Abstract

In 1992, Alex Lewis presented a paper at the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference in Oxford, England, in which he made the argument that Tolkien's Silmarillion was constructed to reflect the political biases of the fictional chronicler of the text: Elrond. Lewis shows that characters affiliated with Elrond tend to receive more treatment in the text, and their actions are cast in a positive light, whereas characters outside of Elrond's lineage—Lewis focuses specifically on the Fëanorians—receive relatively little coverage of their positive actions and tend to be depicted negatively by the narrator.

Lewis's findings have been almost wholly ignored by Tolkien scholars, despite the implications of his findings for how The Silmarillion could be read as a work of history therefore subject to historiological considerations. However, another group that deeply reads, studies, and analyzes Tolkien's texts has not only made a similar observation as Lewis but has acted, often significantly, upon those observations: writers of Tolkien-based transformative fiction, or fan fiction. I am in the midst of conducting a survey of Tolkien fan fiction writers, and preliminary results show that this group is deeply committed to the study of Tolkien's world in order to write fiction set in that world. These writers often express a desire to explore the perspectives of characters either ignored or maligned in the texts and sometimes write with the explicit purpose of righting the historical record where misrepresented characters are concerned.

This paper will consider how Tolkien's construction of historical bias in his books influences the creation of transformative fiction based on those books. Lewis claims that part of the reason The Silmarillion is so compelling is because it mirrors the complexity of real-world history, including in the presence of political bias. The types of fan fiction being written about Tolkien's books and the often inverse relationship between the characters Tolkien emphasized and the characters fan fiction authors write about suggests that the presence of political bias in the texts is a driving force behind the creation of transformative works. Fan fiction writers often view Tolkien's books as historical texts and their own role as providing alternative texts within the historical record, using subtextual and intertextual analyses to construct stories that offer alternative readings consist with Tolkien's larger canon. Finally, this activity suggests that Tolkien was successful, despite his doubts, in creating what he termed in a letter to Milton Waldman "vast backcloths" of myth and history that would inspire other creators.

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