“Well, I’m back.”

Ah, I wonder how many times Sam’s closing line from The Lord of the Rings has been used to excuse a long absence from blogging! However many it is, one more couldn’t really hurt. :)

I think the past three months or more represent the longest pause in the five-year history of Lingwë – Musings of a Fish. In fact, my five-year anniversary of blogging passed unheralded more than a month ago. The recent silence certainly does not reflect any lack of things to write about. Rather the reverse! A great deal has been going on, and I hope to unspool all of the news and announcements here over the coming days and weeks. I am very sorry to have left you all hanging, and I hope you haven’t abandoned me for good!

Most significantly — and it is this change that really accounts for my long absence — I’ve “gone into the West”, as it were. The Pacific Northwest, to be more precise. I took a new job opportunity, and we have moved from Dallas, Texas to Bellevue, Washington. The difficulty, time, and cost of packing up from thirty-five years in Texas and moving 2,200 miles away can’t be overstated. If it hadn’t been for the relocation assistance of my new job, it would have been impossible. Even with it, it was an incredible challenge. But here we are. We are gradually settling in, and things are slowly returning to normal. The new normal, I should say. And with that preamble out of the way, let’s get back to the usual fare for Lingwë. Stay tuned …

Chasing la fée verte

I’ve wanted to try absinthe since I first started reading Hemingway in the 1980’s. Unfortunately, it was outlawed in the United States in October, 1912, considerably before my time. In fact, Hemingway fans reading The Sun Also Rises when it was first published may have found themselves nursing the same curiosity about the spirit, just as unable to try it as I was. The interesting thing is that it was outlawed in France in 1914, in the decade before Hemingway himself was drinking it in Montparnasse (“every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café”). I guess there were ways for motivated devotees to track down la fée verte.

In 2007, absinthe was officially (re)legalized in the U.S. I began to hear about French or Czech absinthes one could order online, but the prices were a touch high, and I didn’t want an entire bottle until I had tasted it. I finally managed it yesterday. The absinthe in question is brand-new to Texas, and it has a celebrity sponsor (like some tequilas and vodkas): Marilyn Manson. The portmanteau name for the spirit? What else but Mansinthe. Sounds like a 1970’s Kraftwerk bootleg, doesn’t it?

So, I finally caught the green fairy. How was it? Not bad. Not amazing, but pretty good. For those who haven’t tried it, the overwhelming flavors are anise and fennel (one might just as well say double-black-licorice). I happen to like this flavor — I also like ouzo and sambuca —but many people do not. No doubt I’d enjoy it even more were the whole ritual observed: slowly dripping water over a sugar cube to release the full bouquet of la louche, etc., and I have been promised the whole grand affair when I travel to England later this summer (where absinthe has never been officially banned). I had expected that to be my first experience with absinthe, and perhaps it should have been! But as I say, it was pretty good; just a little anticlimactic after all these years.

I actually tried three other spirits at the same tasting which I like more. The first was Boca Loca Cachaça (80 proof). This is a spirit made from fresh sugar cane, so it’s a sort of cousin to rum, but it tastes nothing like it. The aroma is exactly like fresh sugar cane, and the flavor follows the nose closely. Drunk neat, it has a kind of smooth, milky sweetness, a really wonderful flavor. In cocktails like the Brazilian caipirinha (which I’ve had before), the flavor of the cachaça itself tends to be overpowered by the fruit. I tasted it neat and in a cairpirinha at the event. Next, I tasted an organic rye vodka flavored with organic cucumber, Square One Cucumber (80 proof), which was really delicious and refreshing, and then an unclassified botanical spirit, Square One Botanical (90 proof), which deserves some elaboration.

I should start by saying that it was amazing. If I’d had a little more wiggle room in the budget, I would definitely have bought a bottle. It’s similar to a vodka, perhaps closer to a gin, but really, it’s its own distinct entity — a botanical spirit — so that’s what she called it. More unique, which I like. It’s an “organic rye spirit infused with the essence of 8 organic botanicals: pear, rose, chamomile, lemon verbena, lavender, rosemary, coriander, and citrus peel”. Right up my street! I also met the owner of the distillery, Allison Evanow, who was very nice and answered all my questions. She also made us a cocktail, called Pear of Roses: Square One Botanical, Meyer lemon juice, muddled pear, lavender syrup, and fresh rosemary. Boy, was it good! They also make a Basil Vodka, using four different varieties of organic basil, which I’d really like to try.

