The origins of Tolkien’s “Errantry” — Part 1

We’ve been talking a little bit about Tolkien’s early poetry over the last few days, in the comments to my last post, as well as in some email the post prompted (a more selective we there :). In one of those comments, I mentioned that I had once considered assembling a variorum edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. That statement led N.E. Brigand to share via email an abstract for a paper he’s proposed writing on a related subject, and in that abstract was a comment which jogged a faint chord of memory — all of which “set the rocket off” for a post on some of the sources (or at least some overwhelming analogues) for “Errantry”, one of Tolkien’s most famous early poems.

That catalytic statement, which I don’t think N.E. Brigand will mind my sharing, was this: “even ten years later [i.e., after the publication of ATB], Paul Kocher, one of Tolkien’s most astute interpreters, was treating ‘Errantry’ as if it derived from ‘Eärendil was a mariner’, when the reverse is true.” Indeed, and this is what I remembered: that it was not only Kocher who missed something important in his approach to the poem, but also Randel Helms.

Just over twenty-five years ago, John Rateliff published a short but valuable piece in Notes and Queries. He writes:

In his book Tolkien’s World Randel Helms suggests that many of the poems in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil are scholarly parodies and singles out one, ‘Errantry’, as ‘a friendly parody of Charles Williams’ Taliessin poems’. Aside from the fact that ‘Errantry’ was originally published [...] five years before Taliessin Through Logres, Helms has missed a much more obvious parallel: that between ‘Errantry’ and Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Sir Topas’. [1]

I would add that not only was “Errantry” first published in a 1933 issue of Oxford Magazine, it was certainly drafted much earlier. Tolkien recalled reciting it during one of the earliest meetings of the Inklings, in the early 1930’s, and it was in existence well before that. A penciled draft survives, along with five further revisions, all predating the first publication. [2] It may therefore have predated Williams’s Taliessin poems by perhaps as much as a decade!

Chaucer’s tale, for those unfamiliar with it, is something of a parody of more serious works of the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the “Thomas Rhymer” traditions. It’s well worth reading. In his note, Rateliff offers a half-dozen illustrative lines from the poem. I’ll give you a little extra here, to give you a bit more of the flavor [3]:

His heer, his berd was lyk saffroun,
That to his girdel raughte adoun;
His shoon of Cordewane.
Of Brugges were his hosen broun,
His robe was of ciclatoun,
That coste many a Iane.
[...]
His Iambeux were of quyboilly,
His swerdes shethe of yuory,
His helm of laton bryght;
His sadel was of rewel boon,
His brydel as the sonne shoon,
Or as the mone lyght.

His spere was of fyn ciprees, [...]

[And so on. I could easily have quoted a dozen other lines of much the same sort.]

One can’t help but notice just how similar these lines are to those in “Errantry” (and to those in its more serious-minded descendent, “Eärendil was a mariner”). And if you don’t know what Cordewane, ciclatoun, or quyrboilly might be, well, did you really know what habergeon, chalcedony, and malachite were? ;)

And I hope you noticed the “rewel boon”. Ruel-bone (variously spelled, rewel, rowell, reuel, etc.) refers to a somewhat uncertain material, but probably whale ivory (note that Sir Topas’s sword-sheath is also made of ivory), and it’s fairly common in Middle English literature. Tolkien himself used this term elsewhere: in jottings on the story of Tuor and Turgon, where Turgon has a sheath of ruel-bone; also in The Lay of Leithian — “'teeth like ruel-bone”; and in the poem “The Sea-Bell” — “cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone”). Equally (if not more) interestingly, there is also Tolkien’s middle name, Reuel — unrelated except by a coincidence of its sound and word-shape, but evocative nonetheless. [4]

There are two other important elements in Sir Topas I should mention. One is the presence of the “queen of Faïrye” in the story; the other is “a greet geaunt” going by the name, “sir Olifaunt”. That should naturally strike a third note in the chord of memory — “Oliphaunt” (like “Errantry” and “The Sea-Bell”) is another poem collected in, but written and published prior to, The Adventures of Tom Bomabil. And like “Errantry” (but unlike “The Sea-Bell”), “Oliphaunt” was incorporated directly into The Lord of the Rings. “Oliphant”, of course, has its own history, which I will not rehearse here. But most of the poems comprising ATB were being written and published during the 1920’s–30’s; the three I’ve written about here can be further narrowed down to roughly 1927–34, a time when Tolkien was doing major work with Chaucer (culminating in his 1934 essay, “Chaucer as a Philologist”).

