The Bones of the Ox

“Thirdly and finally, he said, I wish to make an ANNOUNCE-MENT. He spoke this last word so loudly and suddenly that everyone sat up who still could.”

No, unlike Bilbo, I am not going away; you will all be stuck with me for quite a long while yet. But I do have an announcement, and a pretty big one. A few of you will know this already, but for the most part, I have kept it pretty quiet. But here it is: I am delighted to be able to announce my first book! Some of the details could still change a little, but I have checked with my publisher, and they have given me the green light to go public. Alors, allons maint’nant!

“The Bones of the Ox”: J.R.R. Tolkien and Source Criticism is being published by McFarland. If you know your Tolkien, you’ll recognize the quotation from “On Fairy-stories” (itself a quotation of Sir George Dasent). This phrase spotlights the central issue of the book: source criticism, as applied to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a multicontributor collection which I have been assembling, then editing, for more than two years now. Its purpose is basically two-fold: (1) to explain and justify source criticism as a valid critical approach to Tolkien’s works, and then to lay out a systematic methodology for how it ought to be conducted; and (2) to demonstrate it through a series of new source studies, ranging across Tolkien’s works and through the many periods and literary sources from which he borrowed — and transformed — so many ideas, images, characters, episodes, phrases. To put it another way: (1) theory, and (2) practice. In the end, I hope also to answer the inevitable, “so what?” That is, what is the point? What good does source criticism do us as readers? What can we learn, and why should we care? I happen to believe there are very good answers to these questions.

Why has it taken so long for these seeds to bear fruit? Admittedly, a lot of the time was spent in plan(t)ing the book: ruminating on what I wanted to accomplish with it, what it should do that other books about Tolkien have not done before, and so on. Then too, I spent a good while considering which scholars I wanted to invite into the project, after which I sent out personal invitations to that effect. Nearly all the scholars I wanted — those whom I most admire and whose research fits best the goals of my book — were able and eager to accept. A few others were eager but unable; there is only time enough for just so many projects. But as things turned out, I had such an embarrassment of riches that I could not have accepted more in any case. For that reason, I never needed to run a general call for papers — and this explains how the project remained so secret.

We then met — online mostly; in a few cases in person or by telephone — “to discuss our plans, our ways, means, policy and devices”, the kinds of essays I was looking for, what I hoped the book could bring to Tolkien studies, and so on, and then the writing began. As drafts came in, we moved into a collaborative stage — posing and answering questions, tracking down ref-erences, reading drafts, suggesting revisions, reading and commenting on those, and so forth. And then came more editing, copyediting, structural arrangement, and layout — which was a much bigger job than I had bargained on. If I make it sound exhausting, it was! But exhilarating too. I have a completely new appreciation now for the work that goes into a multicontributor collection — such as many a one I have so cavalierly marked up with the reviewer’s pen. Well, turnabout is fair play, and I expect no less thorough a treatment from my reviewers as I would give this collection myself (as indeed I have already given it myself). I think it can stand up to the best and the worst of them.

So here we are. I walked to the post office and mailed off the final manuscript to Jefferson, North Carolina this very morning. As you can see from the photo above, it’s a pretty big one. I never quite appreciated just how big until I printed the whole thing out, all 325 pages of it. To give it another metric, it’s a bit more than 100,000 words — longer than The Hobbit. It consists of eleven chapters, of which three deal with the theory, and eight the practice, of source criticism. Treat this table of contents as preliminary — though I do not expect it to change in any substantial way. I hope after reading this you will be as excited about the book as I am. In addition to a preface, index, and various other front and back matter, the contents are:

• Introduction: Why Source Criticism? / Tom Shippey
• Source Criticism: Background and Applications / E.L. Risden
• Tolkien and Source Criticism: Remarking and Remaking / Jason Fisher
• The Stones and the Book: Tolkien, Mesopotamia, and Biblical Mythopoeia / Nicholas Birns
• Sea Birds and Morning Stars: Ceyx, Alcyone, and the Many Metamorphoses of Eärendil and Elwing / Kristine Larsen
• “Byzantium, New Rome!”: Goths, Langobards, and Byzantium in The Lord of the Rings / Miryam Librán-Moreno
• The Rohirrim: “Anglo-Saxons on Horseback”? An Inquiry into Tolkien’s Use of Sources / Thomas Honegger
• William Caxton’s The Golden Legend as a Source for J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings / Judy Ann Ford
• She and Tolkien, Revisited / John D. Rateliff
• Reading John Buchan in Search of J.R.R. Tolkien / Mark T. Hooker
• Biography as Source: Niggles and Notions / Diana Pavlac Glyer and Josh B. Long

One other exciting piece of news: thanks to the kind permission of the Tolkien Estate, I’m pleased to bring readers some new primary material: quotations from a handful of previously unpublished letters as well as from Tolkien’s unpublished lecture notes on the “Legends of the Goths” (these are not in the same chapters). If your appetites weren’t already whetted enough, that certainly ought to do it.