Leo Con 2012 — April 14, 2012

I will be speaking at another science-fiction/fantasy event in Texas next month, and this time I can give you a little bit more notice! The event is the inaugural Leo Con, the “first annual sci-fi, fantasy, anime/manga, and gaming convention” at Texas A&M-Commerce. It’s a single-day event, though I hope it will grow in future years. They’re getting off to a good start too, with a pair of excellent Guests of Honor: John D. Rateliff, author of The History of The Hobbit; and Douglas A. Anderson, author of The Annotated Hobbit. Bringing two experts on The Hobbit to North Texas is no accident: part of the aim of Leo Con 2012 is to celebrate the 75th anniversary of that classic, genre-making work of fantasy.

In addition to introducing John and Doug and moderating the Q&A portions of their presentations, I will also be giving a talk of my own. It will be along the same lines as the workshop I gave earlier this month in Corpus Christi, an introduction to source criticism as applied to the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.

The con is open to registration by the public, and if any of you can make it out, I would love to see you. If you want to give a presentation, they are open to that as well, though you’ll have to get in touch with them soon — no later than April 1! I’ll be posting more details (e.g., a schedule of events) as I learn them, but for now, here is the informational letter Robin Reid, Professor of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M-Commerce is sending out.

LEOCON will take place on Saturday, April 14, 2012 in the Hall of Languages (mostly) at A&M-Commerce.

LEOCON is the first science fiction and fantasy con at A&M-Commerce, organized by Sigma Phi Phi (Syphers). Our organization aims to cover all the genres, areas, media, and types of science fiction and fantasy, and we have special interest groups in anime/manga, costuming and cosplay, steampunk, tabletop gaming, card games, online gaming, live action role playing, superheroes, and more!

You can find more information on LEOCON here:

• The SYPHERS Blog
• LEOCON 2012
• Registration
• Guests of Honor

We have opportunities for presenting in all the areas of interest that our group covers: you can participate in a number of ways.

1. If you have a paper on an sf/f topic in any media, you can give an academic presentation.
2. If you have a group of friends who like to talk about any sf/f topic in any media (urban fantasy, Dr. Who, Mass Effect 3, anything!), you can organize a roundtable (5–7 people having a ‘conversation’ and involving the audience). No writing necessary here!
3. If you have a skill you’d like to teach, you can give a workshop (we have ones already scheduled on fanfiction and livestreaming) on “How to Do X”!
4. If you write in any fantastic genre, you can read your creative work (poetry, fiction, it’s all good)!
5. If you create and sell anything related to the fantastic (and we have a pretty flexible definition of the fantastic), you can get a table as a vendor (if you are planning only to promote/sell your work, you don’t have to pay the very low registration fee!
6. If you want to use this event to promote your student organization, we can bring you in as a “vendor” and provide a table.

So, if you’re interested, check out the blog and send your proposal to: Robin_Reid@tamu-commerce.edu

(As long as you register by April 1, you can pay the early bird rate at the door!)

Live Long and Prosper!

Yours,
Robin

Visualizing The Iliad

Among the many blogs I read, there are some which never almost never cross paths with my interests in mythology and literature. One of these is FlowingData, a blog that “explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better — mainly through data visualization”. Catching up on recent posts this morning, I learned of a new data visualization project by Santiago Ortiz, in which he maps out the relationships between characters in The Iliad.

There are two distinct visualizations — actually three, since one of the visualizations is really a two-for-one. That’s the “network” view. It gives a grid on the left, mapping out the intersections between characters, and a sort of three-dimensional node map on the right. Move your mouse over either and observe the results!

