Thomas Honegger
Born in Zürich (Switzerland) in 1965, Dr. Thomas Honegger is a specialist in Medieval Germanic languages and a noted Tolkien scholar. After completing all levels of academic training at the University of Zürich, where in 1996 he earned his doctorate with a thesis entitled Animals in Medieval English Literature, he worked in research at the University of Sheffield and at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, before becoming a lecturer at the University of Zürich. Since 2002 he has been Professor of Old English at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany). Recognized as one of the most important specialists in the works of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, he is responsible for most of the publications in the Cormarë Series by Walking Tree Publishers. He is also a member of the advisory board for the German Tolkien Society’s bilingual journal Hither Shore. The number of works written and edited by Dr. Honegger is far too great to allow for a complete list. Therefore, we will mention only a few of the most significant titles: Translating Tolkien: Text and Film (2004); Tolkien and Modernity, with Frank Weinreich (eds.) 2 vols. (2006); Myth and magic: art according to the Inklings (2007); Subcreation: world-building in the fantastic, with Erwin Otto (eds.) (2017); Introducing the Medieval Dragon (2019); Tweaking Things a Little: Essays on the Epic Fantasy of JRR Tolkien and GRR Martin (2023).
INTERVIEW
Robert Lazu Kmita: Dear Dr. Honegger, I carefully considered what the optimal question for the start of our dialogue would be. A rather difficult equation. In the end, I was helped by a text of yours that I read via academia.edu: it was about the representation of elves in literature and films. Since for many, the representation of Tolkien’s characters has become synonymous with the cast list of Peter Jackson’s movies, I ask you: how do you evaluate these portrayals of the main races – elves, dwarves, goblins, hobbits, wisemans, trolls, orcs – in the films of the New Zealand director? Do they still allow us to imagine them differently?
Thomas Honegger:
Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy has, in my mind, been overwhelmingly influential in the way the various ‘Tolkienian races’ and individual protagonists have been imagined. The best way to see this is in the myriad examples of fan art (and not just fan art) that followed the films. There have always been artists who either maintained or developed their own independent vision of Middle-earth (e.g. Jay Johnstone, Ted Nasmith, Anke Eissmann, etc.), but the scope of their artwork could not match that of Jackson’s films. I have deliberately omitted Alan Lee and John Howe from this list because these two outstanding artists had worked as lead artists on Jackson’s films. As a result, their artistic vision of Middle-earth provided the basis for Jackson’s visualisation of Tolkien’s work. This proved to be a fortuitous choice, in my opinion, because not only is their artwork of the highest quality, but both are experts on Tolkien’s Middle-earth. This combination ensured that the cinematic vision presented was both aesthetically pleasing and, as far as individual visualisations can be, faithful to the original text. As a result, it has become rather difficult to imagine Middle-earth differently – for the time being.
Things are different when it comes to the characterisation of the protagonists. A prime example is Aragorn. Viggo Mortensen is generally regarded as the ideal casting for the role, and I agree. However, Jackson has ‘psychologised’ Aragorn’s character and made him more relatable. Tolkien’s Aragorn is a typical ‘cardboard’ character from a heroic tale and would not be very appealing to a 21st century audience. Jackson reimagines him as a (partially) vulnerable hero with self-doubts. It is these internal changes that I find more problematic than the question of how to visualise the protagonists.
The more recent attempts to ‘update’ Middle-earth’s cast, as seen in The Rings of Power series, build on the aesthetics established by Jackson’s films, but try to ‘re-vision’ the perception of the ‘Tolkienian races’ in particular towards greater ethnic variety and diversity – although I sometimes have the impression that the differentiation by hairstyle is more effective than anything else. I am often reminded of how ‘the Vikings’ were and are imagined. Compare, for example, The Vikings (1958) with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, with the series Vikings (2013-2020). Both, in their own way, reflect the prevailing contemporary idea of what Vikings look like and how they behave. So it may take a while, but sooner or later a reimagining will be possible – even of Middle-earth.
Robert Lazu Kmita: When we look at the works of the mentioned artists or Peter Jackson’s films, our imagination becomes subordinated to their vision (I would even dare to say “interpretation”). This can lead to potential conflicts: for example, I disagree with how many characters were portrayed in the films, although—as you said regarding Aragorn—we can understand the reasoning behind certain creative choices. This aspect reminds me of Tolkien’s own reservations about the idea of visually adapting his works. I’m curious whether you share his concerns and, in particular, whether you strongly recommend reading the Middle-earth stories instead of (or before) watching the films.
