Je n'avais pas vu ce sujet, mais je profite du message de Didier pour rebondir et féliciter Vinyamar pour son approche de la question.
Je me permets d'apporter ma (modeste) contribution à ce débat, riche de possibilités et de promesses...
Dans le cadre de la préparation d'une thèse de 3ème cycle de sociologie politique traitant de l'Imaginaire de la Fin dans l'Oeuvre de Tolkien et de ses rapports, en termes de continuité et de rupture, avec l'eutopie/"l'eucatastrophe", j'ai mené un travail préalable sur les occurences du terme "allegory" et ses composés dans les Letters.
Ce travail a été dicté par ma lecture de l'article portant sur le genre littéraire de l'Utopie et de ses "rapports" avec l'Oeuvre de Tolkien, paru sur le site d'Hiswelokë ("Question de définition :
Chronique d'Uchronie." Article collégial compilé et complété par Didier Willis).
En effet, il m'a paru nécessaire de mener ce travail de "dépoussiérage du sens commun" car, à la suite de la préface de Marie Delcourt, traductrice de L'Utopie de Thomas More (Paris, Flammarion, 1987, 1ère éd. 1966), le rapprochement entre l'utopie et le récit allégorique (tel qu'il est fait dans l'article précité) semble peu pertinent : "[...] More n'écrit pas une fable; il ne dessine pas non plus une parabole" (pp.39-40).
Ce travail de typologisation m'a permis de recadrer les occurrences du terme "allegory" et ses composés au regard du/des contexte(s) socio-historique(s) dans le(s)quel(s) Tolkien a écrit à ce sujet. En cela, l'apport de Vinyamar est indéniable... Merci!
Comme vous pourrez en juger, ce ne sont que quelques éléments quantitatifs qui n'attendent qu'une analyse, sur laquelle je suis en train de travailler. Si vous le souhaitez, je pourrais la mettre en ligne, dès que j'en serais satisfait.
Le mot « allegory » et ses composés dans les Letters :
[citation=n°34, To Stanley Unwin (13 October 1938)]The darkness of the present days has had some effect on it. Though it is not an 'allegory'. (I have already had one letter from America asking for an authoritative exposition of the allegory of The Hobbit).[/citation]
[citation=n°60, To Christopher Tolkien (13 April 1944)]The best entertainment proved to be the chapter of Major Lewis' projected book – on a subject that does not interest me: the court of Louis XIV; but it was most wittily written (as well as learned). I did not think so well of the concluding chapter of C.S.L.'s new moral allegory or 'vision', based on the mediaeval fancy of the Refrigerium, by which the lost souls have an occasional holiday in Paradise.[/citation]
[citation=n°69 To Christopher Tolkien (14 May 1944)]I saw C.S.L. from 10.45 to 12.30 this morning: heard 2 chapters of his 'Who Goes Home?'2 – a new allegory on Heaven and Hell; and I read my 6th new chapter 'Journey to the Cross Roads' with complete approval.[/citation]
[citation=n°71, To Christopher Tolkien (25 May 1944)]Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction: your vigorous words well describe the tribe; only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides.[/citation]
[citation=n°109, To Sir Stanley Unwin (The struggle between darkness and light (sometimes one suspects leaving the story proper to become pure allegory) is macabre and intensified beyond that in "Hobbit" .... 31 July 1947)]But in spite of this, do not let Rayner suspect 'Allegory'. There is a 'moral', I suppose, in any tale worth telling. But that is not the same thing. Even the struggle between darkness and light (as he calls it, not me) is for me just a particular phase of history, one example of its pattern, perhaps, but not The Pattern; and the actors are individuals – they each, of course, contain universals, or they would not live at all, but they never represent them as such.
Of course, Allegory and Story converge, meeting somewhere in Truth. So that the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily can it be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it. But the two start out from opposite ends. You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work. You cannot write a story about an apparently simple magic ring without that bursting in, if you really take the ring seriously, and make things happen that would happen, if such a thing existed.[/citation]
[citation=n°131, To Milton Waldman (The letter (…) is not dated, but was probably written late in 1951)]But an equally basic passion of mine ab initio was for myth (not allegory!) and for fairy-story, and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world (accessible to me) for my appetite.
I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) Anyway all this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine.[/citation]
[citation=n°144, To Naomi Mitchison (25 April 1954)]There is of course a clash between 'literary' technique, and the fascination of elaborating in detail an imaginary mythical Age (mythical, not allegorical: my mind does not work allegorically). As a story, I think it is good that there should be a lot of things unexplained (especially if an explanation actually exists); and I have perhaps from this point of view erred in trying to explain too much, and give too much past history.[/citation]
[citation=n°153, To Peter Hastings (September 1954)]The particular branch of the High-Elves concerned, the Noldor or Loremasters, were always on the side of 'science and technology', as we should call it: they wanted to have the knowledge that Sauron genuinely had, and those of Eregion refused the warnings of Gilgalad and Elrond. The particular 'desire' of the Eregion Elves – an 'allegory' if you like of a love of machinery, and technical devices – is also symbolised by their special friendship with the Dwarves of Moria.