This view, for my money, is the more difficult to use and understand, but take a look at the “stream” view (part of which is pictured above). In this two-dimensional view, the books of The Iliad are laid out horizontally (scroll with the mouse), with parallel streams representing the major characters. As in a word-cloud, the larger a character’s name, the more prominent his role at each point in the poem. It’s a little bit like the classic xkcd representation of The Lord of the Rings (if you haven’t seen it, follow this link; and note: it’s the film version).

Fascinating, eh? I think these sorts of creative visualizations can really help students grasp the complexity of expansive literary works like those of Homer, Virgil, and Tolkien.

Note: The visualizations use the HTML5 <canvas> element, so you’ll need a browser capable of rendering it. That’s most of them, but with the conspicuous exception of any version of Internet Explorer except the latest (version 9).

The already-dead, the not-quite-dead, and those who have clearly overstayed their welcome

It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead.

There’s a big difference between mostly dead
and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.

— Miracle Max, The Princess Bride*

I read an interesting blog post on the morality of the torture of Gollum yesterday, and some of the comments reminded me of another issue which has long preoccupied me: death and its exceptions in Middle-earth. One commenter wonders “about Aragorn summoning the Dead and compelling them to participate in the war against Mordor. This seems awfully close to the cursed practice of necromancy. I take it that Sauron is called ‘the Necromancer’ on account of the Ringwraiths, who are dead men.”

But the Nazgûl aren’t dead men. Not quite, anyway. They can’t be killed in any of the usual ways — “The power of their master is in them, and they stand or fall by him,” says Gandalf — but they do appear to be more or less “alive”. If not, how else is it the Witch-king of Angmar can be hurt and then killed by Merry and Éowyn? Perhaps Miracle Max would say the Nazgûl are mostly dead, but slightly alive. In the text “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”, we find the best description of them:

Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and under the domination of the One, which was Sauron’s. And they became for ever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Enemy’s most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death. [emphasis added]

But this passage raises more questions. If they are (or were) living men, how is it within Sauron’s capacity in the context of Tolkien’s larger theogonic structure to extend their lives so far? For Men, Death is the Gift of Ilúvatar (at least, according to the traditional Elvish interpretation), so how does Sauron have the authority to delay or circumvent it? If he could, does that mean Gandalf would have this power also? It seems hard to swallow. Some may point to “voices of death” to suggest the Nazgûl are, in fact, dead, but I don’t think that’s the intended reading. Rather, I think Tolkien means they are bringers of death, their cries perhaps meant to echo those of the Celtic Banshee.

One might be inclined to argue along these lines: (1) Sauron himself is immortal; (2) he put the greater part of his own power (hence, his immorality) into the Ring; (3) with the power of the Ring, he ensnared the Nine; (4) thus, he imparts to them some measure of his own immortality, making them, if not immortal, then at least longaeval. The same basic argument might be made to explain the extension of the lifespans of the bearers of the Ruling Ring, come to that, and here the argument might be a little stronger because Gollum, Bilbo, et al., actually wore Sauron’s ring, rather than merely becoming enslaved to its creator. (The Seven Rings of the Dwarves are another matter altogether!)

But the argument is problematic either way. The Ainur had no part in the making of the Children of Ilúvatar, and it is too great a leap to suppose that Sauron (who is only a Maia, not even one of the Valar [< Ainur]) could impart any of his own nature to Men. Sauron’s slaves might imitate him, but could Sauron fundamentally alter their nature? Again, the idea is hard to swallow. Could even Melkor have done this? It was within Melkor’s power to “ruin” Elves and Ents (the genesis of Orcs and Trolls). This is also problematic from the standpoint of Tolkien’s fictive theology, though he states it explicitly (but may have become uncomfortable with the idea later in life). The Valar have the wherewithal to promote to Eärendil to something like immortality, though one could argue that his nature is altered with and through the direct authority of Eru. And there are other exceptions. But those who have utterly rejected Eru (e.g., Melkor, Sauron) could make no such appeal and channel no such power. There are no exceptions to the design of Eru except through Eru, and since through Eru, they are not exceptions at all, but merely his will and his design. This is how supreme godhead works!

