A(nother) new book on Tolkien

I’m delighted to announce the immediate availability of Mark Hooker’s new col-lection, The Hobbitonian Anthology of Articles about J.R.R. Tolkien and his Legendarium (Llyfrawr, 2009). This is the follow-up to Mark’s previous volume, A Tolkienian Mathomium (Llyfrawr, 2006), with articles of much the same style and approach. The product description from Amazon (link above) summarizes the book as follows:

This is a second volume of articles by Mark T. Hooker that picks up where A Tolkienian Mathomium left off. Hooker’s analysis is from a linguistic perspective similar to Tolkien’s. “If you liked the last one, you’re going to like this one,” says the Foreword. Beyond Bree and Hither Shore said that there is “something [in A Tolkienian Mathomium] for everyone with even a passing interest in Tolkien. All of the articles are well researched, insightful, and highly infor-mative.” Tolkien Studies said that it is a “pleasantly eccentric volume ... Hooker has a wide variety of things to say that have not been heard before.” Tolkien Collector’s Guide said A Tolkienian Mathomium “is one of the most unique sets of essays on Tolkien I have read in the past 10 years.” An early review by The Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza of the analysis of the origin of the name Tom Bombadil appearing in The Hobbitonian Anthology ranks it as “the best explanation yet of how the name Tom Bombadil came into being.”

That short quotation from the Foreword, as it happens, is mine. Since I had the honor of writing the Foreword to Mark’s new book, that means I have also read it already and can recommend it without reservation. Mark’s translation studies are fascinating (and often quite amusing), while his linguistic explorations are sharp and resourceful. I can honestly say, without hyperbole, that there are interesting ideas on virtually every page of his books. And the price definitely can’t be beat!

Tolkien once wrote that he liked “to wring the juice out of a single sentence, or explore the implications of one word”, and this is exactly what Mark does in his essays. If you’re familiar with him already, from his previous books or articles in Beyond Bree, you’ll no doubt greet The Hobbitonian Anthology like an old friend in a new suit. If you aren’t familiar with him, take my advice and pick up a copy of the book. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Tolkien in Who’s Who in Literature, 1925

Quite by chance I recently came across an interesting piece of very early Tolkien ephemera: an entry in the 1925 edition of Who’s Who in Literature. The publication is “[a] continuance”, so we’re told, “of the Bibliographical Section of THE LITERARY YEAR BOOK (Founded 1897)”, and edited by one Mark Meredith.Tolkien’s entry, which long predates The Lord of the Rings and even The Hobbit, reads as follows:

TOLKIEN, John Ronal [sic] Reuel, M.A. B. 1892. Au. of A Middle English Vocabulary (Clar. Pr.), 1922; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (do.), 1924; Selections from Chaucer (do.), 1925. C. Times Lit. Suppl., Year’s Work in English Studies, Yorkshire Poetry, The Microcosm. 2, DARNLEY ROAD, WEST PARK, LEEDS. [1]

Yes, the typographical error for Ronald is right there in black and white, for all posterity to gawp at. Thank heaven they spelled his surname correctly!

This is the earliest such entry I have seen. Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull do make reference to entries for Tolkien in Who’s Who, citing previously unpublished sources such as the archives of Tolkien’s publisher, George Allen & Unwin. But these appear to be much later ones, long postdating The Hobbit and in some cases even The Lord of the Rings. It is also clearly not the same early entry still in print, as the Who’s Who entry discussed later also contained Tolkien’s telephone number. [2]

First, let me explain the abbreviations, because I chose not to intrude with square brackets of my own. Most are pretty self-explanatory: Au. “Author of”, B. “Year of Birth”, and C. “Contributor to”. Clar. Pr. refers to the Clarendon Press, an imprint of the Oxford University Press. A bit more opaque to us today is “do.”, which is (or was) the standard abbreviation for “ditto”. That is, each of the three books attributed to Tolkien are identified as Clarendon Press publications.

Now, there are several interesting things in this blurb. For one, Tolkien and E.V. Gordon’s edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was actually published in 1925, not 1924 as stated here. Gordon, by the way, is not in the 1925 Who’s Who. But more interestingly, Selections from Chaucer, given a date of 1925, probably refers to the so-called Clarendon Chaucer. Assuming so, this was originally conceived as a collection of writings other than The Canterbury Tales, aimed at younger readers. A half-title proof survives, in which the proposed volume is entitled Selections from Chaucer’s Poetry and Prose, which matches Who’s Who well enough. Tolkien was a co-editor of this volume with E.V. Gordon George S. Gordon, under the supervision of Kenneth Sisam — familiar names at this point in Tolkien’s bibliography. From its first conception in 1922 through roughly 1925, the volume took shape, but then it stalled until around 1930. Following this, some additional progress was made over a year or two, after which it stalled again, never to recover. The inclusion in Who’s Who was therefore, sadly, premature, as the material Tolkien prepared for it was never published. [3]

Regarding the contributions referred to in the blurb, these are (taken in the order given above):

• “Holy Maidenhood”, a review of Hali Meidenhad: An Alliterative Homily of the 13th Century, edited by F.J. Furnivall (Early English Text Society, 1922), written, but unsigned, by Tolkien, and published April 26, 1923.


• Tolkien wrote substantial essays on “Philology: General Works” for The Year’s Work in English Studies covering 1923–5, and appearing in 1924, 1926, and 1927, respectively. Most likely, the Who’s Who blurb refers only to the first of these three.


• Tolkien’s poem “The Cat and the Fiddle” appeared in the Oct./Nov. 1923 issue of Yorkshire Poetry (Vol. 2, No. 19), published by the Swan Press, Leeds.


• And finally, Tolkien’s sonnet “The City of the Gods” appeared in the Spring 1923 issue of The Microcosm (Vol. 8, No. 1). For those who would like to read the poem, it has been reprinted in John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War and in The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Interestingly, Tolkien’s rhyme scheme — a b a b c d c d e e f g g f — appears to be a nonce form; it’s not the Petrarchan, Shakespearean, or Spenserian. Does anyone recognize that rhyme scheme?

And last, but not least, there is the address of Tolkien’s home in Leeds. The helps us to zero in a bit further on the date of the blurb. The Tolkiens were living in the house on Darnley Road from March 5, 1924 on, and they moved out of it (to their better known address of 22 Northmoor Road, Oxford) on January 7, 1926. Because the blurb identifies the edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as 1924 (unless this is a mere slip), my guess would be that the edition was then still forthcoming, and that the blurb therefore dates to the period between March and December 1924. It is also possible that the Who’s Who appeared later, with much of its contents already stale or otherwise in error. It doesn’t really matter too much, but with ephemera such as this, it’s always nice to try to get the best idea one can of its origins.