I don’t have a release date yet, but when I know it, you’ll know it. Stay tuned for more news as it develops.

Middle-earth and Beyond — first look!

It has been a little while since my last update on Middle-earth and Beyond: Essays on the World of J.R.R. Tolkien, the new collec-tion edited by Kathleen Dubs and Janka Kaščáková and forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. You still won’t see it on the CSP website just yet, but I am very pleased to report that the book has gone to print and should be available in about one month’s time!

I’m also pleased to be able to give Lingwë readers the first look at the cover, which features Ted Nasmith’s gorgeous new painting, Bilbo and the Eagles. The back flap of the dustjacket describes the collection, thus:

One wonders whether there really is a need for another volume of essays on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Clearly there is. Especially when the volume takes new directions, employs new approaches, focuses on different texts, or reviews and then challenges received wisdom. This volume intends to do all that. The entries on sources and analogues in The Lord of the Rings, a favorite topic, are still able to take new directions. The analyses of Tolkien’s literary art, less common in Tolkien criticism, focus on character — especially that of Tom Bombadil — in which two different conclusions are reached. But characterization is also seen in the light of different literary techniques, motifs, and symbols. A unique contribution examines the place of linguistics in Tolkien’s literary art, employing Gricean concepts in an analysis of The Lay of the Children of Húrin. And a quite timely essay presents a new interpretation of Tolkien’s attitude toward the environment, especially in the character of Tom Bombadil. In sum, this volume covers new ground, and treads some well-worn paths; but here the well-worn path takes a new turn, taking not only scholars but general readers further into the complex and provocative world of Middle-earth, and beyond.

And here is the final table of contents, including (as I think you all know by now) an essay I first presented at the 37th annual Mythopoeic Society Conference at the University of Oklahoma:

• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction / Kathleen Dubs
• Sourcing Tolkien’s “Circles of the World”: Speculations on the Heimskringla, the Latin Vulgate Bible, and the Hereford Mappa Mundi / Jason Fisher
• Staying Home and Travelling: Stasis Versus Movement in Tolkien’s Mythos / Sue Bridgwater
• The Enigmatic Mr. Bombadil: Tom Bombadil’s Role as a Representation of Nature in The Lord of the Rings / Liam Campbell
• Tom Bombadil – Man of Mystery / Kinga Jenike
• Grotesque Characters in Tolkien’s Novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings / Silvia Pokrivčáková and Anton Pokrivčák
• “It Snowed Food and Rained Drink” in The Lord of the Rings / Janka Kaščáková
• “No Laughing Matter”, Kathleen Dubs
• “Lit.”, “Lang.”, “Ling.”, and the Company They Keep: The Case of The Lay of the Children of Húrin Seen from a Gricean Perspective / Roberto Di Scala
• Contributors

"What are words for, when no one listens anymore?"

Attention: This post contains strong language which some readers may find objectionable. Proceed with care.

I’m coming to this party a little late, but I have some strong opinions about this, so I thought I might as well usher in the new year at Lingwë with something controversial. Just to give you the background (though probably unnecessary): Alan Gribben, a professor at Auburn University in Alabama, is producing a bowdlerized version of Mark Twain’s classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which every occurrence of the word nigger — more than 200 of them — is replaced with slave. You can read more about it here. Or just ask Google; everybody seems to be talking about this. But in all the discussion, one thing is not being said much. The offending word itself. That’s part of the reason for this post.

By the way, a note for my international readers. It’s possible that some of you don’t quite grasp what a taboo word nigger is in the United States. It is perhaps the most offensive word in the modern American colloquial lexis—much worse than fuck, shit, cunt, etc., all of which have venerable histories, by the way. And the profusion of the word nigger in hip-hop culture, ironic as that is, makes it even more taboo in mainstream conversation. Even scholars and newspeople cannot or will not utter the word, not even in discussions of what Professor Gribben is doing to Huck Finn. That’s right: the word is so distasteful that we can refer vaguely what Gribben has done to the text, but we aren’t supposed to actually say it. Usually, “the n-word” is substituted. Everybody knows what that means, though, so what is gained by referring to the word without actually saying it? This is much too Puritanical for me. But I digress …

More to the point is whether bowdlerizing the text is right or wrong. People on one side are crying censorship; while those on the other hail the change for bringing the book to a new audience, one that would otherwise be much too squeamish to touch it. Still others point out that since Huck Finn has gone into the public domain, anyone can do anything he likes to the text — which is true; how long until we have a zombie version?

