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Abstract
During the medieval and early modern periods, folkloric goblins were often presented as multifaceted creatures with unclear origins and as nebulous markers of the preternatural. Beginning in the 1800s, however, authors crafted new interpretations of these creatures that appropriated folkloric traditions to create a distinct kind of fictional goblin. The works of George MacDonald (d. 1905) and J. R. R. Tolkien (d. 1973) were essential to this process. MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872) fuses folklore with Darwinian evolutionary thought to present goblins as antagonistic, troglodytic schemers who devolved from humans. MacDonald’s ideas were influential on Tolkien, as he characterizes goblins as a corrupted and evil ‘race’—descriptions that utilize racialized language common in early twentieth-century England. Tolkien and MacDonald thus flattened folkloric goblins in their own works such that they became an entirely different (and specific) kind of fictional monster that reflected contemporary trends in English society.
Notes
1 I would like to extend my deepest thanks to the scholars who contributed to the creation of this article. Jessica Hemming provided invaluable feedback on an early draft of the article. Michael Ostling also encouraged my work and supplied me with useful references. The two anonymous peer reviewers for this article likewise provided me with constructive and pointed feedback. I would also like to thank the entire editorial staff of Folklore, especially Antone Lanatà Minard, for their constructive comments. All mistakes within this article are my own.
2 The etymology of ‘goblin’ is considered at length in the Oxford English Dictionary in entries both for the word ‘goblin’ and the related ‘hobgoblin’. These are respectively accessible at https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/79613 and https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/87466.
3 The character of Puck was not an invention of Shakespeare himself, but rather a continuation of a tradition that dates to at least the early sixteenth century (and likely earlier). Antonio de Torquemada used the term in his Jardín de Flores Curiosas (Garden of Curious Flowers) of 1570, translated in the early seventeenth century by Lewis Lewkenor. When the character Antonio is asked by Ludovico what he thinks about ‘Robingoodfelowes & Hobgoblins’, he responds by saying that many of them are ‘without doubt forged’ but that many are ‘also true’. He groups them under the category of ‘devils’ broadly, but places them in a different category to Hags and Witches and instead calls them a kind of ‘domesticall spirit’ (Torquemada Citation1600, folios 61 and 79–80).
4 This is not a particularly new idea. Richard M. Dorson, for example, claimed in 1957 during a symposium titled ‘Folklore in Literature’ that ‘folklore can no longer be gainsaid as an instrument of literary analysis’ (Dorson Citation1957, 1).
5 One encounter that the protagonist Curdie has with the goblin queen gives a sense of her monstrous features: ‘Her nose was certainly broader at the end than its extreme length, and her eyes, instead of being horizontal, were set up like two perpendicular eggs, one on the broad, the other on the small end. Her mouth was no bigger than a small button-hole until she laughed, when it stretched from ear to ear—only to be sure her ears were very nearly in the middle of her cheeks’. Illustrations in the 1872 edition highlight some of these features (MacDonald Citation1872, 119 and 183).
6 Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, and after substantial debate on the merits of its scientific theories, ‘evolutionism was triumphant’ by the 1870s (Bowler Citation2003, 179).
7 One of the characters in Malcolm, ‘long before the younger Darwin arose, had suspected a close relationship—remote identity, indeed, in nature and history, between the animal and human worlds’ (MacDonald Citation1875, 76–77). In Lilith, Darwin and James Clerk Maxwell are compared unfavourably to ‘Ptolemy, Dante, the two Bacons, and Boyle’ (MacDonald Citation1896, 2).
8 MacDonald did not always write as if goblins were a distinct species. In his 1858 Phantastes, for example, he writes of ‘the gnomes or goblin-fairies, who inhabit the ground and earthy creeping plantings’ and of a ‘desert region of dry sand and glittering rocks, peopled principally by goblin-fairies’ (MacDonald Citation1858, 35 and 110).
9 Reviews and analyses of these books were further spread in publications such as the Quarterly Reviews. An 1819 issue of this journal, for example, contained a twenty-page review of Benjamin Tabart’s book Fairy Tales, or the Lilliputian Cabinet, which included an analysis of a ‘most important addition to nursery literature’ compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (‘Fairy Tales, or the Lilliputian Cabinet’ 1819).
10 In a 1971 article, Venetia Newall remarked that ‘the relationship between folklore and nationalism is one that has been exhaustively considered and discussed’ (Newall Citation1971, 328; Baycroft and Hopkin Citation2012).
11 Tolkien did not like the idea of goblins having soft feet and did not include it in his works (Carpenter and Tolkien Citation2013, letters 144 and 151). Tolkien’s relationship to the works of MacDonald evidently cooled as he aged, and in a 1966 interview he said that ‘I now find that I can’t stand George McDonald [sic] books at any price at all. I find that now I can’t take him’ (Rateliff Citation2008, 145).
12 In his early writings, however, Tolkien used the term ‘goblin’ in the more general sense that was common in folkloric and some literary traditions. In the 1915 poem ‘Goblin Feet’, for example, he uses the term to describe the various mischief-makers present therein, including leprechauns, gnomes, and fairies (Tolkien Citation1915).
13 Like so many details within the legendarium of Tolkien, his letters add some confusion to the content of his books. In a letter from 1954, for example, Tolkien wrote in a parenthetical aside that orcs ‘are not “goblins”’, although it seems as though here he means that the orcs of Middle-earth do not correspond to earlier interpretations of goblins in folklore and literary fantasy (Carpenter and Tolkien Citation2013, letter 131). A 1938 letter to The Observer also saw Tolkien claim that, in The Hobbit, ‘elf, gnome, goblin, dwarf are only approximate translations of the Old Elvish names for beings of not quite the same kinds and functions’ (Fimi Citation2008, 32; original italics).
14 Anderson was a self-professed admirer of Tolkien, having written a tribute to him in the journal Mythlore (Urrutia et al. Citation1975).
15 In the context of the history of Boggarts, Young argues that the movement of the boggart from a ‘generic, sinister, and shadowy term’ to a ‘benevolent or mischievous nature-loving sprite’ was a form of ‘goblinification’. The identification of this process as ‘goblinification’ itself gives some indication that Anderson’s portrayal of the goblin in this lowly way was not done in isolation, but rather was part of a larger process (Young Citation2022, 194).
16 The core rulebooks for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons were released between 1977 and 1979. Although they comprise the second edition of rules for Dungeons & Dragons, they were more popular and widespread than the first edition (Gygax Citation1977, Citation1978, Citation1979).
17 An overview of what this kind of gameplay looks like can be found in Ewalt (Citation2013, 3–30).
18 These examples are from the pulp magazine Weird Tales, which included short works by famed authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard (Lapsley Citation1923, 79; Hoss Citation1924, 61; Howard Citation1935, 182).
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Matt King
Matt King is a historian of the medieval Mediterranean with a longtime interest in folklore. His first book, Dynasties Intertwined: The Zirids of Ifriqiya and the Normans of Sicily (Cornell University Press, 2022), focuses on the relationship between the Norman kingdom of Sicily and the Zirid emirate of Ifriqiya (modern-day Tunisia) during the twelfth century. He is also actively involved in National History Day, an outreach programme that allows middle school and high school students to conduct original historical research about topics of their choice.