tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90505284365399213122024-03-12T23:31:28.683-05:00Lingwë - Musings of a FishJ.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, the Inklings, J.K. Rowling, and fantasy literature in general; language, linguistics, and philology; comparative mythology and folklore — and <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-does-lingw-mean-anyway.html"><u>more</u></a>.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comBlogger429125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-89644215755546233742024-03-05T18:42:00.017-06:002024-03-06T16:34:59.269-06:00Tolkien’s uncle Wilfred<p>Every so often, I go poking around in old archives — often out of little more than boredom — for anything to do with Tolkien that might have been digitized since the last time I took such a fit. And once in a while I find something I hadn’t seen before, or at least that I don’t remember having come across.</p><p>Here’s a little notice regarding the dissolution of a business partnership between Joshua George Terry Lee and Wilfred Henry Tolkien. [1]</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEYUB1WpaSJNn09gJrC0vfxe5vrK3TtdfqcP8eujWpH-2igO2ip6FH_vEwyJBc6MppIeFWJjpyPjKBAuKXjVqg5yWmJ9HhDK3mHgpA_bx_NuXtAmdVR9WB47-78Oxo0ZQxZojUtjbtkxDNW_gCMgbLRZ25EeHuN_WZvgHaocWtcEVAZsF7cziVmyi9h7lN/s572/Wilfred%20Tolkien%201897.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="572" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEYUB1WpaSJNn09gJrC0vfxe5vrK3TtdfqcP8eujWpH-2igO2ip6FH_vEwyJBc6MppIeFWJjpyPjKBAuKXjVqg5yWmJ9HhDK3mHgpA_bx_NuXtAmdVR9WB47-78Oxo0ZQxZojUtjbtkxDNW_gCMgbLRZ25EeHuN_WZvgHaocWtcEVAZsF7cziVmyi9h7lN/s320/Wilfred%20Tolkien%201897.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>And here’s something even more ephemeral, some golf scores from a couple of tournaments in 1899. [2]</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcOdyw3euFLeck_nBKhE9kExiS6NZ-irhushAjmlD3_h9B1adIAU6MFFTj8J3A1wiWP_uwFwbW6a_Vd7aeMjp9597S9z5P-dXLIcxzpeZLhTMn9O6o-jqqUc2h9by5MBLzh6J3GYu8PYqCQCfppjW581zMEqvh-bjYcd6FNM5hCj9c2CrJLRH1CUZGjxbm/s423/Wilfred%20Tolkien%201899.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="317" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcOdyw3euFLeck_nBKhE9kExiS6NZ-irhushAjmlD3_h9B1adIAU6MFFTj8J3A1wiWP_uwFwbW6a_Vd7aeMjp9597S9z5P-dXLIcxzpeZLhTMn9O6o-jqqUc2h9by5MBLzh6J3GYu8PYqCQCfppjW581zMEqvh-bjYcd6FNM5hCj9c2CrJLRH1CUZGjxbm/s320/Wilfred%20Tolkien%201899.png" width="240" /></a></div><p>Wilfred was Tolkien’s uncle, his father’s younger brother, born in April 1870 in Handsworth, Staffordshire, and who died on 8 August 1938 in Essex. At age 1, Wilfred shows up in a census record living in Moseley Road Heathfield, King’s Norton, Worcestershire, and my guess is he lived there for quite some time, as the golf scores above are also in King’s Norton, nigh on 30 years later. In 1910, Wilfred married Katherine Madeleine Green (1870–1955) in Aston, Warwickshire. It looks like they had a child, Wilfred March Tolkien, who died in infancy (or childbirth) that same year. Evidently, Wilfred was a stockbroker by profession [3]. The notice from the <i>The London Gazette</i> was published when Tolkien was 5 years old and about a year after Tolkien’s father, Arthur, had died of rheumatic fever. Wilfred himself passed away the year after <i>The Hobbit</i> was published and is buried in Key Hill Cemetery, Birmingham. His name appears on the family tombstone, at whose head is his father, John Benjamin Tolkien (Ronald’s grandfather). [4]</p><p>I don’t know much else about Wilfred, I’m afraid. At least, no one I know has dug up very much, not even Ryszard Derdziński, unless I’ve missed something.* He’s not even named in the Tolkien and Suffield family trees in <i>The Tolkien Family Album</i>, where he’s just part of “4 [other] sons” under John Benjamin Tolkien. Nor is he in Carpenter’s biography, where he is likewise part of “3 daughters and 4 [other] sons” [5]. The one tangible thing I know is that, like Tolkien and his father, Wilfred attended King Edward’s School in Birmingham [6].</p><p>*I had hoped that mentioning Ryszard, whom has done more genealogical research into the Tolkien family than anyone else I know, might lead to something, and I wasn't disappointed. Ryszard sent me an email to point out <a href="https://tolkienlibrary.com/tolkien-book-store/clp0166.php" target="_blank">these late letters and a photo</a> of Wilfred. He’s the second from the left seen here. Thank you, Ryszard!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_4OPohNL-Wy0b5rzAjUDJVW4b9w4ev7lWfXZvTHv-BmTR7Qt5M65TTFo7W_PQdubcbPFFZUInoFPB2AgyNCT_c5GSFmsXvD6DQRRESHTAju4broMW7pIccdImWqMJIkPCpJNf8W0b31l6jGqGmP4GAACjcCwQrAMtzJxeem7wLZp6uF60-DDu8p4r5Xeq/s750/Wilfred%20Tolkien%20(second%20from%20left).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="750" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_4OPohNL-Wy0b5rzAjUDJVW4b9w4ev7lWfXZvTHv-BmTR7Qt5M65TTFo7W_PQdubcbPFFZUInoFPB2AgyNCT_c5GSFmsXvD6DQRRESHTAju4broMW7pIccdImWqMJIkPCpJNf8W0b31l6jGqGmP4GAACjcCwQrAMtzJxeem7wLZp6uF60-DDu8p4r5Xeq/s320/Wilfred%20Tolkien%20(second%20from%20left).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Does anyone know anything else? I’ve had a quick look through most of the usual reference works and there’s little more to be found. To learn anything else would take more digging. Was Tolkien even in touch with his uncle during the last decades of Wilfred’s life? There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of it.</p><p>Another passing thought: could the name of Tolkien’s uncle have influenced the choice of Wilfrid (note the different spelling) in the character Wilfrid Trewyn Jeremy in <i>The Notion Club Papers</i>? It doesn’t seem all that likley, but ... maybe?</p><p>One final note. This is the first new post on this long dormant blog in some years. Is anyone still reading? Who will discover it? We wonders, yesss, we wondersss. :)</p><p>[1] <i>The London Gazette</i>, Vol. 1, No. 9, 1 June 1987, p. 3091.</p><p>[2] <i>Golf Illustrated</i>, 11 August 1899, pp. 260–1.</p><p>[3] According to a family tree in the Wikipedia topic on “Tolkien family” [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_family" target="_blank">link</a>]. No source for these dates is given. <b>Update</b>: I found some additional details <a href="https://www.geni.com/people/Wilfrid-Tolkien/6000000174221372963" target="_blank">here</a>, maintained by a member of the Tolkien family, and <a href="https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Tolkien-8" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>[4] <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/41880606/john-benjamin-tolkien" target="_blank">https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/41880606/john-benjamin-tolkien</a>.</p><p>[5] Carpenter, Humphrey. <i>Tolkien: A Biography</i>. Houghton Mifflin, 1977, p. [263].</p><p>[6] See Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, <i>The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide</i>, Rev. and exp. ed., p. 601. This is the only mention of Wilfred in the <i>Companion and Guide</i>, and it’s a tidbit new to the revised and expanded edition.</p>Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-81073862252046357782017-05-28T13:21:00.005-05:002021-02-24T18:30:54.698-06:00Little-known Lewis lettersI happened upon a copy of Richard Purtill’s <i>C.S. Lewis’s Case for the Christian Faith</i> on Friday. A first edition, 1981. Fairly early in Inklings criticism. It’s not a book I was familiar with, but I know Purtill from a couple of his other books, <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Elves</i> <i>and</i> <i>Eldils</i>: <i>Fantasy</i> <i>and</i> <i>Philosophy</i> <i>in</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i> <i>and</i> <i>J</i>.<i>R</i>.<i>R</i>. <i>Tolkien</i> (1974) and <i>J</i>.<i>R</i>.<i>R</i>. <i>Tolkien</i>: <i>Myth</i>, <i>Morality</i>, <i>and</i> <i>Religion</i> (1984). Even though Lewis’s Christian apologetics are not my primary interest, what sold me on taking this book home was the dust-jacket promise of quotation from unpublished letters. Even better, the notes at the end of the book clearly identify each unpublished letter by date and recipient, and best of all, there were 15 of them.<br />
<br />
Now I fully expected that some of these letters had probably been published since 1981, but the chance of finding some interesting material not otherwise available was worth a few dollars. I wasn’t disappointed. 10 of the 15 cited letters were printed in collections published after Purtill’s book, but 5 were not, and as far as I know, have never been and therefore might only be available to the public in this one book. There are all sorts of valuable nuts squirreled away in old, out-of-print books, aren’t there? [Actually, it looks like you can still buy this book for Kindle and in a softcover Ignatius Press reprint edition. But so many others have actually gone out of print.]<br />
<br />
I’ve gone through them one by one, and as a public service, I’d like to share my findings with you. I checked Walter Hooper’s revised and enlarged edition of <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i> and the three-volume <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>. I didn’t exhaustively search other Lewis references such as Hooper’s <i>Companion</i> <i>and</i> <i>Guide</i> or any of the biographies; it’s possible one or more of these letters is quoted in one of those works. If anyone is aware of one, please do let me know. Likewise, if I have somehow missed one in the works I did check.<br />
<br />
Here is each reference in order:<br />
<br />
<b>Chapter 1</b><br />
<br />
To Miss Rhona Bodle, 11 March 1945<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>3</i>, but it is there dated 11 April 1950 — a significant disagreement.<br />
<br />
To Sister Madelva, 19 March 1963<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>3</i>, but dated 3 October 1963 — a smaller disagreement than the previous letter but placing it much closer to the end of Lewis’s life. One would have to check the dates in the original letters to be sure, but I expect Purtill is the one who is wrong.<br />
<br />
To Ruth Pittinger, 17 July 1951<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>3</i>, but the recipient is Ruth Pitter, not Pittinger. Another strike against Mr. Purtill’s attention to detail.<br />
<br />
<b>Chapter 2</b><br />
<br />
To Miss Jacob, 3 July 1941<br />
So far as I know, this letter has not been printed anywhere else. Here is the quotation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There might be good superhuman beings of limited power (I suspect there are millions). What is this power limited by? I suppose by the general nature of things. Alright. Now is that general nature of things itself a conscious being or the work of chance? If the latter, then how did it produce the superhuman good being? Just by a lucky fluke? If the former, then a conscious being further back, the ultimate one, is what we call God and the whole problem is about <i>Him</i>. (qtd in Purtill, p. 16)</blockquote>
To Dom Bede Griffiths, 7 January 1936<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>2</i>, but dated one day later, 8 January 1936.<br />
<br />
<b>Chapter 3</b><br />
<br />
To Sister Penelope, 30 December 1950<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, rev. and enlarged ed., and in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>3</i>.<br />
<br />
To Miss Jacob, 15 August 1941<br />
So far as I know, this second letter to Miss Jacob has not been printed anywhere else. Here is the quotation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I do feel very strongly the difficulty you raise, “If man fell, then man must be made of poor stuff, and why did God make him so?” But then I am always pulled up by realizing that when I am arguing this way I am actually denying freedom. We are saying, “If he fell he was made of poor stuff.” Does that imply “If he had been made of good stuff he could not have fallen?” If not the whole argument collapses: for if a creature made of good stuff <i>could</i> fall the fact of man’s falling does not prove he was made of bad stuff. If so (i.e. if it does imply this) then we are saying that a really good creature would be incapable of moral choice — which is almost saying, “A good creature means a creature incapable of real goodness.” For surely power to be good and to be bad go together, and when you remove one you remove the other? E.g. take away a creature’s sexuality and you have made not only chastity but unchastity impossible for it. Every new faculty opens up new possibilities both of good and of evil. I don’t think that we show any particular <i>personal</i> stupidity in forgetting this: the truth is that freedom and choice, though we all believe in them are strictly incomprehensible to the human mind. You start by admitting them: but when one tries to think of them one always lets them slip through one’s fingers. (qtd in Purtill, p. 38)</blockquote>
<b>Chapter 5</b><br />
<br />
To Mr. Canfield, 28 February 1955<br />
So far as I know, this letter has not been printed anywhere else. Here is the quotation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I’m not a fundamentalist in the direct sense: one who starts out by saying, “Everything we read is literal fact.” The presence of an allegorical or mystical element in <i>Genesis</i> was recognized by St. Jerome. Origen held <i>Job</i> to be a moral fable not a history. There is nothing new about such interpretation. But I often agree with the Fundamentalists about particular passages whose literal truth is rejected by many moderns. I reject nothing on the grounds of its being miraculous. I accept the story of the Fall, and I don’t see what the findings of the scientists can say either for or against it. You can’t see for looking at skulls and flint implements whether Man fell or not. But the question of the Fall seems to me quite independent of the question of evolution. I don’t mind whether God made Man out of earth or whether “earth” merely means “previous material of some sort.” If the deposits make it probable that man’s physical ancestors “evolved,” no matter. It leaves the essence of the Fall itself intact. Don’t let us confuse physical development with spiritual. (qtd in Purtill, p. 57–8)</blockquote>
<b>Chapter 7</b><br />
<br />
To Dom Bede Griffiths, undated [1930]<br />
So far as I know, this letter to a frequent correspondent of Lewis’s has not been printed anywhere else. Here is the quotation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I sometimes have the feeling that the big mass-conversions of the Dark Ages, often carried out by force, were all a false dawn and the whole work has to be done over again. As for the virtuous heathen, we are told that Our Lord is the savior “of all men” though “specifically of those who believe.” As there is vicarious suffering, is there not also vicarious faith? (qtd in Purtill, p. 81)</blockquote>
To Dom Bede Griffiths, 27 June 1949<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>2</i>.<br />
<br />
To Dom Bede Griffiths, 27 September 1948<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>2</i>.<br />
<br />
To Dom Bede Griffiths, June 1937<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>2</i>, dated more precisely to 27 June of that year.<br />
<br />
<b>Chapter 8</b><br />
<br />
To Mr. Masson, 6 March 1956<br />
This letter to Keith Masson — in part about masturbation! — is in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>3</i>, but dated June 3. Purtill slipped on Lewis’s date of “3/6/56”, forgetting that the British put the day before the month.<br />
<br />
To Miss Rhona Bodle, 28 April 1955<br />
This letter was subsequently printed in <i>The</i> <i>Collected</i> <i>Letters</i> <i>of</i> <i>C</i>.<i>S</i>. <i>Lewis</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>3</i>.<br />
<br />
To Dom Bede Griffiths, 24 December 1946<br />
So far as I know, this Christmas Eve letter is another that has not been printed anywhere else. Here is the quotation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But one mustn’t assume burdens that God does not lay on us. It is one of the evils of the rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of <i>all</i> the world come to us every morning. I think that each village was meant to feel pity for <i>its</i> <i>own</i> sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills he cannot help. (This may even become an <i>escape</i> from works of charity we really can do to those we know.) A great many people (not you) now seem to think that the mere state of being <i>worried</i> is itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our own lives for others; but even while we’re doing it I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord, and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds and the frosty sunrise. As about the distant, so about the future. It is very dark: but there’s usually light enough for the next step or so. Pray for me always. (Purtill, p. 103)</blockquote>
So we have a total of five quotations that may have only ever appeared in print in Purtill’s book, more than 35 years ago. Hopefully someone out there will find this post a helpful pointer to them. I should add one more time a <i>caveat lector</i>, since Purtill has shown himself prone to mistakes, but such as they are, these quotations are still quite interesting.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-38055754829231572612016-03-24T12:37:00.003-05:002016-03-24T12:39:26.580-05:00Decennial conference<a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2015/06/news-and-updates.html" target="_blank">I wrote last June</a> about a conference to which I’d been invited as a Special Guest. As that conference is only a week away now, I’m late sharing more details, but here they are anyway. If you’re anywhere within striking distance of northwestern Arkansas and have an interest in the Inklings, I’d encourage you to register to attend. The conference website is <a href="http://www.jbu.edu/cs-lewis-inklings/" target="_blank">www.jbu.edu/cs-lewis-inklings/</a>. It runs from next Thursday afternoon through the middle of Saturday at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, right in the heart of the Ozarks.<br />
<br />
Although I am not a keynote speaker — for that, we have Devin Brown and Charlie Starr — I will be doing a number of different things as a specially invited guest.<br />
<br />
On Thursday around lunch time, I’m going to meet with undergraduate English majors at JBU (and anyone else interested) to talk about my day-job as a Senior Writer at Microsoft, my side-hustle as an independent scholar, and the various writing and editorial jobs I have or have had (technical publications, Mythprint, CSLIS books, the board of the Mythopoeic Press, etc.). The hope is to expand their view of the profession and to inspire them about job prospects for English majors. JBU wants more of them to realize they can do things other than teach, that there are many kinds of interesting jobs for people who analyze texts. The Creative Writing majors at JBU outnumber the Lit majors, and so they’re hoping both camps of English majors will get ideas from me about how to “professionalize” their passions for writing/editing.<br />
<br />
A little later on Thursday, I’ll be joining Jonathan Himes, the Chair of this year’s conference, to conduct a Mythopoeic Workshop. With a couple of others, including Charlie Starr, we’ll be doing a dramatic reading, giving listeners an idea of what a typical meeting of the Inklings was like (I’m Tolkien, of course!), then discussing the Inklings’ mythopoeic methods of inspirations. We’ll talk about how Tolkien was inspired by language, Lewis by pictorial imagery, and Williams by poetry (among other things). We’ll ask the audience to participate directly by discussing today’s fantasy writers, how they are inspired, how their mythopoeic methods differ (if and when they do) from the Inklings’, and so on.<br />
