Editing Tom Bombadil (section)

=== Multiple levels of meaning ===

Jane Beal, in the ''[[Journal of Tolkien Research]]'', writes that Bombadil can be considered using "the four levels of meaning found in medieval [[scriptural exegesis]] and literary interpretation". These are different ways of understanding a text, rather than necessarily contradicting each other.<ref name="Beal 2018"/>

{| class="wikitable" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: none;"
|+ Jane Beal's analysis of Bombadil's multiple levels of meaning<ref name="Beal 2018"/>
|-
! Level !! Meaning
|-
| '''Literal''' || Real world: a wooden doll that belonged to Michael Tolkien.<br/>[[Sub-creation|Sub-created world]]: "Eldest".
|-
| '''[[Allegory|Allegorical]]''' || Real world: the spirit of the vanishing English countryside.<br/>Sub-created world: a figure of the study of [[Zoology]], [[Botany]], and [[Poetry]],<br/>parallel to the first, [[prelapsarian]] Adam.{{efn|The Tolkien scholar [[Brian Rosebury]] writes that Bombadil's relation to the land of which he is the Master is "like that of an unfallen Adam to the Garden of Eden".<ref>{{cite book |last=Rosebury |first=Brian |author-link=Brian Rosebury |title=Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]]  |year=2003 |page=40 |isbn=978-1-4039-1597-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/tolkienculturalp00rose/page/40}}</ref> }}
|-
| '''Moral''' || A storyteller, representative of Tolkien himself.
|-
| '''[[Anagogical]]''' || A figure of the second Adam, [[Jesus]].
|}