But the Ringwraiths are more than 4 ,000 years old by the time of the War of the Ring. How could Sauron accomplish this, and why would it be permitted by the theology Tolkien has established for his fictive world? Unless of course, Tolkien is not playing by his own rules — a distinct possibility.

The other plotline which seems to present difficulties for Tolkien’s theological structure is the journey on the Paths of the Dead. Tolkien explains that the Men of the White Mountains had worshipped Sauron in the Dark Years before the establishment of Gondor, but they swore allegiance to Isuldur in the Second Age. When Isildur called them to war, they failed in their trust, and Isildur cursed them never to depart the earth until their oath should be fulfilled. This would have occurred in the waning years of the Second Age, making the spirits of the Dead roughly 3,000 years old, give or take. If we are skeptical of Sauron’s power to prevent or delay the Gift of Ilúvatar, we should be even more dubious that Isildur could do so!

Unlike the Ringwraiths, the Dead that haunt the Dwimorberg are actually dead, not even slightly alive. Is Tolkien cheating at his own game? Can we reconcile this with what Tolkien has written elsewhere about the fates of Men and Elves? I’m not sure we can, though one obvious strategy might be to point out that all that is written in the “Silmarillion” is from the Elvish point of view. They could be mistaken about the fate of Men, or the transmission of their mythology could be faulty or incomplete, or they could be unaware of “exceptions” permitted in the design of Eru.

Another possibility would be to argue that Eru — or at least the Valar, through Eru — is taking a hand here. That Isildur’s curse would normally carry no more weight than an ordinary curse (“words, words, words”), but Eru heard his plea and empowered it with his own authority. But this seems like rationalizing away a thorny slip in the logic of Arda. And in any case, it’s hard to see how the same argument could be made for the lifespans of the Nazgûl. I don’t see any of their actions as “providential pivots” in the events of the War of the Ring.

For a novel that is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision” this is a tricky problem to resolve. The actual answer may be that Tolkien is indeed “cheating”. That is to say, he sometimes bends the rules of his carefully ordered theology in the service of storytelling. And why not? It’s his story, not history, after all.



* I would have quoted the “bring out yer dead” exchange from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but the banter isn’t easily excerpted, and many of you probably know it by heart anyway.

Speaking and spoken of

Happy Leap Day! Two events coming up in “the droghte of March” [1] to share with you today. First, I will be giving a presentation at the Art Center in Corpus Christi, along the “Texas Riviera”. This is not a free event (the cost is $20), but if you are within a day’s march, come out on March 3 at 1:00 PM to hear me speak about J.R.R. Tolkien and source criticism. Short notice, I know, but I am driving more than seven hours to be there; at least you can do the same! I will also have some copies of my book on hand at a 30% discount — and if you want them, the autograph and dazzling smile are free. ;)

To register for this event, follow this link. Yes, sadly, they did misspell my name, and the error has regrettably been repeated by newspapers and events websites in Corpus Christi, San Antonio, and elsewhere. You all know how I feel about that. Ah well, as Mae West said, to err is human, but it feels divine (apologies to Pope).

I realize some of you may live 1,500 miles north of the Lone Star State. Unless you have come south for the winter, I can’t expect you to turn up in Corpus Christi, so here’s an alternative. On March 11, members of University of Wisconsin Tolkien Society convene for their monthly meeting. This is one of the oldest and most venerable of the Tolkien groups still in business today, founded by the renowned Tolkien scholar, Richard C. West, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in September 1966 — while Tolkien was still alive! The topic of their March meeting is “Tolkien’s Sources”, and they will be focusing on my book and on Mark Hooker’s. If you are in the vicinity of Madison, drop by at 7:30 PM; the gathering is free and open to newcomers to the UWTS. Follow this link for more information about the time and location. I wish I could be there myself!


[1] Especially apt for South Texas!

In a library near you?

I’ve been keeping an eye on Worldcat as libraries — mainly at universities — acquire copies of my book. For a complete list, follow this link. I’m very pleased to report that seven months from the date of its publication, my book is now in more than 100 libraries. Those copies are spread across 34 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia, as well as four countries outside the United States — Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

My book has made it into some wonderful university collections, including those at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Wheaton, Marquette, Cornell, Berkeley, Rice, and even the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy! I’m sure there are copies in municipal and other non-academic libraries as well, but I don’t know of any way to get a handle on that information. I do know it’s in the U.S. Library of Congress and in the British Library.