A couple of closing questions. Isn’t it nice, and perhaps even a bit surprising, to see Tolkien being recognized for his literary efforts (philology, criticism, and poetry) so long before his eternal fame would be made by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings? And who might have submitted his name and abbreviated vita to Who’s Who in the first place? Was it Tolkien himself? Leeds? Or Oxford or its Press?


[1] Meredith, Mark (ed.). Who’s Who in Literature (1925 Edition), A continuance of the Bibliographical Section of THE LITERARY YEAR BOOK (Founded 1897). Liverpool: The Literary Year Books Press, [1925], p. 433.

[2] Scull, Christina and Wayne G. Hammond. The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006, pp. 396, 486, 590, 664, et seq.

[3] For more information on the Clarendon Chaucer, see Scull, Christina and Wayne G. Hammond. The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006, pp. 153–6.

WOTD: Fitt

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost three months since my last Word of the Day — that really has become a misnomer, hasn’t it? But here I am with a new one, fulfilling the promise I made last year that “one of these days I’ll get around to something genuinely English, ab origine.” In today’s installment, I’m looking at the word fitt, familiar enough to most medievalists but probably unknown to anybody else. It’s a word I tend to take for granted, but it caught my attention again in couple of posts I was reading on the subject of Beowulf, here and here (and a tip of the hat to Unlocked Wordhoard for these). It’s a word of very limited use, part of a specialized academic nomenclature, but hey, when has that ever stopped me before? :)

So what exactly is a fitt? With its double terminal stop, it’s a rather strange-looking word for English, isn’t it? The word refers to a section of medieval Germanic verse, basically the equivalent of the Latinate canto. More on that in a moment, but first, to clarify the meaning and source of the word:

Like all the longer Old English poems, Beowulf is divided into sectional divisions that were in all likelihood denoted by the term fitt ‘fitt,’ pl. *fitta. [Footnote: This is to be deduced from the Latin preface to the Heliand, which states that the author ‘omne opus per vitteas distinxit, quas nos lectiones vel sententias possumus appellare’ (‘divided the whole work into fitts, which we can call “readings” or “passages”) [...] [1]

As you can see by the footnote above, fitts weren’t limited to verse in Old English but were also present in the literature of other Germanic languages, as in the Old Saxon Heliand. Fitts were sometimes delineated by punctuation, sometimes with numerals, sometimes by elaborately decorative initial capitals. Other times, one has to deduce where one fitt ends and another commences. Fitts often ended with general statements of summary, reflection, or wisdom [2], as for example in the advice concluding fitt 35 of Beowulf — sibb æfre ne mæg wiht onwendan þám ðe wel þenceð (“kinship can never aught pervert in him who rightly thinks”).

Coming back to canto, as many of you will know, this too is a word denoting a section in a long poem. It comes to us through Italian from the Latin cantare “to sing”. A fitt, it transpires, seems to show precisely the same derivation, but on the Germanic branch of the Indo-European Stammbaum. There, the immediate source would appear to be Old English fittan “to sing”. It appears to me not to be related to fitt “strife, stuggle”, though some have claimed it is. OE fitt “poem, song” is attested only four times, and it was not until Chaucer that the word fitt was used in the same sense as canto (in The Tale of Sir Thopas, there spelled “fit”).

But the more common OE word for “to sing” was singan; so where might fittan have come from? I think there are two possibilities, both metaphorical — and I’m not sure which one I favor:

(I) A phonologically similar Old High German word, fizza “yarn, skein, hank (of thread)”, suggests that singing could have been related to the spinning of a yarn (= a tale). Cognate to this are Middle High German vitzen and Old Norse fitja “to web, knit, weave”. [3]

(II) Alternatively, the Old Norse fet “pace, step”, secondarily “foot (as of a poem), a part of a poem” — one must assume related to fótr “foot” — suggests the possibility of singing while walking, measuring out a poem (or other oral literature) at or by the pace of walking, etc.

But these theories are really just speculation. Various dictionaries suggest the possibility of one or the other (or both), sometimes with certainty, sometimes not. In the end, I think we must admit that one can only go back so far before the vagaries of linguistic change become lost in the haze of history. Arguing backward, we just make the best fitt we can.


[1] Klaeber, Friedrich. Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 4th ed. by R.D. Fulk, et al. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008, p. xxxiii.

[2] Loc. cit., and xxxv. [The translation of the passage that follows is Benjamin Thorpe’s.]

[3] R.D. Fulk, one of the editors of the most recent edition of the Klaeber Beowulf, has an article on this subject: “The origin of the numbered sections in Beowulf and in other Old English poems.” Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006): 91–109. There, inter alia, he talks about the possibility of a derivation from the OHG fizza.

Tolkien Studies 6 available on Project Muse

For those of us with Project Muse access, the latest volume of Tolkien Studies is now online, here. For those without, print copies should be shipping any time now. I’ll report back when I’ve received mine. But now that the issue is officially available through at least the one channel, and now that I’ve had a chance to skim through it (with a more thorough reading to follow), I beg your indulgence while I crow a little*. Yes, I know how self-involved that sounds — but this is my blog. :)

First, and most significantly, I have a book review published in this volume, on Martin Simonson’s The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition (Walking Tree, 2008). I won’t summarize it here, other than to say the book is well worth reading — but I invite you to check out the full review and to send me any feedback you may have. The author himself commented on it, here at Lingwë, noting that “[i]mpressive references to [Northrop] Frye’s notebooks and quite inconceivable cross-checkings in obscure e-magazines denote an uncommon seriousness.” I hope that whets your appetite to learn more, but on the other hand, it might scare you away, hahae. The review runs on pages 264–72.

Elsewhere in the issue, two books to which I made contributions are reviewed. One of these is Truths Breathed Through Silver: The Inklings’ Moral and Mythopoeic Legacy, a rather slim volume edited by Jonathan B. Himes, assisted by Joe R. Christopher and Salwa Khoddam (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). The eminent Richard C. West is the reviewer, and I’m pleased to report that he endorses the book with a very positive review. My essay, “Tolkien’s Fortunate Fall and The Third Theme of Ilúvatar”, (he writes) “examines the topos of the felix culpa (God bringing a greater good out of an evil deed) from Melkor to Gollum, noting that the author’s mythology is not completely consistent with his Catholic orthodoxy (he was not originally trying to do that and his models, after all, were mostly pagan) but is imbued with his deep-rooted Christianity.” He goes on to conclude the review by saying that “[t]he editors should feel gratified that every chapter in this little book is well-written, scholarly, and worthwhile for students of mythopoeic literature.” Especially, I would add, for fans of C.S. Lewis, the subject of the majority of the essays.

