Imitative Desire in Tolkien's Mythology: A Girardian Perspective (J.R.R. Tolkien, Rene Girard)

IN HIS BOOK THE EVERLASTING MAN, Chesterton cautions his readers about those students of mythology who claim to have discovered the key to unlocking the meaning of myths: The problem, as Chesterton sees it, "comes from a man trying to look at these stories from the outside, as if they were scientific objects" (103). The solution Chesterton proposes is that the student of mythology ought to become a storyteller himself, or a poet, a maker of myth, for the only one who truly understands a myth is one who appreciates its aesthetics. Or as Chesterton writes, "He has only to look at them from the inside, and ask himself how he would begin a story" (103). Of course, J.R.R. Tolkien immediately comes to mind as a student of myth who is also a creator of myth. In creating Middle-earth, Tolkien is inside the myth; as a scholar, he is outside. Tolkien is not only concerned with the aesthetics of his mythology, but also with the truth it represents, and, while Tolkien consistently maintains that his mythology is not Christian allegory, nevertheless, the truth of Tolkien's mythos is given form and coherence by his Christian worldview.