If you live in a U.S. state which doesn’t have a copy (at least, not one registered in Worldcat), then please contact a librarian and request that s/he purchase the book. Those states are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island. I know students, professors, and even librarians in some of these states. I won’t name names, but I will say, tsk! If you are reading this and can help get my book into another library, please do. :)

My book reviewed in Beyond Bree

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the first extended review of my book appeared in Beyond Bree (October 2011, p. 7). The review was written by the editor, Nancy Martsch, and with her very kind permission, I am reprinting the entire review here.

When I wrote to her for permission, she added to her reply that she had noticed one slip: “Mary isn’t always represented with dark hair (Rateliff, p 149). She’s blond in Northern European art. (And in some places, dark-skinned.)” For the full context, John had written that “(the physical depiction of [Mother Mary] in traditional iconography is again entirely unlike that of Galadriel, with Mary’s dark hair and blue robes forming a striking contrast to Galadriel’s golden hair and dressing all in white”. Although I think brunette Marys outnumber blond ones (based on a totally unscientific survey), Nancy is right: there certainly are blond Marys. And not only in northern Europe. They were common in the Italian Renaissance as well. Above is a lovely example, Raphael’s Colonna Madonna (ca. 1508).

Something else, not specifically related to Nancy’s review, but this keeps coming up. In spite of the effort I have made to explain why source criticism can be valid and worthwhile in spite of Tolkien’s personal dislikes, people continue to argue the point. For example, here is Beth Withers commenting on the book at GoodReads: “Since Tolkien didn’t care for source criticism, or people spending hours trying to decide where he got his ideas, it seems strange that this book should come together. The author makes it clear from the beginning that there is indeed value in wondering what influences might have been present when Tolkien wrote his most famous work. […] But, if I am understanding Tolkien correctly, he intended only that we enjoy Middle Earth [sic] and not try to second-guess how it came into being.”

Now don’t mistake me. People are welcome to do this — it’s perfectly fair to question my assertions, pace Tolkien — but here is a good analogy which I hope may help drive home the point.

Tolkien did not like the idea of biographies of him either (“strong disapproval”, “premature impertinences”, “I doubt its relevance to criticism”), but nobody questions the value of biography in Tolkien studies today. There are several indispensable ones, and of course, a few that are not so good, along with one or two that are quite bad (but so it is in all things: good and bad, valuable and useless, mixed together). Would anyone prefer that Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond’s Chronology or John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War had never been written, simply because Tolkien was uncomfortable with being the subject of biography? The question is purely rhetorical. So if nobody avoids biographical studies (writing them or reading them) on the basis of Tolkien’s dislikes, then why do so with source criticism? One may certainly object to source criticism on other grounds, but one should not object to it merely on the basis of Tolkien’s wishes for how he should or should not be studied. That is not up to him. I tried to say this at one point in my chapter in the book (see p. 41), but I didn’t make the case as well as I could have. I hope this clear analogy helps.

Anyway, enough preamble: here is the review from Beyond Bree. I have added a few comments in square brackets, marked “/JAF/” — not to be confused with Nancy’s bracketed comment near the beginning. As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.

TOLKIEN AND THE STUDY OF HIS SOURCES
Review by Nancy Martsch

Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays ed by Jason Fisher; McFarland & Co, Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina, 2011. Paper, 5 15/16 x 9'' (15x22.9 cm), 240 pp; $40. Ten essays plus Introduction, Preface, and Index. Cover: “A Conversation with Smaug” by Ted Nasmith, with brown borders and yellow lettering above and below. [The sketch for “Smaug” was in “Beyond Bree” Oct’10. Ed.]

The purpose of this well-written and well-edited volume is to define “source criticism” and to provide examples. Tolkien expressed his disapproval of source study: should this preclude us from practicing it? The answer is a resounding “No!” In his “Introduction” Tom Shippey cites specific reasons why Tolkien might have objected to the study of his sources, and he proposes three areas where source-criticism can enhance our appreciation of Tolkien’s work: personal/ cultural, professional/historical, and the “Cauldron of Story”.