The other book is The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On, edited by Allan Turner (Walking Tree, 2008), reviewed by Anne Petty. (I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that she was the reviewer, because my paper builds on some of the work she herself began with an essay in Tolkien Studies, Volume 1.) This book, as some of you know, is also very short, containing only six essays. I therefore expected the reviewer to be able to go into greater detail about each one, and Petty doesn’t disappoint. I’m also pleased to say that she recommends the book highly. She begins: “Allan Turner’s well-balanced and thoughtful collection of essays chosen to commemorate the thirty-year publication anniversary of The Silmarillion is a welcome addition to Tolkien scholarship. The volume is slim at 176 pages, but the depth and breadth of thought encompassed in these essays makes it well worth owning.” So, by all means, buy one! ;)

Now, I’d like to quote Petty’s comments about my essay at greater length, and hopefully two paragraphs is still within the bounds of Fair Use. *smirk* Here’s what she had to say:

Of special interest to me as a reviewer is Jason Fisher’s article, “From Mythopoeia to Mythography: Tolkien, Lönnrot, and Jerome,” because it reflects in some degree my own study of the Kalevala’s influence on Tolkien. Fisher’s essay focuses first on the similarities of content and language (epic themes and linguistic borrowings) found in the Finnish national epic, Kalevala, and The Silmarillion—the “Mythopoeia” section of the article. He then points out that in style, these two works are quite different. The style of The Silmarillion, as many have said, could be better described as biblical, which provides Fisher a segue into his extended discussion of the Bible’s influence (in particular the Latin Vulgate) on Tolkien’s work. Says Fisher, these contact points “between the Bible and The Silmarillion, we will see, extend beyond the purely stylistic and into the domain of content and theological influence as well” (123).

In the “Mythography” segment of his essay, Fisher concentrates on Christopher Tolkien’s role as literary executor for his father’s vast and sprawling creative output. Having convincingly established the resonances of both the Kalevala and the Vulgate within The Silmarillion, Fisher takes an in-depth look at the ways in which Christopher Tolkien’s handing of his father’s legendarium resembles the work done by the compilers/editors of those influential works, namely, Elias Lönnrot and St. Jerome. In clear, logical prose, Fisher explains the major focus of his study: whereas “J.R.R. Tolkien may have been emulating the product of Lönnrot’s and Jerome’s efforts, Christopher Tolkien was emulating the process” (127). Of particular significance is Fisher’s discussion of Christopher’s editorial choices—and changes—that produced the 1977 volume. Fisher suggests that Christopher Tolkien, with assistance from Guy Kay, added more than mere compilation expertise in creating the Silmarillion manuscript, in particular, the section titled “The Ruin of Doriath.” Whether such editorial liberties enhance or detract from the final outcome remains
debatable, but there can be no question, according to Fisher, that “the published Silmarillion more accurately represents a daunting complex of choices” (135) that reveal as much about Christopher Tolkien as the endless revisions do about his father.

Finally, Petty concludes: “As you can see, I’m very favorably impressed by the offerings of The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On. Its technical faults (another proofreading round for typos would have been advised) are small, and its contributions to Tolkien scholarship are considerable. Each of the authors in the volume has valuable ideas for readers to draw on and perhaps carry further.” Indeed, I issued just such a call for further research in my essay, and (unbeknown to me then) the call was answered by Douglas Kane in his new book, Arda Reconstructed (which I myself have reviewed in the journal, Mythlore). This is just how a community of scholars should work. One scholar builds on the work of another, whose own work in turn provides a foundation for even further research.

I’m almost finished, but you’ll find my footprint in two or three other places in the issue. First, incidental appearances in the bibliography for 2007, noting the essay just discussed, as well as one of my book reviews from that year (of Tom Shippey’s Roots and Branches). The other two appearances are in David Bratman’s omnibus essay, “The Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies 2006”. There, he assesses two pieces of work I published in 2006. One is my essay in the Walking Tree collection, Tolkien and Modernity. This two-volume set was reviewed in last year’s Tolkien Studies, but with very little mention of my paper — unsurprising, considering the sheer number of essays in question, among which mine doesn’t really stand out. Here, Bratman says more:

The title of Jason Fisher’s article, “‘Man does as he is when he may do as he wishes’: The Perennial Modernity of Free Will” (1: 145–75), quotes an Anglo-Saxon proverb on the freedom of power, not philosophical free will at all, but Fisher dives firmly into the latter subject. Devoting most of his space to the backstory of the philosophical debate as far as Boethius and to summarizing C. S. Lewis’s views on divine intention on the (risky, but here possibly warranted) grounds that they also represent Tolkien’s, Fisher uses examples from The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings to summarize Tolkien’s view as one of free will within certain parameters. This is the same point made more elegantly by Fornet-Ponse [in “Freedom and Providence as Anti-Modern Elements?”], and Fisher adequately sources it in Tolkien’s own words without need of recourse to Lewis, or to Boethius. Fisher’s principal assumption of his own is an argument for free will on the grounds that it would be pointless, as well as cruel, for Ilúvatar to force his creatures to misbehave just so he could punish them for it.

A bit later, Bratman describes an essay I wrote in the rather obscure journal of the George MacDonald Society — for which I am grateful, because otherwise, essays (and journals) like this have a way of disappearing without so much as a ripple. That unfortunate tendency is one of the best justifications, in fact, for a “Year’s Work” article in the first place. Of my essay, Bratman writes: “Jason Fisher’s ‘Reluctantly Inspired: George MacDonald and the Genesis of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major’ (North Wind 25: 113–20) is less concerned with that particular story than with tracing the history of Tolkien’s attitude towards his predecessor. Fisher lists a few distinct echoes of MacDonald in Tolkien’s pre-1940s children’s fiction, and attributes Tolkien’s later dislike of MacDonald to his increasing distaste for allegory and whimsicality.”

Addendum Addenda: Okay, at the risk of seeming to inflate my ego even more, I’ve just come across another footprint. Reading Thomas Honegger’s review of Dimitra Fimi’s book, Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), I see that Honegger has cited my review of Ross Smith’s Inside Language: Linguistic and Aesthetic Theory in Tolkien (Walking Tree, 2007), published in Mythlore 103/104. And yet another, bring the total to nine: it was just pointed out to me that Verlyn Flieger mentions my essay from Tolkien and Modernity in her essay on free will. She did likewise when I heard this paper last summer, though more obliquely than here, but I had forgotten all about it.

And there you have it. All of this is, of course, probably the least interesting stuff in this excellent new issue — an issue with major essays by major scholars, and a never-before-published set of notes by Tolkien himself — but at least we’ve gotten me out of the way quickly. I have to confess that the first things I ever read are reviews of my own work. I hope that doesn’t reflect too poorly on me, but really, wouldn’t you? :)

* Okay, while I crow a lot. Gosh, I’m worse than Chanticleer!