Rateliff doesn’t mention any of this (the ruel-bone; the Queen of Faëry, to use Tolkien’s spelling; or the Giant called Olifaunt) in his short piece — he presses no further than the similarity of the lines of the formula, “his this was of that” — but I think all these points deepen the probability that Sir Topas was a conscious source for Tolkien. In my next post, I’m going to discuss another possible source (or analogue, at least), and probably a more controversial one. Stay tuned for that, and in the meantime, please feel free to comment on this first post. I will probably put this post and the next one together as a conference paper, to be eventually rewritten and submitted for publication, so I welcome feedback.

[1] Rateliff, John D. “J.R.R. Tolkien: ‘Sir Topas’ Revisited.” Notes and Queries Volume 29, Number 4 (August 1982), p. 348.
[2] J.R.R. Tolkien. The Treason of Isengard. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1989, pp. 85–6.
[3] The text quoted here is from Walter Skeat’s 1880 edition.
[4] See also Gilliver, Peter, Jeremy Marshall, and E.S.C. Weiner. The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 181–2.

Tolkien Studies 5 — at long last!

As regular readers of Lingwë will know, the latest volume of Tolkien Studies has been available online to Project Muse subscribers since the middle of July, and I’ve been chomping at the bit (to fall back on a regionalism here in Texas) for my copy ever since. I’d hoped to have it in my hands before I left for Mythcon in the middle of August, but that date came and went too. I’ve now learned that due to a miscommunication between WVUP and their distributor, the contributor copies never went out! At least, not until I had squeaked about it several times. My most recent nag resulted in the discovery that the distributor had never dealt with the list of contributor copies, and once WVUP realized that, the copies went out immediately. I got mine, at long last, this past Friday. Since then, I’ve been looking through it eagerly. I suppose I can take credit for the whole throng of contributors finally getting their copies, if I’m willing to admit I’m a real whiner. ;) (Actually, I was very nice and pretty patient in each of my messages.)

The issue contains loads of great stuff, as usual, and it will take some time to digest, again as usual. Some of the highlights include the featured essay by Brian Rosebury, on revenge and moral judgment; an article by Carl Phelpstead on the prosimetric qualities of The Lord of the Rings; Corey Olsen’s paper on the Ents and Entwives, which I saw delivered in Vermont in 2007; and my own essay on the Three Elven Rings. Even better, immediately following my essay, Tolkien’s substantial essay on “Chaucer as a Philologist” is finally brought back into print after more than 70 years, along with the version of The Reeve’s Tale Tolkien prepared for recitation in 1939 (an even rarer piece). That’s Chaucer’s Reeve pictured on the cover of the issue (above), from the Ellesmere MS.

Volume 5 also contains the usual assortment of book reviews, an extensive Year’s Work essay by David Bratman, and the Bibliography for 2006. I am pleased to say that I have two entries in the bibliography, and that I am mentioned (also twice) in the book reviews. (I may get into Bratman’s Year’s Work essay next year. :) The two items in the bibliography are my essays on Tolkien and George MacDonald, published in North Wind, and “‘Man does as he is when he may do as he wishes’: The Perennial Modernity of Free Will”, published in the collection, Tolkien and Modernity (Walking Tree).

The latter is also one of the book reviews. My essay is really only mentioned, not judged, in the review by Shaun Hughes. He had an awful lot to cover in his review, so I suppose I would rather get no more than a mention than be severely criticized, hahae. Still, something more substantive would have been nice. In actuality, there may be more of an engagement with my essay than is at first apparent: Hughes spends nearly a full page [p. 250] on the Boethian view of free will, something I took up in my essay at some length. Though he says nothing so specific, perhaps those comments were stimulated by my paper.