Thomas Honegger:
You point out a major problem: the persuasive (or even coercive) power of the visual image. My generation was lucky enough to grow up with the books as the first and, for a long time, only ‘road to Middle-earth’, so we had to rely on our own imagination. Maybe we received some impulses from the artists who provided the pictures for the Tolkien Calendars, but on the whole, we had to imagine people and places with the help of the (sometimes not very detailed) descriptions. Tolkien was careful to give his readers the freedom of interpretation also in the visual realm –concomitant to his aversion to the ‘straightjacket’ of allegory, but that is another story. So, when Tolkien, in his lecture/essay ‘On Fairy-stories’ (delivered 1939 at the University of St Andrews), talks about words being the preferred medium for depicting the fantastic, he was also addressing this question.
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1911
Interestingly, Tolkien did not explicitly link his arguments to the questions of the technical ability to (re)present the fantastic on stage (or, by implication, on screen).However, his line of argumentation suggests that although he expected the audience to keep up a certain ‘suspension of disbelief’, he thought that the depiction of the fantastic in the visual arts and in drama and film would tax this ‘suspension of disbelief’ too much – and that the representation of the fantastic would be one layer too many. To illustrate this point, take, for example, the 1957 horror movie The Night of the Demon (US: The Curse of the Demon). The movie works well and builds up suspense by means of hints and allusions but, to a modern audience, spoils it when the demon finally becomes fully visible in all its technical inadequacy. It may have worked for an audience of the late 1950s, but a modern audience cannot help but burst out laughing. Compare this to the play Mary Rose (1920) by the Scottish author and playwright J.M. Barrie, the ‘father’ of Peter Pan. At the centre of the play is the abduction of the eponymous heroine into Faery. However, neither elf nor fairy nor Faery itself is ever shown. The play works by means of ‘absence’ and the principle that the tale never told (or here: the fairy never shown) has the greatest impact. And, as I witnessed myself, the play has lost none of its power even in the 21st century.
Jackson’s movies, in contrast to some of its predecessors, did not suffer from ‘technical inadequacies’. On the contrary, his vision of Middle-earth proved very appealing and persuasive and, as a consequence, has become the benchmark in the visual field. However, the more recent productions such as The Rings of Power series or the anime The Wars of the Rohirrim have begun to challenge Jackson’s hegemony by providing, for better or worse, alternative visualizations. I’m watching this new development with interest, though also with some trepidation. On verra…
Robert Lazu Kmita:
Now that you have mentioned “the ‘straightjacket’ of allegory,” it is impossible to avoid addressing this crucial issue. It is well known that Tolkien sometimes rejected any allegorical interpretation of his works. At the same time, this attitude seems to be contradicted by other statements in which he accepted—at least potentially—allegorical readings. For instance, in his famous letter 165 to Houghton Mifflin, he writes that The Lord of the Rings “has no allegorical intentions, general, particular, or topical, moral, religious, or political.” But in another well-known letter (109), to Stanley Unwin, he appears to affirm the opposite: “You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.” Moreover, Tolkien employs a kind of historical-allegorical interpretation himself during the “Hobbit Dinner” organized by his Dutch publisher in Rotterdam (1958), when he makes a remark that is both unexpected and quite striking:
I look east and west
I look north and south
And I do not see a Sauron
But I see very many descendants of Saruman!
So, what do you think is the best possible interpretation of Tolkien’s seemingly ambivalent attitude toward allegory?