I don't think Tom needs philosophizing about, and is not improved by it. But many have found him an odd or indeed discordant ingredient. In historical fact I put him in because I had already 'invented' him independently (he first appeared in the Oxford Magazine)3 and wanted an 'adventure' on the way. But I kept him in, and as he was, because he represents certain things otherwise left out. I do not mean him to be an allegory – or I should not have given him so particular, individual, and ridiculous a name – but 'allegory' is the only mode of exhibiting certain functions: he is then an 'allegory', or an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are 'other' and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with 'doing' anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture .
To conclude: having mentioned Free Will, I might say that in my myth I have used 'subcreation' in a special way (not the same as 'subcreation' as a term in criticism of art, though I tried to show allegorically how that might come to be taken up into Creation in some plane in my 'purgatorial' story Leaf by Niggle (Dublin Review 1945)) to make visible and physical the effects of Sin or misused Free Will by men.[/citation]
[citation=n°163, To W. H. Auden (7 June 1955)]The Lord of the Rings as a story was finished so long ago now that I can take a largely impersonal view of it, and find 'interpretations' quite amusing; even those that I might make myself, which are mostly post scriptum: I had very little particular, conscious, intellectual, intention in mind at any point. Except for a few deliberately disparaging reviews – such as that of Vol. II in the New Statesman, in which you and I were both scourged with such terms as 'pubescent' and 'infantilism' – what appreciative readers have got out of the work or seen in it has seemed fair enough, even when I do not agree with it. Always excepting, of course, any 'interpretations' in the mode of simple allegory: that is, the particular and topical. In a larger sense, it is I suppose impossible to write any 'story' that is not allegorical in proportion as it 'comes to life'; since each of us is an allegory, embodying in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time and place, universal truth and everlasting life. Anyway most people that have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings have been affected primarily by it as an exciting story; and that is how it was written. Though one does not, of course, escape from the question 'what is it about?' by that back door. That would be like answering an aesthetic question by talking of a point of technique. I suppose that if one makes a good choice in what is 'good narrative' (or 'good theatre') at a given point, it will also be found to be the case that the event described will be the most 'significant'.[/citation]
[citation=n°165, To the Houghton Mifflin Co. (30 June 1955)]It is not 'about' anything but itself. Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular, or topical, moral, religious, or political. The only criticism that annoyed me was one that it 'contained no religion' (and 'no Women', but that does not matter, and is not true anyway). It is a monotheistic world of 'natural theology'. The odd fact that there are no churches, temples, or religious rites and ceremonies, is simply part of the historical climate depicted. It will be sufficiently explained, if (as now seems likely) the Silmarillion and other legends of the First and Second Ages are published. I am in any case myself a Christian; but the 'Third Age' was not a Christian world.[/citation]
[citation=n°181, To Michael Straight (Not dated; probably January or February 1956)]Thank you for your letter. I hope that you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? Enjoyed is the key-word. For it was written to amuse (in the highest sense): to be readable. There is no 'allegory', moral, political, or contemporary in the work at all.
It is a 'fairy-story', but one written – according to the belief I once expressed in an extended essay 'On Fairy-stories' that they are the proper audience – for adults. Because I think that fairy story has its own mode of reflecting 'truth', different from allegory, or (sustained) satire, or 'realism', and in some ways more powerful. But first of all it must succeed just as a tale, excite, please, and even on occasion move, and within its own imagined world be accorded (literary) belief. To succeed in that was my primary object.
But, of course, if one sets out to address 'adults' (mentally adult people anyway), they will not be pleased, excited, or moved unless the whole, or the incidents, seem to be about something worth considering, more e.g. than mere danger and escape: there must be some relevance to the 'human situation' (of all periods). So something of the teller's own reflections and 'values' will inevitably get worked in. This is not the same as allegory. We all, in groups or as individuals, exemplify general principles; but we do not represent them. The Hobbits are no more an 'allegory' than are (say) the pygmies of the African forest. Gollum is to me just a 'character' – an imagined person – who granted the situation acted so and so under opposing strains, as it appears to he probable that he would (there is always an incalculable element in any individual real or imagined: otherwise he/she would not be an individual but a 'type').[/citation]
[citation=n°183, Notes on W. H. Auden's review of The Return of the King (written in 1956)]Men do go, and have in history gone on journeys and quests, without any intention of acting out allegories of life. It is not true of the past or the present to say that 'only the rich or those on vacation can take journeys'. Most men make some journeys. Whether long or short, with an errand or simply to go 'there and back again', is not of primary importance.[/citation]
[citation=n°186, From a letter to Joanna de Bortadano (Not dated; April 1956)]Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for Domination). Nuclear physics can be used for that purpose. But they need not be. They need not be used at all. If there is any contemporary reference in my story at all it is to what seems to me the most widespread assumption of our time: that if a thing can be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false.[/citation]
[citation=n°203, From a letter to Herbert Schiro1 (17 November 1957)]There is no 'symbolism' or conscious allegory in my story. Allegory of the sort 'five wizards = five senses' is wholly foreign to my way of thinking. There were five wizards and that is just a unique part of history. To ask if the Orcs 'are' Communists is to me as sensible as asking if Communists are Orcs.