The real easter egg was in the same review, but in a quite unexpected place. Talking about Tolkien’s treatment of wanhope (“despair”) [pp. 246—7], Hughes directs readers to the article by Anthony Burdge and Jessica Burke on that subject in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment — and to my own review of that entry in the Tolkien Encyclopedia Diary. Which actually gave me another unforeseen citation in the issue [p. 256]. Hughes makes no judgment of his own on the Burdge / Burke essay, or on my critique of it, but I wonder very much what he was thinking.

I will be reading and absorbing the rest of the issue for some time to come, but in the meantime, I welcome any and all feedback on my essay, as well as comments of any kind of the issue in general. I have read one reaction to my essay already, here. The review was highly complimentary — which I appreciated, of course — but with a couple of small quibbles too — which I welcome just as much. Anyone else care to comment, question, or critique? :)

WOTD: Oubliette

I found my arms swathed down — my feet tied so fast that mine ankles ache at the very remembrance — the place was utterly dark — the oubliette, I suppose, of their accursed convent, and from the close, stifled, damp smell, I conceive it is also used for a place of sepulture.

— Ivanoe, Sir Walter Scott (1819)

This is a wonderful little word. An oubliette is a dungeon or prison cell whose only means of egress is through a trapdoor in the ceiling. For that reason, it’s usually deep underground, dark, cold, and made of earth and stone. It’s basically the opposite of the chamber in which Frodo was imprisoned in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, which was at the very top of the tower and could be reached only through a trapdoor in its floor, though I daresay one might still call that an oubliette.

The etymology of the word should be readily apparent to French speakers. It derives (fairly recently, too) from the French oublier “to forget”, which in turn comes from Latin oblīvisci “to forget” (and from which we derive the Modern English oblivion). With this etymology in mind, the chamber in the Tower of Cirith Ungol really would have become an oubliette if Sam hadn’t come along, and all the Orcs had killed each other off leaving Frodo all alone in the Tower!

With a slightly related etymology and meaning is perdition. Like oubliette, the word comes to us from Latin by way of French. In this case, it’s the French perdre “to lose” (which is not so different from forgetting), from Latin perdĕre, which means “to lose utterly; to destroy, finish, ruin” (more literally per “to an end” + dăre “to put”). Perdition refers more figuratively to eternal punishment in hell, which is rather what being lost or forgotten in an oubliette must feel like. I can’t help but think of the Man in the Iron Mask.

Are there opportunities to use oubliette metaphorically in the world today? Ever been stuck in an elevator between floors? I have, and I’d say it’s pretty close. A small, claustrophobic cell from which the only escape may be through a trapdoor in the ceiling. More rhetorically, one might use the word to describe a kind of figurative cul de sac in an argument, or perhaps a social or political trap into which one has fallen.

Remembering 9/11/2001

There are so many possible clips, so many things I might say (even at the risk of too much presumptuousness, for me to speak from such a distance in time and space from those events). So rather than do that, let me offer you this very moving clip of Jon Stewart in what must certainly be The Daily Show’s finest hour.

Rain, rain, go away ...

Rain yesterday, rain today, rain tomorrow. And it’s looking like Hurricane Ike will be pulling into town some time this weekend. Certainly much diminished by then (and I absolutely do not mean to make light of the storm or the travails of anybody in its immediate path, past, present, or future) — but still bringing a lot of rain. Well, I suppose we need it; we’ve been suffering through drought conditions here in North Texas all year. And at least, Mother Nature will be helping me water my lawn instead of the City of Dallas. I try to see the silver lining in any major catastrophe, you see.

But it means wiping my dogs’ feet constantly. Come on! *sigh* :)

Recent ego-surfing

Like most independent scholars of moderate ego (okay, giant ego, but I’m working on that ;), I have a healthy interest in tracking down references to my publications and posts. As such, I find myself ego-surfing on a pretty regular basis, and so I thought I’d share a few of the more interesting places I’ve turned up online recently. (A topic for a different post would be all the weird or terrible things other Jason Fishers are out there doing, tarnishing my good name!)

