The Rules of Engagement: Scholars and Texts

These days it is not unusual to hear that scholars must engage with the scholarship of other scholars. This is as it should be. We are not writing in a vacuum. There is quite a lot out there that merits our diligence and will repay our scrutiny. I have been reading scholarship in several different fields for many years now and have learned so much from it. There have been other occasions, however, when I have read scholars that seem to be paying more attention to agreeing or disagreeing with the opinions of other scholars than they pay to the texts or events they claim to be writing about. However weighty the opinion of, say, Harold Bloom might be, I have a hard time regarding any opinion he uttered as evidence of anything but his own opinion. No opinion is evidence of anything but itself and the process by which it is reached. In the scales of argument it cannot have the same weight as the text.

I have also seen scholars create paragraphs of argument by stringing together quotation after quotation from the writings of other scholars. As long as it's all properly cited and quoted of course and done with restraint, there's nothing wrong with it. I have done it myself, but I try to keep it to a minimum. Sometimes, though, it seems like an box labelled 'scholarly engagement' is being lazily checked, and I wonder if the scholar whose name is on the work even has an opinion of their own on the text or events they are writing about. 

Laziness (if that is what this is and I am not being unkind) is one fault. Inattention is another. Today I was reading a particular article on Tolkien for the third or fourth time -- an article with more than a few thoughtful observations -- and found my eye drawn to a quotation from a very important passage for understanding the evolving relationship of Frodo and the Ring. The context here is crucial. I can't see how we can hope to understand without both of these paragraphs. Below I give those paragraphs. The parts presented in orange are the only words quoted in the article I was reading, with ellipses judiciously inserted so as not to distract us from the point the scholar was trying to make. 

All that host was clad in sable, dark as the night. Against the wan walls and the luminous pavement of the road Frodo could see them, small black figures in rank upon rank, marching swiftly and silently, passing outwards in an endless stream. Before them went a great cavalry of horsemen moving like ordered shadows, and at their head was one greater than all the rest: a Rider, all black, save that on his hooded head he had a helm like a crown that flickered with a perilous light. Now he was drawing near the bridge below, and Frodo’s staring eyes followed him, unable to wink or to withdraw. Surely there was the Lord of the Nine Riders returned to earth to lead his ghastly host to battle? Here, yes here indeed was the haggard king whose cold hand had smitten down the Ring-bearer with his deadly knife. The old wound throbbed with pain and a great chill spread towards Frodo’s heart.

Even as these thoughts pierced him with dread and held him bound as with a spell, the Rider halted suddenly, right before the entrance of the bridge, and behind him all the host stood still. There was a pause, a dead silence. Maybe it was the Ring that called to the Wraith-lord, and for a moment he was troubled, sensing some other power within his valley. This way and that turned the dark head helmed and crowned with fear, sweeping the shadows with its unseen eyes. Frodo waited, like a bird at the approach of a snake, unable to move. And as he waited, he felt, more urgent than ever before, the command that he should put on the Ring. But great as the pressure was, he felt no inclination now to yield to it. He knew that the Ring would only betray him, and that he had not, even if he put it on, the power to face the Morgul-king – not yet. There was no longer any answer to that command in his own will, dismayed by terror though it was, and he felt only the beating upon him of a great power from outside. It took his hand, and as Frodo watched with his mind, not willing it but in suspense (as if he looked on some old story far away), it moved the hand inch by inch towards the chain upon his neck. Then his own will stirred; slowly it forced the hand back and set it to find another thing, a thing lying hidden near his breast. Cold and hard it seemed as his grip closed on it: the phial of Galadriel, so long treasured, and almost forgotten till that hour. As he touched it, for a while all thought of the Ring was banished from his mind. He sighed and bent his head. At that moment the Wraith-king turned and spurred his horse and rode across the bridge, and all his dark host followed him. Maybe the elven-hoods defied his unseen eyes, and the mind of his small enemy, being strengthened, had turned aside his thought. But he was in haste. Already the hour had struck, and at his great Master’s bidding he must march with war into the West.

(TT 4.viii.706)

The scholar here sees Frodo responding with assurance to the 'command that he should put on the Ring' and offers this up as evidence that Frodo can tell the difference between his will and that of the Ring. This of course assumes that the Ring is conscious and has a will, and at the very least that assumption needs to be questioned, which the scholar never does at any point. If, however, the Ring is calling out to the Witch-king as the text suggests it may be, does that not support the scholar's contention that it is the Ring commanding Frodo to reveal himself? If so, why not include it? Of course, that would mean the Witch-king actually knows the Ring is present, and it beggars belief that he and the other Ringwraiths would have marched on if they had known that. Surely, merely grasping the phial cannot have communicated that 'These are not the hobbits you're looking for. Move along.' The suggestion is absurd, and is meant to be. But assuming that the Ring is conscious and calling out raises questions here that should not be skirted.

There is also more going on here than the selections chosen by this scholar disclose, none of which is irrelevant to Frodo's experience. What of Frodo's assumption that he may not yet be ready to face the Witch-king, but that, as the words 'not yet' make clear, one day he will be? One does not think what Frodo thinks otherwise. What of his having forgotten that he had the phial? What of the spell his own thoughts and dread of the Witch-king impose upon him? Is there no connection between the movement of his thoughts from his foe to the Ring? Is he really saying that the Ring is responsible for the 'command' he feels while, though pinned like a bird fascinated by a snake, he contemplates not flight but fight? All of the descriptions of Frodo's reaction to seeing the Witch-king -- his dread, the chill throbbing of his old wound, his inability to move, and his realistic understanding that the Ring would only betray him by revealing him and that he could not defeat the Witch-king -- make it much harder to see Frodo's slow struggle to force his hand away from the Ring as something he accomplished with anything approaching self-assurance. 

What I think the answers to these questions may be is a matter for another day. What I find myself wondering is just what degree of engagement with a scholar is needed when that scholar's engagement with the text they are writing about raises questions of its own. The identity of this scholar is not my concern here. I have no interest in savaging someone as if I were the great and terrible Housman. I am not the guardian of truth I thought I was when a young man. If in the course of making an argument of my own about this text I discover a need to engage with this scholar, I shall. However, I think the text is what I should be engaging with. The evidence I need to make my case is there, not in any other scholar's opinion, whether weighty or slight.