Literary WI: Lewis and Tolkien

What was the likelihood of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien working together on a book? What are the implications if they did?
 
Well Lewis was a modern day Christian apologist and the Narnia books were chock full of Christian allegory so we can expect similar tendencies in any joint project they might have done.
 
Tolkien IIRC was more a linguist than an author; LoTR was originally a platform for him to play around with Elvish. I feel like a collaboration would see a Narnia-style series with the linguistic stylings of Tolkien.
 
Tolkien IIRC was more a linguist than an author; LoTR was originally a platform for him to play around with Elvish. I feel like a collaboration would see a Narnia-style series with the linguistic stylings of Tolkien.

tolkein.png

;)
 
It would have to be before Joy Gresham ["is there anyone here called LEWIS?"] enters his life. Tolkein didn't like assertive women and his and Lewis's relationship became strained as a result. More interesting would be a collaboration between Tolkein and Lewis' brother Warnie (the historian W.H. Lewis) whose two books on 17th century France have an awesome hallucinatory reality that would transfer well to fantasy writing. But Tolkein would have to put up with Warnie's drinking binges and keep his mouth shut about Joy, whom Warnie was very loyal to.
 
Creates entire languages for Elves -
names mountain Orodruin, which is translated as Mt. Doom, according to good old naming conventions.
FTFY;)

And on-topic, recall that Tolkien was a compulsive reviser; I think he'd benefit from someone to prod him toward declaring a work complete.
 
They were close friends; it's actually quite surprising that they did not collaborate.
Tolkien didn't really like Lewis's work since he felt that having creatures from different mythologies in one story was awfull (he took his art very seriously). He also hated allegory.

And on-topic, recall that Tolkien was a compulsive reviser; I think he'd benefit from someone to prod him toward declaring a work complete.

Lewis did that anyway. In fact The Lord of the Rings would probably have never been completed (at least to Tolkiens satisfaction) if it hadn't been for Lewis demanding progres.
 
About Tolkien and women, Eowyn takes down a 3,000-year-old undead death machine and his dragon-like mount who had already mortally wounded her uncle and king, while Luthien defies her father and helps trick the Dark Lord out of a jewel in order to marry a man her father had tried to get killed (Beren).

Pretty assertive there.
 
About Tolkien and women, Eowyn takes down a 3,000-year-old undead death machine and his dragon-like mount who had already mortally wounded her uncle and king, while Luthien defies her father and helps trick the Dark Lord out of a jewel in order to marry a man her father had tried to get killed (Beren).

Pretty assertive there.

That was assertiveness in fantasy. Joy was the real thing--from Brooklyn.
 
They were close friends; it's actually quite surprising that they did not collaborate.

They had very, very different literary outlooks. As Samm pointed out below Tolkien didn't really like Lewis' worldbuilding and moreover even though LOTR is in many ways a clear result of the trauma he experienced during WW1, Tolkien himself staunchly resisted the idea of allegory.
 
Joy was the real thing--from Brooklyn.

A British mans worst nightmare :D

Though any collaberative work between Lewis and Tolkien would have been a rather interesting read I think it may have taken decades to finish. This is mostly because of competing ideals and visions for the authors.

From experience co-writing anything is very difficult unless two people can agree to a general vision early on and are willing to stick with it the whole way through.
 
One of the best things Tolkein wrote was his essay on fantasy world-building. But it was very short. I could see him collaborating with Lewis in doing a book on this. Lewis had been constructing worlds in his head since childhood. In one of the Tolkein posthumous volumes there's a record of Inkling discussions of really far-out visionary experiences.
 
Well not a true collaboration, the two of them critiqued on each others writing and I think this helped both of them to create what many enjoy and reread.
 
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