Talk:Deep England

Who uses this term? Politicians? Literary critics?

This term is in fairly wide use in many circles where notions of Little England and particular viewpoints of nostalgic fantasising are discussed. I have seen it used by: historians (it is a concpet I have to discuss quite a bit...), literary critics, politicians, sociologists, and philosophers. There really don't seem to be any specific boundaries to its use, nor any limits to its users. sjc

 by whom?

Mainly by people who do not subscribe to exclusive racist ideologies. sjc

self-identified? Or so described by whom?

They are fairly self-identifying to those with eyes to see. Rather like the war-criminal Slobodan Milosevic who maintains his innocence in the face of an overwhelming plethora of evidence. sjc

Tolkien's views are interesting in that they represent a particular individual's take on the coming of modernity within Deep England: e.g. the masses are indubitably represented within The Lord of the Rings by the orcs, the leathery and obnoxious barbarian horde creature destroyers of the rural lanes of the Shire; Sauron and Saruman the political manipulators controlling hordes for their own evil ends, etc. This view is particularly well-represented in John Carey's critique of English middle-class intellegentsia's fear of the working classes, "The Intellectuals and the Masses". Against this in mitigation can be set Tolkien's genuine and unfeigned love of the countryside, and of folk-ways.

This statement seems somewhat a) unsupported by reference experts, and b) under supported by reference to the works themselves.

It is hard for me to accept that Tolken's view of the "masses" is characterized by the orkish hoards. There are great cities which stand against Sauron, the dwarfish city of Moria is depicted as once great but fallen. Cities are not primarily the residences of evil, instead we find great evils living in the dark woods and underground. Much more would need to be said for me to accept the proposition that Tolken -- in spite of his own claims about his work -- was writing an allegory about the true meaning of England. Moreover, in the context of the article, there seems to be an attribution of racist ideology, which is also unsubstantiated in the case of the writers mentioned in the text itselv. I don't know much about Tolken, and Kipling, but IIRC, Blake was actively opposed to england's participation in the slave trade.

Yes, you're quite right about Blake, i should have edited that bit a long time ago. He is definitely both feet in the Deep England camp, though, as are, I suppose, a whole host of left-of-centre types such as the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris, etc. but from an altogether bucolic ideal sort of perspective.

If, however, you disagree with me on the orcish refs, read the deconstruction done by John Carey, a very serious lit. critic. For Moria, look at London: a great city but fallen (as Tolkien would have it). I accept there's nothing explicitly racist in Tolkien but consider his fair-skinned, fair-haired elven master-race... Swords, blood and honour philosophy... it doesn't take a lot to parallel and recognise the plot from Deutschland c. 1933. I'm not having to try too hard here and I last read Bored of the Rings about 20 years ago and didn't much care for its political tenor at the time.

You should also remember that Tolkien was (as were Hitler and his gaggle of thin-necked assassins) much taken with old Germanic myths and legends, if not an advocate of "Old Prussia" soi-meme. The seductive charms of Oswald Mosley and the far right were also taken far more seriously in Britain in the aftermath of World War I than they are currently, and you would be amazed at the number of intellectually-credible right wing fellow-travellers that they attracted. Tolkien, along with H.G. Wells, another chap you'd reasonably expect to be totally politically bang-on are in fact demophobics nonpareil; just read the subtexts carefully and you'll see what I'm saying... PS: Sorry to explode your Deep England fairy-tale. If you really must read fantasy why not read someone who can do it properly like Lord Dunsany?user:sjc

but unlike Hitler, et al., Tolkien had actually read the old stuff, and little use as he had for France and the French, had read all of that, too. Tolkien's world is significantly more Continental than the imagination of most British authors (certainly moreso than the mad Blake or the very different Kipling (for Kipling England stood for something Other than India). Tolkien is fond of the Shire, but he admits its peculiar absurdity -- and it is held up as something very different from the great wanderings of True Men, who are based in Indo-European heroic mythology far from Germano-specific. The battle scenes owe much more to the Anglo-Norman Song of Roland than they do to any Arthurian material. And the Elves are Germans? Really? The ingredients are much more Celtic. --MichaelTinkler

OK, I was being naughty... A little argumentum ad hominem goes a long way... Sometimes I just can't help myself. And I did clarify the differences in the main article... sjc PS: the elves, the elves, Esmerelda... they are none of them remotely Celtic and swarthy. They all have nice names like Galadriel etc... and vote Conservative and drive VW Golf hatchbacks... and play squash at the weekend... or something like that.

