Reconstructed Old English elf The philologist and Tolkien scholar
Tom Shippey notes that in creating Galadriel, Tolkien was attempting to reconstruct the kind of elf hinted at by elf references in
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) words. The hints are, he observes, paradoxical: while
ælfscyne, "elf-beautiful", suggests a powerful allure,
ælfsogoða, "lunacy", implies that getting too close to elves is dangerous. In Shippey's view, Tolkien is telling the literal truth that "beauty is itself dangerous", as
Chaucer did in ''
The Wife of Bath's Tale'' where both elves and
friars are sexually rapacious. So when
Faramir says to
Sam Gamgee in
Ithilien that Galadriel must be "perilously fair", Shippey comments that this is a "highly accurate remark"; Sam replies that "folk takes their peril with them into Lorien... But perhaps you could call her perilous, because she's so strong in herself."
Angelic being Shippey also considers the Christian
Middle English attitude of the
South English Legendary, a
hagiographic work which he supposes Tolkien must have read, that elves were
angels. In his view, Tolkien's elves are much like fallen angels, above Men but below the angelic
Maiar and the godlike
Valar. He comments at once that Galadriel is in one way certainly not "fallen", as the elves avoided the war on Melkor in the First Age; but all the same, "Galadriel has been expelled from a kind of Heaven, the Deathless land of Valinor, and has been forbidden to return." Shippey suggests that the Men of Middle-earth might have thought the fall of Melkor and the expulsion of Galadriel added up to a similar fallen status; and he praises Tolkien for taking both sides of the story of elves into account.
Arthurian figure The Tolkien scholar
Marjorie Burns compares Galadriel to
Rider Haggard's heroine Ayesha in his 1887 novel
She: A History of Adventure, a book that Tolkien acknowledged as an important influence, and to
Tennyson's
The Lady of Shalott, which recast the
Arthurian legend of
Elaine of Astolat; she notes that Ayesha was herself an Arthurian figure, transposed to 19th century Africa.
Medieval celestial lady Sarah Downey, in
Mythlore, likens Galadriel to a medieval guide-figure such as
Dante's
Beatrice and the pearl-maiden in the 14th-century English poem
Pearl. Galadriel is "tall and white and fair", while the pearl-maiden appears in white and gold, and Beatrice shimmers "clothed in the colour of a living flame". In Downey's view, Galadriel's colours, and her association with both light and with water, connect her with the celestial ladies of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, those figures are
allegorical. Downey notes that Tolkien's protestation that he "cordially dislike[d] allegory" has not spared him from much analysis of his writings to be interpreted, but states that Galadriel appears as a fully-fledged figure of "history, true or feigned", with problems of her own making, rather than being a flat allegorical symbol of goodness and purity. The fact that Galadriel is a "penitent" seeking readmission to Aman, Downey comments, makes it clear, too, that she cannot be straightforwardly equated with a figure of perfection like the Virgin Mary.
Marian figure figure. The theologian Ralph C. Wood writes that Galadriel somewhat resembles
Dante Alighieri's portrayal of Mary in his
Inferno. In a 1971 letter, Tolkien wrote both supporting this view, and refuting the suggestion of her total purity: Beal suggests that, at the end of his life, Tolkien may have been influenced by his readers' interpretations of Galadriel as a Marian figure to consider her in that way herself.
Homeric benefactor has been compared to that of
Circe and
Calypso for
Odysseus in
Homer's epic.
Jungian archetypes view of
the hero Frodo with Galadriel as his anima, opposed by
Shelob Burns adds that the opposed characters of Galadriel and Shelob are indicated by elements such as the Phial of Galadriel, whose light contrasts with the darkness of the spider. == Legacy in music ==