowledge of the Old English epic poem Beowulf; Gollum has some attributes of Grendel, while the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit shares several features with the Beowulf dragon. The poem, too, speaks of Orcs, with the Old English compound orcneas, meaning "demon-corpses". In his famous 1936 lecture, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", Tolkien described the poem's monsters as central to its structure, changing the course of Beowulf scholarship. Commentators have noted that Tolkien clearly preferred the epic's monsters to the critics.
In the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Jonathan Evans initially identifies two categories of monster in Tolkien's legendarium. The first includes Trolls, Orcs, and Balrogs, which are humanoid, but distorted in various ways; the second consists of malevolent beasts which resemble those of the natural world, but are much larger, such as the wolflike Wargs, the giant evil spiders – Ungoliant and her brood including Shelob – and the tentacled Watcher in the Water. The featherless winged steeds of the Nazgûl are monstrous in the second way, gigantic but evidently based on nature, and "apt to evil". Tolkien never names them, though he describes them as "fell beasts", and describes them in a letter as "pterodactylic".
Evans notes that Tolkien's dragons, "an especially important monstrous type", do not fit either of these categories, and he treats those "extraordinarily large, reptilian creatures ... preternaturally evil monsters" separately. Dragons are mentioned only in passing in The Lord of the Rings, but dragons that can speak but which are certainly not humanoid are important characters in both The Silmarillion and The Hobbit.
Tolkien was not consistent in his allocation of monsters to these categories. In The Hobbit, the hill-trolls are initially comic; they are carnivorous but not particularly malevolent, have vulgar table manners, and speak, with Cockney accents. However, when the Wizard Gandalf outwits them, the scholar Christina Fawcett writes, these Trolls are seen as "monstrous, a warning against vice, captured forever in stone for their greed and anger". The critic Gregory Hartley adds that the Trolls in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings are "more bestial" and much less like the trolls of Norse mythology; Fawcett compares them to the monster Grendel in Beowulf. Tolkien's description runs: "Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known... Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dûr."
Other scholars sometimes add the Legendarium's powerful opponents to the list of monsters; Joe Abbott, writing in Mythlore, describes the Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron as monsters, intelligent and powerful but wholly gone over to evil. Abbott notes that in The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkien distinguished between ordinary monsters in the body, and monsters also in spirit:
The distinction [is] between a devilish ogre, and a devil revealing himself in ogre-form—between a monster, devouring the body and bringing temporal death, that is inhabited by a cursed spirit, and a spirit of evil aiming ultimately at the soul and bringing eternal death"
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Tolkien's monsters
Tolkien's monsters are the evil beings, such as Orcs, Trolls, and giant spiders, who oppose and sometimes fight the protagonists in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Tolkien was an expert on Old English, especially Beowulf, and several of his monsters share aspects of the Beowulf monsters; his Trolls have been likened to Grendel, the Orcs' name harks back to the poem's orcneas, and the dragon Smaug has multiple attributes of the Beowulf dragon. The European medieval tradition of monsters makes them either humanoid but distorted, or like wild beasts, but very large and malevolent; Tolkien follows both traditions, with monsters like Orcs of the first kind and Wargs of the second. Some scholars add Tolkien's immensely powerful Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron to the list, as monstrous enemies in spirit as well as in body. Scholars have noted that the monsters' evil nature reflects Tolkien's Roman Catholicism, a religion which has a clear conception of good and evil.
The word "monster" has as its origin the Latin monstrum, "a marvel, prodigy, portent", in turn from Latin monstrare, "to show". Monsters in medieval Europe were often humanoid, but could also resemble wild beasts, but of enormous size; J. R. R. Tolkien followed both paths in creating his own monsters.
Some of Tolkien's monsters may derive from his detailed knowledge of the Old English epic poem Beowulf; Gollum has some attributes of Grendel, while the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit shares several features with the Beowulf dragon. The poem, too, speaks of Orcs, with the Old English compound orcneas, meaning "demon-corpses". In his famous 1936 lecture, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", Tolkien described the poem's monsters as central to its structure, changing the course of Beowulf scholarship. Commentators have noted that Tolkien clearly preferred the epic's monsters to the critics.
In the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Jonathan Evans initially identifies two categories of monster in Tolkien's legendarium. The first includes Trolls, Orcs, and Balrogs, which are humanoid, but distorted in various ways; the second consists of malevolent beasts which resemble those of the natural world, but are much larger, such as the wolflike Wargs, the giant evil spiders – Ungoliant and her brood including Shelob – and the tentacled Watcher in the Water. The featherless winged steeds of the Nazgûl are monstrous in the second way, gigantic but evidently based on nature, and "apt to evil". Tolkien never names them, though he describes them as "fell beasts", and describes them in a letter as "pterodactylic".
Evans notes that Tolkien's dragons, "an especially important monstrous type", do not fit either of these categories, and he treats those "extraordinarily large, reptilian creatures ... preternaturally evil monsters" separately. Dragons are mentioned only in passing in The Lord of the Rings, but dragons that can speak but which are certainly not humanoid are important characters in both The Silmarillion and The Hobbit.
Tolkien was not consistent in his allocation of monsters to these categories. In The Hobbit, the hill-trolls are initially comic; they are carnivorous but not particularly malevolent, have vulgar table manners, and speak, with Cockney accents. However, when the Wizard Gandalf outwits them, the scholar Christina Fawcett writes, these Trolls are seen as "monstrous, a warning against vice, captured forever in stone for their greed and anger". The critic Gregory Hartley adds that the Trolls in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings are "more bestial" and much less like the trolls of Norse mythology; Fawcett compares them to the monster Grendel in Beowulf. Tolkien's description runs: "Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known... Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dûr."
Other scholars sometimes add the Legendarium's powerful opponents to the list of monsters; Joe Abbott, writing in Mythlore, describes the Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron as monsters, intelligent and powerful but wholly gone over to evil. Abbott notes that in The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkien distinguished between ordinary monsters in the body, and monsters also in spirit:
The distinction [is] between a devilish ogre, and a devil revealing himself in ogre-form—between a monster, devouring the body and bringing temporal death, that is inhabited by a cursed spirit, and a spirit of evil aiming ultimately at the soul and bringing eternal death"