The first two essays attempt to define source criticism. EL Risden describes types of source criticism, especially its derivation from the study of Biblical sources. Jason Fisher defines the terms of his study: How do we recognize a good source? Tolkien, Fisher asserts, resembled the Medieval writer who is willing to modify his sources but not to invent from scratch. [Note: that’s not exactly what I say. Both Medieval writers and Tolkien certainly did invent from scratch. See pp. 32–4. /JAF/] If a scholar cannot verify a source, says Fisher, then he should present his findings as a comparative study.

The eight remaining essays are examples of source criticism, following the criteria defined above. In “The Stones and the Book: Tolkien, Mesopotamia, and Biblical Mythopoeia”, Nicholas Birns sees echoes of Old Testament stories in Tolkien’s legendarium: the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood. Two of these, the Creation and the Flood, predate the Hebrew Bible, having antecedents in Mesopotamian myth — and many discoveries about Mesopotamia were made before or during Tolkien’s lifetime. If the world of his legendarium pre-dates the Bible, then Tolkien could incorporate Semitic prehistory into his work. But the Fall, being of Hebrew origin, remained off-limits.

Astronomer Kristine Larsen takes the Classical legend of Ceyx and Alcyone (Halcyon), married lovers who were transformed into sea birds, and compares it to various forms of the story of Eärendil and Elwing. Tolkien knew the legend from both Classical and Medieval sources. Larsen remarks on Tolkien’s astronomical knowledge, and equates Eärendil and Elwing to the planets Venus and Mercury in the morning and evening sky. [Something that has occurred to me but isn’t in the book: if Larsen is correct, as I think she is, then Tolkien has reversed the genders again, just as he did with the Sun and Moon. In Classical mythology, Venus is a woman and Mercury a man. /JAF/]

In “‘Byzantium, New Rome!’ Goths, Langobards, and Byzantium in The Lord of the Rings” Miryam Librán-Moreno lists many parallels between Byzantine history and events in LOTR, noting that Tolkien mixed and recombined his sources. She suggests that, if Byzantium = Gondor, and Byzantium could be seen both as corrupt and as a keeper of knowledge, then Aragorn might represent Charlemagne, who both revived knowledge and restored the purer Northern tradition.

Thomas Honegger offers a resolution to the apparent contradiction of the Rohirrim as “Anglo-Saxons on horseback”. When Tolkien needed a language related to modern English to represent the speech of the Rohirrim, he used Mercian Old English, a language which he knew well. Furthermore, of all the early Germanic languages, Old English (Anglo-Saxon) has the largest extant literature, and provides the most information about its speakers. Thus Tolkien could envision his fictional Rohirrim as representing the “pure Germanic spirit” while speaking Anglo-Saxon.

Judy Ann Ford suggests “William Caxton’s The Golden Legend as a Source for Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings”, noting that this medieval best-seller, a compendium of saints’ lives, contains many fantastic elements. “Religious” writing should not be overlooked as a source for fantasy! John D Rateliff gives an analysis of Rider Haggard’s She (which Tolkien read as a boy), comparing Ayesha and Galadriel; Leo & Ayesha and Beren & Lúthien; Kôr, Gondolin, and Númenor; and the concept (and problems) of limited immortality. Mark T Hooker does a similar study of three works by John Buchan: Midwinter (Tom Bombadil, deep pit, ring), The Blanket of the Dark (Old Forest, Strider), and Huntingtower (many similarities to Bilbo and elements of LOTR). The Huntingtower segment is reprinted (with permission) from “Beyond Bree” Sept, Oct, Nov’08. (There are a couple of other borrowings (uncredited) from “Beyond Bree” in this book. [I am not sure what Nancy is referring to here. It must be other passages from elsewhere in Mark Hooker’s essay. /JAF/])

Lastly, Diana Pavlac Glyer and Josh B Long use Tolkien’s life as a source, focusing on autobiographical elements in “The Lost Road”, “The Notion Club Papers”, and Smith of Wootton Major.