The issue is a troubling one. I feel that bowdlerizing a text is never the right answer. In full disclosure, I have something of a vested interest; I’ve been a big fan of Twain for as long as I have Tolkien — since I was about Huck’s age. The very first book report I ever gave in school was not on The Hobbit, but on The Autobiography of Mark Twain. (This book is in the news again too, with the recent publication of material suppressed from it for the past one hundred years. But that’s a topic for another post.)

A satellite issue that I find equally troubling is that so many people crying censorship are unwilling, themselves, to put front and center the word at issue: nigger. They are, in effect, voluntarily censoring themselves while decrying the censorship of Twain. I posted some of these thoughts on one of my friend’s blogs; he removed them (with apologies) because they actually spelled out the heinous word that must never even be spelled out.

I don’t suppose I blame him for this. It is a horrible epithet, freighted with a history of bigrotry and murder. But before and after all of that, it is just a word. True, the word may remind us of that history of bigotry and hatred; it should, however painful the reminder. Might refusing to say it or even spell it be an attempt to ignore or forget that history? I’m not calling my friends ostriches, but to me, there is no reason that intelligent people making intelligent arguments should be unable to utter the word. How can we rationally discuss a difficult subject if we are unwilling even to name it out loud? The very people who have historically been the target of this epithet should applaud its use in thoughtful conversations about race.

Naturally, I don’t mean to suggest the word should regain it old currency. I’m not saying anyone should hurl it at anyone else; that is absolutely wrong. Words can naturally be used as weapons — this word, along with many others. But words are not weapons inherently, by their fundamental nature. We should be able to use any word in a critical discussions about words.

Apart from the dangers of bowdlerization in a (supposedly) free society, I have another problem with the substitution of slave for nigger in Huck Finn. The former actually occurs in the novel, maybe half a dozen times, as compared to a couple hundred of the latter. By replacing one word with another that actually occurs in the text, you lose the ability to distinguish between the substitutions and the cases where Twain actually wrote slave.

As to substituting n—, which is often suggested, that would be better than a different word, but not very much better [1]. It’s still a problem for young readers, because they will naturally ask what n— means. The people who have a problem with exposing young people to Twain’s own words would have great difficulty answering, probably offering something like, “that’s a very bad word which none of us is allowed to say; it’s so bad, I can’t even tell you what it stands for.” Is a lame answer along these lines really the way to educate our children? I don’t call that education.

Kids are going to find out one way or the other, so you’ve only kicked the can a little further down the street — but at the cost of vandalizing Twain’s masterpiece. Are children’s ears really so sensitive? Or is it not rather the parents who are so uncomfortable? This reminds me a bit of the attitudes of shame and avoidance by everyday Germans about the Holocaust in the decades following World War II. Even today, I’m told this topic is verboten in polite conversation in Germany. I would be pleased to hear from my German friends on this point.

I do sympathize with Professor Gribben’s aims. His point in making the change is to bring the book — all but that one word, anyway — to students who would simply not be allowed to read it otherwise. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, he might say. On the surface, it’s a laudable goal, but is bringing these readers a bowdlerized book better than keeping the original from them? A legitimate question for debate, but I don’t think so. Better would be to continue chipping away at the prejudices in the Deep South from the inside until they’re ready for the real thing. These prejudices are the reason the book can’t be taught as written. To change the book seems to me to be coddling these prejudices, rather than confronting them. They shouldn’t change the book; the book should change them.

My friend referred to Twain’s observation that “the difference between the almost-right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”, and that is spot-on. In the case of Huck, to substitute the lightning bug for the lightning itself is nothing more than hiding away the very issue that should be at the heart of the discussion, and hiding it from kids at precisely the age where these prejudices can be most effectively battled.

