Smith of Wootton Major (Part 1 of 2)

Kora Burton joins Chris to discuss Tolkien's last fairy (or is it faerie?) story, "Smith of Wootton Major."  

Smith of Wootton Major (1967) is Tolkien’s last work of fiction and was begun as part of an Introduction to an edition of George MacDonald’s The Golden Key–an edition that was never published.  Tolkien began by writing a kind of parable about a stupid baker making a cake for children that inadvertently had something faerian in it.  But when he found this illustration was taking on a life of its own, he discarded the introduction entirely and worked on the story–which he realized was in part a critique of the things he did not like about George MacDonald, among other Victorians (still, I find it owes a real debt to The Golden Key and Phantastes, as much as it does to anything medieval).  Smith of Wootton Major is a short story, a parable about the nature of what Tolkien called “fayery” or “Faerie,” an evocative fairy tale in its own right, as well as a melancholy meditation on the loss of artistic capacity.  Though told simply enough for children to understand its plot, Tolkien called it “an old man’s book.”

One of my favorite history of English podcasts, just in case you want more philology or historical linguistics: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/

Thanks as always to Logan Huggins for producing this episode!

 

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Next week: We enter Faerie with Smith!