The philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien set out to explore time travel and distortions in the passage of time in his fiction in a variety of ways. The passage of time in The Lord of the Rings is uneven, seeming to run at differing speeds in the realms of Men and of Elves. In this, Tolkien was following medieval tradition in which time proceeds differently in Elfland. The whole work, too, following the theory he spelt out in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", is meant to transport the reader into another time. He built a process of decline and fall in Middle-earth into the story, echoing the sense of impending destruction of Norse mythology. The Elves attempt to delay this decline as far as possible in their realms of Rivendell and Lothlórien, using their Rings of Power to slow the passage of time. Elvish time, in The Lord of the Rings as in the medieval Thomas the Rhymer and the Danish Elvehøj (Elf Hill), presents apparent contradictions. Both the story itself and scholarly interpretations offer varying attempts to resolve these; time may be flowing faster or more slowly, or perceptions may differ.
Tolkien was writing in a period when notions of time and space were being radically revised, from the science fiction time travel of H. G. Wells, to the inner world of dreams and the unconscious mind explored by Sigmund Freud, and the transformation of physics with the counter-intuitive notions of quantum mechanics and general relativity proposed by Max Planck and Albert Einstein. In 1927 J. W. Dunne wrote an influential book proposing a theory that time could flow differently for different observers, and that dreams gave access to all of time. A network of writers who were influenced by Wells, including Henry James, Dunne, and George du Maurier created a literary environment that enabled Tolkien to explore time travel in his own way, first in the unfinished The Lost Road, then in the unfinished The Notion Club Papers, and finally in The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien mentions both the mortal desire to escape from death, and the Elvish desire to escape from immortality. The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger suggests that these illustrate a Christian message, that one must not attempt to cling to anything as worldly things will change and decay; instead, one must let go, trust in the unknown future, and in God. This theme is, she argues, demonstrated in the protagonist Frodo Baggins, who is saved by having the courage to face loss, to move, and to change.
Context
Turning away from present time
The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger wrote that at the end of the nineteenth century, thinkers in several fields were turning away from present time and exploring other ways to view the world. In 1895 H. G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, a science fiction novella in which a machine allows an observer to travel forwards and backwards in time. In 1900, Sigmund Freud published his The Interpretation of Dreams, exploring the inner world of the unconscious mind. That same year, Max Planck postulated that energy is quantized, paving the way for the counter-intuitive theory of quantum mechanics. In 1905, Albert Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity, relating space and time in a new way in physics. The cultural historian Modris Eksteins remarked that "rational man [had] undermined his own world". Flieger wrote that fantasy writers like J. R. R. Tolkien, David Lindsay, E. R. Eddison, and Mervyn Peake were both turning away from modernism and using modern theories to seek to escape, "at once reactionary and avant-garde".
Time in different dimensions
In 1927, the soldier and pioneer aviator turned philosopher J. W. Dunne published his book An Experiment with Time, in which he presented a multi-dimensional theory of time, suggesting that dreams could combine memories of both past and future events, and that time could flow differently for observers in different dimensions. Further, he believed that dreams could give access to all dimensions of time, a mechanism for time travel. The theory did not gain scientific acceptance, not least because it led to an infinite regress of dimensions, but attracted the interest of contemporary writers including H. G. Wells, J. B. Priestley, Jorge Luis Borges, John Buchan, James Hilton, Graham Greene, Rumer Godden, and two members of the Inklings literary group, C. S. Lewis and Tolkien.
Space or time
Tolkien recorded in his letters that Lewis proposed to him that since there was too little of what either man liked in literature, they would have to write stories themselves. He further wrote that they tossed a coin for the choice of subject: Lewis got space travel, and Tolkien got time travel. Lewis published the first of his three "space romances", Out of the Silent Planet, in 1938. Tolkien began The Lost Road, abandoning the draft after four chapters in 1937; he tried the theme again in The Notion Club Papers, written between 1944 and 1946, which he also dropped; and finally made use of some of these ideas in The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954–1955.
The Inklings scholar John D. Rateliff describes Tolkien's two time travel novels and Lewis's The Dark Tower, all incomplete, as a "triad". Lewis's work, written sometime between 1939 and 1946, and published posthumously in 1977, is a possible sequel to Out of the Silent Planet; its protagonists use a "chronoscope" to view an alien world in "Othertime".
Development of ideas
Desire "to go back" in time
Christopher Tolkien, reviewing the motivations for his father's writings, commented that
Devin Brown, writing in Mythlore, argues that storytelling itself is "the ultimate time travel machine", noting that Tolkien's 1939 essay "On Fairy-Stories" stated that a defining characteristic of a fairy story is "its ability to transport the reader outside of time to realms otherwise inaccessible".