Thomas Honegger:
I feel like Gandalf when he is offered the One Ring: ‘Don’t tempt me!’ The question of allegory touches upon a topic that I have addressed in one of my most recent papers, namely ‘Allegory, applicability, or rather typology? Approaches to interpreting Tolkien’s texts’, delivered on 17 May 2025 at the International Colloquium ‘La consonance chrétienne de la Terre du Milieu’ (Paris, Collège des Bernardins, 16–18 May 2025). The audience reacted very well to my talk, and the subsequent discussion was lively. This is no surprise, given that ‘allegory’ is a hotly debated topic in Tolkien studies. As Tolkien’s short story ‘Leaf by Niggle’ (1945) proves, he ‘can do’ full-scale allegory. However, as you pointed out, as an author he was also wary of and opposed to the reductive power of allegorical interpretation. As a student of Chaucer, he was familiar with the medieval tendency to prioritise the ‘inner meaning’ of a tale. This is exemplified in The Canterbury Tales by the Nun’s Priest’s (possibly ironic) admonition to his audience, ‘Taketh the fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille’ (NPT l. 677), meaning ‘Take the fruit (i.e. the moral interpretation of the tale) and disregard the chaff (i.e. the actual tale)’. So, in some of the contexts mentioned, Tolkien was reacting against such a threat, real or imagined, insisting on the intrinsic artistic value of his tale. In other situations, such as the relaxed atmosphere of the Hobbit Dinner in Rotterdam, he was more open to possible allegorical interpretations of his epic, even using his own text as a source for them. As with so many of Tolkien’s statements, these should be viewed within their contemporary context.
Another problem that arises when discussing Tolkien’s attitude towards allegory is the issue of terminology. Tolkien uses different terms at different times, and their exact meaning is not always clear. Thus, alongside ‘allegory’ proper (sometimes referred to as ‘formal or mechanical allegory’), we also have ‘applicability’, ‘inner meaning’, or ‘message’. Tolkien was neither a professional philosopher nor a theologian, nor did he develop a consistent terminology for what could be called ‘textual exegesis or interpretation’. He was even less concerned with terminological matters when writing or speaking in an informal or semi-formal context. Despite all these complications, it is clear that Tolkien valued the artistic independence of literary texts, and we can apply what he said about ‘myth’ to ‘literature’ in general: ‘For a [literary text] is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected’ (‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’).
If you would like to know more about allegory, typology or applicability, please be patient and await the publication of my aforementioned paper.
Robert Lazu Kmita:
I assure you that I am eagerly looking forward to reading the text of your article about allegory and all the “collateral” details. I am also glad that you have directly touched upon an extremely important matter: Tolkien’s attitude toward the literary work. As we well know, he always “amended” the — let’s call it — “analytical” approach to any creation whose main stake is the epiphany of beauty. Specifically, he called into question any approach to a text — for example, Beowulf — that, instead of being “tasted” (as one would savor an old, special-quality wine), is subjected to “dissection” — whether historical, stylistic, or of any other kind. What is the origin of this principled reserve toward the non-aesthetic approach to literary and poetic creations? I have detected similar ideas especially among the great writers of the German-speaking world. And that is not all. For him, the “analytical” approach is the method beloved by Saruman — a method that, as we well know, led to his terrible downfall. To this, Gandalf — i.e., Tolkien — opposed an intuitive-contemplative approach, which preserved the integrity of the creation by avoiding its dissection. So what, then, might be the origins of such an attitude?
You are touching upon a central quality of Tolkien’s work: the ‘holistic’ interpretation of art as reflecting the divine creative process, at least in part. In this respect, he can be seen as part of the tradition of great Romantic-era writers and artists who, among other things, used their art to react against the ‘rational’ approach that had been prevalent during the preceding Enlightenment era. Tolkien’s deep-rooted Catholicism naturally inclines him towards such an approach, and consequently he favours an intuitive, contemplative approach to literature. This is also evident in the effect his epic has on many readers, who reread The Lord of the Rings annually – not because they suffer from literary amnesia, but because they have intuitively grasped the text’s underlying holistic quality and experienced its therapeutic effect. Some of these readers are academics who are very well-versed in dissecting literary texts as professional literary critics. Yet they told me privately that they avoid teaching or discussing The Lord of the Rings within their usual academic framework precisely because they realise that it would kill the magic for them and many others by dissecting the tale. This does not mean, however, that Tolkien’s epic cannot be taught to university students or written about; it just requires a different ‘toolbox’ to that used for mainstream literature.
Incidentally, Tolkien reveals his stance by contrasting Saruman, who represents an analytical approach and is a proponent of ‘knowledge’, as evidenced by his slogan ‘Knowledge, Rule, Order’, with Gandalf, who is a proponent of ‘lore’. The difference between knowledge and lore largely reflects what we discussed above: knowledge can be gained through the analytical dissection of things, and it is cumulative and believes in the technological and rational perfectibility of the world. Lore, by contrast, posits a former, lost state of perfection: a ‘Golden Age’. In such a fallen world as ours, the best we can do is preserve what is worth preserving and hope for the former perfection to be restored at the end of time.
