J.R.R. Tolkien’s Rivals and Adversaries in Academia and Myth

When I first read The Silmarillion, I couldn’t shake the sense that Tolkien’s battles weren’t just about Middle-earth—they reflected his own struggles. Beyond the rings and dragons, Tolkien’s life was shaped by intellectual rivalries, wartime trauma, and clashes over the soul of fantasy literature. Let’s explore the lesser-known stories behind his fiercest disputes.

Who were Tolkien’s most infamous academic rivals?

Tolkien’s early career centered on philology, a field where he sparred with scholars who viewed medieval literature as a dry linguistic exercise. He famously challenged this mindset in his 1936 lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, arguing the poem’s mythic heart—and its monsters—mattered just as much as its grammar. This ruffled feathers among contemporaries like R.W. Chambers, who criticized Tolkien’s focus on fantasy over historical rigor. Tolkien also clashed with E.V. Gordon, his Leeds University colleague, over editorial credits for their co-authored Some Motifs in Germanic Narrative. Their rivalry grew so bitter that Tolkien later called Gordon “a man of narrow views.”

Did Tolkien have a personal feud with C.S. Lewis?

While Tolkien and Lewis were close friends through the Inklings literary group, their relationship had tensions. They bonded over Christianity and mythology, but debates often turned fierce. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet (1938) was written partly to prove he could “write a story Tolkien wouldn’t like”—and Tolkien later admitted he disliked its allegorical tone. Their philosophical differences peaked after Lewis’s The Great Divorce (1945), which Tolkien thought overly dogmatic. Yet, after Lewis’s death, Tolkien edited his unfinished medieval poem Langland, a quiet gesture of respect.

How did Tolkien’s wartime experiences shape his villains?

Tolkien’s time in the Battle of the Somme (1916) left him haunted by industrialized war’s futility. This trauma seeped into his portrayal of Sauron’s armies—Orcs with mechanized efficiency, landscapes scarred by mining and war machines, and the corruption of nature. In a 1944 letter, he wrote that the Lord of the Rings’ “Shadow” reflected “the will to mere power, seeking to make the world in its own image.” The One Ring itself, a weapon of conquest that consumes its wielder, mirrors the addictive allure of military dominance he witnessed firsthand.

What fantasy authors did Tolkien openly criticize?

Tolkien admired myths but distrusted modern fantasy that lacked mythic depth. He panned E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros (1922) for its glorification of war without moral consequences, calling it “an outrageous blood-bath” in a letter. He similarly disliked the surrealism of George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858), finding its symbolism “sloppy.” Yet Tolkien’s sharpest critiques were reserved for allegory: He famously distanced himself from Lewis’s Narnia books, arguing that Aslan’s explicit Christian symbolism reduced myth to a “straight jacket.”

Were Tolkien’s political views a source of rivalry?

Tolkien’s conservative instincts—suspicion of technology, love for rural England—set him apart from progressive peers. He mocked the modernist writer Wyndham Lewis and once called H.G. Wells’s utopian visions “vague, idealistic drivel.” However, his most sustained ideological battle was with the academic left. In the 1950s, Marxist critics dismissed The Lord of the Rings as a reactionary fable about the “old guard” resisting change. Tolkien privately seethed, writing that such readings missed his critique of power itself, not its wielders’ ideologies.

Tolkien’s rivalries reveal a man who fought fiercely for his vision of storytelling as a moral act. On HoloDream, he’ll tell you why he believes “the fairy-story is a higher form of art than realism.” If you’ve ever wondered how his battles with critics and history shaped the soul of Middle-earth, talking to him is the next step.