I’ve read that the book makes one other change, substituting Indian for injun, the latter being now also regarded as a racial slur (though evoking nowhere near the reaction of nigger). This change is total nonsense. First, Indian is not accurate; if you want to vandalize the text, just substitute Native American. Second, injun is not a racial slur — or at least, no more than Indian is — it’s a dialectal variation. It really just comes down to local accent, represented orthographically by Twain. And by the way, injun only occurs about ten times in the novel, about one-twentieth the frequency of nigger. Were there Native American schools refusing to teach Huck Finn because of the word, or is this merely meddling to suit the tastes of the editor? And if an editor wants to change this particular word, why not flatten out all of Twain’s meticulous use of dialect? Twain carefully reproduces six distinct regional dialects, if I recall. This is something we ought to preserve, not smooth away.



[1] This has been tried before, and recently. Joseph Conrad’s 1897 novel, The Nigger of the Narcissus — oh my god, it’s right there in the title! Children, avert your eyes! — was reissued in 2009 by WordBridge Publishing as The N-word of the Narcissus. In this bowdlerization, every occurrence of the word nigger, including in the title, was changed to n-word. Absurd. Even when the book first appeared in America (a little more than a decade after Huck Finn), it was published here under a different title, The Children of the Sea. It is seldom read today, almost certainly because of the offense this word continues to give.

A thought this New Year's Eve

“This empty year is fading into a dull grey mournful darkness: so slow-footed and yet so swift and evanescent. What of the new year and the spring? I wonder.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien,

from a letter to his son, Christopher,

28 October 1944

Word of the Day: Fart

I recently received a birthday wish that included the following charming observation: “Thou art an old fart […] but the most awesomest anglo saxon speaking one that I know.” I replied that fart was a word known to the Anglo-Saxons. In fact, like the words for many bodily parts and functions, it goes much further back than this. It turns out there are quite a few interesting things to say about this word and some of its relatives, so I decided — even at the risk of lowering our collective brows — to write a post on it. Rest assured: I’ll find ways to elevate the conversation again. (“Mr. Shakespeare, your cue in five minutes.”)

The Old English word for a fart is attested in only one form and only one place (that I know). That form is feorting — a bit surprisingly, this is a feminine noun. Yes, women fart too, though they usually won’t admit it. But if you want to look it up in any of the major Anglo-Saxon dictionaries, don’t expect to see the Modern English fart. Most bodily terminology has been glossed with euphemism, often in Latin. In the great Bosworth/Toller dictionary, feorting is glossed as crĕpĭtus ventris, which is Latin for a “chattering of the belly” — cute, eh? The Latin crĕpĭtus is an imitative word, from which we also derive the Modern English words crepitation, i.e., “a crackling (e.g., of the joints)”; and decrepit, i.e., “creaking with old age”. I did just turn forty, after all.

In John R. Clark Hall’s dictionary (even the revised edition of 1960, ed. Herbert Meritt), it’s defined with Latin pēdātio. This is actually the direct Latin cognate given in Ælfric’s glossary, but unless you’re familiar with this word, it’s not much help. It doesn’t appear in the average student dictionary of Latin, but it comes from the pēdĕre “to break wind”, a verb which can be traced back to the Indo-European root √pezd “to fart”, again probably imitative of the sound. This root also gave us the Sanskrit पर्दते and Ancient Greek πέρδομαι, with the same meaning. The word also passed far and wide, as farts tend to do, into Avestan, Lithuanian, Latvian, Albanian, Russian, Welsh, etc.

Among the Germanic languages, the word was also rather widely attested too — and anyone who has experienced a particularly noxious chattering of the belly will not be surprised at its reach. Though we can only extrapolate the unattested Old English verb *feortan, we have evidence of Old High German ferzan, Old Saxon fertan, Old Norse freta, and various forms in the later medieval languages as well, e.g., Middle High German, Middle Dutch, and of course Middle English. Chaucer, it must be said, leet fle a fart rather often in his verses. (But Norman Davis omits the word from A Chaucer Glossary, tsk tsk tsk.)

There are two surprising offspring of the humble fart. The first, thanks to our friend William Shakespeare, has become an old saw, though not many realize it ever had anything to do with breaking wind. Recall the ominous lines from the close of Act III of Hamlet: “For ’tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard” (III.4:207–8). Poor Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!

A petard was a small bomb used to breach castle walls or gates. The word comes to us from the French pétard, literally a “farter”, in turn from Middle French péter “to fart”. The bomb had a long fuse — think of this image and you’re on the right track — which made a sputtering, “farting” sound as it burned down. The French word comes down from the Latin pēditum, in turn derived from the verb whose acquaintance we’ve already made above. Cognates include Italian petardo and obsolete Spanish petar.