It wasn’t unexpected, but I was tickled to find myself finally appearing in Google Scholar searches, mainly thanks to my recent article in Tolkien Studies, and to a review in the same issue of a book for which I wrote a chapter. More on that in a future post. What was very unexpected, on the other hand, was to find that I am mentioned by name in Wikipedia’s major entry on The Hobbit. And no, I didn’t put it there myself! ;) In fact, I’m cited twice in the article; in both cases, it’s my review of John Rateliff’s The History of The Hobbit (published in Mythlore 101/102) being referred to. In the first case, my own words are quoted; in the second, a modicum of Old Norse source-study I incorporated into my review. The additions, made by one Davemon back in May, came as a pleasant surprise.

I’ve also been making a regular appearance on Richard Nokes’s excellent medieval website, Unlocked Wordhoard. Since he added me to his blogroll about three months ago, he’s linked to me a half a dozen or so times. I’m grateful for it. Over the last year and more, various other blogs have summarized, responded to, and/or linked to my posts, too. A small sampling of some of the more interesting ones: Elendilion, commenting on my post about the Tolkien Encyclopedia Diary, among other posts [in Polish]; a post on “Elven Latin” at Face of the Moon, linking to my musings on the etymologies and relationships between Gandalf and Albus Dumbledore; Sam Riddleburger’s thoughts on my thoughts on his thoughts (wait, what?) on Lloyd Alexander; a response to my post about the mythical Marathi Hobbit, among other posts [in Spanish]; and a detailed answer to my post on “old Entish swords” in Beowulf and Tolkien over at Eldamar [in Italian]. Finally, a nod to L’Imbrattacarte, where I got a special honor of being mentioned in the blog’s very first (and so far, only) post [in Italian].

This mutual admiration society runs both ways, too. Since I posted a link to Randy Hoyt’s new mythopoeic website, Journey to the Sea, for example, I’ve seen two or three other sites pick up on that post and link to him as well. To some extent, we all share our traffic, and these links and blogrolls can be crucial for reaching a larger audience — which, let’s be honest, is really why we’re all doing this: to be read. And so, thanks for reading this post, and thanks to everyone who has linked back to me from their own blogs and websites. Much obliged.

And now, let the ego-surfing resume. :)

Do Tolkien’s Elves have free will? Do we?

The question is less innocent than it sounds. At Mythcon earlier this month, I heard two presentations on the subject of whether the Elves in Middle-earth exhibit free will or some kind of predestination. I gave a short summary of the two papers, by Carl Hostetter and Verlyn Flieger respectively, in my conference report, here. As I wrote in the report, an argument (but a civil one) took off immediately and raged during the entire weekend, and now well beyond it, giving “the whole Shire something to talk about for nine days, or ninety-nine more likely.”

Last week, I opened this Pandora’s Box on TORn, posting the same summaries and ultimate question: do Tolkien’s Elves have free will? The debate there has been one of the liveliest I’ve ever seen on the site, with almost 150 responses — and counting! Carl Hostetter has even stopped by to further elucidate Tolkien’s unpublished thoughts on Elvish fate and will, as situated in their concepts of ambar and umbar.

In a way, the question can actually be abstracted to ask to what extent a fictional being created by any author (with the authority, one might say, equivalent to that of God, but within a narrower scope) can exhibit free will. (Hence my illustration above, which I hope you enjoyed. I spent entirely too much time on it! ;) We tend to talk about Tolkien’s Elves, Men, Dwarves, and Hobbits as if they were actually real, living beings, independent of their Author. Dorothy Sayers has much to say on this subject in The Mind of the Maker, and I could appeal to Tolkien’s concept of the sub-creator, too (as described in “On Fairy-stories” and in his published letters). Sayers was a Catholic like Tolkien, but Lewis, an Anglican, espoused similar views on sub-creation.

And so, to continue, might we argue just as well (or ill) about whether Shakespeare’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had a free choice whether to go to England or not (whereby avoiding death)? That may sound silly, but the question isn’t entirely rhetorical — just ask Harry Potter fans whether they feel that Harry, Ron, and Hermione are “real” people capable of making their own “free” choices. In a way, the whole essence of fanfic is to follow through on the consequences of such assumptions. I didn’t bring up any of this on the TORn thread, though; I think they’re just about ready to start throwing things at me as it is! ;)

A thorny subject, but an interesting one! Perhaps it’s even worth getting scratched up a little in the debate. Stop by TORn and read along, or post your own thoughts — there or here.