Most Men in Tolkien aren't wanderers--the Dunedain are specifically the emigres from foundered Numenor, and the Rangers are a small, specifically trained group within that. Men live in Bree, in Lake-town, in Rohan and Anorien.

The idea of orcs as "the masses" (not a concept I think Tolkien was much concerned with) seems pretty dubious: Tolkien said "I was an orc in the Great War." Orcs are the poor bloody infantry, taking orders and dying while others make the decisions. Vicki Rosenzweig

On the contrary, Tolkien was much and vehemently opposed to what he considered the philistinism of the masses. Democracy was nothing but a sham, according to Tolkien. In ancient Greece, democracy served as a fancy name for mob rule. Any Greek city-state worth remembering, Tolkien wrote, is worth remembering precisely because of its centralized ability to mobilize and tackle another power. Even worse, Tolkien argued, democracy's natural terminus is in slavery. "I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power?and then we get and are getting slavery," Tolkien claimed, echoing critics of democracy from Plato in the Republic to Tocqueville in Democracy in America.

Conversely, the Shire serves as Tolkien's representation of a Utopian agrarian republic. The Shire is, itself, a pre-modern society, and the Hobbits often seem innocent and childlike because they are. They live in a pre-cynical age: Merry England by Walt Disney = Deep England. They simply live the good life, as farmers, shopkeepers, men, women, and children. They eat, they drink, they smoke, they argue, they gossip, they collect too many gifts ("mathom"), they garden, and they love. "Hobbits are unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-armed countryside was their favourite haunt," Tolkien wrote in the Prologue to the Fellowship of the Ring. "They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skillful with tools." They were certainly not rational political animals, capable of running a computer...

PS On the gender front, there don't seem to be a lot of females in LOTR, now do there?sjc

With all the due respect, Tolkien was strictly opposed to allegorical interpretation of his works (just read his Prologue to the Second Edition of the Lord of the Rings). So while it's possible to analyze the literary and psychological motives behind LoTR, I really doubt whether one can dig something conclusive out of it. This is reaffirmed by what I've read so far in this discussion. --Uriyan

There is an almost overwhelming degree of unwitting testimony relative to Tolkien's perceptions of Deep England within his work. He may not have consciously been aware of it, but it's there nevertheless... I read it a long time ago and still remember being truly staggered by the extent of it.

Tolkien hated socialism in any form, and wrote that the saints living in the modern world were those "who have for all their imperfections never finally bowed head and will to the world or the evil spirit (in modern but not universal terms: mechanism, 'scientific' materialism, Socialism in either of its factions now at war)."

I also think it is perfectly possible to analyse what someone writes and figure out what is being said between the lines. It is what we are all doing here. sjc

PPS: I just found this really nice piece of dissection by a truly intelligent writer of fantasy, Michael Moorcock, which strikes a chord with me:

The little hills and woods of that Surrey of the mind, the Shire [where the protagonist "hobbits" live], are "safe" but the wild landscapes everywhere beyond the Shire are "dangerous"... Lord of the Rings is a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class... If the Shire is a suburban garden, Sauron [the "evil" dark lord] and his henchmen are that old bourgeois bugaboo, the mob - mindless football supporters throwing their beer bottles over the fence - the worst aspect of modern urban society represented as the whole by a fearful, backward-yearning class.

sjc

Wouldn't it be useful simply to distinguish between Tolkien and Tolkien's work? Tolkien surely had his own views, some of which were expressed explicitly in print. But Tolkien's claimed intentions, or his own way of reading his work, is not quite the same thing as how others have read his work. It seems to me that regardless of Tolkien's intentions, many people have found reasons of their own to enjoy his books, and have found their own meaning in it. How other people have read and interpreted these books seems to me to be an entirely legitimate, and interesting, topic. All I am saying is that the two readings of the books need to be distinguished clearly,

SR

I agree entirely with SLR on the approach. Authors are not so easily reduced to their work, even authors of genre fiction. Critics are sometimes, but far from always, more perceptive than those they study. Only really, deeply banal art is entirely explicable. MichaelTinkler

The American novelist Diane Johnson said it better than I could: The novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them.

