Tolkien Transactions XVIII

October 2011

So, October. That's my birthday month, and I treated myself to a couple of new Tolkien books: The Art of the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien edited by Wayne G Hammond and Christina Scull, A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany The Lord of the Rings by Cor Blok edited by Pieter Collier, and Parma Eldalamberon XV - 'Si Qente Feanor & Other Elvish Writings_. They have now all arrived, and I'm looking forward to get more acquainted with them (having so far only found time for a brief perousal of each). I've saved a little for Flieger's Green Suns and Faerie: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien, but that was unavailable when I ordered.

Also, I have finished reading Jason Fisher's book, Tolkien and the Study of his Sources — another very good book overall (though also with a few examples of less excellent scholarship).

Reviews of all will be forthcoming here on Parmar-kenta when I find the time.

But the Tolkien Transactions is (mainly) about the internet and what is going on there that I have found interesting.

= = = = News = = = =

Pat Reynolds, The Return of the Ring, Sunday, 2 October 2011, ‘Special Guest: Jef Murray’
http://returnofthering.livejournal.com/3181.html
What it says . . .

Pat Reynolds, The Return of the Ring, Sunday, 9 October 2011, ‘Special Guest: Ted Nasmith’
http://returnofthering.livejournal.com/3515.html
Again, as per the headline.

Rene van Rossenberg, Wednesday, 12 October 2011, ‘25th Anniversary of Tolkien Shop Report’
http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2011/10/12/48984-25th-anniversary-of-tolkien-shop-report/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6bxc7o3
A brief report from the silver anniversary of the Tolkien Shop: the only (physical) store in the world dedicated entirely to Tolkien. For the shop itself see http://www.tolkienshop.com/.

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

Matthew R. Bardowell, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Friday, 1 January 2010, ‘J. R. R. Tolkien's creative ethic and its Finnish analogues’
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/J.+R.+R.+Tolkien's+creative+ethic+and+its+Finnish+analogues.-a0218950941
http://preview.tinyurl.com/69o3cx9
This brilliant source study investigates, as the title suggests, the influence of the Finnish Kalevala on Tolkien's writings, but does so at another level than much other source criticism. Bardowell looks into the thematic content by studying the ethics of creation that underlie the two works and comparing these, he concludes that Tolkien was indeed influenced by the Finnish epic. The beauty of this is that regardless of whether, or how far, you agree with Bardowell, you can probably learn something about Tolkien by reading this article: if nothing else, it can be read as an excellent example of comparative criticism.

AH, Sunday, 2 October 2011, ‘Across the Bridge of Tavrobel’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/trip-to-tavrobel.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6xesheo
Andy Higgins has been on a trip to Great and Little Haywood and Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire in search of Tolkien's Tavrobel from The Book of Lost Tales, and he claims to have stood on the ‘Bridge of Tavrobel’ though he is not sure that he really did see Gilfanon's house, the ‘House of the Hundred Chimneys’ when looking at Shugborough Hall.

MM, Monday, 3 October 2011, ‘Why is Middle-earth Segregated in The Hobbit?’
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2011/10/03/why-is-middle-earth-segregated-in-the-hobbit/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6f4737t
The segregation here seems to refer to the (relative) isolation of the communities that Bilbo and the Dwarves pass through: the Shire, Rivendell, Beorn's house, the Elvenking's halls and Lake Town. Of all these only the last two seem to have some kind of communication, whereas in The Lord of the Rings it is evident that these far-flung pockets of civilisation are all in communication, even if there is no regular post-service outside the Shire.

JF, Sunday, 9 October 2011, ‘The Poros and the Bosphorus’
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/10/poros-and-borphorus.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6jy4d4g
Jason Fisher proposes a speculative Primary World derivation of the name of the Poros — the river that flows from the Ephel Duath into the Anduin and forms the southern border of Ithilien — by suggesting the Greet word Poros, the last element of Bosphorus. Jason's hypothesis certainly seems possible to me, but it will require stronger evidence to finally convince me (and even stronger evidence to convince me that it was a deliberate choice by Tolkien). The ensuing discussion in the comments to the blog is quite interesting as well, so be sure to read the comments also.

AH, Sunday, 9 October 2011, ‘Be Very Qwiet, I am Hunting Tolkienian Woodwoses’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/be-very-quiet-i-am-hunting-tolkienian.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6hrgd97
Andy Higgins is hunting Tolkien's use of woodwoses in his fiction — a very interesting study that includes occurences in the Anglo-Saxon sources that Tolkien worked with.