“English gets millionth word” — *not*

Courtesy of CNN — and the “news” will soon be all over the Web, no doubt — we’re told that English acquired its one-millionth word at 5:22 AM this morning. I really have to roll my eyes at this. The problem, as the CNN article acknowledges (somewhat reluctantly, it seems to me), is that you simply can’t quantify such things with any degree of accuracy whatsoever. Actually, that’s just one problem. A more immediate problem, for me, is the fact that the purported one-millionth word, “Web 2.0”, is not a word. Permit me another eye-roll. In fact, a great many of the words (so-called) tracked by The Global Language Monitor (Orwellian overtones there?) are phrases, terms, expressions, idioms — whatever you prefer to call them — but not words at all. This organization has also developed some sort of mathematical equation for predicting the word-growth of English, which is of course, patent nonsense — and patented nonsense, as, naturally, their entire methodology is proprietary.

In the CNN article, GLM responds to the objections of sane linguists and lexicographers everywhere in the person of Paul J.J. Payack, “president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor” — chief word analyst? Nice title, if you can get it! He says, well, of course, it’s just an estimate, and the real point is merely to celebrate the enormity and continuing growth of English. But on the GLM website, au contraire, it’s all about this particular “word”, “Web 2.0” — nor is it really very surprising that a website should wish to aggrandize Internet-centric terminology. They make quite a big deal out of this particular term being their one-millionth word, even to the point of enumerating fifteen finalists, all of which were beaten out (how exactly?) by “Web 2.0” for the top honors. Of the fifteen finalists, by the way, only about half are really individual words and not phrases. And with only one or two exceptions, each is an ephemeron of one sort or other (usually political, technical, or pop-cultural). “Octomom”, we’re told, is now an English word. Please, say it ain’t so! “N00b” and “defriend”, okay, maybe — and yes, that’s “n00b” with two zeros. But “sexting”? Are you kidding me?!

By the way, the 1,000,0001st word, the GLM informs us, is “financial tsunami”. Again — *sigh* — not a word. And this is only one type of imprecision on this website (although, for me, it is the most annoying). Just start reading along, and you’ll see what I mean. For an organization that supposedly monitors English usage, the GLM could use some English lessons. Not to mention a copyeditor and a fact-checker. All of this is just vacuous hype (with the ulterior motive of promoting their marketing services, I would imagine). Being interested in words — and phrases — is a wonderful thing, but claiming any kind of authority in monitoring, branding, or counting them is simply balderdash. Now there’s a word for you, Mr. Payack!

Reviewed, reviewing, and reviewing reviewed

I learned recently that Hither Shore, the annual publication of the Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft (German Tolkien Society), printed a review of The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On in its most recent number. I contacted Thomas Honegger, who sits on the editorial board for Hither Shore, and he kindly put me in touch with the reviewer, the esteemed Thomas Fornet-Ponse, who in turn kindly sent me a copy of the review.

Mit Hilfe von einem Freund (danke, Mark Hooker), I polished up a translation of the two paragraphs that pertain to me, the first explicitly, the second more implicitly. I’ll give you the original German first, then the translation — and please feel free to suggest improvements:

Strukturanalogien zwischen Elias Lönnrot, Tolkien und Hieronymus fragt, insofern alle drei ähnliche, nämlich mythopoetische Aufgaben in ihrer jeweiligen Sammlung und Kompilation von Texten durchgeführt hätten. Andererseits widmet er sich auch der Rolle Christopher Tolkiens, die in ihrer mythographischen Dimension ebenfalls große Ähnlichkeiten zu derjenigen Lönnrots und Hieronymus’ aufweise.

Wie bei den beteiligten Personen nicht anders zu erwarten, sind die Beiträge durchgängig von hoher Qualität und versprechen sowohl dem schon gut informierten Leser einige interessante Einblicke als auch dem weniger gut informierten (dem allerdings wohl noch einige mehr).

—

Jason Fisher had an entirely different approach [from that of Michaël Devaux]. On the one hand, he looked at the coincidences in the area of content or structure between the works of Lönnrot, Tolkien and Jerome [i.e., Hieronymus], in so far as the three are similar, namely the mythopoeic aspect of each of their collection and compilations of texts. On the other, he discusses the role that Christopher played in the mythographic dimension, and how it was similar to those of Lönnrot and Jerome.

As is to be expected with the people taking part in the project, the contributions are of a high quality throughout, and promise to provide the already well-informed reader with a number of interesting insights, and the less-well-informed reader with even more.

Thomas informs me that this review, essentially unchanged, will also appear in the upcoming Inklings Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik, published by the Inklings Gesellschaft. His favorable comments are counterbalanced against the first Amazon review of The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On (if review you can call it). One Carol Reed has this — and no more than this — to say: “Some of these people need to get a life. I was hoping for some discusion of the inconsitencies and contridictions in Tolkien’s work..” The spelling errors are hers; I’m resisting the temptation to [sic] my dogs on her. ;)

And so, I suppose in the category of “needing to get a life”, I’ve written four new book reviews of my own recently. The first, on the Douglas Anderson collection, Tales Before Narnia, was printed in the current issue of Mythprint. You can read it here (and don’t forget about this post, where I track my Mythprint reviews).

I have two book reviews in the current issue of Mythlore. I review Myth and Magic: Art According to the Inklings, edited by Eduardo Segura and Thomas Honegger (read it here), and Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion, by Douglas Charles Kane (read it here). The latter is currently on sale; if you follow the link to Amazon, it’s 27% off right now — very helpful for an expensive book like this!

Finally, I think I can let this cat out of the bag officially, now that the issue has gone to press, I have a review forthcoming in Tolkien Studies, Volume 6. There, I review Martin Simonson’s The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition. I’m afraid I can’t give you a copy of this to read, but I’m told the issue should be arriving around the end of June. For those of you with Project Muse access, you may see it a couple of weeks sooner.

As I hinted in the title of this post, some folks have been discussing my reviews too. This is invaluable to me, not just as proof that my hard work is actually being read, but also in terms of substantiating (or not) the opinions I made such an effort to share. Some of you may have noticed that Eduardo Segura and Martin Simonson visited Lingwë to comment. If you missed them, back up to this post and read the comments. John Rateliff also gave me a little feedback in the comments to a post on his own blog (I admit, I solicited feedback). Furthermore, rank and file readers — as opposed to the authors or editors — have brought up my reviews in various recent online discussions: here (in the comments), here (you may have to register), and here (in Dutch).

In the latter, I was thrilled to find these two opinions: “Ach, Als Jason Fisher er enthousiast over is, heb ik er redelijk wat vertrouwen in” [Well, if Jason Fisher is excited about it, I have a lot of confidence]; and “die recensie van hem is nogal een lap, maar ook zeer de moeite waard om door te lezen” [This review from him is quite a piece, but also very worth reading].

It’s quite something to realize that there are people as far away as the Netherlands reading my reviews. And I am humbled to learn of their faith in my judgment. It spurs me to work ever harder. :)

Two years online!

It’s hard to believe I’ve really been writing Lingwë – Musings of a Fish for two years now, but yesterday was indeed the two-year anniversary of my first post. And in the strangest of coincidences, that very first post just attracted a new (and relevant!) comment, two years later to the day, from Harvard professor Marc Zender. Strange are the ways of chance, I suppose — if chance you call it.