A new site for comparative mythology studies

Last month, my friend Randy Hoyt (who is, incidentally, the webmaster for the Mythopoeic Society) launched “a new online magazine devoted to the study of myth — particularly comparative mythology and the role of myth in our everyday lives.”

The online ’zine takes its name from Tuor’s journey to the sea to meet Ulmo, as Randy explains here. Depictions of those rare personal encounters between gods and lesser beings have the potential to be extremely powerful, especially when handled by a writer with Tolkien’s skill. (C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton had this gift as well; let me refer readers to Till We Have Faces and The Man Who Was Thursday.) The choice of “Journey to the Sea”, therefore, seems very appropriate indeed — representing a place for deeply mythical experiences at the margins between the domains of the gods and of men, or between the quotidian world and Faërie.

Two issues have been published so far: Issue 1 (July 1, 2008), and Issue 2 (August 1, 2008). If all goes as expected, we should have another issue next week. Randy, I assume you are working on this now? The site is beautifully designed, too, with muted grey-scale illustrations, and the kind of balance between illustrations and text, and between white space and content, that could only come from a professional web developer (which Randy indeed happens to be). For the sake of comparison, visit just about any page on MySpace or LiveJournal (which I’m convinced have set web design back at least a decade).

Reading over these two issues, I particularly enjoyed the article on Milton’s Satan. Why don’t you stop by and see which ones speak to you. And if you keep coming back, you may just find a contribution by yours truly in the not too distant future.

Mythcon Conference Report

I’m back from Mythcon and finally (I think) caught up. Mythcon 39 at the Central Connecticut State University in New Britain was only my second Mythcon. My first was two years ago, in Oklahoma, before I started writing Lingwë. Like that gathering, this one was on the smaller side — or so the long-time Mythies tell me — and the first ever in New England. In addition to the conference report to follow, you can read some others’ opinions in this thread, as well as David Bratman’s posts on the conference, here and here. (I’ll add others as I happen upon them, and I invite those who were also there to chime in as well.)

The conference officially began Friday afternoon, but people (like me) started trickling in as early as Thursday afternoon. Those early birds got a head start enjoying such amenities as no air conditioning in the dorm rooms, no sheets or pillow cases (only a scratchy “prison blanket” and lumpy pillow), no towels for the shower, no soap or paper towels in the bathrooms ... I could go on. Suffice it to say there was no lack of things lacking!

The food was edible, if not exciting. Think Army food. Most meals seemed to consist of the same exact set of dishes, with one or two new ones added to each meal and the earlier ones eventually running out. There was a green-bean-with-mushrooms side dish that I swear I saw at four or five meals in a row. Ditto some kind of cold penne with onions and feta cheese. Not something you really want sitting around for days on end, is it? We also had the privilege of being drowned out by the football team during most meals. I found myself actively trying to get to the chow hall early, hoping to have finished around the time they came rampaging in like stampeding elephants. One memorable image: some kind of linebacker — or something; what do I know? But he was big! — shaking a chair he’d broken over his head in triumph while his teammates hooted and hollered. I couldn’t help but think of the Dum-Dum in Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes.

But despite all those little (and not so little) things worth complaining about, and which we all joked about together in common suffering, the Mythcon itself was great. I heard some excellent papers from familiar scholars and new ones, sat in on a couple of panels (plus my own), broke bread many times with many different combinations of people, and stayed up talking late into the night (or early into the morning, depending on your point of view). Here’s a rough idea of what I did and heard at Mythcon.

My own paper was the first of the conference. I thought it went well; I’m getting good feedback. I had a large audience, just about filling the room. I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 or more people, including Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, Verlyn Flieger, Carl Hostetter, Arden Smith, David Bratman, Janet Croft, Alexei Kondratiev, Chris Gilson, Jessica Burke and Anthony Burdge, Faye Ringel — and three friends from the Reading Room at TORn, two of whom I was meeting for the first time. My PowerPoint slideshow worked pretty much as I’d planned, though the second slide gave me some trouble (for some unfathomable reason — personally, I blame Windows Vista). The Q&A also yielded some great comments, in particular from Carl and Faye. I won’t say anything else about my own paper, but invite others to offer their thoughts — including criticism. I know, for example, that one particular section of my paper (on Khamûl) isn’t particularly persuasive, even though I still like it myself. I had planned to listen to David Bratman’s paper immediately following, but I missed half of it because of hallway conversations after my own. So next, for me, was ...