That there is no allegory does not, of course, say there is no applicability. There always is. And since I have not made the struggle wholly unequivocal: sloth and stupidity among hobbits, pride and [illegible] among Elves, grudge and greed in Dwarf-hearts, and folly and wickedness among the 'Kings of Men', and treachery and power-lust even among the 'Wizards', there is I suppose applicability in my story to present times. But I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man![/citation]
[citation=n°205, From a letter to Christopher Tolkien (21 February 1958)]I do not know what I mean, because 'aesthetic' is always impossible to catch in a net of words. Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an 'allegory'. And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn' omentieimo,2 and that the phase long antedated the book. I never heard any more. But I enjoyed myself immensely and retire to bed really happy. It was obvious that the ball is right at your toes, so far as the total sphere of the academic world is concerned. (Actually I think it of vast nobility and importance).[/citation]
[citation=n°211, To Rhona Beare (14 October 1958)]Theologically (if the term is not too grandiose) I imagine the picture to be less dissonant from what some (including myself) believe to be the truth. But since I have deliberately written a tale, which is built on or out of certain 'religious' ideas, but is not an allegory of them (or anything else), and does not mention them overtly, still less preach them, I will not now depart from that mode, and venture on theological disquisition for which I am not fitted. But I might say that if the tale is 'about' anything (other than itself), it is not as seems widely supposed about 'power'. Power-seeking is only the motive-power that sets events going, and is relatively unimportant, I think. It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the 'escapes': serial longevity, and hoarding memory.[/citation]
[citation=n°215, To Walter Allen, New Statesman (Not dated; April 1959)]I hope 'comment on the world' does not sound too solemn. I have no didactic purpose, and no allegorical intent. (I do not like allegory (properly so called: most readers appear to confuse it with significance or applicability) but that is a matter too long to deal with here.) But long narratives cannot be made out of nothing; and one cannot rearrange the primary matter in secondary patterns without indicating feelings and opinions about one's material...[/citation]
[citation=n°229, From a letter to Allen & Unwin (23 February 1961)]Here [in Mordor] rules the personification of satanic might Sauron (read perhaps in the same partial fashion [as other identifications Ohlmarks has made] Stalin).
There is no 'perhaps' about it. I utterly repudiate any such 'reading', which angers me. The situation was conceived long before the Russian revolution. Such allegory is entirely foreign to my thought. The placing of Mordor in the east was due to simple narrative and geographical necessity, within my 'mythology'. The original stronghold of Evil was (as traditionally) in the North; but as that had been destroyed, and was indeed under the sea, there had to be a new stronghold, far removed from the Valar, the Elves, and the sea-power of Númenor.[/citation]
[citation=n°241, From a letter to Jane Neave (8-9 September 1962)]I am now sending you 'Leaf by Niggle'. I have had a copy made specially to keep if you wish – from the Dublin Review in which it appeared nearly 20 years ago. It was written (I think) just before the War began, though I first read it aloud to my friends early in 1940.1 recollect nothing about the writing, except that I woke one morning with it in my head, scribbled it down – and the printed form in the main hardly differs from the first hasty version at all. I find it still quite moving, when I reread it.
