Monday 13 July 2020

Why was JRR Tolkien averse to the French language and culture?

I explain, over at The Notion Club Papers blog...

1 comment:

TonguelessYoungMan said...

"...Or else they are Americans; who just don't understand."
At the risk of sounding indignant (I'm not, because this is by and large true), I, an American, understand, it's rather obvious when you look at the history of England. The francophone Normans displaced the native English aristocracy, the 100 years war(s), the Auld Alliance (an explicitly anti-English alliance) between Scotland and France, being competing colonial powers thereafter, Napoleonic wars etc. etc.

Not to mention I've met a fair share of Englishmen, living in a very touristy and metropolitan city, and some of them seemed pretty keen to mock the French.

I actually thought it was fairly common knowledge that the French and English have a pretty intense rivalry.

Are people really put-off by his anti-French sentiments? I suppose it makes a degree of sense for the very upper class types, who might retain some vestigial Francophilia, but here is where I admit my ignorance of just how different social classes in England are, in regards to such things.