<br />
Friday afternoon, I’ll act as moderator for an informal session to meet the keynote speakers and writers/editors in the CSLIS. We’ll do book signings, meet-and-greet, etc. I think I still have a few copies of my book to take with me. It is still selling a few copies here and there, nearly five years on, and gosh, that is gratifying!<br />
<br />
On Saturday, I’ll be giving my own paper on Tolkien, Foucault, and premodern and poststructuralist conceptions of authorship. This is a paper I intended for a collection years ago, but at the time I had too many irons in the fire and couldn’t get to it. I didn’t want to hold up the collection, so I withdrew from it. Funnily enough, that collection ended up taking five years more to prepare, so I probably could have stayed involved, but c’est la vie. Anyway, the theme of this year’s conference (“Is Man a Myth?”) offered a convenient nudge to return to the topic at last. And so I have.<br />
<br />
And finally, I’ll moderate a closing panel with the keynote speakers in which we’ll try to rummage through everything we’ve collectively heard during the conference, discuss points of interest, directions for new work, and so on. We’ll take additional questions from the conferees and then wrap for the year.<br />
<br />
It should be a wonderful event! I’ve been to this conference seven times before, and I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed it. As I wrote in my previous post, this year marks special significance for me, because it was ten years before almost to the day, also at this conference, also at JBU, where I delivered my first-ever conference paper — with Tom Shippey in my audience, no less! Since then, I’ve presented papers or talks of one sort or another more than 20 times in 9 different US states. I haven’t been to a conference outside the US yet (I was invited to come to one in England as a Special Guest a few years ago, but alas, too expensive!), but I do have my eye on one this September in Canada, a mere three-hour drive from home.<br />
<br />
I’ll write up a conference report on CSLIS 19 as soon as I can, so that even if you can’t make it to the event yourselves, you’ll get some idea of what it was like. And maybe feel inspired to come next year. In the meantime, here is the conference report I wrote for <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2010/04/cslis-13-conference-report.html" target="_blank">CSLIS 13</a> for anyone interested.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-79682338926756709092015-12-29T11:55:00.000-06:002015-12-29T12:03:32.181-06:00Tolkien Studies Volume 12<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been a long time coming this year, but it seem the 2015 volume of <em>Tolkien Studies</em> is finally right around the corner. The West Virginia University Press website finally has a page up for Volume 12 (<a href="http://wvupressonline.com/node/635" target="_blank">here</a>). Take care you're looking at the right issue, because they show the same cover for Volumes 10, 11, and 12 on the <a href="http://wvupressonline.com/tolkien_back_issue" target="_blank">Back Issues</a> page, and they show the cover for Volume 9 on the Volume 12 details page! And how about this: the Volume 12 details page does not show the contents ("Coming soon"), but if you take a look at the details page for <a href="http://wvupressonline.com/node/593" target="_blank">Volume 11</a>, you'll see the contents not for that issue but for the new one, Volume 12. Gaah! Get it together, WVUP!<br />
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Although David Bratman reported that Tolkien Studies will be in softcover starting with this issue, it appears WVUP has <em>not</em> lowered the price. You can apparently put in pre-orders for the issue now at $60 for individuals. That's a bit steep for softcover, but the contents are more important than the packaging, and as long as the issues are still made reasonably well, I guess we can live with it. They may or may not be as durable as the hardcover, though, so greater care in handling is probably advised from here on out.<br />
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Speaking of the contents, the complete issue is now available on Project Muse. If you or your local library have access, you should be able to start reading the issue by following <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tolkien_studies/toc/tks.12.html" target="_blank">this link</a>. Also note that unlike WVUP, Project Muse has the cover, which I've reproduced above. Quite nice, I think. The illustration is "The White Dragon Pursues Roverandom & the Moondog", drawing by J.R.R. Tolkien (Bodleian Library MS Tolkien Drawings 89, Fol. 3r).<br />
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I've been looking forward to seeing this issue a little more than usual because (as I think you all know), I've joined the gang writing the "Year's Work" essays. For this issue, the works reviewed are those published in 2012. I wrote three sections, General Criticism: The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s Work as a Whole, Tolkien’s Subcreation, and Philology and Language Studies, covering 13 books and 17 essays or book chapters. And I think it's probably okay to announce that I'm currently hard at work writing three sections for <em>next year</em> as well, covering more than fifty essays and a few books published in 2013.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-28788786091744068582015-11-04T19:16:00.001-06:002015-11-04T19:16:17.055-06:00A new review of my book — from a surprising reviewer!It’s been four years since <i>Tolkien</i> <i>and</i> <i>the</i> <i>Study</i> <i>of</i> <i>His</i> <i>Sources</i> appeared, so you can imagine my surprise at seeing a new, and quite substantial, review in <i>The</i> <i>Journal</i> <i>of</i> <i>Inklings</i> <i>Studies</i>. The review is by Faith Liu, an undergraduate at Hillsdale College in Michigan. You read that right: an <i>undergraduate</i>.<br />
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Liu will be earning her bachelor’s degree in English and Music next year, and in the meantime, she is also a pianist, voice instructor, and producer at a small, independent film studio. I didn’t know any of this when I read her review, nor would I ever have guessed. Her review does not read like the kind of work one normally expects from undergraduates; it’s far more mature and self-assured.<br />
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It turns out she also reviewed the late Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger collection, <i>Tolkien’s</i> <i>The</i> <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Rings</i>: <i>Sources</i> <i>of</i> <i>Inspiration</i>, in the previous issue of <i>The</i> <i>Journal</i> <i>of</i> <i>Inklings</i> <i>Studies</i> (Vol. 5, No. 1, April 2015), something that failed to catch my attention six months ago when I leafed through it. The contributor blurb in that issue says (in part) that Liu’s “passion for storytelling has led her to study Tolkien at Oxford University, direct college opera and short film, and read the entirety of LOTR aloud — ‘with voices’ — to her siblings.” Her blurb in the most recent issue says much the same and confirms that her review of my book is just the second time she’s written for the journal.<br />
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And that <i>may</i> be the entirety of her work in the field to date. At least, I haven’t been able to discover anything else. If that is true, and these two reviews comprise the bulk, or even the entirety, or her contributions to Tolkien studies to this point, then the quality of her reviews and her obvious familiarity with the subject matter are all the more surprising and impressive! You don’t normally see this kind of work without a few false starts leading up to it. Don’t take my word for it; read them and see for yourself! You can read the Caldecott/Honegger review <a href="http://inklings-studies.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/jis_5-1_5_liu_on_caldecott__honegger_jrrt_lotr_sources_of_inspiration1.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, and the review of my book <a href="http://inklings-studies.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/03_liu_on_fisher_ed_tolkien_and_the_study_of_his_sources.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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To sum her up on my work, here is her concluding paragraph:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is refreshing to see, in what is already a thriving community, a discussion of why and how to go about Tolkienian source study, and rarely is it undertaken with such attention to detail and demand for high standards. Though the collection could use a conclusion (one is otherwise left with the melancholy aftertaste of Glyer and Long’s discussion of <i>Smith</i> <i>of</i> <i>Wootton</i> <i>Major</i>), and more attractive cover design, <i>Tolkien</i> <i>and</i> <i>the</i> <i>Study</i> <i>of</i> <i>His</i> <i>Sources</i> is, on the whole, a triumph: a collection accessible to both the enthusiast and the academic, with extensive footnotes and bibliographies providing ample food for the reader seeking to go beyond. The work of these scholars is not chemical analysis of predigested dinners; rather, it is the attempt to unlock the secrets of an old family recipe. Some attempts bring new insight into a dish, while others indulge in more insubstantial speculation, but all serve to promote a greater appreciation for the discipline, for the dish, and for the chef himself.</blockquote>
To judge by the example of these two reviews, I would say Faith Liu is off to a great running start in the field, and not just because she liked my book — though of course, liking my book is an obvious sign of intelligence! ;) All kidding aside, she is critical at several points, and I found her to be criticisms fair and articulated well. I certainly look forward to seeing more of her work, whether more book reviews or, even better, some scholarship of her own.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-20573404225881754672015-10-21T16:53:00.000-05:002015-10-21T16:55:44.744-05:00Scattered leavesSeveral libraries hold copies of books once owned by Tolkien, often inscribed and in some cases annotated by him. I’ve been fortunate enough to see and handle some of these myself at the Cushing Library at Texas A&M (a topic for another day, but you can read about these books <a href="http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1066-Sixteen-philological-books-notes-library-of-Tolkien.php" target="_blank">here</a>), but the Bodleian library system has perhaps the largest collection of such copies. Judging from an excavation of their online catalog, the Bodleian and its satellites hold about two dozen books once owned by Tolkien. Three of these have been digitized so that we all read the very copies that once sat on Tolkien’s own bookshelves.<br />
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As a public service, I thought I’d share the results of my excavations. I’m not going to the trouble of providing all the individual library and shelving details here, but if you’re in the area and want to find any of these books, you can look them up yourself with <a href="http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1" target="_blank">SOLO</a> (Search Oxford Libraries Online).<br />
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Although merely owning a book doesn’t always mean one has read it — that is certainly true for me! — the books Tolkien owned do give us some insight into the man’s interests. Perusing the following, there isn’t a whole lot here that is strikingly new, but we see books on Indo-European linguistics; the Germanic languages, including Primitive Germanic, Gothic, Middle Low German, Old Dutch, Old Frisian, Old English, Old Norse; other European languages, including Middle Scots, French, Flemish, Galician, Spanish, Lithuanian; as well as history (the Vikings), legend (northern Germanic heroic sagas), and literature (Caxton).<br />
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As I said, there are other libraries with books once owned by Tolkien, and I have been gradually searching these out as time and inspiration strike. Anyone who has links and other information, please feel free to share it in the comments. Or if you’ve written up your own findings somewhere, please let us all know!<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PPxK9cciai0/VigI7dhfatI/AAAAAAAAAuI/pV2Pz6SXEbk/s1600/Signed%2BTolkien%2BDetail.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PPxK9cciai0/VigI7dhfatI/AAAAAAAAAuI/pV2Pz6SXEbk/s400/Signed%2BTolkien%2BDetail.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
I. Books owned by Tolkien (with digital scans)<br />
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Bremer, Otto. <a href="http://purl.ox.ac.uk/uuid/58b2dba4b08f41c692a4a51b538a6666" target="_blank"><i>Ethnographie</i> <i>der</i> <i>germanischen</i> <i>Stämme</i></a>. Strassburg: Trübner, 1904. Gorgeous calligraphic inscription on the title page: “John Reuel Tolkien | e. coll. exon. | oxon. | mdccccxiv”. That’s 1914 — a very early book in Tolkien’s library. Illegible marginalia on p. 20; possibly another on p. 122. You can see Tolkien’s inscription above.<br />
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Persson, Per. <a href="http://purl.ox.ac.uk/uuid/c53dfa15aedc4487ad00fee56f5b2b6e" target="_blank"><i>Studien</i> <i>zur</i> <i>Lehre</i>: <i>von</i> <i>der</i> <i>Wurzelerweiterung</i> <i>und</i> <i>Wurzelvariation</i></a>. Upsala: Academiska Boktryckeriet, 1891. Inscribed on the first flyleaf: “J.R.R. Tolkien | 1926”. Illegible marginal note on p. 50; a partially legible note on/in Greek at the top of p. 130 with an x in the left margin; a legible Greek word in the right margin on p. 157; and a final, only partially legible note on the rear endpaper. These appear to be in Tolkien’s hand, but I have examined them only very hastily at this point.<br />
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von Richthofen, Karl Freiherrn. <a href="http://purl.ox.ac.uk/uuid/7ae34edc1bbd46fe98e12d2922f9d18a" target="_blank"><i>Altfriesisches</i> <i>Wörterbuch</i></a>. Göttingen: Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, 1840. Inscribed on the first flyleaf: “J.R.R. Tolkien”, along with a date that is nearly illegible but looks to me like it might be 1926 or 1928. No inscriptions in the body of the book as far as I could tell on a quick inspection.<br />
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II. Books owned by Tolkien (without digital scans)<br />
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[No Author Given]. <i>Festschrift</i> <i>für</i> <i>Berthold</i> <i>Delbrück</i>. Special issue of Indogermanische Forschungen, Bd. 31, 1912/13. Strassburg: Verlag von Karl J. Trübner, 1912–1913. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Einenkel, Eugen. <i>Geschichte</i> <i>der</i> <i>Englischen</i> <i>Sprache</i>: <i>II</i>. <i>Historische</i> <i>Syntax</i>. Strassburg: K.J. Trübner, 1916. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Faust. <i>Historia</i> <i>von</i> <i>D</i>. <i>Johann</i> <i>Fausten</i> <i>dem</i> <i>weitbeschreyten</i> <i>zauberer</i> <i>und</i> <i>schwarzkünstler</i>. [Jena]: [E. Diederichs], [1911]. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Feist, Sigmund. <i>Einführung</i> <i>in</i> <i>das</i> <i>Gotische</i>: <i>Texte</i> <i>mit</i> <i>Übersetzungen</i> <i>und</i> <i>Erläuterungen</i>. Leipzig: Teubner, 1922. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Gessler, Jean. <i>Le</i> <i>livre</i> <i>des</i> <i>mestiers</i> <i>de</i> <i>Bruges</i> <i>et</i> <i>ses</i> <i>dérivés</i>: <i>Quatre</i> <i>anciens</i> <i>manuels</i> <i>de</i> <i>conversation</i>. Bruges: [Fondation universitaire de Belgique], 1931. Flemish translation, vocabulary, and French-English parallel-text version of Caxton’s “Ryght good lernyng”. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Heusler, Andreas. <i>Deutsche</i> <i>Versgeschichte</i>: <i>mit</i> <i>Einschluss</i> <i>des</i> <i>altenglischen</i> <i>und</i> <i>altnordischen</i> <i>Stabreimverses</i>. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1925–1929. Inscribed by Tolkien; no further details provided.<br />
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Horn, Wilhelm. <i>Beiträge</i> <i>zur</i> <i>germanischen</i> <i>sprachwissenschaft</i>: <i>Festschrift</i> <i>für</i> <i>Otto</i> <i>Behaghel</i>. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1924. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Karsten, T. E. <i>Die</i> <i>Germanen</i>: <i>eine</i> <i>Einführung</i> <i>in</i> <i>die</i> <i>Geschichte</i> <i>ihrer</i> <i>Sprache</i> <i>und</i> <i>Kultur</i>. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1928. Inscribed by Tolkien; no further details provided.<br />
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Kauffmann, Friedrich. <i>Deutsche</i> <i>Altertumskunde</i>. München: Beck, 1913–1923. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Kendrick, T. D. <i>A</i> <i>History</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Vikings</i>. London: Methuen, [1930]. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Kretschmer, Paul. <i>Die</i> <i>indogermanische</i> <i>Sprachwissenschaft</i> : <i>eine</i> <i>Einführung</i> <i>für</i> <i>die</i> <i>Schule</i>. <br />
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1925. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Leskien, August. <i>Litauisches</i> <i>Lesebuch</i> <i>mit</i> <i>Grammatik</i> <i>und</i> <i>Wörterbuch</i>. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1919. Inscribed by Tolkien; no further details provided.<br />
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Mansion, Joseph. <i>Oud</i>-<i>gentsche</i> <i>naamkunde</i> : <i>bijdrage</i> <i>tot</i> <i>de</i> <i>kennis</i> <i>van</i> <i>het</i> <i>oud</i>-<i>nederlandsch</i>. ’s-Gravenhage : M. Nijhoff, 1924. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Nuñez, Marcial Valladares. <i>Diccionario</i> <i>gallego</i>-<i>castellano</i>. Santiago [de Compostela]: Impr. del Seminario Conciliar Central, 1884. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Schneider, Hermann. <i>Germanische</i> <i>Heldensage</i>. Bd. 1. Einleitung: Ursprung und Wesen der Heldensage. Buch 1: Deutsche Heldensage. Bd. 2, Abt. 1: Buch 2: Nordgermanische Heldensage -- Bd. 2, Abt. 2: Buch.3: Englische Heldensage. Festländische Heldensage in nordgermanischer und englischer Überlieferung. Verlorene Heldensage. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1928–34. Each volume has a bookplate, “Presented by the executors of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien”, and is inscribed by Tolkien.<br />
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Smith, G. Gregory. <i>Specimens</i> <i>of</i> <i>Middle</i> <i>Scots</i>. Edinburgh; London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1902. Inscribed on the first flyleaf: “John Reuel Tolkien. Exeter Coll. March 1914”. Another book in Tolkien’s library from a very early date!<br />
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Stammler, Wolfgang. <i>Mittelniederdeutsches</i> <i>Lesebuch</i>. Hamburg: P. Hartung, 1921. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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Wood, Francis A. <i>Indo</i>-<i>European</i> <i>ax</i>: <i>axi</i>: <i>axu</i>: <i>A</i> <i>study</i> <i>in</i> <i>ablaut</i> <i>and</i> <i>in</i> <i>word</i> <i>formation</i>. Strassburg: K.J. Trubner, 1905. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.<br />
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III. Tolkien’s own books (given by Tolkien to others)<br />