Successive attempts at a time-travel novel
The Lord of the Rings was preceded in Tolkien's writings by two unfinished time-travel novels, The Lost Road, begun in 1936–37, and The Notion Club Papers, begun 1945. Both texts make use of variants of the character Ælfwine to provide a frame story for the time travel, and indeed for his legendarium. The Old English name Ælfwine means "Elf-friend", as does the later Quenya name Elendil, and the Old High German and Lombard equivalents, Alwin and Alboin, respectively; all these names (boldface in the table) appear in the texts as incarnations of the protagonist in the different times visited.
+ Time-travelling frame story characters with the periods they visit Period Second AgeOver 9,000 years ago Lombards(568–774) Anglo-Saxons( 450–1066) England20th century Languageof names Quenya (in Númenor) Germanic Old English Modern English Meaningof names Character 1 Elendil Alboin Ælfwine Alwin Elf-friend Character 2 Herendil Audoin Eadwine Edwin Bliss-friend Character 3 Valandil ("Valar-friend") ——— Oswine Oswin, cf. Oswald God-friend
The different time-travel novels indicate the development of Tolkien's ideas and his skill in expressing them.
+ Tolkien's successive attempts at a time-travel novel Work Written Publication Time-travel mechanism Destinations The Lost Road 1936unfinished Edited by Christopher Tolkien in The Lost Road and Other Writings, 1987 Time travel by Dunne-style "vision", from modern England The Saxon England of Alfred the Great, the Lombard king Alboin of St Benedict's time, the Baltic Sea in the Viking Age, Ireland at the time of the Tuatha Dé Danann (600 years after Noah's Flood), the prehistoric North in the Ice Age, Middle-earth in the Third Age, the Fall of Gil-galad, and the Downfall of Númenor in the Second Age of Tolkien's legendarium, when the world is reshaped as round, and the Straight Road to the Earthly Paradise of Valinor can no longer be sailed by Men The Notion Club Papers c. 1945unfinished Edited by Christopher Tolkien in Sauron Defeated, 1992 A frame story with future as well as past time travel leads to a retelling of The Lost Road, again using dream as the mechanism The Atlantis-like island of Númenor in Tolkien's legendarium The Lord of the Rings In stages, haltingly, between 1937 and 1949 1954–1955 The travellers feel taken back in time on entering the Elvish land. Time seems to pass differently there, though the protagonists hold varied opinions as to how that is. They are allowed to look into a magic fountain, the Mirror of Galadriel, to see visions of the past, the present, and a possible future. Elvish leaders in Middle-earth, including Galadriel, use the power of their Rings to hold back time and change. Lothlórien, the Elvish realm of Galadriel
Flieger comments that had either The Lost Road or The Notion Club Papers been finished,
A better time in the distant past
Tolkien built a process of decline and fall in Middle-earth, implying that if one could go back in time, one would find a far more perfect world than the present one, into both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. The pattern is expressed in several ways, including the splintering of the light provided by the Creator, into progressively smaller parts; the fragmentation of languages and peoples, especially the Elves, who are split into many groups; the successive falls, starting with that of the angelic spirit Melkor, and followed by the destruction of the Two Lamps of Middle-earth and then of the Two Trees of Valinor, and the cataclysmic fall of Númenor. The whole of The Lord of the Rings shares the sense of impending destruction of Norse mythology, where even the gods will perish. The Dark Lord Sauron may be defeated, but that will entail the fading and departure of the Elves, leaving the world to Men, to industrialise and to pollute, however much Tolkien regretted the fact.
Time held back in The Lord of the Rings
The Elvish realms described in The Lord of the Rings, Rivendell and Lothlórien, were the remnants of far larger kingdoms in Beleriand in the First Age. The Elves were aware of the inexorable process of decline and fall in Middle-earth, marked by the splintering of the original created light and by the sundering of the Elves. The Elves sought to delay this decline as far as possible. The ruler of Rivendell, Elrond, was the bearer of the Ring Vilya, providing him with the power to protect Rivendell and slow the passage of time in its hidden valley: indeed, Rivendell kept its own calendar. The ruler of Lothlórien, Galadriel, was similarly the bearer of the ring Nenya, which she used to protect her realm and to keep it in an apparently timeless and "unstained" state.
The eight companions of The Fellowship of the Ring, escaping from the dark tunnels of Moria on their quest to destroy the One Ring, feel taken back in time on entering the Elvish land of Lothlórien. They notice, too, that time seems to pass differently there, and that the land appears to be unstained by the ravages of time. They are allowed to look into a magic fountain, the Mirror of Galadriel, to see visions of the past, the present, and a possible future. Galadriel uses the power of her Ring to hold back time and change. She perceives that the coming of the One Ring will be fateful for her realm, as either it will be destroyed, her Ring will lose its power, and time will sweep the Elves away; or the Dark Lord Sauron will regain his Ring, and take control of all the others.
Influences
Paired time-travellers with Old English names