I have really enjoyed writing Lingwë — sharing news as well as the occasional internet oddity, trying out theories and arguments, and engaging in thought-provoking conversations with literally tens of dedicated readers, hahae. Actually, perhaps I’ve graduated up to dozens or even a few score by now, if Google Analytics is to be trusted. I’ve also had visitors from well over a hundred different countries — including even Iraq! And the sometimes bizarre search terms that lead people to Lingwë would make for a post all of their own!

I feel I can look back with genuine pride on some of the entries of the past two dozen months. I will resist the temptation to iterate a list of “greatest hits” — and in any case, there have been more than few forgettable posts and greatest “misses” too. And speaking of the greatest missus, I would like to take a moment to mention my partner and inspiration, who has (unfairly to her) been mentioned waaay too rarely here: my wife, Jennifer. She has the patience of a saint — a cliché, but true — and has been nothing but supportive of my extra-curricular work. I wish all of you could meet her. She’s quite simply the best person I know. Thank you for your unwavering support and enthusiasm, darling! (I know, I sound like I’m accepting a Webby or something, hahae.)

So, while looking back, let me also look forward. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen over the past two years, watch this space: I hope to keep bringing you more of the same for many years to come — if this whole “interweb thingy” catches on. ;) As always, I welcome comments, feedback, corrections, and criticisms. So far, I have managed to avoid the radar pings of the trolling bots that would force me to moderate comments (*knock on wood*). And I still receive few enough that I can (and do) respond to each one. Feel free to make requests too — and yes, that is a tip jar. ;)

Marjorie Burns reviews The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún

In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, I happened upon a review of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún by Marjorie Burns. Marjorie was a particularly good choice (as was Shippey in the TLS) to review this work, because of her own background in Norse literature and mythology. For those who haven’t read it, definitely make the time for her own book, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. In the present review, Marjorie provides the all but obligatory allusion to Richard Wagner and William Morris, but she explains the distinctions between their versions of the legend and Tolkien’s quite well:

Unlike Wagner, the sometimes heavy-handed librettist, and unlike Morris, whos long lines and rhymed stanzas hold to Victorian tastes, Tolkien aimed for directness an authenticity. He did so by imitating poetic meters used by the early Norse—meters that (much like those in Old English) depend on alliteration (rather than rhyme) and a spacing of pauses and beats.

She also suggests that not all of Tolkien’s alterations to the traditional story may be to everybody’s liking. As an example, she highlights Tolkien’s diminution of the werewolf episodes (clearly among her own favorite scenes). Marjorie closes the review by acknowledging the enormous value of Christopher Tolkien’s foreword, commentaries, notes, and appendices. I would definitely echo this myself. To those already familiar with the Völsung material, they are very helpful indeed; but to those who are not, they’re nothing less than indispensable.

More information on The Book of Jonah

I have received some additional details on The Book of Jonah from the publisher — still scant information, but I thought I would share what I have. First of all, it appears that the July release date is looking more like the end of August. I have put in a request for a review copy — fingers crossed. :P

I can also tell you that the book is being edited by Brendan Wolfe and will feature a foreword by Sir Anthony Kenny. The nephew of Alexander Jones, general editor of The Jerusalem Bible, Kenny had a first-hand perspective and may be able to offer one or two interesting morsels. He described a meeting with Tolkien about the project in his memoir, A Path from Rome: An Autobiography (1985), calling Tolkien “a difficult collaborator” [1].

According to the marketing collateral DL&T sent me, “Kenny [in his foreword] recalls his own memories of working on the Jerusalem Bible and the impact made by its groundbreaking publication” — no mention of Tolkien there. But then:

[Editor] Brendan Wolfe tells the little-known story of how Tolkien, then at the height of his fame as the author of The Lord of the Rings, agreed to join the team of Catholic writers and scholars working on a major new translation of the Bible into English in the early 1960s.The result was the Jerusalem Bible, still celebrated for its elegant, timeless English. Wolfe shows the resonances between the story of Jonah and the whale, Tolkien’s contribution to the JB, and themes in his other writings.

Just what form the exploration of these resonances will take — whether an introdutory essay, footnotes, commentary, or some combination of all of these — we’ll have to wait and see. I still have a difficult time imagining how the book will be more than a hundred pages.

And finally, as to the question of the translation itself. The marketing collateral sheds little light, I’m afraid. It refers only to an “[e]xclusive translation”, calling the book “[a] beautiful new presentation of one of the best-loved Bible stories in a translation by J.R.R. Tolkien.” Note that the credit for the translation is here given entirely to Tolkien (pace Carpenter). Moreover, “exclusive” does not mean new — it may simply acknowledge that the trans-lation is and has always been copyright DL&T. The flyer gives no indication whatsoever of any material by Tolkien not previously published. It’s probably safe to assume there won’t be any. Update: Or perhaps there will be. See the comment from Jeremy Edmonds below.

One final note: this isn’t the first foray into the world of Tolkien by DL&T. They’ve published one previous book about him — Stratford Caldecott’s Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien, a 160-page [2] monograph examining Tolkien and his works from a theological vantage.


[1] Kenny’s memoir is cited both by Scull and Hammond in their Reader’s Guide, and by L.J. Swain in his entry on “Judaism” in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. Ed. Michael D.C. Drout. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 314–5.

[2] This figure is from the DL&T website, where the book is apparently still for sale for £9.95; however, according to Amazon, the book is only 144pp. and is no longer available. Has anyone read Caldecott’s book? I’ve read one or two of his essays, but not Secret Fire.

More new Tolkien material coming this summer ... sort of

This just in — It appears that Darton, Longman & Todd (publishers of The Jerusalem Bible) will be publishing The Book of Jonah, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, on 20 July 2009. I have really mixed feelings about this. It feels like a real stretch, and I would be willing to wager a tidy sum that the text will simply be a word-for-word reprint of the same Book of Jonah that has been available in The Jerusalem Bible for forty years now. On the other hand, it’s convenient to be able to buy a copy of just the one biblical book Tolkien is known to have worked on (instead of the whole JB). And what a nice cover! :)

What do we really know about Tolkien’s translation? Not as much as we’d like to, but some. First of all, Tolkien did not translate Jonah from the original Hebrew as is so commonly supposed [1]; rather, the text he worked from was a French translation from the Hebrew, so one step removed [2]. It has also been reported that Tolkien translated the Book of Job, but the best evidence we have suggests that Tolkien did no more than look over a draft trans-lation by another hand, and perhaps not even that much [3]. Tolkien also produced a sample translation of the first chapter of Isaiah, but we have no reason to suppose it was used in the preparation of that book for publication.