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Tolkien, J.R.R. <i>Tree</i> <i>and</i> <i>Leaf</i>. London: Allen & Unwin, 1964. The Bodleian has two copies of interest, one inscribed by Tolkien to his son, John, in July 1964, and the other inscribed to his wife, Edith (no date given).<br />
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Tolkien, J.R.R. <i>The</i> <i>Fellowship</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Ring</i>. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954. Inscribed by Tolkien to his son, John. No date or other information given.<br />
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Tolkien, J.R.R. <i>The</i> <i>Two</i> <i>Towers</i>. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954. Inscribed “J.F.R. Tolkien from J.R.R.T. Nov. 1954”.<br />
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Tolkien, J.R.R. <i>The</i> <i>Return</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>King</i>. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955. Inscribed “J.F.R.T. from J.R.R. Tolkien for Nov. 16 1955”.<br />
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Tolkien, J.R.R. <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> <i>or</i>, <i>There</i> <i>and</i> <i>Back</i> <i>Again</i>. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937. The Bodleian has a second-impression copy inscribed “J.F.R. Tolkien from J.R.R.T.”. The Merton College Library also has a second-impression copy, this one inscribed to “Norman Davis from J.R.R. Tolkien” on the recto of the first flyleaf. This copy contains an inserted card with printed address, “Merton College, Oxford OX1 4JD Telephone no. 49651”, followed by a handwritten note, “Presented to the Library by Professor Norman Davis, Emeritus Fellow of the College, 18th October 1983”.<br />
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And finally, one especially interesting copy not owned by Tolkien.<br />
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[Unknown]. <i>Sir</i> <i>Gawain</i> <i>and</i> <i>the</i> <i>Green</i> <i>Knight</i>. Edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925. C.S. Lewis’s personal copy, with detailed glosses throughout and in which he drew and “annotated a knight’s armour as a key to the technical vocabulary used by the poet for the arming of Sir Gawain, as he prepares to set out in search of the mysterious Green Knight (pp. 18–19)”. Recently, this book was displayed as part of the Romance of the Middle Ages exhibit that ran 28 January through 13 May 2012. It was also part of the Bodleian exhibit, “Tolkien: Life and Legend”, in his centenary year, 1992. If you have a copy of the exhibit catalog, you can see Lewis’s illustration of the knight’s armor on p. 39, item 70.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-82086965388750408862015-08-31T18:49:00.001-05:002015-08-31T19:11:43.361-05:00A standalone edition of The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun — in Serbian!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UEFBiTM53f0/VeToBNRjeDI/AAAAAAAAAts/NSG40rVQwzs/s1600/Aotrou%2BInstagramCapture_31557e79-b660-4e21-84d2-57bc9873efd3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UEFBiTM53f0/VeToBNRjeDI/AAAAAAAAAts/NSG40rVQwzs/s400/Aotrou%2BInstagramCapture_31557e79-b660-4e21-84d2-57bc9873efd3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Although the text of Tolkien’s <i>Lay</i> <i>of</i> <i>Aotrou</i> <i>and</i> <i>Itroun</i> has been floating around the Internet for ages, it has been difficult to get a legit copy of the poem in print. Copies of the publication in which is appeared, <i>Welsh</i> <i>Review</i> (Vol. IV, No. 4), have been out of reach of all but the most dedicated (and/or luckiest) collectors for decades, and the poem has never been reprinted in the United States or England since its first appearance seventy years ago. It has been reprinted just once, however, in a Serbian translation in 2002. This was a limited print run of just 500 copies and is, so far as I know, the <i>only</i> authorized translation ever made. The book was a softcover of just 88 pages, rare enough that I have never seen a copy. Fortunately, the Serbian translator, Aleksandar Mikić, released an updated and expanded second edition this past June.<br />
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This minor work of Tolkien’s is obviously a special favorite of his, as it is of mine, and Mikić has honored the lay’s 70th anniversary (the 80th of its composition) with a beautiful, well-made, collectible copy. The new edition, clearly a labor of love, is a hardcover of nearly 300 pages, consisting of the poem, substantial background material and commentary, and eight accompanying color plates. In addition to the plates, there are illustrations on the front and back covers. Among the plates are illustrations of the lay by the translator himself, along with Anke Eissmann, Ruth Lacon, and three brand new paintings especially commissioned from Ted Nasmith. I always love to see new works from Ted, and my special favorite is “Aotrou chases the enchanted doe through Broceliande”. Apart from the doe, this painting strongly reminds me of Ithilien and the Men of Henneth Annûn. In fact, there’s a painting by Darrell K. Sweet called “Journey to the Cross-roads” — a favorite of mine from childhood — that I find strikingly similar in its setting and color palette.<br />
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In the original edition, as I understand it, the poem was presented in both the original English and in facing-page Serbian translation, but the accompanying essays were given only in Serbian. In the new edition, the entire book is in facing-page translation, so that the preface, essays, and contributors blurbs (and even the copyright page) can all now be read in English. Most of the accompanying material is the work of the translator, Aleksandar Mikić, with assistance from Ruth Lacon (also called in the book by the names Elizabeth Currie and Ruth Lewis). Apart from the poem, the book consists mainly of a preface; an extensive essay, “The Lay of Man and the Supernatural”; and a short commentary, “On the Translation”, contributed by Zoran Paunović, a Professor of English Literature on the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, and a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad (about a hundred kilometers to the northwest).<br />
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What I’ve called an extensive essay might better be termed a short monograph (it’s about 160 pages). It’s organized into multiple sections, beginning with a short orientation, followed by contextual discussion in “Tolkien and Christianity”, “The Celtic Cosmos”, “Tolkien and the Celts”, “Little Britain”, and “Where and When?” Then we get into some source criticism on “The Source”, which reprints the Breton lay, “Aotrou Nann hag ar Gorrigan”, in full and in Breton! This leads to “The Cognates”; “The ‘Briton Harper’”; three short character studies of the Corrigan, Aotrou, and Itroun; and a final conclusion on “The Message”.<br />
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The book only arrived from Serbia a couple of days ago, and I haven’t had time to read it thoroughly yet, so I will have to save further evaluation of the quality of the commentary for another day. For now, suffice it to say that it looks to be a thorough treatment — probably the most thorough the lay has ever received in a long but often overlooked life. It also has an accompanying bibliography (a good sign). In any case, it is quite nice to have the lay in print, along with some beautiful illustrations of it, and substantial commentary, all in one convenient new edition. It might just be a reason to dabble in some Serbian!Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-87716728147669398892015-08-20T12:15:00.002-05:002015-08-20T12:42:34.672-05:00Horcruxes: analogues and sources<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As you know, I’ve be reading the Harry Potter books again. I’ve also been working on the bookshelves in my office at home. This has involved handling and arranging a large number of books, as well as sorting in all my acquisitions of the last three years or so. One book that came to the surface is something that actually belongs on our fiction bookshelves downstairs, but it’s been bobbing around in my office since the last time I read it too, close to two years ago. On that occasion, I noticed once again something I have been meaning to share since at least the <i>previous</i> time I had read it, some six years ago. The book I’m talking about is Lloyd Alexander’s <i>Taran</i> <i>Wanderer</i>, and if you know it, you may already see where I’m headed. It’s a subject I’ve been meaning to tackle on Lingwë for a long, long time, and I think the day has come at last — mainly because I want to be able to put the darn book back on the shelf!<br />
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So, you all know what a horcrux is — in Slughorn’s words, “an object in which a person has concealed a part of their soul. […] You split your soul, you see […], and hide part of it in an object outside your body. Then, even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged” [1].<br />
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There’s a long tradition of the external soul in folktales, and I’ll come back to that in a little while, but first, consider an episode in <i>Taran</i> <i>Wanderer</i> (1967), the fourth book in Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. This is a series, like Harry Potter, that I’ve read many times, and as I said, I made this connection between them some years ago. I can’t remember exactly when now, but I’m guessing it was 2009, or perhaps even a year or two before that.<br />
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Without going over the plot of the entire novel (for which, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taran_Wanderer#Plot_summary" target="_blank">see here</a>), let’s get right to the episode in question (spoilers, obviously!). In a nutshell: Taran and his companions encounter Morda, an evil wizard who has separated his soul from his body and placed it into a small shard of bone, his own severed pinky bone, in fact. With his soul elsewhere, the wizard is now as strong as death and cannot be killed like a mortal man. But as luck (or providence) would have it, Taran has come across this bone. To save the lives of his companions and himself, he tries to snap the bone in half. He can’t do it, but in Morda’s struggle to regain the bone, it does indeed snap and Morda is undone. It’s a memorable scene in a great novel for young people.<br />
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Now let’s take a closer look at some of the details here. Apologies if this is a bit lengthy, but there are a number of points I want to call your attention to.<br />
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Taran and friends find a small iron coffer, bound in iron bands, and padlocked. Rather recklessly, they break into the coffer, finding a leather pouch containing “a slender piece of bone as long as Taran’s little finger” [2]. Taran’s companion, Fflewddur Fflam, is all for getting rid of it as a dangerous enchantment — quite sensibly. They return it to the coffer, and return that to the hiding place where it was hidden in a hollow tree. But a few pages later, it turns out that Taran’s pet crow, Kaw, has retrieved it, magpie-like, and brought it back to Taran for a prank. Fearing to toss it away now, Taran pockets it. Meanwhile, the companions come upon their friend Doli, who has been transformed into a frog by Morda and left to die.<br />
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Eiddileg, King of the Fair Folk, sent to Doli to investigate the theft of one of their treasure troves, and when he was discovered, Morda cast a spell on the dwarf to get rid of him. Casting an enchantment on the Fair Folk was a thing completely unheard of, for which Doli calls “the foul villain of a wizard […] shrewder than a serpent” — the choice to transform Doli into a frog might be relevant here, as frogs are serpent’s prey. Morda mocked him and “savored [his] lingering agony more than the mercy of killing him out of hand” [3].<br />
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Seeing no other way to reverse the enchantment cast against Doli, Taran, with Gurgi and Kaw, decides to confront Morda. Morda’s dwelling is surrounded by a great wall of thorns, and Kaw is ensnared seeking a way around or over. Taran and Gurgi attempt to climb the wall, but they too are captured, and Fflewddur likewise, not long after. Morda has “a gaunt face the color of dry clay, eyes glittering like cold crystals, deep set in a jutting brow as though at the bottom of a well. The skull was hairless, the mouth a livid scar stitched with wrinkles.” “Morda’s gaze was unblinking. Even in the candle flame the shriveled eyelids never closed […].” His voice is likened to the hiss of a serpent, and “[t]he glint in Morda’s lidless eyes flickered like a serpent’s tongue.” With a magical ornament that he stole, a gem of great power, Morda transforms Fflewddur and Gurgi into a rabbit and a mouse respectively (note: also serpent’s prey), finally rounding on Taran, who “stared at the ornament like a bird fascinated by a serpent.” Later, as they struggle, “the wizard’s relentless grip tightened,” much like a python’s.<br />
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Gurgi, in mouse form, gnaws loose the ropes binding Taran. Freed, Taran runs Morda through with his sword — to absolutely no avail whatsoever. But then Taran sees that Morda is missing a finger, and he realizes that this is the very bone he pocketed. Morda has already revealed he had been seeking ways to extend his life. This is the reason he plundered the Fair Folk’s trove, searching for gemstones to lengthen his life beyond “any mortal’s mayfly span of days.” With Angharad’s magical ornament he has learned even to cheat death. “My life is not prisoned in my body. No, it is far from here, beyond the reach of death itself!” he says to Taran. “I have drawn out my very life, hidden it safely where none shall ever find it. Would you slay me? Your hope is useless as the sword you hold.”<br />
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Morda attempts to transform Taran, but surprisingly, the spell fails. Taran is not enchanted; something is blocking the spell. Taran has realized the value of the little bone Kaw brought back to him, and Morda has realized that Taran holds his life in his hands. In the ensuing struggle, the bone is finally snapped in two, and “[w]ith a horrible scream that stabbed through the chamber, Morda toppled backward, stiffened, clawed the air, then fell to the ground like a pile of broken twigs.”<br />
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Whew! That ran on a bit, didn’t it? But I wanted to point out some important features of this episode. First, and perhaps most obvious is the strong similarity between the finger bone containing Morda’s soul, protecting him from death, and Voldemort’s horcruxes, each serving the same purpose. None of Voldemort’s horcruxes are parts of himself, though you might remember that when the younger Barty Crouch kills his father, “I Transfigured my father’s body. He became a bone … I buried it while wearing the Invisibility Cloak, in the freshly dug earth in front of Hagrid’s cabin” [4]. An incidental similarity, but an interesting one. Another similarity of this same sort and from the same installment of Harry Potter: Morda sacrifices a finger in his quest for immorality much as Pettigrew sacrifices a hand to serve’s Voldemort’s; and likewise, another of the ingredient’s in Voldemort’s return is a bone of his father, straight from his grave.<br />
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There is also the significant amount of ophidian imagery shared by Morda and Voldemort, much of which I’ve highlighted above. Both characters are frequently compared to snakes (more so than to anything else), both have unblinking eyes and other features like a serpent, both speak in a hiss.<br />
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Along with their occupations (unstoppable evil wizards), their names are quite similar too. I’ve written about the name Voldemort before (you can read that <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2007/06/voldemort-anagrams-and-etymologies.html" target="_blank">here</a>). Morda clearly reveals the same root, the Latin <i>mors</i> “death”. In his Author’s Note, Lloyd Alexander refers to him as “deathlike”, offering as good a gloss of the name as we need! Oh and did I say unstoppable? In both cases, Voldemort and Morda are respectively stymied in their attempts to curse the protagonist of the story. Harry is protected by Lily’s love and becomes part-horcrux himself; and because he is part-horcrux, it is that horcrux that Voldemort destroys — not Harry himself — with the Avada Kedavra curse during the Battle of Hogwarts. Not unlike the way Taran is protected because he holds Morda’s life in his hands. Morda is also described as “gaunt”, and Potter fans need no reminder that the same word has great significance for Voldemort too.<br />
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So, quite similar in many way, yes? But none of this is to suggest Rowling got the idea of horcruxes from Lloyd Alexander! I have no idea whether she’s ever read his work, and in any case, Alexander himself notes in his Author’s Note to <i>Taran</i> <i>Wanderer</i> that “Morda’s life secret […] is familiar in many mythologies.” Rather, both Rowling and Alexander each independently borrowed an idea familiar to them from folklore for their own use.<br />
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Tolkien touches on the motif of the external soul in his essay “On Fairy-stories”. Discussing <i>The</i> <i>Monkey’s</i> <i>Heart</i>, a Swahili tale Andrew Lang included in his <i>Lilac Fairy Book</i>, Tolkien writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I suspect that its inclusion in a ‘Fairy Book’ is due not primarily to its entertaining quality, but precisely to the monkey’s heart supposed to have been left behind in a bag. That was significant to Lang, the student of folk-lore, even though this curious idea is here used only as a joke; for, in this tale, the monkey’s heart was in fact quite normal and in his breast. None the less this detail is plainly only a secondary use of an ancient and very widespread folk-lore notion, which does occur in fairy-stories;* the notion that the life or strength of a man or creature may reside in some other place or thing; or in some part of the body (especially the heart) that can be detached and hidden in a bag, or under a stone, or in an egg. At one end of recorded folk-lore history this idea was used by George MacDonald in his fairy-story <i>The</i> <i>Giant’s</i> <i>Heart</i>, which derives this central motive (as well as many other details) from well-known traditional tales.<br />
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* [Tolkien’s footnote:] Such as, for instance: <i>The</i> <i>Giant</i> <i>that</i> <i>had</i> <i>no</i> <i>Heart</i> in Dasent’s Popular Tales from the Norse; or <i>The</i> <i>Sea</i>-<i>Maiden</i> in Campbell’s <i>Popular</i> <i>Tales</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>West</i> <i>Highlands</i> (no. iv, cf. also no. i); or more remotely <i>Die</i> <i>Kristallkugel</i> in Grimm.</blockquote>
This is the same motif seen with Morda’s finger bone and with Voldemort’s horcruxes. I included Tolkien’s footnote in the quotation, because <i>Die</i> <i>Kristallkugel</i> [“The Crystal Ball”] also presents an additional layer of similarity to Lloyd Alexander. In the tale, an enchanter’s power is hidden in an external object, and three brothers confront this wizard attempting to rescue a princess. Two of them have been transformed into animals, an eagle and a whale. All of these motifs resonate closely with the episode in <i>Taran</i> <i>Wanderer</i>.<br />