The second surprising relative is the partridge — ironic, since one of my favorite etymologists (Eric Partridge) bears that surname. From Middle English partrich, in turn from Old French pertris, perdriz, from Latin perdix, from Green πέρδιξ, the partridge was so named because of the whirring sound of his wings. What a proud bird for such a lowly etymology! Cognates include Scottish partrick, Old Italian perdice, Spanish perdiz, Catalan perdiu, etc.

All of this from the sound of breaking wind. And since it’s Christmastime, if you’ll permit me: “And a partridge in a pear treeeeeeee … pffffftht!!” Excuse me! Okay, that was a new low for Lingwë.

An interview with Simon Tolkien

Earlier this year, I conducted an interview with Simon Tolkien for Mythprint (it appeared in the June 2010 issue, Vol. 47, No. 6, on pp. 3–4). Simon Tolkien is the author of Final Witness, The Inheritance, and The King of Diamonds (coming in April, 2011). Of equal importance — to this audience, at least — he is the son of Christopher Tolkien and grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien.

As part of the new blog of the Mythopoeic Society, dubbed The Horn of Rohan, my interview has been made available online. In the interview, we talk about Simon’s memories of his grandparents, his feelings about The Lord of the Rings, recollections of the barn in which his father assembled The Silmarillion, his tastes in literature, and of course, his own legal and mystery fiction. You can read it by following this link.

And by the way, I should add that I really enjoyed The Inheritance. I don’t read a lot in that particular genre — I could probably enumerate my experience using no more than my ten fingers: a little Agatha Christie, the occasional Arthur Conan Doyle, but nary a Grisham, Turow, or Grafton — but this is a book I can recommend. I was particularly impressed with its sense of time and place, as well as the carefully rendered characters. Why don’t you give it a try?

Onomastics and The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Slight as it is, J.K. Rowling’s Tales of Beedle the Bard has not been the subject of very much study since its 2008 publication. Little surprise there. As a quick benchmark, Google Scholar returns a mere 50 hits for “Beedle the Bard” + Rowling, as compared to nearly 9,000 for “Harry Potter” + Rowling. (Why add Rowling to the search query? To filter out unrelated articles written by real Harry Potters!)

But I’ve just read this charming little book again, and I thought I would share some thoughts on a handful of its proper names. There are not many of these (about twenty), and several of them may also be found in the Harry Potter novels, but a few of them are really interesting. As with all Rowling’s proper names, they show a lot of imagination and a real dexterity with words and puns.

The most obvious place to begin is with the “author” of the collection, Beedle himself. In an intriguing little work called Exploring Beedle the Bard: Unauthorized, Pithy, Tale-by-Tale Perspectives, Graeme Davis posits that the name “may perhaps echo the name Bede, the great Northumbrian writer and historian who preserved many stories relating to the earliest history of the English people”; or, he says, perhaps it is the genuine Yorkshire surname, Beedle [1]. Rowling tells readers that Beedle the Bard was indeed from that part of England.

These are plausible, but I think there’s another possibility as well. A beadle is a minor parish official — perhaps the most famous example of which is Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle in Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Many of Rowling’s names remind readers of Dickens. Mr. Bumble is also in charge of the orphanage in that novel. Rowling has an orphanage in the Harry Potter series as well — though I’m not trying to compare Oliver Twist with Tom Riddle!

The word beadle really just means a “proclaimer”, and comes to us from the Middle English bedel, from Old French bedel “a herald”, in turn from Vulgar Latin bedellus, and still earlier, borrowed from a Germanic root (cp. Old High German biotan “to proclaim”). A bard is a kind of proclaimer as well. The word is Celtic but probably akin to Sanskrit bhásh “to speak” (cp. OE bannan “to proclaim, summon”). The word fame is also a descendent of the same root. And Beedle is a justifiably famous bard, isn’t he?

A few of the new names are very straightforward. For example, we learn about Brutus Malfoy. This is Latin brutus “stupid”, now connoting brutality + French mal foi “bad faith”. There are also Lisette de Lapin, an animagus capable of transforming into a rabbit, and the great wizarding philosopher, Bertrand de Pensées-Profondes — whose apt surnames are French for “rabbit” and “profound thoughts”, respectively. Lisette and Bertrand are not particularly apt in their etymologies, but they are apt in terms of their sound. Lisette alliterates with lapin, and Bertrand rhymes, more or less, with profondes. In addition, there is a famous Muggle philosopher with the same given name, Bertrand Russell.

