Farmer Giles of Ham

Farmer Giles von Ham (English original title: Farmer Giles of Ham ) is a work by JRR Tolkien , which is to be assigned to the literary genre of art fairy tales . It was first published in 1949 by George Allen & Unwin , but it was already written around 1937.

content

The good-natured, cunning but not too courageous farmer Giles von Ham drives a lost giant from his property more by chance than by courage or skill. He is then stylized as a hero through word of mouth. Ultimately, Augustus Bonifacius, King of the "Middle Kingdom" and liege lord Giles' heard of this heroic deed and gave him an old sword as a thank you (such a sword was out of fashion at court, but a sufficient gift for a simple person like Giles) .

Stimulated by the stories of the lost giant, among other things, an old and devious dragon called Chrysophylax Dives sets out to devastate the lands near Giles' farm. Pressed by the other villagers, Giles has to face the dragon after having failed with various excuses. Coincidence would have it that the sword he received as thanks is the infamous sword "caudimordax" or tail-biter, which jumps out of its scabbard as soon as a dragon is close and almost independently fights against chyrsophylax. Wounded and completely exhausted, Chrysophylax collapses after a long chase across the fields in front of the village church. Chrysophylax offers the villagers a large part of its treasure so that they can save his life. When the king learns of this, he wants to claim the lion's share of the treasure for himself, but, as the reader would expect, the devious dragon does not think of returning.

Giles is obliged by the king to accompany the royal knights who are supposed to remind the dragon of his promises or to kill him. Attacked by Chrysophylax, the knights all flee at the crucial moment, so that Giles faces the dragon alone. Again, with a good deal of luck, his cunning and not least with the help of his sword, he manages to get some of his treasure and even force the dragon into his service. When the king found out about it and wanted to grab the treasure in his greed, the now more sophisticated peasant broke away from him and founded the "Little Kingdom", the security of which was now guaranteed by Chrysophylax. At the end of his life, Giles releases the dragon, who of course still had a huge part of the treasure hoarded in his cave.

meaning

The significance of the story Farmer Giles von Ham can be seen in its exemplary function for Tolkien's conception of (fantastic) literature (especially fairy tales ). Tolkien sees the most important task of the fairy tale as having a healing (and not a moral) effect on the human mind: the recovery of the human imagination, the sharpening of aesthetic awareness and the consolation that escapes into the imaginary world. He does not understand this to be the accusation of escapism , but rather the escape, which is wholesome because it helps people to endure better and healthier things that cannot be changed in the real world (“escape of the prisoner”). The always happy ending of a fairy tale (he coined the term " eucatastrophe " for it) is essential for him for the comfort experience (see Tolkien's essay On fairy stories from 1939).

As an art fairy tale, Farmer Giles von Ham fulfills all the essential elements that also apply to a folk tale . In addition, it contains satirical, parodic and humorous aspects that are rather untypical for fairy tales. Corresponding to Tolkien's field of work, there are many philological allusions that caricature the way philologists work . For example, he explains the origin of the name Thames with the word "tame" (dt. Tame), since Giles had become the master of a tamed dragon. Many of the names in his fairy tale are either speaking names (chrysophylax = guardian of gold) or contain allusions to historical or mythological figures ( e.g. to Hannibal's opponent Fabius Cunctator in the name of the cowardly blacksmith Fabricius (sic!) Cuncator and the name of Giles' dog ( Garm is the dog of the dead goddess Hel ).)


Fiction	Songs for the Philologists (1936) • The Hobbit (1937) • Blatt von Tüftler (1947) • The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1945) • Bauer Giles von Ham (1949) • The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (1953) • The Lord of the Rings (1954/55) • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Poems from the Red Book (1962) • Tree and Leaf (1964) • The Tolkien Reader (1966) • The Road Goes Ever On (1967) • Smith of Wootton Major (1967)
Posthumously published fiction	Santa's Letters (1976) • The Silmarillion (1977) • News from Middle-earth (1980) • Mr. Bliss (1982) • Bilbo's Farewell Song (1990) • The History of Middle-earth (12 volumes; 1983–1996) • The Lost Road and Other Writings (Volume 5, 1987) • Roverandom (1998) • The Children of Húrin (2007) • The History of The Hobbit (2007) • The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (2009) • King Arthur's Fall (2013) • The Story of Kullervo (2015) • Beren and Lúthien (2017) • The Fall of Gondolin (2018)
Academic works	A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English text, 1925) • Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (1925) • The Devil's Coach-Horses (1925) • Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad (1929) • The Name Nodens (1932) • Sigelwara Land Parts I and II, in Medium Aevum (1932–1934) • Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale (1934) • Beowulf: The Monsters and Their Critics (1936) • The Reeve's Tale: version prepared for recitation at the "summer diversions" (1939) • On Fairy-Stories (1939) • Sir Orfeo (1944) • Ofermod and Beorhtnoth's Death (1953) • Middle English "Losenger": Sketch of an etymological and semantic inquiry ( 1953) • Ancrene Wisse : The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962) • English and Welsh (1963) • Introduction to Tree and Leaf (1964) • Contributions to the Jerusalem Bible (as translator and lexicographer) (1966) • Tolkien on Tolkien (autobiographical) (1966)
Posthumous academic publications	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , Pearl and Sir Orfeo (translations into modern English, 1975) • Finn and Hengest (1982) • The Monsters and the Critics (1983) • Beowulf and the Critics (2002) • Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (2014)