윤민우. 톨킨의 자연: 느림의 경제.
(Minwoo Yoon.
Nature in Tolkien’s Fantasy Literature: The Economy of Slowness)
Abstract
In Tolkien’s literature, any attempt to revise the slow-tempo of
nature creates evil and trouble. Evil or ingenious beings—Melkor,
Sauron, Saruman, as well as Fëanor—are unanimously labelled as
“impatient,” “hasty,” “rash,” and “swift.” All these hasty creatures
are manufacturers, the descendants of Aulë who as one of the
Valar is the expert at making things with metal or wood. Tampering
with nature as created derives, in a deeper level, from the desire
to imposes one’s will upon nature. This desire is in fact the hunger
for power, which in turn invents machines to make itself “more
quickly effective.”
Tolkien himself calls the device of machines a “magic,” which
resembles modern technology. Tolkien offers many creatures living
close to nature, Woses, Beorn, Tom Bombadil, but at the center of
his natural environment are the Ents, the walking and talking trees
in Fangorn. They are by nature slow, indifferent, carefree, and
collective. The trees have lived a long time in the forest and the
accumulated experience in nature composed a story, that their name
of each natural object is like a long story. This episode seems to
be in keeping with a recent trend of ecocriticism—ecocriticism as
storytelling. On the other hand, Tolkien’s narrative touches upon
the gradual disappearance of Entwives, and it is not difficult to
understand why. Entwives represent feminine care for food and safety
and as such cultivate the wild, “green” earth to the extent of
turning it into barren “brown” land. Tolkien is rigid and relentless
in this point: any hasty and purposeful attempt at taming wild
nature dooms it to eventual extinction. Further, Tolkien’s natural
environment is comprised of local, equal, and independent beings,
and is never anthropocentric. Rather than proposing a binary
opposition between male culture and female nature, it serves as a
locale for the strife between the one male force of nature and the
other same male force of culture. So Tolkien’s nature can never
afford to be romantic or nostalgic, but itself is a composite of
dangerous and autonomous biological and social entities.
Key Words
slowness, magic, Treebeard, Beorn, ecofeminism, storytelling