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Tolkien goes on to give an even earlier example:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
At the other end, indeed in what is probably one of the oldest stories in writing, it occurs in <i>The</i> <i>Tale</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Two</i> <i>Brothers</i> on the Egyptian D’Orsigny [<i>sic</i>; D’Orbiney] papyrus. There the younger brother says to the elder: ‘I shall enchant my heart, and I shall place it upon the top of the flower of the cedar. Now the cedar will be cut down and my heart will fall to the ground, and thou shalt come to seek for it, even though thou pass seven years in seeking it; but when thou has found it, put it into a vase of cold water, and in very truth I shall live.’</blockquote>
The motif is once again similar, and this time, the hiding place is a tree, just in in Lloyd Alexander. And of course, in traditional tales of two and three wizard brothers, we hear an echo of Rowling’s “<a href="http://youtu.be/bN1_h_eGitE" target="_blank">Tale of the Three Brothers</a>” from <i>The</i> <i>Tales</i> <i>of</i> <i>Beedle</i> <i>the</i> <i>Bard</i>. That tale doesn’t make use of the external soul motif directly, but of course, each of the three brothers in the parable seeks to escape or delay death, just as do Voldemort and Morda. And their Deathly Hallows are set up as talismans contrasting directly with Voldemort’s horcruxes.<br />
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Another interesting story of this same sort is the Slavic tale of Koschei, included by Andrew Lang in his <i>Red Fairy Book</i> as “The Death of Koschei the Deathless”. Again the tale involves wizards, three of them, not brothers this time, but each married to one of three sisters. Each can transform into a bird of prey, so we have animal transformations once again. Koschei is another enchanter, one who has protected himself from death by hiding his soul inside a needle (rather like Morda’s bone), and that in turn inside an egg, which is inside a duck, inside a hare, locked in an iron chest, which is buried under an oak tree. That is six levels of external protection, just like Voldemort’s six (intentional) horcruxes.<br />
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And there are plenty more analogues we might examine! Sir James Frazer surveys the sources rather exhaustively in his mammoth study of magic and religion, <i>The</i> <i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i>. See Chapter X “The External Soul in Folk-tales” (pp. 95–152) in Volume 11 of the third edition, called <i>Balder</i> <i>the</i> <i>Beautiful</i>: <i>The</i> <i>Fire</i>-<i>Festivals</i> <i>of</i> <i>Europe</i> <i>and</i> <i>the</i> <i>Doctrine</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Eternal</i> <i>Soul</i>, <i>Volume</i> <i>II</i> (published 1913). Frazer finds this motif in the traditional tales of Hindu, Kashmiri, Greek, Italian, Slavic, Lithuanian, German, Scandinavian, Celtic, Egyptian, Arabic, and many other peoples. The basis for their many stories, Frazer argues, was a genuine belief in this principle by primitive peoples.<br />
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So Alexander and Rowling are clearly dipping into the same well here, and a very deep one. There is no reason at all to suppose Rowling borrowed from Alexander, and yet the striking similarities between their tales — both dark wizards likened repeatedly to a serpent, both with names meaning “death”, both of whose attempts to curse the protagonist fail — certainly do catch the eye! That these are logical enough characteristics for such a character and could easily occur to authors independently needn’t spoil the fun of dwelling on them. What do you think?<br />
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[1] Rowling, J.K. <i>Harry</i> <i>Potter</i> <i>and</i> <i>the</i> <i>Half</i>-<i>Blood</i> <i>Prince</i>. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books [an imprint of Scholastic], 2005, p. 497.<br />
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[2] Alexander, Lloyd. <i>Taran Wanderer</i>. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967, p. 91.<br />
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[3] Ibid., p. 101–2. Subsequent quotations from <i>Taran</i> <i>Wanderer</i> follow along through this chapter and the next, passim.<br />
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[4] Rowling, J.K. <i>Harry</i> <i>Potter</i> <i>and</i> <i>the</i> <i>Goblet</i> <i>of</i> <i>Fire</i>. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books [an imprint of Scholastic], 2000, p. 690–1.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-24279167704185893882015-06-10T18:29:00.002-05:002015-06-10T18:33:39.530-05:00Tolkien and L.W. Forster<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
It is well known and now often repeated that for Tolkien, language came first, story second. In answer to an inquiry from <i>The New York Times Book Review</i>, Tolkien set down some notes about himself, including comments about the “fundamentally linguistic” genesis of his work. These notes were first used (<i>abused</i>, Tolkien would say) by Harvey Breit as the basis for a very short interview in the <i>NYTBR</i> on 5 June 1955. Breit omitted mention of philological origins in his piece, but the same notes were handed out to many inquirers by Houghton Mifflin over the years. In these notes (printed with Tolkien’s further annotations and corrections as Letter #165 in <i>The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien</i>), Tolkien says that “the invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.” To give an example of how far these notes went, this passage (and more) was reprinted verbatim a <i>dozen</i> years later in “The Prevalence of Hobbits” by Philip Norman in <i>The New York Times Magazine</i>, 15 January 1967.</div>
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About three years after that, the same point was reiterated in a surprising place. At least, I was surprised to encounter it, and sharing the discovery is the reason for this post.<br />
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Leonard Wilson Forster (1913–1997) was a distinguished German scholar, Fellow of Cambridge University and Lecturer at University College London, and about a generation younger than Tolkien. In 1970, he published <i>The Poet’s Tongues: Multilingualism in Literature</i> with the Cambridge University Press. This was a series of lectures turned fuller historical sketch of “the different ways poets have used languages other than their own for poetry from the Middle Ages down to our own time” (1). A fascinating subject, and one with obvious relevance to Tolkien, though not one where we would necessarily expect to find him discussed as early as 1970. And yet, we read:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[The German poet] Stefan George used an invented language for workshop practice. Many people have invented private languages, usually as a secret means of communication or as a kind of personal cypher. In <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, J.R.R. Tolkien uses a number of invented languages and has included some fine poetry written in them. His is quite a different case; the languages came first and everything else followed. Tolkien tells me that he long ago invented some languages out of pure philological enthusiasm; as they seemed to work, he thought it would be interesting to invent people who spoke them. The result was the whole thrilling world of dwarves, elves and hobbits which is already being exploited for Ph.D. theses by the academic machine, mainly in the United States. (88)</blockquote>
This is as nice a summary on the subject as you could look for, with snarky commentary on American academia as well. But the most interesting thing here, to me at least, is how Forster makes it clear that he and Tolkien discussed this personally. We know of one letter from Tolkien to Forster, predating Forster’s book by a decade (dated 31 December 1960), of which only one paragraph is printed in <i>The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien</i> (as #226). The subject under discussion in this excerpt is whether the two World Wars influenced Tolkien in the writing of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. One can only imagine that Forster was among those Tolkien was answering directly in the Foreword to the Second Edition of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> when he wrote that “its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels. […] The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion.”<br />
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What else was in Tolkien’s letter? Were there others exchanged between them? Did they ever meet in person? I don’t know. I’ve done some very cursory searching to see whether I could learn anything of Forster’s letter to Tolkien (or any others). No luck so far, though I did learn that <a href="http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0012%2FMS%20Add.9252" target="_blank">the Forster papers</a> held at Cambridge contain a number of clerihews, so that’s another fun connection between them (not to imply Forster and Tolkien were the only dons writing clerihews in the 20th century). I did find a few letters from Forster to others, and I was interested to see that his signature reminds one a little of Tolkien’s, though not so calligraphic as his (and again, not to imply anything more than happenstance similarity). You can judge for yourself below.<br />
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Anyway, this chance discovery of Tolkien in one of the works of Forster doesn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know, but it’s always enjoyable to discover connections, especially when they are relatively early, even during Tolkien’s lifetime.<br />
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<br />Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-47113747660381722712015-06-09T15:12:00.003-05:002015-06-09T15:14:20.425-05:00News and updatesIt’s been a while since I’ve written. I hope some of you are still checking back here for new posts and haven’t given up on me! The purpose of today’s post is just to catch you all up on a few recent news items, mainly to do with me and my Tolkien work.<br />
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<b>8th anniversary of Lingwë</b><br />
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I neglected to post anything last month, but a couple of weeks ago, Lingwë turned eight years old. My goodness, that’s a pretty long time in the world of blogging. A few of the Tolkien-related blogs I read have been around longer — e.g., John Rateliff just edges me out at March 2007 and Michael Drout has been blogging since 2002 — but there’s no doubt Lingwë is getting rather long in the tooth. :) Speaking of anniversaries, the day after tomorrow marks three years since I came to work at Microsoft and moved to the Pacific Northwest.<br />
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<b>New book coming soon! Really!</b><br />
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I first shared news of <i>C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Faith, Imagination, and Modern Technology</i>, which I edited with Salwa Khoddam and Mark Hall, <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2014/11/cs-lewis-and-inklings-faith-imagination.html" target="_blank">back in November</a>. At that time, we thought publication was right around the corner. “Need brooks no delay, yet late is better than never,” as Tolkien said, and we have finally now finished the proofing and indexing. The publisher <a href="http://www.cambridgescholars.com/c-s-lewis-and-the-inklings-17" target="_blank">lists the book</a> as already published (1 June 2015), so we obviously missed that, but it should be available <i>very</i> soon now. The list price is a bit steep at £52.99, but I’m hoping the book will at least end up in some libraries if not on the shelves of too many private enthusiasts and collectors! It’s actually a very good collection, if I do say so myself, so you really should consider it. Here’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1443876291/?tag=linmusofafis-20" target="_blank">an Amazon link</a> in case you want to preorder it or share it around.<br />
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<b>The 2015 Mythopoeic Awards — and a couple of streaks!</b><br />
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The Mythopoeic Society recently <a href="http://www.mythsoc.org/news/2015mythopoeic-awards-finalists-announced/" target="_blank">announced the finalists</a> for the 2015 Mythopoeic Awards. Among the nominees for the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies is John Wm. Houghton, Janet Brennan Croft, Nancy Martsch, John D. Rateliff, and Robin Anne Reid, eds., <i>Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey</i> (McFarland, 2014), to which I contributed the essay, “Tolkien’s Wraiths, Rings and Dragons: An Exercise in Literary Linguistics.” Tom himself sent me a note when he read the book in page-proofs thanking me for my contribution, which he said was “right along the lines I like to see myself.” You can imagine how gratifying that was! Congratulations to the five editors and to all the contributors of <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-festschrift-for-tom-shippey.html" target="_blank">this fine volume</a>.<br />
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And I mentioned streaks. With this book, McFarland has now had an MSA finalist in the running every year since their first appearance in 2008 (seven books, eight years in a row), so congratulations to them as well! They're cultivating a really solid portfolio in Tolkien studies and in myth, fantasy, and pop-culture studies more generally. And considering the almost foregone conclusion (my opinion, at least) that Tolkien’s <i>Beowulf</i> will win the award this year, I fully expect the Shippey Festschrift to be a finalist again next year, continuing the streak, and maybe the year after that as well.<br />
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Another streak I will dare to mention at the risk of immodesty. This also now makes five years in a row in which an MSA finalist has had a chapter in it by yours truly. In 2011, it was Brad Eden’s <i>Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien</i>; in 2012–2014, it was my book, <i>Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays</i>; and now in 2015, the Shippey Festschrift.<br />
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<b>A special conference next spring</b><br />
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As those who follow my antics will know, I’ve attended the C.S. Lewis and Inklings Society’s annual conference seven times; I’ve had chapters in three of their books, two of which I also co-edited, laid out, and cover-designed; and I’ve won their Best Scholar Paper award five times in a row, every year it had been awarded, 2010–2014, until I took myself out of the running from this year on. So I think it’s safe to say I’ve given back as much (or more) as I’ve gotten out of the CSLIS. Giving back in that way pays many kinds of dividends, and the newest is that I’ve been invited to come to the next CSLIS conference (31 March–2 April 2016 in Siloam Springs, Arkansas) as a Special Guest, along with Keynote Speakers Devin Brown and Charlie Starr. I’ll be doing a special presentation and a panel in addition to my conference paper. There’s a real symmetry to this for me, because my first ever conference presentation was also at the CSLIS conference, also hosted that year in Siloam Springs, and it will have been ten years ago next spring. So, if you are in the region, think about coming to the CSLIS conference next year. I’ll share more details (e.g., the conference website) one they are available, but in the meantime, here is a first look at the flyer the conference chair, Jonathan Himes, has been circulating.<br />
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<br />Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-83651401181022624752015-04-15T18:08:00.001-05:002015-04-15T18:54:26.209-05:00Three Gudgeons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZvMnYlCmvlk/VS7uVQDnEBI/AAAAAAAAAqs/Ywsep3zcjvo/s1600/Gudgeon.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZvMnYlCmvlk/VS7uVQDnEBI/AAAAAAAAAqs/Ywsep3zcjvo/s1600/Gudgeon.png" height="200" width="166" /></a></div>
I’ve just finished <i>The Prisoner of Azkaban</i>, and in addition to a few small points that have caught my eye on this latest reading, I’ve got a somewhat larger and (I hope) more interesting one for today. The subject line is your tip-off. Strike a chord of memory?<br />
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When Harry visits Professor Lupin after the disastrous Quidditch match against Hufflepuff, Lupin tells him<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“They planted the Whomping Willow the same year that I arrived at Hogwarts. People used to play a game, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk. In the end, a boy called Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye, and we were forbidden to go near it. No broomstick would have a chance.” [<i>Azkaban</i>, p. 186]</blockquote>
So, that’s one Gudgeon. But the name should sound familiar, because there’s another in just the previous book. In <i>The Chamber of Secrets</i>, Gilderoy Lockhart — like Lupin, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher — assigns Harry the detention punishment of helping him with his fan mail:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“You can address the envelopes!” Lockhart told Harry, as though was a huge treat. “This first one’s to Gladys Gudgeon, bless her — huge fan of mine.” [<i>Chamber</i>, p. 120]</blockquote>
So that’s two Gudgeons. And Gladys — bless her — comes up again in <i>The Order of the Phoenix</i>. Our intrepid band of juvenile witches and wizards runs into Lockhart at St. Mungo’s hospital, recovering (sort of) from the injury he sustained to his memory some three years earlier. Madame Gudgeon is still writing him fan mail.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“You can put them in envelopes,” he said to Ginny, throwing the signed pictures into her lap one by one as he finished them. “I am not forgotten, you know, no, I still receive a very great deal of fan mail … Gladys Gudgeon writes weekly … I just wish I knew why …” He paused, looking faintly puzzled, then beamed again and returned to his signing with renewed vigour. “I suspect it is simply my good looks …” [<i>Phoenix</i>, p. 511]</blockquote>
These two are known well enough, and I’m sure I must have put them together before now, but they really jumped off the page this time, because I learned recently there’s a third Gudgeon in the world of Harry Potter!<br />
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In 1998–99, J.K. Rowling wrote four short issues of <i>The Daily Prophet</i> exclusively for the U.K. Harry Potter fan club. I haven’t seen these issues in full, though they are discussed in Philip W. Errington’s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1849669740/?tag=linmusofafis-20" target="_blank">J.K. Rowling: A Bibliography 1997–2013</a></i>, coming from Bloomsbury Academic later this month. They’ve also been summarized on the <a href="http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/sources/source_dp.html" target="_blank">Harry Potter Lexicon</a> website. In the first issue, dated 31 July 1998 — incidentally Harry Potter’s 18th birthday — we learn about Galvin Gudgeon, seeker for Ron Weasley’s favorite Quidditch team, the Chudley Cannons. Quite a dreadful seeker he was too, being known to fall off his broom and to mistake passing bumblebees for the Golden Snitch. Pathetic!<br />