Carl Hostetter, “‘The Circles of the World’: Fate, Free Will, and the Oikumeme in Elvish Thought” — Little did we know that this was just the first salvo in what would become the Great Debate around which the entire conference eventually seemed to revolve. More on that in a moment. Carl’s paper was less a paper (at present; he’s continuing to work it up into one) than a series of quotations from Tolkien on the subject, including about three pages of unpublished notes from late 1968 or 1969 on the Elves’ ideas of fate and free will. That was very interesting, and Carl did a nice job explaining Tolkien’s sometimes sketchy and confused adumbrations (though it will be even more convincing once Carl has written more of the apparatus to connect the parts). In the final analysis, Carl demonstrated Tolkien’s apparent view that the Elves do indeed possess free will. This is the side on which I find myself, too, but not everyone agreed. I also appreciated Carl’s disquisition on the Elvish terms ambar and umbar, from the root MBAR; I had touched on this in my last Mythcon paper (two years ago), but I don’t think I’d had the relationship between them quite right in my head then.

The Planetarium Show — Kris Larsen, in addition to presenting a full paper later in the weekend, put on a wonderful show in the planetarium in Copernicus Hall (where she works). She took us on a tour of the Ainulindalë, pointing out the stars, planets, and constellations Tolkien describes in his legendarium — at least, the ones which have been identified with any degree of certainty. I hadn’t been to a planetarium show since childhood, and I really enjoyed it (a crick in the neck notwithstanding). The only thing I would suggest for Kris is that she work on her Elvish pronunciation a bit — talk about a Connecticut Yankee in King Thingol’s Court. ;) Moving on to Saturday morning ...

We held Opening Ceremonies, followed by the Guest of Honor presentation by Marjorie Burns. Unfortunately for me (and you), I didn’t have my pen and paper to take notes, so I simply had to enjoy the talk without being able to record any of the specifics. It was a very solid piece of work, however. In it, she compared and contrasted Mary, Varda, and Galadriel, as well as related figures and elements. The touchstone there was the conference theme of the “valkyrie and the goddess.” She also had much to say about George MacDonald’s Curdie books, which I really ought to read. (I’ve so far done no more than skim The Princess and the Goblin.) Others will no doubt be able to do a better job summarizing it, so I will leave it at that. One interesting note is that Marjorie was wearing a traditional, hand-made bunad. My photos weren’t great because of my distance from the stage, but here’s the best I can offer.

After this, I attended the paper by Don Williams. He had veered away from his previously announced topic and gave a largely theological talk on the so-called trilemma of C.S. Lewis (from Mere Christianity). I didn’t quite get the new title, sorry. In his paper, Don attempted to mount a defense of Lewis’s argument against three critiques of it: an earlier one by John Beversluis, and two published within the last year, by N.T. Wright and Marvin Hinton. Apart from having ‘merely’ read Mere Christianity, I wasn’t well enough grounded in this debate to venture much opinion. I can, of course, argue a point of logic, and quite doggedly, but there seemed no purpose to it. David Bratman, on the other hand, was riled up for the debate; he interrupted twice, grumbled to himself frequently, and disputed several of Don’s points. David and Don know the subject far better than I ever will, so I’ll leave the debate to them. Later that day came a paper I’d been eagerly awaiting ...

Christina Scull, “Memory as Evidence in Tolkien Scholarship” — This was a beauty of a paper, spotlighting the question (often overlooked) of whether and to what degree personal recollection may be put forward as evidence in scholarship. And we aren’t talking only about the memories of Tolkien’s family and friends, but of the Professor himself. One of Christina’s examples was well known to me (Tolkien’s various mistaken statements on the date of the Andrew Lang lecture which eventually became “On Fairy-stories”), but others were less familiar. In particular, the memories of George Sayer and Michael Tolkien were called into question. The paper was a cautionary tale to scholars of all levels of experience, presented with skill and humor by a prima inter pares.