In “The Fountain of Fair Fortune”, we meet three witches named Asha, Altheda, and Amata. These three are respectively sick, destitute, and lovelorn, and seek to have their wishes granted by the titular Fountain. Asha is a genuine Sanskrit name meaning “wish, desire, hope” — apt indeed. Altheda is a genuine name as well, from Greek. It’s sometimes said to be a variant on the name Althea, but giving Rowling the benefit of a definite intention, I think the etymology might be αλήτης “a wanderer, vagrant, vagabond, beggar”. The third, Amata, is the clearest of the three, from the Latin amata “beloved”. All three seem quite apt and resonate nicely with one another. Assuming it was all fully intentional, it’s also wonderful to see Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin — the three pillars of the dead languages — equally represented.

Other names appearing in The Tales of Beedle the Bard: Beatrix Bloxam, Herbert Beery, Silvanus Kettleburn, Hector Dagworth-Granger, Adalbert Waffling, Emeric the Evil, Egbert, Godelot, Barnabas Deverill, Loxias — and a few others already familiar from the seven-volume series. Some of these have pretty clear meanings. I could take a closer look at some of these if there is sufficient interest; or tackle them yourselves and post your thoughts in the comments.

[1] Davis, Graeme. Exploring Beedle the Bard: Unauthorized, Pithy, Tale-by-Tale Perspectives. Nimble Books: 2009, p. 5.

Another review of Truths Breathed Through Silver

Quite by accident, I learned of another review of the collection, Truths Breathed Through Silver: The Inklings’ Moral and Mythopoeic Legacy, ed. Jonathan Himes (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). For a refresher on this book, refer back to this post; for highlights from other reviews, this post.

This latest review appeared in The C.S. Lewis Chronicle, the journal of The Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. It’s a very short review (not more than 300 words), and it wastes roughly half of these in quibbling over the aptness of the book’s subtitle. But lest I seem ungrateful, I must point out that the review is actually quite positive, once it gets around to dealing with the actual contents of the collection. Sadly, by this time, the reviewer has only a few sentences left, but here’s an excerpt:

[Two paragraphs summarizing the mythopoeic predilections of the Inklings …]
.....That is what I thought this book would be about. But it isn’t. It is fascinating and welcome, but it is not about the Inklings’ moral and mythopoeic legacy. It is an exhilarating, learned ragbag of essays on all sorts of things: Lewis on verbicide, Tolkien’s treatment of the Fall [*], a history of libraries in Tolkien’s Middle Earth [sic], mathematics in the spirituality of George MacDonald, and more. Swashbuckling stuff, all of it, and some of it […] timely and important. But it is an opportunity missed. There is a significant book to be written on the myth-making of the Inklings, qua Inklings. [Charles Foster. The C.S. Lewis Chronicle, Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 2009): 40.]

I would differ with the plain assertion that the collection “is not about the Inklings’ moral and mythopoeic legacy”; still more, that it is “an opportunity missed”. It’s perfectly fair for a reviewer to point out oversights or errors in a collection, or to single out weaker contributions thereto, but to spend the bulk of a very short review voicing chagrin that this book is not the book the reviewer thought it would be … Why not spend those words saying something about what that book actually is? Such ruminations as these, and the call for “a significant book [yet] to be written”, might be okay in a review of a couple thousand words — they are probably not appropriate in a review of only a couple hundred.

At least I was included in the short capsule summary [marked above with an asterisk], and I certainly can’t complain about being called “swashbuckling” and “exhilarating”, even if indirectly — “learned ragbag” is a bit more left-handed, but I’ll take that too. :)

A new essay

Some time ago, The Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza asked me to contribute an essay to their Scholars Forum, which has previously featured new papers by Tom Shippey, Michael Drout, Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, and other notable names in Tolkien studies. It’s a great honor to have been offered a place in such a fellowship. My essay was published earlier this month, so I thought it was high time I mentioned it here!

You can read my paper, “Some Contributions to Middle-earth Lexicography: Hapax Legomena in The Lord of the Rings”, by following this link. (Forgive the odd formatting; that wasn’t my doing.) The title offers a hint at my approach, playing as it does on Tolkien’s own paper, “Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography” (1925). If you are a regular reader of Lingwë, then you should find plenty of interesting things in the essay. I do hope you enjoy it.

Note that if you would like to comment on it — and I hope some of you will — they ask that you do so in a separate thread, located here. Of course, I also invite comments on the essay here.