I wasn't suggesting that Tolkien can be entirely reduced to his work. But short of resurrecting him and putting the hard questions, we only have his work and his epistolary legacy against which to assess him. I think I am fairly clear in my mind that his work is suspect; I am not entirely alone in this respect; the main thrust of my argument is that Tolkien is basically Deep England to the bone.sjc

Since you've admitted not reading it in 20 years, I tend to think more highly of your practice of history than of liteary criticism. ; ) MichaelTinkler

I guess I'm not alone, though. I was reading Jonathan Coe's novel "The Rotters Club" (a tale of life in Birmingham) the other day and came across this: "Birmingham, Doug maintained, had produced two notable racist thinkers in the last few decades: Enoch Powell and J.R.R. Tolkien." Laugh? The cat nearly had an epileptic fit.sjc

Removing this paragraph from the main page; perhaps it should be rewritten by someone who has read the works in question (destroyers of the rural lanes of the Shire? fair-haired elven master-race)?

Tolkien's views are interesting in that they represent the complexity of a particular individual's take on the coming of modernity within Deep England: e.g. the masses may be said to be represented within The Lord of the Rings by the orcs, the leathery and obnoxious barbarian horde creature destroyers of the rural lanes of the Shire; Sauron and Saruman the political manipulators controlling hordes for their own evil ends, etc. This view is particularly well-represented in John Carey's critique of English middle-class intelligentsia's fear of the working classes, "The Intellectuals and the Masses". Against this in mitigation can be set Tolkien's genuine and unfeigned love of the countryside, and of folk-ways.

Well actually, I read them once, admittedly not with the fawning eye of the school of Tolkien sycophants. About 20 years ago. Then I started rereading them again. And frankly I found it even more appalling the second time around. The stuff is pernicious garbage of a low order of intellectual magnitude: what we have with Lord of the Rings is a crypto-fascist staircase mystery masquerading as a fantasy novel. user:sjc:sjc

That's fine, but not very relevant to this page. The trouble I find with the page as presently written is that it doesn't make it very clear what its subject is. Deep England is variously a vision, an ideological construct, a concept, a place in which J B Priestly could reside, and a perspective with proponents and opponents. The most important thing which I would like to see clarified is whether the various writers listed would have seen themselves as part of a school with something in common (and if so, what), or whether this school is identified by others. If the latter, is the school only identified by those critical of it? Is the term Deep England particularly used by those critical of it? Is the used for anyone who writes (or paints?) positively of rural England, or only those who combine this with a reactionary viewpoint?

As to Tolkien, I don't think it's controversial that he was deeply politically reactionary. But symbolic interpretations of literary works in ways that wouldn't be recognised by the author need a little more context than the psychohistory suggested above. I think there is something interesting to be written here, and I agree that the connections between Tolkien's racial mythology and the myths built on by the Nazi party for their own purposes go deeper than is often observed. If this John Carey is interesting, please write about him - but don't expect people to accept a point of view merely because it is propounded by a 'serious literary critic'. Many people so described don't actually read the works they criticise.

Oh dear. This really is an argument of infinite regress, isn't it? Deep England is all of the things which you detail above and more. It is not a school, but certainly inclusion within its rank of members is a self-selecting process. It is moreover a term which can be used not only by critics but occasionally by its adherents, who would depict it positively. Unfortunately its adherents are not usually the brightest of folk, so intellectual Darwinism tends to reduce their outpourings to yesterday's chip-paper wrappings long before they become common currency. sjc

There's no need for this to be infinite regress. If the term is used in an incoherent manner, that's fine, but the explanation needs to be on the main page, not here.

What's missing from this page at present is the step between an artistic portrayal of an ahistorical rural idyll and the reactionary political points of view associated with it? Why (according to its critics) does this connection arise?

At the moment, this page has little more useful content than:

Reactionary people often romanticise the past. The term 'Deep England' is used by people who criticise this.

plus a pile of name-checks.

And don't fall into the trap of believing your enemies are stupid. Neither Priestly nor Kipling was a stupid person. Nor was Enoch Powell, come to that. Being clever and being correct don't automatically go together, right?

--Matthew Woodcraft

Fine. I accept your reductionist argument. I have better things to do than argue the toss.sjc

PS: On the subject of John Carey, I fully intend to do an article on him at some future point. As well as QD & FR Leavis, Terry Eagleton, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. But I only have one pair of hands.

Me again: sjc writes "They were certainly not rational political animals, capable of running a computer... " The latter I'll grant you, but not the former. They have a higher tech than, for example, the writer who first claimed that Humans are political animals; about the same level as the writers of the US Constitution, or higher than that in the UK at the time of the Glorious Revolution. I'm unconvinced about "Deep England," but fairly sure that being agrarian doesn't mean people are politically unsophisticated.