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Gudgeon is a genuine surname, especially concentrated in the North of England, where Rowling may actually have encountered it. There are still some Gudgeons in the United States as well, though it’s hardly common. For more information on the name, you might consult Henry Harrison’s <i>Surnames of the United Kingdom: A Concise Etymological Dictionary</i> (London: The Morland Press, 1918), or William Anderson’s <i>Genealogy and Surnames: With Some Heraldic and Biographical Notices</i> (Edinburgh: William Ritchie, 1865). There’s also Thomas Moule’s <i>Heraldry of Fish: Notices of the Principal Families Bearing Fish in Their Arms</i> (London: John Van Voorst, 1842), from which I’ve taken the coat of arms shown above right, with its distinctive three fish.<br />
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But hang on, how did we get to fish? And why name these characters Gudgeon in the first place? Though we know little of them, all three have something very specific in common, enough to justify the bestowing of such a name. But to know why it’s apt, we have to talk about its origins. And the first thing you want to know about gudgeons is that a gudgeon <i>is</i> a fish, hence the heraldic device shown above, which in fact represents three gudgeons, the same as in the title of this post! Also, having a fishy name myself, I can’t help but feel a certain remote kinship to these three. :)<br />
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A gudgeon is a small European fresh-water bait fish. The words comes through Middle English <i>gojon </i>(and variant spellings) from French <i>goujon</i>, in turn from Latin <i>gōbio</i>, a by-form of <i>gōbius</i>, which coincidentally gave us the name of another fish, the <i>goby</i>. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us the word acquired a figurative meaning starting in the late sixteenth-century, “one that will bite at any bait or swallow anything: a credulous, gullible person”. The English Dialect Dictionary says much the same: “A fool, simpleton; one who is easily gulled”. Samuel Johnson, closer in time to the word’s original figurative currency, has it thus: “a small fish found in brooks and rivers, easily caught, and therefore made a proverbial name for a man easily cheated”. From here, it’s easy to see how Rowling, a self-confessed dictionary diver, might have come across the name and found it apt. Davey Gudgeon is foolish enough to tilt at the Whomping Willow; Gladys Gudgeon is taken in by Gilderoy Lockhart’s vacuous good looks; and Galvin Gudgeon is, well, just a clumsy dolt.<br />
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And so we have another great name rescued from history and put to excellent use! What do you think the chances are that these three Gudgeons might be related too? In Rowling’s intricately interwoven wizarding world, just about anything is possible.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-57864733456420892792015-04-08T17:42:00.000-05:002015-04-08T17:42:02.225-05:00More on Tolkien and the Nobel PrizeIt’s old news now that Tolkien was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by C.S. Lewis in 1961. But I was doing a little poking around related to the news stories of 2012, when I came across something I didn’t expect. A couple of things, actually.<br />
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First, C.S. Lewis made another nomination a year later. In 1962, he nominated Robert Frost. Little did he know that Frost had been nominated in 1961, the same year as Tolkien, and that the Nobel committee had ruled him out because of his advanced age. He was 86 at the time. According to the Nobel nomination database, these are the only two nominations Lewis made. He died, of course, a year after nominating Frost.<br />
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And there’s something even more interesting. Among the other nominees competing with Tolkien in 1961 was E.M. Forster, who, like Frost, was ruled out because of his age. Well, Forster had been nominated many times before. Although he never won the Prize, he’d been nominated in thirteen different years over a twenty-year period — 1945–46, 1950, 1952–57, 1960–61, 1963–64. Here’s the interesting thing. In one of those years, 1954, Forster was nominated by two nominators, two Oxford dons, and in fact, two Inklings — Lord David Cecil and J.R.R. Tolkien! These were the sole nominations made by either man, again according to the Nobel nomination archive. In the event, the nomination went to another E.M. — Ernest Miller Hemingway. And it’s hardly a side note that this was the same year <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> finally arrived!<br />
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I can’t recall ever seeing this talked about before. Has anyone else? It’s news to me that Tolkien ever nominated anyone for the Nobel Prize.<br />
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Also, in case you’re interested in more than highlights, in Tolkien’s own year of nomination, 1961, 93 nominations were made for 55 authors. These included Frost and Forester and few others mentioned in the press a couple years ago, but the complete list of nominated authors follows. Several are connected to Tolkien in smalls ways — e.g., W.H. Auden, Edmund Wilson, Robert Graves — and a number of these authors went on to win the Prize eventually. Tolkien was competing with some excellent authors here, along with a fair few who have disappeared into the nooks and crannies of history.<br />
<br />
Ivo Andrić<br />
Jean Anouilh<br />
W.H. Auden<br />
Gaston Bachelard<br />
Simone de Beauvoir<br />
Karen Blixen<br />
Heinrich Böll<br />
Maurice Bowra<br />
Georges Duhamel<br />
Lawrence Durrell<br />
Friedrich Dürrenmatt<br />
Johan Falkberget<br />
E.M. Forster<br />
Gertrud von le Fort<br />
Robert Frost<br />
Romulo Gallegos<br />
Armand Godoy<br />
Julien Gracq<br />
Robert Graves<br />
Graham Greene<br />
Gunnar Gunnarsson<br />
L. Hartley<br />
Adrianus Roland Holst<br />
Taha Hussein<br />
Aldous Huxley<br />
Pierre-Jean Jouve<br />
Ernst Jünger<br />
Yasunari Kawabata<br />
Miroslav Krleza <br />
André Malraux<br />
William Somerset Maugham<br />
Eugenio Montale<br />
Alberto Moravia<br />
Giulia Scappino Mureno<br />
Pablo Neruda<br />
Junzaburo Nishiwaki<br />
Sean O’Casey<br />
Ramón Menéndez Pidal<br />
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan<br />
Cora Sandel<br />
Aksel Sandemose<br />
Jean-Paul Sartre<br />
Giorgos Seferis<br />
Ignazio Silone<br />
Georges Simenon<br />
Charles Percy Snow<br />
Michail Solochov<br />
John Steinbeck<br />
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien<br />
Junichiro Tanizaki<br />
Miguel Torga<br />
Tarjei Vesaas<br />
Simon Vestdijk<br />
Arthur David Waley<br />
Edmund WilsonJason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-3925104331950063332015-01-16T16:36:00.001-06:002015-01-16T16:37:55.212-06:00A quick observation about The Chamber of the SecretsHello, friends! I’m onto <i>The Chamber of Secrets</i> in my latest reading of the Harry Potter series, and I’ve noticed something interesting in the first couple of chapters. Can’t remember whether this has occurred to me on previous readings, but I’d like to share it with you now.<br />
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When Dobby visits Harry in his room (Chapter Two “Dobby’s Warning”), it comes out that he’s been stopping Harry’s letters from his friends from Hogwarts over the summer. This occurs right around the time of Harry’s birthday. “Give me my friends’ letters!” he shouts at Dobby. This reminded me at once that in <i>The Sorcerer’s Stone</i>, letters to Harry are also being stopped, also right around his birthday, but in that case, by Uncle Vernon (Chapter Three “The Letters from No One”). “I WANT MY LETTER!” he shouts at him. I thought this was a nice parallel in the early episodes of the first two novels in the series.<br />
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And there’s another one. In the same chapter of <i>The Chamber of Secrets</i>, after Uncle Vernon has locked Harry up in his room with bars on the window, “[Harry] dreamed that he was on show in a zoo, with a card reading UNDERAGE WIZARD attached to his cage. People goggled through the bars as he lay, starving and weak, on a bed of straw” (p. 23). This reminded me of the episode with the boa constrictor in the zoo in <i>The Sorcerer’s Stone</i>, Chapter Two “The Vanishing Glass”, another nice parallel in the opening chapters of the two books. Even better, if we consider the parallel more carefully, Harry imagines himself more or less in the same place as a snake in his dream — something that will happen again, much more obviously and to much greater dramatic effect, later on in the series in <i>The Order of the Phoenix</i>. I think the parallel may be read as a very early and subtle reinforcement of the close connection between Harry and Voldemort, a connection that will be made clearer by the end of the second book and come into sharper and sharper relief as the series progresses.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-68887071423722770332015-01-08T18:46:00.001-06:002015-01-08T18:55:54.698-06:00First mainstream appearance of tengwar outside Tolkien?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A few months ago, I wrote about the history of the hobbit/habit pun (<a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2014/08/bad-puns-can-be-hobbit-forming.html" target="_blank">read the post</a>). During the course of that discussion, I referred to an early piece on Tolkien appearing in <i>Life</i> magazine, “Can America Kick the Hobbit? The Tolkien Caper”, which was published in the 24 February 1967 issue. Because these earlier weeklies often printed letters to the editor, I thought it would interesting to see whether this particular opinion piece had generated any mail. It had, and I discovered something very interesting: what may well be the first appearance of tengwar in a mainstream publication other than Tolkien’s own work. If anyone knows of an earlier example, I’d love to hear about it. Otherwise, I think we can take this as the earliest so far known.<br />
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A selection of the letters Charles Elliott’s piece elicited were printed three weeks later, in the issued of 17 March 1967, under the heading, “Tolkien Caper” on p. 26. There are four short letters. In the interests of research value, I will copy these letters below.<br />
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The first, from Diana L. Yost or Orefield, PA, reads:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sirs: Mr. Elliott’s review, “Can America Kick the Hobbit?” (Feb. 24), was disappointing. If the reader goes no deeper than the level of <i>Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout</i>, <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is of course an innocent child-sized story — but only because the reader himself has set that level. Fortunately, the campus Tolkien followers have probed deeper to find a work rich in symbolism. This is why the trilogy is popular, not because it is the undemanding and comfortable tale your reviewer has settled for.</blockquote>
The second, from Sherry Lee Snider of New York, NY:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sirs: Bravo! Those are my sentiments exactly. I was raised on C.S. Lewis as a child and drifted naturally into Middle Earth from Narnia where my love of heroic deeds and that “other world apart” had been carefully nurtured. In those days (actually up to about four years ago) if a veiled reference to Middle Earth crept into the conversation you knew you had encountered someone like yourself. Nothing was said but a bond was formed. Alas — that thrill of silent understanding is gone now — a true Tolkien lover would never <i>discuss</i> it — and all of us who are secret romantics are forced to wander without hope of a chance encounter. Why couldn’t these faddists have remained with Henry Miller and left us Tolkien? You can’t trust anybody these days.</blockquote>
The third has the great distinction of having been written in tengwar from the point of view of Frodo Baggins himself. You can see the letter in reproduction above right, and the editors of <i>Life</i> added the following note:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The above is a communication in Tengwar, one of the scripts Tolkien invented for his mythical creatures. It translates, “Dear Sirs, I am writing on behalf of all Elves, Dwarves, Ents, Men and Hobbits and all other things dwelling upon Middle Earth. The article in your Feb. 24 issue is very disrupting to our Hobbit children. Frodo Baggins.” — ED.</blockquote>
And finally, the fourth and tersest, from G. Sachs of New York, NY:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sirs: Mr. Elliott is an Orc.</blockquote>
I haven’t studied these tengwar closely yet or transliterated the letter myself to check the editors’ own transcription for accuracy, but of course, they surely got the intent. Any errors would be those of the letter’s author. We know that Tolkien received letters from his admirers written in runes and asking him to respond with them too (which he sometimes did), but this is the one of the only mainstream appearances of Tolkien’s runes that I can recall seeing, and certainly the earliest — by many years. By mainstream, I mean outside a Tolkien or fantasy related publication. I have no doubt that other magazines have received such letters, but <i>Life</i> took the additional step of actually printing one in facsimile — which is still immense fun for us, almost fifty years later!Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-70251614439947484732015-01-07T17:17:00.002-06:002015-01-07T19:11:29.505-06:00Return to Hogwarts … againI’m opening 2015 by reading the Harry Potter series again. For about the tenth time (I can’t be certain, as I didn’t start scrupulously tracking my reading until 2004). And as I sometimes do when I read a book or series again, I’m going to share a few questions and observations that come up. On re-reading, I often notice things I haven’t noticed before, or that I may have noticed several readings before but have since forgotten. Or that I’ve noticed before but have never shared. I welcome any thoughts you might have on any of this.<br />
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So, without further ado, a few scattered comments on the first five chapters of <i>The</i> <i>Sorcerer’s</i> <i>Stone</i>. Yes, by the way, I do use the American title, because that’s the edition I’m reading. Note that page numbers are from the US first edition hardcover.<br />
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For some reason, Dudley Dursley’s best friend, Piers Polkiss, jumped out at me this time. Talk about minor characters! But there’s something interesting here. Have any of you ever noticed this? He’s introduced in Chapter Two “The Vanishing Glass”: “Dudley’s best friend, […] Piers Polkiss was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat” (p. 23).<br />
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Now I haven’t gotten to the later books again yet, and I’m not going to look ahead for more ammunition here. But the alliterative name Piers Polkiss reminded me of Peter Pettigrew. Even better, Piers is a variant form of Peter. Both are compared to rats, and both are the sidekicks to friends with more forceful personalities. Intentional? Hard to say, but as purposeful as Rowling has shown herself to be, it strikes me as possible. Of course, many of Rowling’s names are alliterative, but two characters whose first and last names both start with P, and who share these other common characteristics? Interesting, eh?<br />
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As a side note, I looked at the surnames without turning up much to connect them. Polkiss — I’m not sure that’s actually a genuinely attested name — is probably connected to Polk, and the earlier form Pollock, Bollack, etc. This name is believed to derive from the parish of Pollock in Renfrewshire, Scotland, and that in turn is from Gaelic <i>pollag</i> “a little pool or pond”, diminutive of <i>pol</i> “pool”. That doesn’t seem to have much to do with Piers Polkiss as a character, though who can say? We know so little about him.<br />
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Pettigrew on the other hand, derives from French <i>petit</i> <i>cru</i>, typically meaning “a little person” or “little grown” — which seems perfectly appropriate for him. Alternatively, you could read <i>petit cru</i> as “little believed”, with <i>cru</i> as the past participle of <i>croire</i>. That also has potential. Peter Pettigrew was actually <i>much</i> believed at first, to the detriment of Sirius Black, but he was a pathological liar and never taken seriously. Perhaps a better reading would be “little (to be) believed”. This could have been intentional by Rowling as well. We know the name Voldemort was informed by a French meaning. Pettigrew was a French Huguenot name that later migrated to Scotland (among other parts of the British Isles) — so, swimming in the same onomastic waters as Pollock (therefore, perhaps Polkiss), and where Rowling herself wrote the books. But this geographical connection doesn’t tell us much about the characters.<br />
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So that’s that. Everything else I’ve got today — just a few orts — comes from Chapter Five “Diagon Alley”.<br />
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After Hagrid collects Harry from the Hut-on-the-Rock, Harry, seeing only one boat, asks Hagrid how he got there. Hagrid says he flew (pp. 63–4). What I’m wondering is how. He needed something — a broom, a thestral, a hippogriff, Sirius’s flying motorbike — because it’s only Voldemort who can fly unaided, a point that is made quite clear in <i>The</i> <i>Deathly</i> <i>Hallows</i> (note that the Death Eaters and The Order of the Phoenix can all apparently fly in the film adaptations). Obviously, Hagrid didn’t have a thestral or a hippogriff. Harry would have seen either, and Hagrid wouldn’t have left either behind. The same for Sirius’s motorbike. So, are we to assume he had a broomstick? What broomstick would hold him? And where did he put it? We’re told his coat is full of all kinds of odds and ends, even a fire poker, but a broom that could hold him would have to be hard to conceal in a coat. And why didn’t he use Sirius’s motorbike? In <i>The</i> <i>Deathly</i> <i>Hallows</i>, they use it precisely because it’s one of the means of flight that can escape magical detection (having been previously, and presumably permanently enchanted), so Hagrid could have used it to fly them to London without using magic (as he was forbade to do on the return trip). Of course, they would have been visible, and that would been a problem. Anyoo, how did Hagrid fly to meet Harry? Anyone?<br />
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Later, in Diagon Alley, a plump shopper laments that dragon liver is going for seventeen Sickles an ounce (pp. 71–2). Since seventeen Sickles equals one Galleon (p. 75), why wouldn’t she say dragon liver is going for a Galleon an ounce? This would be a bit like saying something cost a hundred cents an ounce, instead of a dollar an ounce. It’s a bit odd, isn’t it?<br />
