Alternative Histories

Abstract This chapter suggests that Celts and Celticism are key themes in the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien, and furthermore that while his fiction is not ‘Classical reception’ in the conventional sense, our understanding of it is enriched if we read it not simply as a work of fantasy, but as a series of alternative histories, in which relations between various traditional ethnic groups of Europe are imaginatively recreated. It is proposed that various of Tolkien’s fictional peoples may be identified as ‘crypto-Celts’, ‘crypto-Romans’, and ‘crypto-Saxons’, and that he uses these crypto-peoples as means of considering the different ways in which real-world peoples interact. The implications of this for Tolkien’s views on ‘Englishness’ and ‘Britishness’ are considered, and the widespread belief that Tolkien regularly deals with hypostatized ethnic or national groups is challenged. Emphasis is given rather to the importance in his work of contact and mixture between groups, and his implicit critique of Romantic notions of Heimat. Particular attention is also paid to groups or individuals who function as ‘crypto-Roman Catholics’, and their importance for Tolkien’s vision of a re-Catholicized England.