Therefore, in answer to your latest question, such an attitude most likely originates from Tolkien’s profound Catholicism, which also pervades his literary works without being overtly religious.
Robert Lazu Kmita:
In conclusion of our dialogue, for which I thank you very much, I would like to ask you a double question, whose subject is unique: the current status of fantasy literature. The first part of my question refers to the “canon” of contemporary literature: do you think Tolkien has been accepted—alongside, let’s say, V. Woolf, J. Conrad, J. Joyce, E. Hemingway, and G. Greene—as one of the most significant writers in the English language? (I ask you this because, as is all too well known, his works have often been treated with disdain by the “professional” literary critics, as well as by some “realist” writers of his time.) Finally, does Tolkien have a posterity worthy of the quality of his creations? In other words, are there fantasy writers who have managed to be more than mere imitators?
Thomas Honegger:
The debate surrounding Tolkien’s ‘canonicity’ reached its peak in 2000 with Tom Shippey’s provocatively titled monograph J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Shippey’s book was a response to various polls in previous years in which The Lord of the Rings was voted the “greatest book of the century” to the dismay of traditional literary critics. Professor Shippey situates Tolkien and his work within the historical and cultural context that produced the modernist authors you mentioned. In doing so, he not only contextualises Tolkien in his time, but also demonstrates how he reacted to the same circumstances and issues as the modernists, albeit in a different manner.
This is one partial answer to your question. Another aspect to consider is the abolition of the literary canon, which was still in existence during my undergraduate studies. Students in many English departments in the Western world no longer have to focus their academic endeavours on canonical texts, and I sometimes get the impression that anything goes. The good news is that Tolkien’s works are now also taught regularly on university courses, and critical analysis of his texts is an accepted part of academic discourse, with several high-quality, peer-reviewed journals dedicated to exploring Tolkien’s literary heritage. You don’t have to be a Tolkien fan to teach his texts or publish scholarly articles on his work. The only requirement is a willingness to apply the same basic principles of academic decency and integrity when dealing with a ‘popular’ writer as with an ‘elite’ one. This is his status in contemporary literary scholarship as I see it.
Reflecting on your second question, I was reminded of a quote by a literary critic that is no longer attributable: “As a writer of contemporary fantasy, you cannot ignore Tolkien. Either you work in his tradition, or you consciously try to distance yourself from his approach.” Accordingly, Tolkien’s influence is very much present. On the one hand, there are authors such as Terry Brooks, whose The Sword of Shannara trilogy (1977-1985) follows very closely in Tolkien’s footsteps, though without quite matching up to him. On the other hand, there are writers like Philip Pullman, whose His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000) consciously constructs a fantasy world that stands in opposition to Tolkien’s Providence-ruled universe. However, I believe it is possible to write fantastic texts within the realm of the literature of the fantastic (please pardon my low philological humour) without taking a pro- or anti-Tolkien stance. Neil Gaiman and J.K. Rowling come to mind. While Gaiman draws inspiration mostly from myths and folk tales, Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997-2007) is in the tradition of the English boarding school novel. Its plot structure and setting are indebted to classics such as Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) and Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s series (1941-1945). Rowling merely imbues the traditional English boarding school novel with a healthy dose of magic. Interestingly, Tolkien’s influence is even perceptible in the world of Hogwarts. Rowling’s Horcruxes, the Elder Wand, and the Cloak of Invisibility can be seen as an intelligent Tolkien reader’s response to or commentary on issues that Tolkien left unanswered in his own texts, such as ‘How did Sauron forge his One Ring horcrux?’ and ‘How does an object that provides absolute power [as do both the One Ring and the Elder Wand] affect its possessor and those who come into contact with them?’
Over the years, I have come to regard Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as the archetypal text at the heart of the epic fantasy genre. Like the eagle, sparrow or dove in the bird category, it possesses all the typical characteristics of the category, which may also include penguins and ostriches. However, penguins and ostriches are ‘marginal’ and merely highlight the prototypical quality of the birds at the centre of the category. The same is true of more ‘deviant’ works of epic fantasy. Therefore, while Tolkien did not invent the genre of epic fantasy with The Lord of the Rings, he certainly defined it and is likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
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The featured image is a photograph of J.R.R. Tolkien taken in 1911, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The image of Thomas Honegger in Cefalu (2025), uploaded by TomMartin1965, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, also courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.