Finally, and perhaps most troubling in light of this new book, Humphrey Carpenter reports that Tolkien’s translation of Jonah “was extensively revised by other hands before publication” [4]. If Carpenter is correct (and I have no reason to doubt it), and further, if my guess is correct that the text will simply be the same as already in print, then what have we gained by this new publication? How much of the final published translation is even in Tolkien’s own words? Not much, according to Carpenter. And so indeed, where is the value?

Now, on the other hand, were we to get notes, jottings, and drafts of the translation, revealing something of its intermediate stages and giving insights into Tolkien’s approach, along with facsimile pages in Tolkien’s hand and an insightful introductory essay to go along with all of this — well, then I would be delighted to eat my words. The only bit of hope: The Book of Jonah (trans. Tolkien) is supposed to be 104pp., even though the Book of Jonah itself is extremely short (only about three pages in The Jerusalem Bible). But I’m still skeptical at this point. How about the rest of you?


[1] Scull, Christina, and Wayne G. Hammond. The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Volume II: Reader’s Guide, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006, p. 468.

[2] See also Scull & Hammond Reader’s Guide, p. 437ff.

[3] Kilby, Clyde. Tolkien and the Silmarillion. Wheaton (IL): Harold Shaw Publishers, 1976, p. 54. I suspect this was simply a slip, but one which unfortunately has been taken up and repeated many times. According to Scull and Hammond, “[o]n 26 January 1958 [Jerusalem Bible general editor Alexander] Jones solicited Tolkien’s opinions of a first draft of most of the Book of Job” (Reader’s Guide, p. 437), but that seems to have been the extent of it — at least, so far as anyone can now verify.

[4] Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977, p. 274.

Teaching Tolkien

I’m working up a post to share some of my initial thoughts about The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, I promise, but I couldn’t let this pass without commenting. It is a fact often bemoaned by Tolkien scholars and students alike that the literary establishment has been reluctant to admit the Professor into their sanctum litteratorum. Only slowly, over decades, have Tolkien’s works crept into collegiate curricula. And I suppose there is a dispassionate argument to be made for this. Nevertheless, I will set it aside, as I admit I am not a disinterested commentator. More and more schools are now offering courses on Tolkien, and teachers’ roundtables are becoming more wide-spread. I myself will be presenting a class at a Summer Institute for Teachers this summer — more on that to come. But in spite of this progress among rank and file students and instructors, there is still resistance among the more, how shall I put it, elite schools.

But at last, and for the first time I know of, Tolkien has come to Harvard. True, it’s a summer course, not one offered during the busier, higher-profile fall or spring semesters. True, it’s being offered by the Anthropology and not the English department. And yes, the course is being conducted by a lecturer, not a tenured professor. But even this is a big step.

The course itself looks quite good. I suppose you could say Tolkien is getting “the Harvard treatment” — rather than a straightforward survey of Tolkien’s literary contributions, Anthropology and Archaeology S-1641 (“Tolkien as Translator: Language, Culture, and Society in Middle-Earth [sic]”) is a systematic exploration of “the important role of language in The Lord of the Rings, applying concepts from linguistic anthropology that shed light on Tolkien’s methods and purpose as the ‘translator’ (both linguistic and cultural) of Middle-Earth [sic].” Hardly a “gut”, in the traditional Ivy League parlance.

Even a cursory glance at Dr. Marc Zender’s web pages for the class (linked from the previous paragraph) reveals that this is serious academic business, and it’s very refreshing to see. Take a look at the syllabus [PDF] for even more detail. Zender’s web pages and syllabus demonstrate a close familiarity with the subject matter, and a broad reading of the scholarly literature — ranging from out-of-print classics to the most recent research. Indeed, some of my friends will probably be delighted to learn that their books and essays are being used at Harvard this summer.

The only change I would have suggested is that Zender use the more complete “Nomenclature” published in Hammond and Scull’s The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, rather than the abridged version published in A Tolkien Compass. Still, the material Lobdell omitted was small enough not to make much difference. Also, in spite of the shortcomings of the Tolkien Encyclopedia, one of its entries makes it onto Zender’s assigned reading. I was a little bit surprised not to see Tolkien’s own essay, “English and Welsh”, assigned during week five or six. But I suppose it’s too easy for me to engage in Monday-morning quarterbacking here; the class really does look absolutely first-rate. In fact, I wish I could take it. Or teach it. ;)

Speaking of teaching ... I thought I had written something about this here on Lingwë, but apparently I haven’t, so here goes ...

“J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Real and Imagined Middle Ages” is a Summer Institute for Teachers funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It runs for five weeks, from July 13 to August 13, at Texas A&M University at Commerce. As I hinted above, I’ll be participating in the Institute as a “visiting expert”, conducting a half-day class on the subject of Old English, Old Norse, and Tolkien’s Fiction during the Institute’s second week. I’m one of fifteen such instructors, plus the two Institute co-directors, Drs. Robin Reid and Judy Ford (take a look at the company I’ll be keeping, here). It’s too late to apply, I’m afraid, but if a program like this sounds interesting to you, keep your eyes open in the future — and watch this space. This is the second Tolkien Institute (the first was in 2004), and it may not be the last. In addition, there’s a good chance some of the material could become available online later this summer (but I’m not promising anything).

Tolkien may not have reached the top of the Ivory Tower yet, but with an ample supply of students, and with intrepid instructors like Marc Zender and so many others, I feel confident Tolkien will gain admittance one day and finally be universally recognized for the brilliant and creative man that he was. And on that day, don’t be surprised if you hear a collective cry from fans and scholars alike, now hoar and hoarse: “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you all along!”

Tolkien Studies 6 on the horizon

Well, folks, it’s that time of year again. The arrival of late spring brings with it a new volume of Tolkien Studies. I have been piecing together the contents of the sixth volume for some time now, and with the help of Tolkien-Buecher.de (and their source, Michael Drout), I can now fill in the remaining gaps and give you what I think is a fairly complete table of contents. The issue is not yet available on Project Muse, let alone in the mail to subscribers, but this should satisfy your curiosity for the time being.

Front Matter

• Editors’ Introduction
• In Memoriam: Pauline Baynes and Derek Brewer
• Conventions and Abbreviations

Essays

• John D. Rateliff — “A Kind of Elvish Craft”: Tolkien as Literary Craftsman
• Douglas A. Anderson — John D. Rateliff: A Checklist
• Ármann Jakonsson — Talk to the Dragon: Tolkien as Translator
• Jill Fitzgerald — A “Clerkes Compleinte”: Tolkien and the Division of Lit. and Lang.
• Stefan Ekman — Echoes of Pearl in Arda’s Landscape
• Judy Ann Ford and Robin Anne Reid — Councils and Kings: Aragorn’s Journey Towards Kingship in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings
• Cynthia M. Cohen — The Unique Representation of Trees in The Lord of the Rings
• Josh Long — Clinamen, Tessera, and the Anxiety of Influence: Swerving from and Completing George MacDonald
• Verlyn Flieger — The Music and the Task: Fate and Free Will in Middle-earth

Notes and Documents

• J.R.R. Tolkien [Edited by Carl F. Hostetter] — Fate and Free Will
• Stuart D. Lee — J.R.R. Tolkien and The Wanderer: From Edition to Application
• Christopher Gilson — Essence of Elvish: The Basic Vocabulary of Quenya

Back Matter

• Book Reviews
• The Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies
• Bibliography (in English) for 2007

I know (or think I know) a few of the books being reviewed, but since the reviews comprise a much more fluid section of the volume, I have learned that it’s better not to talk too much about them before they appear. I have also heard that there is supposed to be a comprehensive index of volumes 1–5 published in this issue. We’ll see. I hope so.

