Editing Smith of Wootton Major (section)

=== Capable of allegorical interpretation ===

{{further|Christianity in Middle-earth}}

[[File:Workshop of Della Robbia family - The Virgin of the Lilies - Walters 27217.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Josh B. Long likens the Faery Queen with lilies to the [[Virgin Mary]].<ref name="Long 2021"/> Glazed terracotta plaque ''The Virgin of the Lilies'', [[Luca della Robbia|Della Robbia]] family workshop, 16th century]]

Josh B. Long, in ''[[Tolkien Studies]]'', states that for Tolkien, "allegorical interpretation" was not the same as allegory, as interpretations come from a free interchange between text and reader, whereas allegory is imposed by the author. Long sees both religious "undertones" in the story, and autobiographical elements. He notes that the Catholic writer [[Joseph Pearce]] took the story as a [[parable]],<ref name="Long 2021"/><ref>{{cite book |last=Pearce |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Pearce |title=Tolkien: Man and Myth |publisher=[[Ignatius Press]] |year=1998 |page=170}}</ref> and that Flieger accepts "a level of allegory" but not the philological version proposed by Shippey.<ref name="Long 2021"/><ref name="Flieger 2001">{{cite book |last=Flieger |first=Verlyn |author-link=Verlyn Flieger |chapter=Pitfalls in Faërie |title=A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie |title-link=A Question of Time (book) |publisher=[[Kent State University Press]] |year=2001 |isbn=0-87338-699-X |pages=227–253}}</ref> Instead, the Hall would be the church, Cook would be the parson, and cooking would be "personal religion".<ref name="Long 2021"/> Or, [[Matthew Dickerson]] and [[Jonathan Evans (scholar)|Jonathan Evans]] suggest, Alf is a figure of Christ, the king of a heavenly realm who arrives as a child and grows to be a man.<ref name="Long 2021"/> [[Martin Sternberg (scholar)|Martin Sternberg]] sees the story as religious<!--"not necessarily Christian", in Long's words-->, with experiences of the numinous and "traditional mystical ideas and motifs".<ref name="Long 2021"/>

Long presents his own religious interpretation, likening the story's Faery Queen to the [[Mary, mother of Jesus|Virgin Mary]], with the lilies "near the lawn" as her symbol; Alf as Christ; the Great Cake perhaps as a Twelfth-cake for [[Epiphany (holiday)|Epiphany]]; Nokes as a fool or "a kind of anti-Tolkien"; Smith, a "[[Laity|lay]] Christian".<ref name="Long 2021"/>

In addition, Long sees Shippey's identification of birch and oak with philology and criticism as correct, but differs about what Tolkien wanted to say here. In Long's view, the birch "represents the sharp critique of most of his philological colleagues who supposed that Tolkien had squandered years of his life on a worthless piece of fantasy literature—a place he didn’t belong, or so they thought." In other words, he writes, the dispute was inside the philological community; far from fighting literary criticism, Tolkien had done much to heal the split between the critics and the philologists at Oxford.<ref name="Long 2021">{{cite journal |last=Long |first=Josh B. |title=Faery, Faith, and Self-Portrayal: An Allegorical Interpretation of Smith of Wootton Major |journal=Tolkien Studies |date=2021 |volume=18 |pages=93–129 |doi=10.1353/tks.2021.0007}}</ref>