Panel, “The Valkyrie and the Goddess: Women and Mythopoeic Fiction” — The panel consisted of Marjorie Burns, Verlyn Flieger, Leslie Donovan, and author Guest of Honor Sharan Newman, with Jessica Burke moderating. I thought the conversation was pretty good, though it meandered quite a bit. It turned out that Jessica was not able to present her own planned paper for Mythcon, on Guinevere, so I was glad to hear her bring some of that into the conversation. Sharan Newman also had some interesting contributions, and since I was unfamiliar with her fiction (and her scholarship) before this, I welcomed the opportunity to hear more.

The evening belonged to Verlyn Flieger, who presented a paper on “Fate and Free Will in Middle-earth” — basically the counterargument to Carl’s paper the day before. Verlyn opened by pointing out how her talk would demonstrate the true nature of scholarship: two scholars evaluating the same evidence and coming to antipodal conclusions. Her take on the question was that Men do, but Elves do not, possess free will. The paper was beautifully written and delivered, but I have to question the conclusion. As I said earlier, the debate between Carl and Verlyn was acted out again and again in hallway and meal-time conversations over the whole weekend (and was parodied brilliantly by the Not-Ready-for-Mythcon Players too, see photo below). As a side note, Verlyn indirectly cited me in her talk when she noted that the Tolkien and Modernity collection from Walking Tree contains three essays on the same topic — one of those is mine. Nice to know Verlyn has read it. :)

On Sunday, I attended the panel, “Fairy Stories: A Discussion of ‘On Fairy-stories’” — which unfortunately jumped the track (in my view) early on and never seemed to get back onto it. I couldn’t stay for the entire panel, but I heard the same from others. The overall conversation was pretty interesting, don’t get me wrong, but unfocused. And in any case, it wasn’t a discussion of “On Fairy-stories”, which was disappointing considering that one of the editors of the new expanded edition of that work was on the panel! That’s Verlyn Flieger; joining her was Marjorie Burns and Bernadette Bosky, and the moderator was Anthony Burdge. I felt that by failing to really steer the conversation into the territory of the essay, an opportunity was missed. Verlyn herself had to caution more than once (and rightly) that Tolkien’s Faerie is not the same, nor necessarily even compatible with, the many other views on that realm being brought up by the audience (and even others on the panel). As I said, I had to leave the panel after about an hour to head over to ...

Wayne Hammond, “At Home Among the Dreaming Spires: Tolkien and Oxford University” — Another remarkable paper. This might not have been everybody’s cup of tea, I suppose, but the purpose of Wayne’s talk was to describe Tolkien’s relationship with and work for the university, over some thirty years. This subject is often given short shrift, or ignored completely, but Wayne and Christina are in the unique position (from having written their Chronology) of understanding its importance better than probably anybody else in the world. Wayne brought home, powerfully, the incredible volume of labor Tolkien had to do for Oxford — teaching, attending meetings, committees and societies, advising and examining students, and so on, ad defatigationem — leaving us all the more amazed that Tolkien was able to accomplish anything else at all (academic research, fiction, correspondence, maintaining a personal diary, creation of his own invented languages — let alone spending time with his family). And yet he did all of those things, something one can’t fully appreciate without having some understand of the details of Tolkien’s professional career.

One side-note. My cell phone — or rather, my wife’s — went off during Wayne’s paper. I had thought I turned it off, but Duran Duran’s “Rio” loudly proclaimed otherwise. It was embarrassing, but funny. I apologized then, but let me do so again: if you’re reading, Wayne, or anybody else who was there, I’m very sorry for the interruption. I’ll see to it that it doesn’t happen again. Or if it does, that it’s at least Tolkien’s own performance of the Troll Song, or something else more suitable. :)

Following Wayne’s paper, I heard Diana Glyer, “C.S. Lewis in Disguise: Fictional Portraits of Jack in the Work of the Inklings” — The paper, Diana herself told us, had not (so far) revealed any major conclusions or unearthed any significant new understanding of the Inklings. But even so, the paper was very enjoyable, and well presented. I hadn’t met Diana before, but this was (I thought) a great introduction. She pointed out the hidden caricatures of Lewis in three works of Barfield (which I now must read), and two of Tolkien (of which I was aware already). The paper, like its author, was witty, personable, and charming. Wonderful. And let me add my congratulations to Diana (and David Bratman) for their Mythopoeic Scholarship Award! (And Diana is scheduled to be the Scholar Guest of Honor at next year’s Mythcon.)