If the pieces by Verlyn Flieger and Carl Hostetter sound familiar, then you were either at Mythcon last year, or you read my follow-up discussion (or both). It’s nice to see both of these published, even if Carl was unable to provide the commentary he had hoped. I still have my fingers crossed that he will find the time to write it one of these days. The lead essay by John Rateliff may also sound familiar. He delivered a version of it as the Blackwelder Lecture at Marquette University in October, 2007. I could not be there, so I’m really looking forward to reading the essay now.

Once I’ve read and digested the issue, I’ll share my thoughts about it, as I hope some of you will too. In the meantime, back to The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún …

Viking gag

While I twiddle my thumbs waiting for my copy of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún to arrive, please to enjoy a cartoon from the reliably oddball Dan Piraro. I wonder at what age Vikings get their learner’s permit? :)

Swamped at work

Apologies for the lack of new material here recently, but I have been absolutely buried. I’m still alive and twitching underneath the pile, and I hope to dig myself out soon.

In the meantime, why not preoccupy yourselves by translating the following passage from Juvenal. No, not the rapper; that’s Juvenile — though I can see why you’d think he might need translating too. ;)

IAM PRIDEM, EX QVO SVFFRAGIA NVLLI VENDIMVS, EFFVDIT CVRAS; NAM QVI DABAT OLIM IMPERIVM, FASCES, LEGIONES, OMNIA, NVNC SE CONTINET ATQVE DVAS TANTVM RES ANXIVS OPTAT, PANEM ET CIRCENSES. —Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81

If you manage to translate it (no cheating with Google!), you’ll have the closest thing to a political post I’m ever likely to make here on Lingwë. As a hint, I’ve put into boldface the phrase that has since become a relevant political metaphor — and the title of a Star Trek episode.

Have fun! :)

Video discussion of Sigurd and Gudrún

I’ll just let this video speak for itself with no more preface than to note than you’ll get a look at some manuscript lines, some of the illustrations, and a bit of a listen to Brian Cox recording the audiobook.

Brilliant! Can’t wait!

The road to Hell is paved with good equations

Richard Scott Nokes has an interesting post over at the Unlocked Wordhoard, in which he takes a stab at calculating the distance between Milton’s Heaven and Hell. Actually, his student took the stab, and he only reported the results. To set the context, let’s have a look first at what Paradise Lost has to say:

Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed, and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal.
[I.34–53]

So, as Nokes says, “Satan and the rebel angels fall for nine days through Chaos before landing in Hell.” His student calculated the result to be 25,920 miles. Now I am not going to object that this is an impossibly small distance — noting that the distance between the earth and the moon alone is some ten times as great. No, in the mythopoeic world of Milton’s Paradise Lost, I’m perfectly willing to accept that theological space is not necessarily the same as physical space (never mind that we are applying Newtonian mechanics — a tool of regular space — to the problem).

No, my concern is in some of the assumptions. “The math,” Nokes points out, “assumes that the terminal velocity of a falling angel is 176 ft/sec through a matrix of chaos.” Why assume this value? As we all know, terminal velocity depends on the shape, size, and orientation of the falling object, as well as on the viscosity or density of the material through which the object is falling. It depends also on the gravitational force being exerted on the object, which is around 9.8m/sec² — but only at sea-level on planet Earth. The gravitational force in other parts of space is completely difference; hence, terminal velocity in those regions also has different bounding parameters. It also depends on the initial force of God’s wrath (as Nokes mentions) — but was there torque involved? And if so, what is the radius of the circle described by God’s radius?

“Being that,” we are further told, “chaos probably has no air or fluid to resist movement through drag or friction (since it is a void), terminal velocity would be the same as initial velocity.” Well, I’m willing to accept that chaos might indeed be a vacuum, but if so, I don’t think this statement that the terminal velocity equals the initial velocity is true. In that case, there would be no acceleration. But we know that there is — unless we are talking about a perfect vacuum in which there are no objects to exert gravitations forces. But I would assume that Heaven and Hell both are quite gravitationally massive, wouldn’t you? In which case, velocity would converge asymptotically on the speed of light (without ever reaching it).

Let’s come at this from another angel — er, I mean, angle. According to our good friends at Wikipedia (because, let’s face it, it’s been fifteen years since my college physics classes), you can reduce terminal velocity to the following equation:

That’s if you can set aside buoyancy effects (which I think we can). Here, g is the acceleration due to gravity. As I said above, I think we’ve got to consider g a large, but unknown, constant. I think we can all agree it’s probably not the relatively weak 9.8m/sec² of our familiar Terra Cognita. The other part of the numerator of the fraction is m, the mass of the falling object. Would an angel have a mass much larger than that of a human being? Or perhaps, because they’re incorporeal by nature, much, much smaller? Hmm, let’s move on.

In the denominator, ρ is the density of the air or fluid through which the object is falling. The conventional wisdom might be that the “chaos” in question is rarified to the point of being a near-vacuum, a “void”; thus, ρ should approach 0. But on the other hand, a vacuum, even a very rarified near-vacuum, doesn’t sound very “chaotic”, does it? Perhaps ρ is actually very large, with a commotion of heavy molecules of air bouncing and colliding in every direction at all times.

Another factor, A, must be taken into account. This is the cross-sectional surface area of the falling body. I already broached the question of whether angels are light, since incorporeal; or heavy, since much greater than man. What about their size? Wouldn’t we have to think they’re very large indeed — at least as compared to people, or to a serpent — even if they are very light? Therefore, A is large. Er, but hang on a moment! How many angels was it that could dance on the head of pin? Maybe A is very small. Hmm.

Finally, we have Cd, the coefficient of drag. For a human being, oriented upright, the drag coefficient is in the neighborhood of around 1.0, roughly the same as for a simple cube; but for other shapes, and in different orientations, the coefficient may be higher or lower. Would an angel fall through space like a cube (1.0) or a sphere (0.47) — or perhaps more like a bullet (0.295) or even a Boeing 747 (0.031)? And would the angel twist and turn during his fall, resulting in a dynamic drag coefficient, changing with each gyration? Or would he clasp his hands to his chest and resolve himself to fall gracefully and without complaint, come what may? It all makes a difference to the calculations!

