The talking fox of Woody End

[Valandil]

Or at least a thinking fox. Whose thoughts get recorded in the story.

Crazy thought I've never had before... The fox wouldn't have anything to do with CS Lewis' Narnia creatures, would it? Influenced by? Jab at?

I wonder whatever became of the fox. Anyone up for some fanfic on it? Or an RPG? Dare we christen it "Frodo's Fox"?

[Varnafindë]

Originally Posted by Valandil

Crazy thought I've never had before... The fox wouldn't have anything to do with CS Lewis' Narnia creatures, would it? Influenced by? Jab at?

No. Tolkien's fox was written about fifteen years earlier than the Narnia stories.

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Varnafindë

No. Tolkien's fox was written about fifteen years earlier than the Narnia stories.

You may both be right. Narnia may have come years later, but as one of the regular Inklings, Lewis was listening and reviewing and suggesting improvements. “Come on, Tollers!” he would say, addressing Tolkien familiarly. “You can do better!” Lewis was very encouraging: in Letter 227, Tolkien wrote that

… I owe to [C. S. Lewis’s] encouragement the fact that in spite of obstacles … I persevered and eventually finished The Lord of the Rings. He heard all of it, bit by bit, read aloud, but never saw it in print till after his trilogy was published.

Poet and fellow Oxford professor Hugo Dyson hated it: it is probably true that one night in Lewis’s rooms at Merton College as Tolkien began to read to the Inklings from the LotR draft, Dyson fell back on his couch as if in agony and exclaimed, “Oh, G*d! Not more f*****g elves!”

Back to the subject. I seriously doubt that the fox was a randomly chosen creature. Lewis was a medievalist: if I am not mistaken, Narnia is in fact a complex medieval-style allegory composed by Lewis and based upon his nearly-unmatched knowledge and understanding of medieval allegory. I think the fox was indeed chosen to demark the shift in story-telling. I don’t think anyone else - not on this board, and not among professional interpreters of Tolkien - has noticed this before. It’s taken me over forty-four years and perhaps a hundred readings to notice it, along with reading a lot of criticism of the scene both from folks like us and from academicians. It seems deliberately obvious: nearly everyone notices and is aggravated by the fox, but no one notes the shift it marks. It must be a signpost, an intentional marking of a particular turn in the story.

Why then a fox? My guess is that C.S. Lewis suggested a fox. Hoping to substantiate it, I looked up “fox in medieval literature” on Google and found quite a bit of reference material, particularly about Reynard the Fox, “the main character in a literary cycle of allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. Those stories are largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure,” as Wikipedia puts it. There are a great many other references (over 950,000 tonight), and I have not time to plow through more than a sampling.

Does anyone have any idea why Tolkien would choose to mark this part of the story with a fox rather than, say, a squirrel or a badger or bird or some other creature?

[Valandil]

No idea. Why does a fox fit best in your theory?

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Valandil

No idea. Why does a fox fit best in your theory?

Nor have I any idea. That’s why I’m asking the ’Moot.

Perhaps this holds a clue…

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by Alcuin

Back to the subject. I seriously doubt that the fox was a randomly chosen creature. Lewis was a medievalist: if I am not mistaken, Narnia is in fact a complex medieval-style allegory composed by Lewis and based upon his nearly-unmatched knowledge and understanding of medieval allegory. I think the fox was indeed chosen to demark the shift in story-telling. I don’t think anyone else - not on this board, and not among professional interpreters of Tolkien - has noticed this before. It’s taken me over forty-four years and perhaps a hundred readings to notice it, along with reading a lot of criticism of the scene both from folks like us and from academicians. It seems deliberately obvious: nearly everyone notices and is aggravated by the fox, but no one notes the shift it marks. It must be a signpost, an intentional marking of a particular turn in the story.

I've always regarded the fox as a left-over from The Hobbit and I have an inkling (hah!) that his presence in the story has at least once been touched upon in older threads. But I lack the time to look for it now and 'fox' is too short a search term, and well, I may have imagined it. But in any case the fox and its thoughts feel very Hobbity and if you take out the Gandalf's long historical explanation (which I always felt had to have been considerably added to at a later stage given its change of gravitas) the start of LoTR feels very much like a continuation of the The Hobbit. So the fox here does not feel particularly out of place for me. Although I can't remember whether it felt as a signpost of a story-turn when I read it. Unless I re-read more carefully I have a hard time saying where LoTR stops being The Hobbit's sequel and strikes out on its own path.

Why then a fox? My guess is that C.S. Lewis suggested a fox. Hoping to substantiate it, I looked up “fox in medieval literature” on Google and found quite a bit of reference material, particularly about Reynard the Fox, “the main character in a literary cycle of allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. Those stories are largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure,” as Wikipedia puts it. There are a great many other references (over 950,000 tonight), and I have not time to plow through more than a sampling. `

Being from Belgium, Reynard the Fox has featured significantly in my childhood's literature but it strikes me as very different from Tolkien's fox. So much removed in fact that I would go as far as say that there are no simularities other than the species concerned and that Tolkien was not at all influenced by Reynard when he brought up his fox.

Does anyone have any idea why Tolkien would choose to mark this part of the story with a fox rather than, say, a squirrel or a badger or bird or some other creature?

Much (IMO) has to do with biology and habits of foxes and not so much with its role in literature or mythology. It's nighttime when the fox chances across the Hobbits and most birds are creatures of day-light. Foxes are predators, in England they could be considered even apex predators with the removal of wolves, and they're culture followers, so this is an animal that dares to get close to human and their camps while looking for a meal, unlike other animals. Badgers are much more private in that regard. Foxes would take note of human movements in their territory whereas other animals might not. Foxes not only hunt at night but have considerable larger territories than most other species with which it shares its habitat so a fox would be well suited to comment on having seen strange things in the neighbourhood.