Kristine Larsen, “Sea Birds and Morning Stars: Ceyx, Alcyone, and the Many Metamorphoses of Eärendil and Elwing” — This was another excellent paper. For those of you who don’t know Kris or her work, she’s an astrophysicist who both uses Tolkien in her teaching and studies his use of astronomical and meteorological elements in his fiction. This is a unique enough avenue for research, but that she does it so well is all the better for us. I first met her in April 2007 at the University of Vermont, where she gave a paper on Varda (subsequently published by Mallorn). She’s also been published in Tolkien Studies (and elsewhere), and I think she’s doing some of the most fascinating specialized work on Tolkien today. Her Mythcon paper was a source study of Eärendil/Elwing in the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone, recorded severally by Hesiod, Apollodorus, and Ovid (among others), and transmitted again (in part) in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess. It was some great work, and it was refreshing to see Eärendil approached from a new angle. As Carl Hostetter pointed out during the Q&A, Ceyx and Alcyone is hardly the only source for Eärendil and Elwing, but it’s pretty clear that it was one of Tolkien’s sources.

Nicholas Birns, “Esoteric and Democratic: Tradition in Rowling, Tolkien, and Lewis” — I last saw Nick at the same Vermont conference I just mentioned, as well as the one before that (2006). I also had an advance look at his review of The Children of Húrin for the current volume of Tolkien Studies. The thing that amazes me about Nick is that he appears not to be reading his papers at all! Either he is somehow doing so with the best use of peripheral vision I’ve ever seen, or he’s got it completely memorized, or he is able to assemble a cogent, articulate talk on the fly from notes. Any one of these is impressive! Although I think his paper could have benefited from a clearer statement of purpose up front, and a fuller and clearer summarization of conclusions at the end, it was good, its argument sound. Nick made some very good points about the differences between the three authors (though Lewis got the shortest shrift). Particularly apt was Nick’s observation that “magic is more pluralized” in Rowling than in Tolkien (and Lewis), and that there is no systematized education in Middle-earth, where learning and teaching are rather more “asymmetrical.” (Nick might want to read David Oberhelman’s essay in Truths Breathed Through Silver for a discussion of libraries and repositories of knowledge in Middle-earth.) He had some good insights into why also, and I think that if he expanded on that, the paper would be improved still further.

After this, I had my panel. “Language and Myth: The Role of Language and the Birth of New Languages in Fantasy” — which has drawn some editorial (favorable, fortunately) in the comments to this post. I thought it went well — but too quickly! My chief aim had been to keep to the stated purpose and scope of the panel, announced in advance, which meant hitting not just language, but myth, and not just either, but both together, and not just Tolkien but other fantasy writers as well — all of which was a tall order for a one hour panel. I had four panelists on stage with me: Carl Hostetter, Arden Smith, Alexei Kondratiev, and Sharan Newman. I also tried to involve the audience, but tried not to allow them to take over. I enjoyed the whole experience, and once again, it spawned some great hallway conversation.

Apart from all these details, there was plenty more fun and merry-making that I won’t elaborate on here. For example, staying up until after 3AM Sunday night talking to the Davids (Bratman and Emerson), Lynn Maudlin, and others. Music, and play-acting, the dueling twins Ambar and Umbar, “fated to kill each other of their own free will” (believe me, the joke would take too long to explain and is much too nerdy to be worth the effort), and much besides. Randy Hoyt and I (foolishly?) revealed that we’d like to bring Mythcon to Dallas in two or three years, on which idea everyone in shouting distance seized with an unbreakable grip, so there seems to be no going back on it now! :)

Anyone else who attended Mythcon, please feel free to use the comments below as a scratch pad for your own reactions. I certainly didn’t attend every paper and panel, so maybe we’ll hear about some of those from others. And let me encourage anyone who didn’t go to think about attending next year’s Mythcon in southern California.