There are, alas, too many unknowns for us to arrive at any final answer. In the numerator, we think that the acceleration due to gravity should be very large, but the mass of the angel could be either very great or teensy-weensy. In the denominator, we think that the density of chaos is probably pretty great — or else it wouldn’t be called “chaos” — but we must acknowledge that it could be very little ( “void”). The cross-sectional surface area of the falling angel could be enormous, or infinitesimal. And the drag coefficient, well, who in the hell knows?

So, let’s see. Turn a few beads on the ol’ abacus. Putting this all together, it look’s like the answer is probably ... uh ... somewhere between a couple of beard-seconds and perhaps a megaparsec. I can live with the uncertainty. How about you?

Fueling my obsession with personal trivia

Some of you may know that I have a rather strange online moniker, “visualweasel” — I’ll save the story behind that name for another day. What you probaby did not know is ... well, any of the following trivia about me. Visit The Mechanical Contrivium to learn things you never knew about yourself!

1. Oranges, lemons, watermelons, pineapples and visualweasel are all berries.
2. On stone temples in southern India, there are more than 30 million carved images of visualweasel!
3. Visualweasel can sleep with one eye open!
4. It’s bad luck to put visualweasel on a bed!
5. White chocolate isn’t technically chocolate, because it doesn’t contain visualweasel!
6. The first visualweasel was made in 1853, and had no pedals!
7. Two thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in visualweasel.
8. The canonical hours of the Christian church are matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, visualweasel and compline!
9. In 1982, Time Magazine named visualweasel its ‘Man of the Year’.
10. Visualweasel is actually a fruit, not a vegetable! [Er, I thought we established that in #1.]

Speaking of Tolkien events on short notice ...

For anyone in the vicinity, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque is hosting a public lecture with Verlyn Flieger next Thursday night, April 9, at 7:00 pm. The talk will be held in George Pearl Hall, at Cornell and Central (the southern edge of the campus).

Verlyn will be speaking on the question, “When is a Fairy-story a Faërie Story?” Not too long ago, she published a paper of the same title in the Walking Tree collection, Myth and Magic: Art according to the Inklings — which, coincidentally, I just reviewed for Mythlore. I’m not sure how much of the same ground her lecture next week will cover, but it’s bound to be in the same general ballpark. From the UNM press release, “Tolkien’s essay ‘On Fairy-stories’ in both its published and draft versions shows his developing thought about the nature of Faërie and its relationship to both the Secondary and Primary Worlds. Flieger’s talk will trace the trajectory of his concept from first jottings to final publication.”

Tolkien 2009 at UVM — Schedule

A few months ago, I told you about an upcoming conference at the University of Vermont in Burlington, the same one I’ve attended the past three years (but will be sitting out this year). Well, from “upcoming”, the conference has now “upcome” — it’s next weekend! Unfortunately, this also coincides with Easter, but for any of you able to attend, I highly recommend it. And I can now give you an idea of what you’ll be in for.

Before I do that (so that it doesn’t get lost at the tail end of the schedule), let me whet your appetite for next’s year’s event: The Tolkien 2010 Conference at UVM will be April 9–11, 2010. The theme is “Tolkien in the Classroom”, with the keynote — quite appropriately, since she has a forthcoming book on this topic — delivered by Leslie Donovan of the University of New Mexico. And now, back to this year’s event …

TOLKIEN 2009, APRIL 10–11
Theme: Sex and Gender in Tolkien’s Middle-earth

FRIDAY, APRIL 10
Open-mike fireside Tolkien reading and performance
Henderson’s Cafe, Davis Center
7:30–9:30 pm

SATURDAY, APRIL 11
Full Day Conference
Memorial Lounge Auditorium
Waterman Building

Continental Breakfast, 8:00 am [aka “The Ovarium”]

Session I — Difference: Sexual, Gendered, and Spiritual
8:30–10:00 am

• ‘Not all Tears are an Evil’: Tragedy and Consolation in The Lord of Rings – Elizabeth Bateman (Washington College)
• Tolkien’s Theory of Gender in The Silmarillion – Corey Olsen (Washington College)
• ‘(As it were) a Vocation’: Frodo’s Celibacy from Tolkien’s Traditional Catholic Perspective – Trudy G. Shaw (Creighton University)

Session II — Tolkien and the Literary Tradition
10:00–11:30 am

• Mirrored Images: Similarities Between Éowyn in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice – Jessica Safran (Central Michigan University)
• History, Love, and Bodies: Tolkien and Morris – James Williamson (University of Vermont)
• Bewildered by Loss in Sir Orfeo and The Children of Húrin – Rob Wakeman (University of Maryland, College Park)

Lunch break, 11:30–1:00 pm

Keynote
1:00–2:00 pm

• ‘In the Company of Orcs’: Peter Jackson's Queer Tolkien – Jane Chance (Rice University)

Session III — Theorizing Tolkien
2:00–3:30 pm

• A Hegelian Reading of the Elves: Synthesizing the Master-Slave Dialectic in The Silmarillion – Jacob Seliger (University of Arizona)
• Queer Theory and Tolkien’s Middle-earth – Christopher Vaccaro (University of Vermont)
• Elfin Agency: Performativity and Arwen Evenstar in The Lord of the Rings – James Weldon (Wilfrid Laurier University)

Afternoon break, 3:30–3:45 pm

Session IV — Roundtable Discussion
3:45–5:00 pm

• Sexualities and Genders in Middle-earth

New reviews published — and one or two other items

The contents for the new issue of Mythlore (Volume 27, Issue 3/4, Spring/Summer 2009, whole #105/106 — phew!) have been announced. One essay jumped right out at me, especially in the light of my WOTD yesterday, hortus conclusus — “‘A Far Green Country’: Tolkien, Paradise, and the End of All Things in Medieval Literature”, by A. Keith Kelly and Michael Livingstone. That should be good, judging by the title! Also in the issue, an essay by Joe Christopher on C.S. Lewis’s first collection of poetry, Spirits in Bondage, which (the collection, not the essay) I read just recently.

I have two book reviews in this issue. These are Myth and Magic: Art According to the Inklings, edited by Eduardo Segura and Thomas Honegger (Walking Tree, 2007); and Arda Recon-structed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion, by Douglas Charles Kane (Lehigh University Press, 2009). Both of these are substantial reviews, each in the neighborhood of 3,000 words (one slightly more, one slightly less). As always, I welcome any feedback on them — they should be online in a couple of weeks. (Don’t worry; I’ll remind you. ;)

In other news, I’ve just sent off my proposal for Mythcon 40 in Los Angeles. I had been trying to decide between three different ideas, even considering presenting more than one paper (as I always try talking myself into; somebody slap me) — when I came to my senses and realized the deadline was rapidly approaching. For any of you who might be thinking of sending in an abstract, that’s April 15. I hope to see you there.