It is not really or properly an 'allegory' so much as 'mythical'. For Niggle is meant to be a real mixed-quality person and not an 'allegory' of any single vice or virtue. The name Parish proved convenient, for the Porter's joke, but it was not given with any intention of special significance. I once knew of a gardener called Parish. (I see there are six Parishes in our telephone book.) Of course some elements are explicable in biographical terms (so obsessively interesting to modern critics that they often value a piece of 'literature' solely in so far as it reveals the author, and especially if that is in a discreditable light). There was a great tree – a huge poplar with vast limbs – visible through my window even as I lay in bed.[/citation]
[citation=n°255, From a letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar (5 March 1964)]He says: þam is noma cenned/fyrnstreama geflotan Fastitocalon, 'to him is a name appointed, to the floater in the ancient tides, Fastitocalon'. The notion of the treacherous island that is really a monster seems to derive from the East: the marine turtles enlarged by myth-making fancy; and I left it at that. But in Europe the monster becomes mixed up with whales, and already in the Anglo-Saxon version he is given whale characteristics, such as feeding by trawling with an open mouth. In moralized bestiaries he is, of course, an allegory of the Devil, and is so used by Milton.[/citation]
[citation=n°262, To Michael di Capua, Pantheon Books (7 September 1964)]I am not at all confident that I can produce anything worthy of the honorarium that you offer. I am not naturally attracted (in fact much the reverse) by allegory, mystical or moral. But I will do my best, if there is time. In any case I am grateful to you for your consideration. Yours sincerely, J. R. R. Tolkien.[/citation]
Sur les 21 lettres dans lesquelles le mot « allegory » et ses composés apparaissent :
- 2 sont adressées à Stanley Unwin (éditeur) ;
- 4 sont adressées à Christopher Tolkien (fils) ;
- 1 est adressée à Milton Waldman (éditeur) ;
- 1 est adressée à Naomi Mitchison (écrivain) ;
- 1 est adressée à Peter Hastings (libraire) ;
- 2 sont adressées à W.H. Auden (critique littéraire) ;
- 1 est adressée à la Hougthon Mifflin Co (maison d’édition américaine) ;
- 1 est adressée à Michael Straigth ;
- 1 est adressée à Joanna de Bortadano ;
- 1 est adressée à Herbert Schiro ;
- 1 est adressée à Rona Beare ;
- 1 est adressée à Walter Allen (éditeur) ;
- 1 est adressée à Allen et Unwin (éditeurs) ;
- 1 est adressée à Jane Neave (tante) ;
- 1 est adressée à Eileen Elgar ;
- 1 est adressée à Michael di Capua.
- Nombre d’occurrences du mot « allegory » (nom singulier) : 41 ;
- Nombre d’occurrences du mot « allegories » (nom pluriel) : 1 ;
- Nombre d’occurrences du mot « allegorical » (adjectif) : 6 ;
- Nombre d’occurrences du mot « allegorically » (adverbe) : 2.
Au total, il y a 50 entrées du mot « allegory » et de ses composés (formes plurielle, adverbale et adjectivale) dans les Letters de Tolkien. Tolkien se sert une seule fois du pluriel contre 41 entrées pour le singulier.
Nombre d’occurrence du mot « allegory » et de ses dérivés par année (sur le total de lettres écrites cette même année) :
- En 1938, 2 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 1 lettre sur 2 ;
- En 1944, 4 occurrence du mot « allegory » dans 3 lettres sur 21 ;
- En 1947, 8 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 1 lettre sur 3 ;
- En 1951, 4 occurrences du mot « allegory » et 2 occurrences du mot « allegorical » dans 1 lettre sur un nombre inconnu ;
- En 1954, 4 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 1 lettre, 1 occurrence du mot « allegorical » dans 1 lettre, 2 occurrences du mot « allegorically » dans 2 lettres sur 11 ;
- En 1955, 2 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 1 lettre, 2 occurrences du mot « allegorical » dans 2 lettres sur 16 ;
- En 1956, 5 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 2 lettres, 1 occurrence du mot « allegories » dans 1 lettre sur 8 ;
- En 1957, 3 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 1 lettre sur 8 ;
- En 1958, 2 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 2 lettres sur 7 ;
- En 1959, 1 occurrence du mot « allegory » dans 1 lettre, 1 occurrence du mot « allegorical » dans 1 lettre sur 6 ;
- En 1961, 1 occurrence du mot « allegory » dans 1 lettre sur 8 ;
- En 1962, 2 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 1 lettre sur 5 ;
- En 1964, 2 occurrences du mot « allegory » dans 2 lettres sur 7.
- Dans les années 30, il y 2 occurrences, soit env. 5% du total ;
- Dans les années 40, il y 12 occurrences, soit env. 30% du total ;
- Dans les années 50, il y a 21 occurrences, soit env. 52% du total ;
- Dans les années 60, il a 5 occurrences, soit env. 13% du total.
Le mot « allegory » et ses composés sont surtout utilisés dans les années 40 et 50 (env. 82%). Dans les années 60, ce mot et ses composés ont 4 fois moins d’entrées dans les Letters de Tolkien que dans les années 50, décennie où il y en a le plus (plus de la moitié, sous la forme d’un nom commun singulier, d’un nom commun pluriel, d’un adjectif et d’un adverbe).
Sur les 41 entrées du mot « allegory », 34 (env. 83%) ont été écrites après la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, dont 8 pour 1947, soit env. 20% du total d’occurrences pour ce mot après 1945.
Le pluriel est utilisé dans une lettre datée de 1956.
Les 6 entrées du mot « allegorical » datent des années 50.
Les 2 entrées du mot « allegorically » datent de 1954.
Cordialement,
Eric (alias Gumbadan, qui officie habituellement sur les Chroniques de Chant-de-Fer).