Just a Bit of Nonsense

Abstract

There is a broad vein of nonsense in Tolkien’s tales. Middle-earth creatures delight in whimsy. They banter. They pun incessantly. They recite rollicking rhymes composed of “just a bit of nonsense” (201). They joke. Their author jokes, too, so outrageously he is sometimes embarrassed about it—he informs us the title of that magnificent dragon Smaug derives from “the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb smugan, to squeeze through a hole,” playful paronomasia that he promptly puts in its proper stylistic place as “a low philological jest.”¹