BC, Tuesday, 11 October 2011, ‘From Hobbit-sequel to Lord of the Rings - the role of The Notion Club Papers’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/10/lord-of-rings-mostly-equals-hobbit-plus.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6fybzyb
Bruce Charlton here argues that the Lewis / Tolkien agreement that led to the space trilogy for Lewis and to the Lost Road and the Notion Club Papers_ for Tolkien was, for both authors a turning point that led their mythopoeia in new directions. The further claim that The Lord of the Rings would never have become other than a new Hobbit — a book of the same style as The Hobbit — without the impetus from The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers and that Tolkien's evolving Silmarillion mythology had less to do with the ‘growing up’ of the Hobbit sequel seems to me to require extraordinary evidence.

Lynn Forest-Hill, Wednesday, 19 October 2011, ‘Tolkien and Bevis: romancing the foundation of myth’
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=242515
http://preview.tinyurl.com/655e7wq
Another excellent contribution to the ‘Scholars’ Forum' series at The Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza website, Forest-Hill discusses the role of medieval romances in general as inspiration for Tolkien, and that of Bevis of Hampton in particular.

MM, Wednesday, 19 October 2011, ‘Were There Two Thrains in the Original Hobbit or Just One Thrain?’
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2011/10/19/were-there-two-thrains-in-the-original-hobbit-or-just-one-thrain/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6crn5e8
A discussion that has, at times, been conducted with some heat, Martinez here ends on the conclusion that ‘J.R.R. Tolkien accidentally created two Thrains in the first edition of The Hobbit and he had to both acknowledge this error and fix it in the next edition’. This seems to me a fair representation of my understanding also — I might have wished to stress the inadvertent nature of the accident, but that's mere dressing. Another way to have fixed the error could of course have been to remove the superfluous Thrain, but I think that Tolkien was more apt to invent a story that made the error not an error but an oversight: ‘Ooops, did I forget to tell you more about that other Thrain (whom I had no idea existed)? Sorry about that, but here goes:’ ;-)

= = = = Book News = = = =

Damien Bador, Mythprint, Tuesday, 4 October 2011, ‘Tolkien and Wales’
http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/tolkien-and%C2%A0wales/
‘This review originally appeared in Mythprint 48:7 (#348) in July 2011.’
Damien Bador finds Phelpstead's book sligtly more academic in style than I did, but he, too, is generally positive about Tolkien and Wales.

JDR, Friday, 14 October 2011, ‘New Tolkien Calendar’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-tolkien-calendar.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6a3u7qd
John Rateliff still doesn't like Cor Blok's art, but nonetheless has bought the 2012 Tolkien Calendar in which it features.

JDR, Sunday, 16 October 2011, ‘The New Arrival: Ruud's Companion’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-arrival-ruuds-companion.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5uf3lg5
John Rateliff reviews Jay Rudd's Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work ending ‘So, my initial impression: an impressive achievement, but to be used with some caution.’ At $75 it may be a little too expensive for most amateur enthusiasts such as myself: in particular with comments such as this (also John Rateliff's comment that the commentary on The Hobbit that follows the plot summary ‘is a bit eccentric’).

Benedicte Page, The Bookseller, Monday, 17 October 2011, ‘HarperCollins pre-empts Hobbit anniversary’
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/harpercollins-pre-empts-hobbit-anniversary.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6bjohxz
The big story is of course the publishing of The Art of the Hobbit edited Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull that contains many previously unpublished sketches and illustrations that Tolkien made for The Hobbit, but this is accompanied by the release of a single-volume revised edition of John Rateliff's The History of the Hobbit, a pocket-sized Hobbit and a 75th-anniversary boxed-set edition of The Hobbit along with The Lord of the Rings. All of this is to start the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of The Hobbit next year.
The news are taken up in several other news-outlets, a few of which are :
PC, Wednesday, 19 October 2011, ‘HarperCollins pre-empts The Hobbit anniversary’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1013-Pocket_Hobbit_JRR_Tolkien.php?436
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5tpjjux
The Tolkien Library story.
Paul Bignell, The Independent, Sunday, 23 October 2011, ‘Lost Hobbit images get first showing’
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/lost-hobbit-images-get-first-showing-2374676.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3b6oxap
This article contains a number of . . . shall we just say ‘dramatic exaggerations’ and leave it at that :-)
Alison Flood, The Guardian, Monday, 24 October 2011, ‘Tolkien's Hobbit drawings published to mark 75th anniversary’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/24/tolkien-hobbit-drawings-published
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4yqtzgh
Associated with this article from The Guardian is also a gallery of some of the pictures from the new book.
This is just a small sampling of the many articles on the beginning of the celebrations of next year's anniversary, most of them focusing on The Art of the Hobbit: congratulations to Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond for their achievement — the book is a delight (so far I have only had time to skim the book and enjoy the pictures).

