“The Mythical Mode of Imagination”: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Epistemology of Myth

Abstract

In June 1942 Time and Tide reported that the Nazi party had chosen Hagen over Siegfried as their national hero. Passing over the noble but credulous hero of the Niebelungenlied, the Nazis instead identified a scheming, malicious villain as the epitome of the Germanic spirit. When he heard the news, C.S. Lewis could barely suppress his elated laughter. Lewis had long been an admirer of the Niebelung mythology, and in the years leading up to the Second World War he had watched with increasing dismay as the Nazis appropriated it for their own ideological purposes. “It was,” he wrote, “a bitter moment when the Nazis took over my treasure and made it part of their ideology.”¹ But with the news that the Nazis had chosen Hagen, Lewis’s dismay was replaced by a relieved amusement: “[N]ow all is well. They have proved unable to digest it. They can retain it only by standing the story on its head and making one of the minor villains the hero …. [T]hey have given me back what they stole.”²