Tolkien and the Study of His Sources is an excellent book which can serve as a “how-to” guide for both research and writing. The authors are careful to avoid the assertion x = y, noting that Tolkien drew upon many sources. It is important to consider Tolkien’s work in relation to events of his time (such as the discovery of Hittite). And finally one may derive ideas from Tolkien’s work, such as Librán-Moreno’s comparison of Aragorn to Charlemagne, which may not have been intended by the author but which may enhance the reader’s enjoyment of his writing.

Is this a review? You tell me.

I learned a few days ago that Amon Hen, the monthly publication of the Tolkien Society in Great Britain, had just published a review of my book in its most recent issue. I am afraid I let my subscription lapse some years ago, so I had to beg a copy of friends. The editor very kindly obliged. I had been warned already that it was not particularly flattering, but I have no objections whatsoever to a critical review — if it is an informed, carefully considered, and constructive one. Sadly, this review is not that. I hesitate to call it a review at all.

I am really at a bit of a loss after reading it. It comes across as less a review, per se, than the personal credo of a true believer. How dare I look behind the curtain, and that sort of thing. For those of you who know it, I was reminded a bit of the preface to the first edition of J.E.A. Tyler’s The Tolkien Companion (1976). This preface, with its true-believer silliness, was wisely dropped from the more recent reprint edition of that book. But it appears there are still fans of this stripe going strong, dutifully defending the Professor from every perceived attack of scholarly investigation. The nerve I have!

It’s a great pity, in my view, that a serious scholarly book, which ought to call for a serious scholarly review, should be subjected to such careless and pointless ramblings. And of the shameful abuse of a Tom Shippey quotation, the less said the better! My consolation, of course, is that no serious reader will take seriously a “review” of this sort. But I have already said too much, when I had intended to remain above the fray. Let me say no more now, but allow the review to speak for itself. I welcome your comments and reactions (though let's keep it civil).

TOLKIEN and the Study of His Sources CRITICAL ESSAYS
Edited by JASON FISHER
(McFarland, 2011 www.mcfarlandpub.com ISBN 978-0-7864-6482-1; PB 240pp)
reviewed by Adrian Tucker

Source Criticism – something to strike fear and loathing into the hearts of those of us who like to believe that The Lord of the Rings is a true account of an alternative world history. We can console ourselves with the knowledge that Tolkien felt the same way.

Clearly someone with his classical education would have been aware of the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire, and would have used it to give a sense of familiarity to his history of Númenor; but to quote Tom Shippey in his Introduction “no-one needs to know… to appreciate The Lord of the Rings.” Still, there are those who must enquire into everything, and the name for such people is Source Critic.

Anyone can set themselves up as a Source Critic: there is no academic qualification to be attained, only access to a Search Engine such as Google. Just type in a word like “Uruk” and see what pops up. It won’t be long before there’s an App for it!

There are various areas to be explored, such as Biblical, Nordic, Classical, Byzantine, Anglo-Saxon, and Medieval; but the most interesting for me is contemporary fiction.

My School Library, like Tolkien’s, was stacked with Henty, Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, and Buchan. Like him, I was brought up on adventure, and treasure hunts in the Wild Places, unlike modern children, who have to make do with gritty tales of urban realism.

I was surprised to learn that J.R.R. was a fan of She, a tale which enchanted my early years, but it never occurred to me to regard it as a source for Galadriel! Indeed, Ayesha seems to me a much more powerful figure than the Lady of Lórien, who plays a fairly peripheral part in the Destruction of the One Ring. Almost any tale of mines and caves can contain allusions to Moria or Cirith Ungol, but we have to show that Tolkien actually read them and he has admitted to having read Haggard in his schooldays. Unlike him, I missed out on John Buchan’s historical novels, which are hard to find nowadays except perhaps in a Charity Shop.

Anyway, this is all quite fascinating, so long as it does not spoil one’s appreciation of the Book which never disappoints, no matter how many times it is re-read. Let those who wish, seek for Sources even in the pages of The Beano!!