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In Madam Malkin’s robe shop, Draco tells Harry his mother is “up the street looking at wands”, but why? The wand chooses the wizard, but Narcissa is shopping for one without Draco? Now, I’m just assuming she’s shopping for Draco’s wand, and not for a new (replacement) one for herself. I think it’s safe to assume she is shopping at Ollivander’s, because Ollivander recognizes Draco’s wand seven years later when Harry shows it to him at Shell Cottage. He remembers every wand he’s ever sold, and so he has no problem identifying Draco’s. Would he sell a wand for Draco without Draco being present to try it out? It seems out of his character. Maybe the Malfoys bullied him into doing it that way, but it seems unlikely. Maybe Narcissa is just looking at wands while she waits for Draco to join her, but then why? What would be the point of that? So what’s going on here? Just a slip on Rowling’s part?<br />
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In the Apothecary, “Harry examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each” (p. 81). Are we to assume these unicorns died of natural causes? But in most mythologies, unicorns are meant to be immortal, aren’t they? I can’t remember what (if anything) Rowling ever says about their lifespans in her world. We learn later in <i>The</i> <i>Sorcerer’s</i> <i>Stone</i> that it’s a terrible crime to kill a unicorn, so the horns for sale in Diagon Alley can’t be like rhino horns on the black market today. And surely they aren’t horns taken from still living unicorns! We also know they’re the horns of adult unicorns (the youngsters are gold, not silver). We know that unicorn tail hairs are one of the few powerful magical cores used in wands, but giving a hair is a lot different from giving the horn. This seemed a bit unusual to me too, just a little bit inconsistent, maybe, with the rest of what we know about the place of unicorns in Rowling’s wizarding world. An awfully rare and special thing to find in Diagon Alley! And for only the cost of three wands? Seems like something you might find in Knockturn Alley, rather.<br />
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And finally, when Hagrid leaves Harry after their shopping trip, “Harry wanted to watch Hagrid until he was out of sight; he rose in his seat and pressed his nose against the window, but he blinked and Hagrid had gone” (p. 87). That sounds an awful lot like apparition, doesn’t it? Do we think Hagrid can apparate? There’s never been any hint that he could, and there’s a lot of him to make disappear! I guess it’s possible Hagrid simply hustled out of sight very quickly, but that also seems out of his character. If Hagrid could apparate, wouldn’t he have done so to come collect Harry in the first place (solving the flying problem at the same time)? I just thought this was interesting too.<br />
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What do you think? Please don’t think I’m not enjoying these books because I’m picking a few nits. My enjoyment of them is as immense as Hagrid himself! Just a few small things I’ve noticed. Any thoughts?Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-60295760217097191932014-11-05T15:46:00.000-06:002014-11-05T15:57:46.043-06:00C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Faith, Imagination, and Modern Technology<div class="tr_bq">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sF25x3JyO0o/VFqb0wVAWoI/AAAAAAAAAps/hZ1bnMYUr44/s1600/Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="1" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sF25x3JyO0o/VFqb0wVAWoI/AAAAAAAAAps/hZ1bnMYUr44/s1600/Cover.png" height="320" width="225" /></a></div>
With the ink almost dry, the time has come to share the news of a new collection on the Inklings that I co-edited with my colleagues Salwa Khoddam of the Oklahoma City University and Mark Hall of Oral Roberts University. The new volume, <i>C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Faith, Imagination, and Modern Technology</i>, is the third in a series of collections to come out of the conferences of the <a href="http://www.oru.edu/academics/resources/cs_lewis/" target="_blank">C.S. Lewis and Inklings Society</a>, which I have attended seven times now. The theme of the 16th annual conference in 2013, “Fairytales in the Age of iPads: Inklings, Imagination, and Technology”, provided a large part of the impetus for this collection, and the new book features six essays on this theme. Faith and imagination, of course, tend to be reliably perennial subjects at this conference.</div>
<br />
The two previous collections in this series are <i>Truths Breathed through Silver: The Inklings’ Moral and Mythopoeic Legacy</i>, edited by Jonathan Himes, with Joe R. Christopher and Salwa Khoddam (2008); and <i>C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering Hidden Truth</i>, edited by Salwa Khoddam and Mark R. Hall, with Jason Fisher (2012). I contributed to both of these volumes, and I assisted with the editing of the second and also designed its cover. I took a seat at the table of editors this time around, also contributed a chapter, and again did all the formatting and designed the cover (which you can see above right).<br />
<br />
For those who may be interested, I’m happy to share the table of contents here, omitting the usual front and back matter. Three of the chapters focus on J.R.R. Tolkien, nine on C.S. Lewis, three on George MacDonald, and one on Dorothy Sayers. These last two, as I’m sure most of you know, aren’t Inklings per se, but MacDonald has been called an imaginative forebear of the Inklings, and Sayers was on the fringe of the group. We’re hoping the book will be available for purchase by December, and I’ll post again when that happens.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, here’s what you can look forward to:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>Part I. Faith—C.S. Lewis</b><br />
<br />
C.S. Lewis’s and Karl Barth’s Conversions: Reason and Imagination, a Realisation—<i>fides quaerens intellectum</i><br />
Paul H. Brazier<br />
<br />
C.S. Lewis and Theosis: Why Christians Are Meant to Become Icons of God<br />
Ralph C. Wood<br />
<br />
“Triad within Triad”: The Tripartite Soul as a Structural Design in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy<br />
Hayden Head<br />
<br />
<b>Part II. Imagination—C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald and J.R.R. Tolkien</b><br />
<br />
Entering Faerie-Land: Reading the Narnian Chronicles for Magic and Meaning<br />
Peter J. Schakel<br />
<br />
To Risk Being Taken In: C.S. Lewis on Self-Transcendence<br />
Aaron Cassidy<br />
<br />
C.S. Lewis’s Problem with “The Franklin’s Tale”: An Essay Written in the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Year of <i>The Allegory of Love</i><br />
Joe R. Christopher<br />
<br />
Redeeming the Narrator in George MacDonald’s <i>Lilith</i><br />
Jonathan B. Himes<br />
<br />
Reflections in the Mirror—Anodos and His Shadow, Frodo and Gollum: The Doppelganger as a Literary Motif in George MacDonald’s <i>Phantastes</i> and J.R.R. Tolkien’s <i>Lord of the Rings</i><br />
Mark R. Hall<br />
<br />
The Erlking Rides in Middle-earth: Tradition, Crux, and Adaptation in Goethe and Tolkien<br />
Jason Fisher<br />
<br />
<b>Part III. Modern Technology—C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, George MacDonald, and J.R.R. Tolkien</b><br />
<br />
Looking into the “Enchanted Glass”: C.S. Lewis and Francis Bacon on Methods of Perception and the Purpose of the “New Science”<br />
Salwa Khoddam<br />
<br />
The Abolition and the Preservation of Man: C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, and Wendell Berry on Education<br />
David Rozema<br />
<br />
Medieval Memento Mori and Modern Machine in Dorothy L. Sayers’s <i>The Nine Tailors</i><br />
Denise Galloway Crews<br />
<br />
Ecology in the Works of George MacDonald: Nature as a Revelation of God and His Imagination<br />
David L. Neuhouser and Mark R. Hall<br />
<br />
Whiner or Warrior? Susan Pevensie’s Role in the Novel and Film Versions of The Chronicles of Narnia<br />
Eleanor Hersey Nickel<br />
<br />
The <i>Palantíri</i> Stones in J.R.R. Tolkien’s <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> as Sauron’s Social Media: How to Avoid Getting Poked by the Dark Lord<br />
Phillip Fitzsimmons</blockquote>
<br />Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-10433377569557911582014-11-03T23:27:00.001-06:002014-11-05T15:14:46.120-06:00Jonah and the Colocynth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After
more than five years of (recent) anticipation, which might easily have
stretched on indefinitely, Tolkien’s translation of Jonah has arrived! You can
read my previous posts on the subject, of which I found there were a surprising
number, by following <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/search?q=jonah" target="_blank">this link</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tolkien’s
translation appears in the new issue of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal
of Inklings Studies</i>, Vol. 4, No. 2 (October 2014). It is short — naturally,
since Jonah itself is one of the shortest books in the Bible — spanning just
four pages (5–9). But even so short a translation is valuable new primary
material for Tolkien studies. The translation is followed by Brendan N. Wolfe’s
essay, “Tolkien’s Jonah”, which is also full of interesting material, including
liberal quotation from Fr Alexander Jones’s letters to Tolkien as well as
Tolkien’s draft opening to the book of Isaiah! Just to give you a taste, but
without stealing all the journal’s thunder: “Heavens hearken, earth give ear,
for Jahveh speaks […]” [1] It reads almost like a piece of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beowulf</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tolkien’s
Jonah is a very interesting piece of work and will take time to explore
thoroughly. But one small thing in particular really caught my attention while
reading it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here
is the King James Version of Jonah 4:6: “And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and
made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to
deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.” The English
Standard version also uses “gourd”. The Common English Bible calls it a “shrub”,
the Complete Jewish Bible “a castor-bean plant”, the Contemporary English
Version “a vine”, the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition “an ivy”, the
International Standard Version “a vine plant”, the New American Standard Bible “a
plant”, the New International Version “a leafy plant”, the New Revised Standard
Version “a bush”, and so on. That pretty much covers all the variations I’ve
seen in English language Bibles. So what does Tolkien say?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If
you’ve read Jonah in the Jerusalem Bible, you’ve seen “castor oil plant”, but that’s
not what Tolkien originally wrote; that was the work of the reviser. And that proves the importance of seeing Tolkien’s original translation. He did consider
the castor plant. According to Wolfe, Tolkien even “cop[ied] out the entry for ‘castor’ in
the OED, exchang[ed] notes with Jones on the subject, and ultimately opt[ed] for
‘colocynth’.” Colocynth? I can’t recollect ever having seen this word before. Here is
Tolkien’s translation of the verse in question: “Then Yahweh God appointed a
colocynth to grow up over Jonah, so that it might cast a shade upon his head
and relieve his discomfort; and Jonah had great delight in the colocynth.” Now <em>that’s</em> interesting!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
original Hebrew here is קִיקָי֞וֹן [qî·qā·yō·wn], and apparently no one is
quite sure what kind of plant this is. It’s a hapax legomenon in Scripture [2],
and no further explanation of it is ever given. It’s quite singular in my
experience that Tolkien chose this word. Colocynth (I have learned) derives
from Ancient Greek κολοκυνθίς “wild gourd”, and it is known more commonly as
the bitter apple, bitter cucumber, desert gourd, vine of Sodom, etc. It’s native
to the regions of the Biblical world, and it looks like a tiny watermelon (see the photo above).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
reviser evidently didn’t like Tolkien’s theory. This may have been Alan Neame,
who was engaged to edit and harmonize the translations of the books of the Old
Testament for the Jerusalem Bible, or it may have been someone else involved.
This person changed “colocynth” to “castor oil plant”, but how interesting is
Tolkien’s translation! And so typical of Tolkien to expend so much thought on a
single word!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
[1]
Quoted in Wolfe, Brendan N. “Tolkien’s Jonah.” <em>Journal of Inklings Studies</em>,
Vol. 4, No. 2 (October 2014): 11–26, p. 19. Wolfe is quoting with permission
from Tolkien’s unpublished draft of the first chapter of Isaiah, Bodleian
Library, Oxford (Tolkien A37/1). Wolfe quotes a little less than fifty words,
meaning a sizeable chunk of primary work remains unpublished.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
[2] See <a href="https://orcministries.wordpress.com/category/daily-bible-journal/jonah/" target="_blank">this blog post</a>
for some further commentary on the Hebrew word.</span>Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-40836675955076590912014-10-28T11:34:00.000-05:002014-10-28T11:34:30.350-05:00Forgotten habitsIn <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2014/08/bad-puns-can-be-hobbit-forming.html" target="_blank">a recent post</a> about puns on “hobbit”, I wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The first usage to come close to this is the exchange of letters to the editor of <i>The</i> <i>Observer</i> in 1938. On 16 January 1938, <i>The</i> <i>Observer</i> published a letter, signed “Habit”, in which the reader inquired about Tolkien’s sources in <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i>. Tolkien’s “jesting reply” (cf. Letters #26, 4 March 1938) was published four days later. I haven’t read the original letter. It’s available from <i>The Observer</i>’s digital archives, but not for free — does anyone have a copy they might share? Without the original at hand, I don’t know whether the original inquirer went beyond merely signing as “Habit”; if not, the tiresome old pun we know today is barely inchoate.</blockquote>
Er, actually, I <em>have</em> read the original letter! It was about seven years ago, and I had simply forgotten. The mountain of new primary material that has come to light in the last decade is staggering enough that this happens from time to time. Normally, my memory of what I’ve seen is very good — at least good enough to remember there <em>was</em> something and where I probably saw it, if not some of the particulars. That’s enough to get me back to the source where I can refresh my memory on the primary materials I don’t often cite. But in this case, I clean forgot.<br />
<br />
So where is it? Why, in the most logical place for it: John Rateliff’s <em>History of The Hobbit</em>, of course! Specifically, it’s in Appendix II, “Tolkien’s Letter to The Observer (The Hobyahs)”. The original letter from “Habit” is reproduced on p. 855 (in both my two-volume Houghton Mifflin first edition and in my one-volume Harper Collins revised edition).<br />
<br />
So, now having rediscovered this and reread it, I can say that the original correspondent indeed went no further than merely hinting at the pun through his assumed cognomen. So that’s settled. :)Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-28043812049392570782014-10-14T14:33:00.000-05:002014-10-14T14:34:01.556-05:00Tolkien Studies delayedThe world of academic publishing sometimes moves at about the same speed as the earth’s tectonic plates. At the risk of stating the obvious, Volume 11 of <i>Tolkien Studies</i> has been significantly delayed. David Bratman announced the contents at the end of July (<a href="http://kalimac.livejournal.com/743712.html" target="_blank">here</a>), and I know we have all been looking forward to it eagerly since then. I got word from West Virginia University Press today that the issue is now expected to be available the second week of November. Yikes, that is <i>some</i> delay! But better late than never, and I hope having some idea when to expect it helps.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-2030612838663015462014-09-05T19:23:00.000-05:002014-10-02T19:56:22.852-05:00The surprising longevity of one Tolkien essay — and a new Tolkien collection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a5mrbYmxxL0/VApQ0uAiWHI/AAAAAAAAApM/8_KwNZ9YMO8/s1600/Hobbit%2BWP_20140905_014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a5mrbYmxxL0/VApQ0uAiWHI/AAAAAAAAApM/8_KwNZ9YMO8/s1600/Hobbit%2BWP_20140905_014.jpg" height="320" width="180" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Almost a year ago, out of the blue, I got a request to reprint one of my essays on Tolkien in a Gale reference collection I was told was being edited by Michael Drout. Naturally, I was happy to see the essay go even further that it already had (on which, see below for more), and Gale tends to pay to reprint, which was also nice. I’m not used to earning actual dollars and cents for the work that I do, though when I do get a small payday, it is certainly welcome! And the Gale Literary Criticism series is well respected and widely used in many libraries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I got in touch with Mike to inquire about this, and he demystified the project. He wasn’t really editing anything, per se. Rather, the publisher had sent him a long list of essays, of which he’d chosen what he thought were the top twenty of so. He also suggested some that weren’t on their long list. And in the end, the publisher made the decisions about what to include and what not to. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So anyway, I took care of the paperwork and then promptly moved on to other things. I had forgotten all about it when a check showed up a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, the book had appeared, or was about to, and I had never heard another word about it. I came up with nothing searching the web, so I wrote to the publisher. They sent me <span id="goog_859518066"></span></span><a href="http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do;jsessionid=D7D5DA0E4BDE1B1CC0E44CB3AD23691E?N=197%204294904802&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=1893975233560758231187841856662893695&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">a link<span id="goog_859518067"></span></span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> to the book: Volume 299 in the Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism series. No wonder I couldn’t find it: at a glance, you’d never know it had anything to do with Tolkien! In fact, the collection actually covers three writers: Jane Addams, Mao Dun, and J.R.R. Tolkien. A strange assortment! The part about Tolkien is specifically limited to essays on <em>The Hobbit</em>, which may be stranger still (or perhaps not: they covered <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> in a previous volume). And finally, the book lists for $360, so I asked the publisher whether they might send me a copy. They did, and it arrived in yesterday’s mail.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Before I describe the new book, I thought I might
summarize the remarkable journey of my essay. It began here on this blog, in a
series of posts late in 2009. I developed these into a conference paper, which
I delivered at the 13th C.S. Lewis and Inklings Society conference in Oklahoma
City in the spring of 2010, and for which I won the Best Scholar Paper award
that year (the first of five consecutive wins at this conference). The essay
was published in <em>Mythlore </em>later that
year. Then it was reprinted as a chapter in 2012 in the CSLIS volume, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering
Hidden Truths</i>, a volume for which I was also an assistant editor (though
this had nothing to do with the selection of my essay for publication there).
