Origin of Wizards Tower in Legend and Literature?

[johnsemlak]

I was wondering how far back in literature this concept goes, and if it's based on legends of any sort.

Obiously, wizard's towers appear in several fantasy novels by Tolkien and Robert Howard for example. Are there any earlier mentionings of one?

 

[Rashak Mani]

Good Question... really interested in hearing some answers too.

My guess would be some reference to Merlin or Morgana having a tower of their own... though I don't remember. I just know that the idea of a Wizard living in a tower is pretty well ingrained in RPG mythos.

 

[Wicht]

I am trying to think of towers in Fairy Tales or Folk Tales and the only one I can think of is Rapunzel's tower. Towers are normally associated AFAIK with imprisonment. Magical ogres, wizards and giants in most folk tales lived in castles. Think Jack and the Beanstalk, East 'O the Sun..., and others. Castles are the dwelling in each of them for the wizards. Witches on the other hand tend to live in houses.

In the Sorcerer's Apprentice, a very old story, IIRC that wizard lived in a house as well.

On the other hand there may be more of a precedence for wizards living in towers in Arabian style fantasies, ala Ali Baba but I am not as familiar with those.

I don't recall Merlin having a tower, though he does in more modern retellings. IIRC he had a special cave, one in which he was eventually trapped.

 

[Vigilance]

Having just done about 1000 hours of research on Merlin and Morgan le Fey I can tell you they did not inhabit towers.

Morgan was a queen, and could have inhabited any sort of structure she wanted, but preferred nice big castles to keep Arthur's troops away from her

The earliest references I am familiar with are from RE Howard's Conan.

Chuck

 

[johnsemlak]

The earliest references I am familiar with are from RE Howard's Conan.

Chuck

If that's the case, I wonder where Tolkien got the idea from. Did he borrow it from Howard?

 

[Vigilance]

I honestly don't know. There may be a place both Howard and Tolkien got the idea I am not familiar with in myth and legend.

Certainly Tolkien knew of more fantasy sources than I do, being a master philologist and Chaucerian scholar.

Chuck

 

[AFGNCAAP]

A villain called Archimagus from Spenser's The Faerie Queene dwelled in a tower, IIRC. I can't remember for the life of me if there are any sort of tower/wizard references in Chaucer or not.

I don't think it's too strange for towers to have been used as dwellings--not only due to their physical impressiveness, much like an obelisk or the like--but also for any sort of defensive advantage (able to observe the surrounding area, having a high defensive point, etc.). Also, any symbolic elements of towers can be seen in the Tower card of the Major Arcana of the Tarot (for example, the Hanged Man represents Odin hanging from the World-Tree).

And, possibly for Saruman (maybe Sauron), the tower could have been seen as a structure going along with the idea of "metal & wheels" that Treebeard says the wizard's mind is focused on--sort of a Middle-Earth skyscraper, if you will. In the movie, it stood as an axis to the wheel-like structure of the mines/forges/campgrounds for his forces.

 

[jester47]

Actually, the prevalence of towers comes from Arthurian Romance. The place is littered with them. However the towers do not enter Malory. The place to find towers is in Chertian DeTroys, Tristan, and most of the French Medieval Romances. However, ussually these were prisons, or lairs of evil. Rarely (if ever) did they house practitioners of magic. I think Prospero in The Tempest lives in a tower. That might be the source. Also, towers were big in Italy in the late middle ages and were great places to set up observatories and conduct experiments. Also, Leiber had wizards living in towers somtimes (but the two most powerful lived in a walking hut and a cave).

Edit: Ok, so prospero does not explicitly live in a tower... as far as I can find in the Tempest. So so far the only one we have putting wizards in towers is Howard, followed by Tolkien...

Anyone got anymore information? I would suspect that there might be some fairy tales with wizards in towers... Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?

Aaron.

 

[Turjan]

There was no big difference between "castle" and "tower" in former times. Remember that the old castle of the kings of England in London is simply called "The Tower". Medieval castles, especially the French type, had a fortified tower as central element, the so-called "donjon". This tower contained the living space and the throne hall of the noble. It had extraordinarily thick walls and, most of the time, only one well-defended small entrance.

 

[Believer]

Also, I believe that in ancient times 'towers' were seen as an afront to the gods (Only kings and nobility (Divine Right) had towers), Wizards were challenging the gods in their own right with the use of magic, and a 'tower' was a good symbol.