(avg. read time: 3–7 mins.) This will be a less extensive entry on Tolkien than others I have posted to this point, as well as others that have yet to appear here. It is actually something of a redirect, as I think that one scholar has answered a recurring question much better than I could. What I will be doing here is referring readers to the relevant article for more detail while epitomizing its major points here and adding some of my own commentary.
1. Tolkien’s stated distaste for allegory did not prevent his being a member of the Oxford Dante Society. Dante’s great poem is an allegory, and there are hints in LOTR that Tolkien was influenced by Dante’s Commedia. (The brutish & cruel humour of the orcs has much in common with that of Dante’s demons.)
2. My impression is that, far from being allegorical, parts of the story in the “Narniaverse” (if one may so call it) are examples of what, in one of his essays with the title, Lewis calls “transposition”. For instance, *if* there were a world of Talking Beasts, Aslan is Lewis’ “supposal” as to what the Incarnate Word would “be like”, if He were to be “transposed” into the life of Narnia.
Transposition is a bit like allegory, but is very different from it.
Two notes:
1. Tolkien’s stated distaste for allegory did not prevent his being a member of the Oxford Dante Society. Dante’s great poem is an allegory, and there are hints in LOTR that Tolkien was influenced by Dante’s Commedia. (The brutish & cruel humour of the orcs has much in common with that of Dante’s demons.)
2. My impression is that, far from being allegorical, parts of the story in the “Narniaverse” (if one may so call it) are examples of what, in one of his essays with the title, Lewis calls “transposition”. For instance, *if* there were a world of Talking Beasts, Aslan is Lewis’ “supposal” as to what the Incarnate Word would “be like”, if He were to be “transposed” into the life of Narnia.
Transposition is a bit like allegory, but is very different from it.