And now it has appeared one more time, in the esteemed TCLC series. Wow, have I
gotten a lot of mileage out of that piece of work!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Since this is not likely to come to the attention of the casual Tolkien watcher, and since some of the essays may not be that easy to come by otherwise, I thought I would enumerate the contents as a public service. The Tolkien portion of the book runs from pp. 241–342, a cool hundred pages of valuable essays on <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> collected together for use in libraries. The layout is “encyclopedia style” — large, double-columned pages. It opens with a short introductory essay on <em>The Hobbit</em>, outlining its plot and major characters, themes, and critical reception. This piece is written by Cynthia Giles, a freelance encyclopedist from my old stomping grounds in Dallas. Apart from that, I know nothing about her. At a glance it looks solid, but I haven’t read it closely yet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This introductory piece is followed by a bibliography of Tolkien’s principal works, which I’ve only skimmed (but I spotted one small error). After this, the “Criticism” section comprises the reprint essays, each of which is given a bracketed paragraph intro. After the essays (enumerated below), there is a short and selective bibliography of “Further Reading”, annotated and categorized (bibliographies, biographies, criticism). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The fourteen reprinted essays and their original publication details are:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Constance B. Hieatt. “The Text of <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i>: Putting Tolkien’s Notes in Order.” <i>English</i> <i>Studies</i> <i>in</i> <i>Canada</i> 7.2 (1981): 212–24.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Christina Scull. “<i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> Considered in Relation to Children’s Literature Contemporary with Its Writing and Publication.” <i>Mythlore</i> 14.2 (1987): 49–56.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lisa Hopkins. “Bilbo Baggins as a Burglar.” <i>Inklings</i> 10 (1992): 93–9.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Christina Scull. “<i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> and Tolkien’s Other Pre-War Writings: Part Two.” <i>Mallorn</i> 30 (1993): 14–20.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Janet Brennan Croft. “The Great War and Tolkien’s Memory: An Examination of World War I Themes in <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> and <i>The</i> <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Rings</i>.” <i>Mythlore</i> 90 (2002): 4–21.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Olga V. Trokhimenko. “‘If You Sit on the Door-Step Long Enough, You Will Think of Something’: The Function of Proverbs in J.R.R. Tolkien’s <i>Hobbit</i>.” <i>Proverbium</i> 20 (2003): 367–77.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Brian Rosebury. “Tolkien and the Twentieth Century.” <i>Tolkien</i>: <i>A</i> <i>Cultural</i> <i>Phenomenon</i>. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 134–57.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stuart D. Lee and Elizabeth Solopova. “<i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i>.” <i>The</i> <i>Keys</i> <i>of</i> <i>Middle</i>-<i>earth</i>: <i>Discovering</i> <i>Medieval</i> <i>Literature</i> <i>through</i> <i>the</i> <i>Fiction</i> <i>of</i> <i>J</i>.<i>R</i>.<i>R</i>. <i>Tolkien</i>. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 59–122.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nils Ivar Agøy. “Things to Remember When Translating Tolkien.” <i>Lembas</i> <i>Extra</i> (2008): 42–50.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Thomas Kullmann. “Intertextual Patterns in J.R.R. Tolkien’s <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> and <i>The</i> <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Rings</i>.” <i>Nordic</i> <i>Journal</i> <i>of</i> <i>English</i> <i>Studies</i> 8.2 (2009): 37–56.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dimitra Fimi. “Epilogue: From Fairies to Hobbits.” <i>Tolkien</i>, <i>Race</i>, <i>and</i> <i>Cultural</i> <i>History</i>: <i>From</i> <i>Fairies</i> <i>to</i> <i>Hobbits</i>. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 189–99.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jason Fisher. “Dwarves, Spiders, and Murky Woods: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Wonderful Web of Words.” <i>Mythlore</i> 29.1-2 (2010): 5–15.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Aaron Isaac Jackson. “Authoring the Century: J.R.R. Tolkien, the Great War and Modernism.” <i>English</i> 59.224 (2010): 44–69.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">David Day. “The Genesis of the Hobbit.” <i>Queen’s</i> <i>Quarterly</i> 118.1 (2011): 115–29.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-67965529263069948082014-08-05T19:34:00.003-05:002014-08-05T19:35:41.227-05:00Bad puns can be hobbit-forming<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-50mfmrnrJhE/U-FxkgnmnsI/AAAAAAAAAo8/N26zdhPDm0M/s1600/Dolbier.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="1" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-50mfmrnrJhE/U-FxkgnmnsI/AAAAAAAAAo8/N26zdhPDm0M/s1600/Dolbier.png" height="400" width="96" /></a></div>
In a recent post to the Mythopoeic Society’s email listserv, John Rateliff shared an early reference to Tolkien in Robert Heinlein. John wrote (very slightly edited):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Recently I’ve been re-reading what I suppose is Robert Heinlein’s only fantasy novel, <i>Glory</i> <i>Road</i>. While it’s packed full of allusions to fantasy characters and titles and settings — e.g. John Carter and Dejah Thoris, Ettarre, Storisende and Poictesme, Barsoom, <i>The</i> <i>Red</i> <i>Fairy</i> <i>Book</i>, <i>The</i> <i>Twilight</i> <i>Zone</i> — I was surprised to find a passing Tolkien reference:<br />
<br />
She: “. . . we come to a brick road, very nice.”<br />
He: “A yellow brick road?”<br />
She: “Yes. That’s the clay they have. Does it matter?”<br />
He: “I guess not. Just don’t make a hobbit of it …” [1]<br />
<br />
This passing pun does not of course mean Heinlein actually read the book […] but it does show his awareness of Tolkien, and his assumption that his audience would share than awareness, a full year before Tolkien went mainstream with the Ace Book controversy in 1965.</blockquote>
This pun — based on the idea of a <i>hobbit</i> = a <i>habit</i>, good or bad — has become so hackneyed in the fifty years since that I now cringe every time I see it, which is still very often. There’s another worn-out pun I see a lot. This one is based on the idea of <i>Tolkien</i> = <i>talking</i> — e.g., “that’s what I’m Tolkien ’bout!” I’m not sure which one has been the more abused of the two, and neither is particularly good. But I got to wondering about the earliest uses of the <i>hobbit</i> = <i>habit</i>.<br />
<br />
The first usage to come close to this is the exchange of letters to the editor of <i>The</i> <i>Observer</i> in 1938. On 16 January 1938, <i>The</i> <i>Observer</i> published a letter, signed “Habit”, in which the reader inquired about Tolkien’s sources in <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> [2]. Tolkien’s “jesting reply” (cf. Letters #26, 4 March 1938) was published four days later. I haven’t read the original letter. It’s available from <i>The Observer</i>’s digital archives, but not for free — does anyone have a copy they might share? Without the original at hand, I don’t know whether the original inquirer went beyond merely signing as “Habit”; if not, the tiresome old pun we know today is barely inchoate. The similarity of the words is played on, but the writer may never have gone so far as a pun. Even in his reply, Tolkien is not particularly explicit about it. He calls “the Habit […] more inquisitive than the Hobbit” (Letters #25), but he doesn’t actually go in for the pun either.<br />
<br />
Tolkien never seems to stoop to such a low jest himself, in all the writings I can recall. He did connect the two words in another letter I know, but more coincidentally, I think, and not in jest — “<i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> was not intended to have anything to do with [‘the matter of the Elder Days’]. I had the habit while my children were still young of inventing and telling orally, sometimes of writing down, ‘children’s stories’ for their private amusement” (#257, 16 July 1964). And he acknowledged the pun again many, many years later: “A review appeared in <i>The</i> <i>Observer</i> 16 Jan 1938, signed ‘Habit’ (incidentally thus long anticipating Coghill’s perception of the similarity of the words in his humorous adj. ‘hobbit-forming’ applied to my books)” (#319, 8 January 1971). It seem likely that Nevill Coghill shared this pun with Tolkien directly at one of the many dinners they attended together, or during meetings of the Inklings; I’m not aware that he ever put in into writing. But Coghill was certainly among the earliest to make this joke; it may even predate publication of <i>The</i> <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Rings</i>. But we can’t be sure. Tolkien refers to Coghill’s pun in 1971, and we have no idea how far back he is looking. It could be five years or ten or more.<br />
<br />
In writing, the pun became very common after 1965, with the Ace episode and the revised edition of <i>The</i> <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Rings</i> leading to an enormous growth in Tolkien’s popularity, especially in America. Perhaps the best-known of these early pieces is Henry Resnik’s “The Hobbit-Forming World of J.R.R. Tolkien”, published in <i>The</i> <i>Saturday</i> <i>Evening</i> <i>Post</i> (2 July 1966). Not long after, Joseph Mathewson got into the game with “The Hobbit Habit”, published the September 1966 issue of <i>Esquire</i>. The following winter, Charles Elliott published a peculiarly sour piece in <i>Time</i> called “Can America Kick the Hobbit? The Tolkien Caper” (24 February 1967). A few months after that, Matthew Hodgart reviewed <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i>, <i>The</i> <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Rings</i>, and <i>The</i> <i>Tolkien</i> <i>Reader</i> in <i>The</i> <i>New</i> <i>York</i> <i>Review</i> <i>of</i> <i>Books</i>, captioning his review, “Kicking the Hobbit” (4 May 1967). And then there is Mary Lou Loper’s “Fun is Hobbit-Forming at Tolkien Party”, <i>Los</i> <i>Angeles</i> <i>Times</i> (19 September 1967). And Dainis Bisenieks’s “The Hobbit Habit in the Critic’s Eye”, in <i>Tolkien</i> <i>Journal</i> 3:4 (November 1969). And this is just a selection.<br />
<br />
The pun continued to resurface in the years after Tolkien’s initial splash. For example, in connection with the Rankin/Bass animated version of <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i> — e.g., “Will the Video Version of Tolkien be Hobbit Forming?”, by John Culhane, in <i>The</i> <i>New</i> <i>York</i> <i>Times</i> (27 November 1972). Then with the publication of <i>The</i> <i>Silmarillion</i> — e.g., “Kicking the Hobbit” by Richard Brookhiser, in <i>The</i> <i>National</i> <i>Review</i> (9 December 1977); “Hobbit Forming”, by Anthony Burgess, in <i>The</i> <i>Observer</i> (18 September 1977); and “The Hobbit Habit”, by Robert M. Adams, in <i>The</i> <i>New</i> <i>York</i> <i>Review</i> <i>of</i> <i>Books</i> (24 November 1977). Carpenter’s biography attracted the same kinds of headlines — e.g., “Hobbit-forming”, by John Carey, in <i>The</i> <i>Listener</i>, Vol. 97 (12 May 1977); and again, “Hobbit Forming”, by Nick Totton, in <i>The</i> <i>Spectator</i> (14 May 1977). And now of course, with the advent of the Peter Jackson film adaptations of <i>The</i> <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Rings</i> and <i>The</i> <i>Hobbit</i>, the pun has become ubiquitous and endless.<br />
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But that’s what was so interesting about the source in Robert Heinlein that John Rateliff discovered: it predates the earliest of these by a couple of years. In poking around the virtual stacks, I’ve actually found another reference in fiction that predates Heinlein. It’s in the June 1963 issue of <i>The</i> <i>Magazine</i> <i>of</i> <i>Fantasy and Science</i> <i>Fiction</i>, in a short story called “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LXIII”, written by Reginald Bretnor, under the anagrammatic pseudonym Grendel Briarton. A <a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-feg1.htm" target="_blank">feghoot</a> is a short story ending in, and whose whole point is, a dreadful, groan-inducing pun; learn more about feghoots and their history <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feghoot" target="_blank">here</a>. So, this particular feghoot builds up to the pun we’ve been talking about here, though the pun was much younger at the time:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Scarcely ten minutes later, he was summoned back by a cry of great agitation.<br />
<br />
“Mr. Feghoot!” the alarmed writer exclaimed. “Look — there’s a <i>being</i>! He — he’s only four feet tall, with red cheeks, and a brass-buttoned coat, and — and short breeches. And his feet are all furry! He’s telling me the most wonderful story. But — but he’s a hallucination. He simply took shape there! And you told me the drug would do me no harm!”<br />
<br />
“My dear Tolkien,” said Ferdinand Feghoot. “I said it was <i>harmless</i>. I never said it was non-Hobbit-forming.” [3]</blockquote>
But even <i>this</i> isn’t the earliest printed use of this pun that I have found.<br />
<br />
For that, you have to go back almost a decade further. On 24 April 1955, <i>The</i> <i>Providence</i> <i>Journal</i> published a very short review of <i>The Two Towers</i>, tersely entitled “Hobbit-Forming”, by Maurice Dolbier [4]. The review is just two paragraphs — the first alarmingly full of plot spoilers for a contemporary review! The review is accompanied by a drawing of Frodo by designer and artist Walter Lorraine, the art director at Houghton Mifflin at the time, and the illustrator of the first US edition dust jackets of <i>The</i> <i>Lord</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Rings</i>. You can sort of make out his illustration in the photo above — apologies for the poor quality, but it’s a sixty-year-old newspaper reproduced from microfiche. Lorraine himself would be an interesting subject for a future post!<br />
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A bit off the subject, but still à propos of word-play, isn’t the name Dolbier an interesting coincidence, considering Tolkien’s invention of Dolbear in <i>The Notion Club Papers</i>. I haven’t looked very deeply into the frequency and etymology of these surnames, though I do know there’s an attested variation, Dolbeer, which may be from Welsh Dolbyr “the short vale” or from Dalbyr, a town on the Jutland peninsula, where the family may have originated.<br />
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Anyway, to sum up. While it’s possible that Nevill Coghill used the pun earlier than this, I’ve seen no evidence of it in print. And there is the letter to <i>The Observer</i> in 1938, but its author not have gone all the way. I’d like to see that letter if I could. Can anyone antedate the pun to earlier than Dolbier’s use, published 24 April 1955? The pun would still have been pretty fresh and fairly clever in 1955. Unfortunately, it’s been used about a million times since (no exaggeration).<br />
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[1] Heinlein, Robert A. <i>Glory</i> <i>Road</i>. 1964, pp. 82–3.<br />
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[2] Letters to the Editor, <i>The</i> <i>Observer</i> (16 January, 1938), p. 8.<br />
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[3] Bretnor, Reginald [as Grendel Briarton]. “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LXIII.” <i>The</i> <i>Magazine</i> <i>of</i> <i>Fantasy and Science</i> <i>Fiction</i> 24:6 #145 (June 1963), p. 102.<br />
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[4] Dolbier, Maurice. “Hobbit-Forming (Review of <i>The</i> <i>Two</i> <i>Towers</i>).” <i>The</i> <i>Providence</i> <i>Sunday</i> <i>Journal</i> 24 April 1954, Section 6, p. 10. My enormous gratitude to Kate Wells and the Providence Public Library for this scan.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-81131416165646408952014-06-09T12:51:00.003-05:002014-06-09T12:53:48.762-05:00Another new Tolkien collection from McFarland<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M1VKXFD7aKw/U5X0ApQ5KpI/AAAAAAAAAos/TGNKAHK3ZQs/s1600/978-0-7864-7960-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M1VKXFD7aKw/U5X0ApQ5KpI/AAAAAAAAAos/TGNKAHK3ZQs/s1600/978-0-7864-7960-3.jpg" /></a>The books keep rolling off the presses! I’ve just gotten the final table of contents from Brad Eden for his new collection, <i>The Hobbit in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on the Novel’s Influence on the Later Writings</i>. This one isn’t available for sale on Amazon yet, but McFarland has just added it to their own website (<a href="http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-7960-3" target="_blank">here</a>).<br />
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This is project I’ve been aware of for some time. Brad sent out of a Call For Chapters in late May, 2013 (one year ago, almost to the day). The idea was to provide<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
an edited volume discussing research and scholarship on the influence of <i>The Hobbit</i> on the revision and expansion by Tolkien of the larger Middle-earth legendarium. Christopher Tolkien has stated in writing that the writing and publication of <i>The Hobbit</i> in the 1930’s had no influence at all on Tolkien’s ongoing expansion and revisions of his legendarium. Recent scholarship and detailed research has shown, however, that Tolkien was influenced by the plots, characters, and ideas presented in <i>The Hobbit</i>, some of which had an extraordinary effect on subsequent expansions, revisions, and new concepts within his legendarium.</blockquote>
I saw an early table of contents last August, and it looks like all of the chapters represented there have made it into the final book, along with a few additional ones. For a time, I was planning to offer a chapter also, though I had some concerns about the scope of the topic. I was worried the topic just wasn’t that fruitful, at least not if taken narrowly. John Rateliff’s and Verlyn Flieger’s chapters were obviously the kernel of the idea and both clearly have important and compelling things to say on the subject, but beyond that, I didn’t think there were enough explicit threads showing the influence of <i>The Hobbit</i> on the later development of the legendarium to base an entire collection on. And what threads there were had already been largely explored, or so it seemed to me. So I wasn’t sure what I could add on that subject. But Brad suggested that he was open to broader topics, so I proposed something. In the end, though, I wasn’t able to commit the time it would have required this past autumn, in part because of deaths in the family, surgery on one of our dogs, and other irruptions of ‘real life’, as it is called.<br />