Struggling with this Vicky...

I have trouble giving credence to Moorcock as an authority here, given that he blithely ignores the differences, *for story purposes*, that is, within the secondary creation that is Lord of the Rings, between magic and technology: he doesn't see why the good guys didn't take cannon up against Barad-dur, ignoring both the military strength of Sauron and the point that Gandalf and Elrond know that it wouldn't do any good, that the need is to destroy the Ring. (See Ansible 174, at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/SF-Archives/Ansible/a174.html). Vicki Rosenzweig

Yes, I read that too. Moorcock was really attacking Tolkien's characteristic paucity of emplotment here, I think. Moorcock isn't first and foremost a literary critic, but he certainly is a writer possessed of more imagination in his little finger than exist in the entire canonical output of the Inklings. But frankly, if you guys are so upset about the dehagiographication of St Tolkien, then I will let it ride. But please expect an article really soon on the case for the extermination of hobbits... :-) sjc the bad

You clearly have a higher opinion of Moorcock's fiction than I do, which is fine: but I think it belongs on a page about Moorcock. VR

Calder cites, amidst a myriad of examples, the city-bred northener J.B. Priestley who by inclination had become a denizen of Deep England What does this last mean? He was walking around in a vision?.

It means that his intellect had been usurped by the seductive lure of post-Georgian romanticism. It is not terribly difficult to comprehend. Or is it? sjc

If you mean that, then say it. Yes, your page is difficult to comprehend. Please help to improve it. You're not just writing for an audience whose political views will match yours; people will read this page whose point of view is closer to that of the writers you criticise. Be direct, not allusive.

You seem to be saying that Priestley, who ought to know better, found a romanticised view of (particularly English?) rural life sufficiently attractive that he overlooked the opression historically involved. Or do you mean that he was deliberately colluding with the 'various interested organisations'?

Phrases like a clearly defined political and cultural purpose in the hands of various interested agencies are unclear. Why not just say what the purpose was, and who the agencies were? You're already making it clear whose view this is, so if you mean oppressive, or racist, or sexist, then just say so.

This ought to be a useful page, if it can focus on the movement (?) described by its title.

--Matthew Woodcraft

Fine. I accept your reductionist argument (bis). I still have better things to do than argue the toss. sjc

It's not "arguing the toss, it's asking for clarification. If I agreed with you (and I think I do, in part), I'd want more detail on this, to make the article useful. If someone had a clearly defined purpose, it's worth identifying--especially 60 years on, when you can't expeect most readers to have heard the broadcasts or otherwise be intimately familiar with the experience of hiding in the Underground during the Blitz. Vicki Rosenzweig

I have re-edited an earlier version of the article, which appears to describe a concept actually used in criticism: Google gives examples. I have tried to turn the rhetoric down a bit (actually, a lot), and edit for NPOV. I hope that in doing so I have not created any distortions of fact. And yes, more research is needed to make the article useful. The Anome

Google search gives about 85 hits for "Deep England" - about 40 are in the same usage as this article. So people are using this term, but it's pretty rare.

I'm not sure about the validity of this term as an encyclopaedia article. It appears to be an idiosyncratic term used by Robert Hewison and Angus Calder and few others as a criticism of Priestley.

Google hits:
+"deep england" +"julian barnes" = 0
+"deep england" +utopian = 0
+"deep england" +"john major" = 1 (out of context)
+"deep england" +"Angus Calder" = 2
+"deep england" +"Robert Hewison" = 3
+"deep england" +"J.B. Priestley"  = 5
+"deep england" +"Rudyard Kipling" = 1 (out of context)
+"deep england" +"Tolkien" = 0
+"deep england" +"Beatrix Potter" = 0

The term "Merry England" which has similar meanings deserves an article. Mintguy

Strongly recommend moving much of the above to Talk:Lord of the Rings and Talk:Tolkien.

Also consider role of C. S. Lewis, another notable Catholic Englander... like Tolkien he tended to see the enemy as TECHNOLOGY (note "the one ring" is a TECHNOLOGY, and the Orcs and Saruman are delighted/seduced by killing machines) - so most of the allegorical reads are just off the mark above.

This is certainly a real subject, with major importance in British culture and politics, even if "Deep England" might be the wrong title: possible alternative titles might be "Merrie England", or "English reactionary romanticism"?

There is most certainly a good article in here somewhere, but first we must give it a good NPOV kicking, and the benefit of some more research...