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Looking at the table of contents now (see below), I still have the same concerns. Don’t get me wrong — all of the chapters sound interesting! It’s just that several of them don’t seem very closely connected to Brad’s stated mission with the collection. But if “a book focusing on how <i>The Hobbit</i> influenced the subsequent development of Tolkien’s legendarium […] was sorely needed” (marketing blurb), then one should expect there to be enough to say about that without venturing off down side alleys, however interesting they might be. But we’ll see. Perhaps some of these chapters will surprise us by revealing unexpected connection and causation.<br />
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The cover, shown above, features original artwork by <a href="http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/tom_loback.htm" target="_blank">Tom Loback</a>, a well-known artist and enthusiast of Tolkien’s invested languages and scripts. The table of contents, presumably now final, follows below.<br />
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<hr />
<i>The Hobbit in Tolkien’s Legendarium:</i><br />
<i>Essays on the Novel’s Influence on the Later Writings</i><br />
Edited by Bradford Lee Eden<br />
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Introduction / Bradford Lee Eden<br />
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<b>THE EVOLUTION OF THE DWARVEN RACE</b><br />
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Anchoring the myth: the impact of <i>The Hobbit</i> on Tolkien’s legendarium / John D. Rateliff<br />
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From Nauglath to Durin’s Folk: <i>The Hobbit</i> and Tolkien’s Dwarves / Gerard Hynes<br />
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<b>DURIN'S DAY</b><br />
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“It passes our skill in these days”: primary world influences on the evolution of Durin’s Day / Kristine Larsen<br />
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A scientific examination of Durin’s Day / Sumner Gary Hunnewell<br />
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<b>THEMES</b><br />
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<b>French influences</b><br />
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Tolkien’s French connection / Verlyn Flieger<br />
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<b>Northern influences</b><br />
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Tolkien’s Northern fairy-story / Jane Chance<br />
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<b>Linguistics</b><br />
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From “The Silmarillion” to <i>The Hobbit</i> and back again: an onomastic foray / Damien Bador<br />
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<b>Animal sentience</b><br />
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Civilized goblins and talking animals: how <i>The Hobbit</i> created problems of sentience for Tolkien / Gregory Hartley<br />
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<b>Invisibility</b><br />
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Seeing in the dark, seeing by the dark: how Bilbo’s invisibility defined Tolkien’s vision / Michael A. Wodzak<br />
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<b>Bilbo as Tolkien personified</b><br />
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A Victorian in Valhalla: Bilbo Baggins as the link between England and Middle-earth / William Christian Klarner<br />
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<b>The characters of Beorn and Bombadil</b><br />
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Beorn and Bombadil: mythology, place, and landscape in Middle-earth / Justin T. Noetzel<br />
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<b>Pilgrimage</b><br />
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Travel, redemption, and peacemaking: hobbits, dwarves and elves and the transformative power of pilgrimage / Vickie L. Holtz Wodzak<br />
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<b>Environmentalism and authorship</b><br />
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A Baggins’ backyard: environmentalism, authorship, and the Elves in Tolkien’s legendarium / David Thiessen<br />
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<b>Contemporary interpretations of The Hobbit</b><br />
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Polytemporality and epic characterization in <i>The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey</i>: reflecting <i>The Lord of the Ring</i>’s [<i>sic</i>] modernism and medievalism / Judy Ann Ford and Robin Anne Reid<br />
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The wisdom of the crowd: Internet memes and <i>The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey</i> / Michelle Markey ButlerJason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-89222303421211201902014-06-03T12:34:00.001-05:002014-06-03T12:36:38.156-05:00New Book on Tolkien and Modernism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L0Q4FRj45zY/U44DT21wAqI/AAAAAAAAAoY/3dGK7xIN_cE/s1600/Tolkien+and+the+Modernists.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L0Q4FRj45zY/U44DT21wAqI/AAAAAAAAAoY/3dGK7xIN_cE/s1600/Tolkien+and+the+Modernists.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
Even though he lived at the right time for it and went through many of the same experiences that formed the crucible of Modernism, Tolkien has not very often been thought to exemplify the movement. Most critics regard him as already a bit old-fashioned even in his own day, more often thought of as a reincarnation of the <i>Beowulf</i>-poet than as a Great War author, for example (though interestingly, Tom Shippey has made both of the preceding arguments). [1] For my part, I see Tolkien as fitting in various ways into <i>both</i> movements — perhaps a bit less obviously as a Modernist, but the case has been made before and need not be rehearsed here. [2]<br />
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Now, a new full-length treatment of this question is on the horizon: Theresa Freda Nicolay’s <i>Tolkien and the Modernists</i> (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0786478985/?tag=linmusofafis-20" target="_blank">order it here</a>), coming from <a href="http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-7898-9" target="_blank">McFarland this summer</a> (or sooner — I have a review copy in my hands now). I’m only just beginning to dig into it, so this is not the time for a proper review, but I wanted to make readers aware of the new book — particularly those with an interest in Modernism, as well as those who may feel that critical treatments of Tolkien lean disproportionately to Medievalism.<br />
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The book is relatively short at 193 pages. It comprises an introduction, seven chapters, a bibliography, and an index. The latter is pretty short (only about two full pages), and exhibits some idiosyncrasies. For example, there are sub-entries under “Tolkien, J.R.R.” for <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, <i>The Fellowship of the Ring</i>, <i>The Two Towers</i>, and <i>The Return of the King</i>, but each of these also has its <i>own</i> entry in the index, repeating all of the page references. The same process is repeated for C.S. Lewis and his works. At least the page references in these duplicate entries match!<br />
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The chapters run as follows:<br />
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1. Rekindling an Old Light<br />
2. Industrialism, Instrumentality and “antiquity so appealing”<br />
3. <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>: “Insubstantial dream of an escapist”<br />
4. Modernist Disaffection and Tolkienian Faith<br />
5. The World as Wasteland: The Landscapes of Loss<br />
6. The Wasteland Within: Alienation in Tolkien and the Modernists<br />
7. Postmodern Monsters and Providential Plans<br />
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Having so far only read the introduction, some of the conclusion in Chapter 7, skimmed a few passages here and there, and examined the bibliography and index, the book looks to be pretty solid at first glance. But — and again speaking only from a first, cursory look — Nicolay seems to have developed her argument largely in a vacuum: though she cites several of the major Tolkien scholars, it looks like her bibliography omits mention most of the critical work on Tolkien and Modernism that comes readily to my mind (e.g., Mortimer’s essay already mentioned [2]; <i>Modern Fiction Studies</i> 50:4 (a special issue devoted entirely to Tolkien); Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers’s <i>Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages</i>; Frank Weinreich and Thomas Honegger’s two volumes of <i>Tolkien and Modernity</i>; Martin Simonson’s <i>The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition</i>; to name a few). I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve read the entire book, but ordinarily, one ought to demonstrate familiarity with and then build on or expand the work already done in the scholarly community.<br />
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In any event, an(other) extended treatment of this subject is certainly welcome, and I look forward to reading it straight through. Once I’ve done so, I’ll be back with fuller comments. I’d welcome the same from any of you as well.<br />
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[1] See “Tolkien as a Post-War Writer.” <i>Scholarship & Fantasy: Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon (1993)</i>, ed. by K. J. Battarbee. Anglicana Turkuensia 12 (1993): 217-36. And “Tolkien and the Beowulf-poet.” <i>Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien</i>. Walking Tree Publishers, 2007.<br />
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[2] See, for example, Mortimer, Patchen. “Tolkien and Modernism.” <i>Tolkien Studies</i> 2 (2005): 113–29. Mortimer concludes: “But to be a modernist one does not have to embrace modern era or belong to any specific school. One simply has to faithfully document the modern condition, while operating under certain aesthetic assumptions about the primacy of the artist and the role of language in shaping life. At the very least, Tolkien was, as Flieger terms him, a ‘reluctant modernist,’ […]” (127).Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-24777590629285370762014-03-09T21:40:00.000-05:002014-03-09T22:00:10.295-05:00New Tolkien collection — and a new publication credit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cMuHMWABX5c/Ux0iUPfO00I/AAAAAAAAAoE/ySWV-LMMi9Q/s1600/faconnement_vol2_couv.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cMuHMWABX5c/Ux0iUPfO00I/AAAAAAAAAoE/ySWV-LMMi9Q/s1600/faconnement_vol2_couv.png" /></a>A little more than two years ago now, I received an interesting inquiry from Didier Willis, the President of “Le Dragon de Brume”, a small French non-profit association promoting J.R.R. Tolkien and publishing essays about him and his works. In their own words, “créée en octobre 2010, le Dragon de Brume a pour objet de promouvoir, par la diffusion ou la représentation d’études et de travaux de recherche, la connaissance des œuvres de l’auteur britannique J.R.R. Tolkien dans le monde francophone.” It seems they had published their first collection the summer before (that is, 2011), called <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/dragonbrumeux/home" target="_blank"><i>Tolkien</i>, <i>le</i> <i>façonnement</i> <i>d’un</i> <i>monde</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>1</i>: <i>Botanique</i> <i>et</i> <i>Astronomie</i></a>. As part of that collection of essays on Middle-earth botany and astronomy, they’d translated and reprinted an essay by Kristine Larsen. How could they not, seeing as Kris is the world’s greatest expert in the intersection of Tolkien and astronomy?</div>
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They were, it transpired, beginning work on a companion volume, and Didier was writing to request permission to translate and reprint another of Kris’s essays, this time “Sea Birds and Morning Stars: Ceyx, Alcyone, and the Many Metamorphoses of Eärendil and Elwing”, which attentive readers will know was published in my own book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0786464828/?tag=linmusofafis-20" target="_blank"><i>Tolkien</i> <i>and</i> <i>the</i> <i>Study</i> <i>of</i> <i>His</i> <i>sources</i>: <i>Critical</i> <i>Essays</i></a>. I was certainly amenable — Kris’s essay is a fantastic one, and I was thrilled it might be read more widely, and perhaps even lead some readers back to my book (follow and share the link!) — and the rest of the permissions issues were quickly worked out. Two years ago this month, they began their work on it.<br />
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Some months later (now we are up to November, 2012), Didier wrote me again. He had been discussing the permissions involved in reprinting one of his own articles, written for <a href="http://www.tolkiendil.com/asso/mag" target="_blank"><i>l’Arc</i> <i>et</i> <i>le</i> <i>Heaume</i></a>, a publication of <a href="http://www.tolkiendil.com/index.php" target="_blank">Tolkiendil</a>, another, larger French non-profit promoting Tolkien. Coincidentally, one of my own essays, “La Jeune Fille Elfe dans la Forêt: Une Image Récurrente chez Tolkien” (previously unpublished), <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2012/01/celebrating-tolkiens-120th-birthday.html" target="_blank">had been translated and printed</a> in <i>l’Arc</i> <i>et</i> <i>le</i> <i>Heaume</i>. Didier’s essay inquired into the possibilities of sourcing Tolkien’s conception of Númenor in a curious medieval mappa mundi (collected in Cotton Tiberius B.v), which depicts a star-shaped island near the Pillars of Hercules in the Strait of Gibraltar. They really do look alike, two asterisks in the ocean. How appropriate for an asterisk-reality! Didier went on to make the responsible search all scholars make for other research bearing on their own, and this led him to another essay dealing with Tolkien and mappae mundi. Care to guess?<br />
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Indeed, this was my own essay, “Sourcing Tolkien’s ‘Circles of the World’: Speculations on the Heimskringla, the Latin Vulgate Bible, and the Hereford Mappa Mundi”, which appeared in a collection called <a href="http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/01/middle-earth-and-beyond-first-look.html" target="_blank"><i>Middle</i>-<i>earth</i> <i>and</i> <i>beyond</i>: <i>Essays</i> <i>on</i> <i>the</i> <i>World</i> <i>of</i> <i>J</i>.<i>R</i>.<i>R</i>. <i>Tolkien</i></a>. So, Didier wanted to work out permission to translate and reprint this article, to appear alongside his own. All the parties were in agreement, and this work commenced.<br />
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At long last, I am thrilled to report that <i>Tolkien</i>, <i>le</i> <i>façonnement</i> <i>d’un</i> <i>monde</i>, <i>Vol</i>. <i>2</i>: <i>Astronomie</i> <i>et</i> <i>Géographie</i> has now appeared — this very month in fact. And in it are Kris’s essay and mine. You can read about the collection and peruse its full table of contents by following <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/dragonbrumeux/vol2" target="_blank">this link</a>.<br />
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I happen to have before me print copies of both volumes — thank you very much, Didier! — and they are quite nice! No indexes, alas, but they make up for it by the inclusion of a lot of carefully chosen illustrations, maps, and figures. Alongside Didier’s and my essays, for example, are reproductions of the mappae mundi being discussed. Alongside Kris’s essay are reproductions of manuscript pages from Christine de Pizan and Guillaume de Machaut from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.<br />
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I highly recommend both volumes for anyone with an interest in Tolkien and the ability to read French. That’s probably a lot of you. I haven’t read the entire two-volume set yet — only a few essays so far, like the translations of Kris’s and mine, Didier’s and one or two others — but the range of subject matter is impressive, even within each volume’s deliberately narrow scope. Some of the scholars’ names are already familiar ones — Damien Bador, Bertrand Bellet, and of course Didier Willis (who alone has six essay in the two volumes!) — while others are new to me, as I am no doubt new to them. But that’s part of the fun and excitement of reading a collection assembled halfway around the world. Different voices, different histories, different cultures of reception. Yet through it all, the Professor, his magnificent creations, and our shared admiration for them.Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-44163787048777968732014-02-14T15:47:00.001-06:002014-02-14T15:50:16.087-06:00A Brief History of The Hobbit<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_PtpxwoVfPc/Uv6Nype6fvI/AAAAAAAAAnw/InWxPCFmbYk/s1600/history_hobbit-e1356133479745-200x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_PtpxwoVfPc/Uv6Nype6fvI/AAAAAAAAAnw/InWxPCFmbYk/s1600/history_hobbit-e1356133479745-200x300.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a>On the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTolkienSociety.EducationalCharity/" target="_blank">Tolkien Society’s Facebook page</a>, Neil Holford recently shared a link to a forthcoming book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0007557256/?tag=linmusofafis-20" target="_blank">A Brief History of The Hobbit</a></i>, by John Rateliff and J.R.R. Tolkien, to be published this coming September by HarperCollins. At 400 pages and priced at £9.99, it’s clearly not the same two-volume treatment I reviewed in <i><a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=178795473" target="_blank">Mythlore</a></i> almost six years ago. But what is it, exactly? An abridgment, I presumed, but to find out more, I went straight to the source. John Rateliff, after all, is practically my next-door neighbor! :)<br />
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John clarified the scope of the project, and he doesn’t mind my sharing, so here you go. It is indeed an abridgment of the one-volume revised edition, in which John’s goal is “to reduce the size of the book by half without leaving out any of the Tolkien. […] You could say the original edition was Tolkien and Rateliff in roughly equal portion, while this version will be mostly Tolkien.”<br />
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In other words, what John is pruning is his own commentary and notes. He’s cutting that down aggressively, aiming to preserve only the essentials, and leaving mostly just the original draft text of <i>The Hobbit</i>. It should be a welcome addition for those fans who might have found the complete <i>History</i> a bit overwhelming — although personally, I revel in minutiae. Likewise, it will be a convenient copy to have nearby for when one need only refer to the draft text of the novel. The original treatment can be just a bit unwieldy when one only wants to look up a draft passage and nothing more. This will give us the best of both worlds. Looking forward to it!Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.com3