AH, Sunday, 23 October 2011, ‘From Dragons and Swords to Motor Cars and Gaffers’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/from-dragons-and-swords-to-motor-cars.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3btbsqj
Andy Higgins makes me want to read _Mr Bliss_! His investigation into Tolkien's use of ‘Gaffer Gamgee’ draws on published letters (nos. 76 and 257 being the primarily relevant, but also nos. 144 and 184), but it is mainly his enthusiasm about the story itself that I find contagious (my immune system being particularly weak against that kind of contagion).

= = = = Interviews = = = =

MM, Friday, 14 October 2011, ‘Interviews With The Scholars’
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2011/10/14/interviews-with-the-scholars/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/662dmmo
Michael Martinez here introduces his commendable new series of e-mail interviews with known Tolkien scholars.

MM, Friday, 14 October 2011, ‘An Interview with Janet Brennan Croft’
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2011/10/14/an-interview-with-janet-brennan-croft/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5u2g9lc
A very interesting interview ranging in topics from the personal (first encounter with Tolkien) over reflections on the state of Tolkien scholarship today to the interpretative.

MM, Friday, 21 October 2011, ‘An Interview with John Rateliff’
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2011/10/21/an-interview-with-john-rateliff/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6kb5dkk
An excellent interview that, naturally, focuses on The Hobbit along with the two editions of John Rateliff's book.

MM, Friday, 28 October 2011, ‘An Interview with Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull’
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2011/10/28/an-interview-with-wayne-hammond-and-christina-scull/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/66fhdeo
The interview with Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull is far-ranging and highly interesting. It obviously touches on the newest book from their hand, The Art of the Hobbit as well as the earlier J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator and a number of the other books, essays, papers and not least falsifications that they have contributed to the study of Tolkien.

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

Byron Jennings, Friday, 2 September 2011, ‘Is that a fact?’
http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/09/02/is-that-a-fact/
What I found particularly interesting in a Tolkien context about this blog (that has a completely different focus) is the description attributed to Carl Weiman about the different views of novices and experts. While the terms are, of course, debatable when applied to a wholly different field of study, I think there is a useful reminder in the distinction between those who seek ‘a catalogue of facts’ and those who ‘sees patterns, relationships and organization but has no catalogue of true statements.’ I argue that these views do exist also in Tolkien studies and that they are to some extent incommensurate (though I think also that it is a more gradual transition and only the end-points, which very few occupy, are truly incommensurate), and that it often useful in a discussion to realize what is the starting point, the perspective, of the other participants.

MM, Wednesday, 21 September 2011, ‘The Much Bemusing Bloggery of Online Tolkien Scholarli’
http://blog.tolkien-studies.com/2011/09/21/the-much-bemusing-bloggery-of-online-tolkien-scholarli/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6eahwqu
Martinez shares a list of various blogs and websites that he considers ‘people who, in [his] opinion, have something credible and interesting to say about J.R.R. Tolkien, Middle-earth, or some of his linguistic or other classical interests.’ There was a few blogs and sites there that I didn't have on my lists (thanks, Michael!), and though many of these seems to only occasionally have something to say that will appear here, some of them will doubtlessly eventually make the list of sources below (I follow many more blogs and sites than those listed: the listed ones are only those that I refer to regularly in this collection).

MM, Wednesday, 5 October 2011, ‘Did J.R.R. Tolkien Invent Orcs?’
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2011/10/05/did-j-r-r-tolkien-invent-orcs/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/64jyqep
I've been interested in the Orcs lately, and was interested to read Michael Martinez' take on this question. I would add that it does, of course, depend somewhat on what you mean by ‘invent’ and that The Hobbit wasn't the first time Tolkien mentioned Orcs. The Orcs of The Lord of the Rings derive elements from both the MacDonaldesque goblins of The Hobbit and the demonic Orcs of the Silmarillion.

BC, Saturday, 29 October 2011, ‘Native language?’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/10/native-language.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/68cvgg6
Charlton comments on the idea of native language as described in Tolkien's Notion Club Papers. See also the rewarding discussion about the strong sense of place below.

Jonathan McCalmont, Boomtron, Sunday, 30 October 2011, ‘DC: The New Frontier . . . Stripp'd’
http://www.boomtron.com/2011/10/darwyn-cooke-dc-the-new-frontier-strippd/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6hxrshw
Out of the depth of a review of two new DC comic books rise this passage:

In contrast, the world of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings supports the escapist fantasies of millions of adults because though Tolkien’s world is a world where magic exists and good triumphs over evil, Tolkien also infused his world with more ‘realistic’ thematic concerns such as the cost that the good must pay in order to rid themselves of evil. The departure of the elves and the scouring of the Shire echo with the losses of the Second World War and so make Middle Earth seem that much more real. By keeping one foot in the real world, Tolkien ensured his creation remained relevant to modern audiences in a way that Cinderella simply is not. Thus Tolkien’s work demonstrates the balancing act that modern myths must perform: Make a story simplistic and you make it irrelevant but make a story realistic and you run the risk that it will no longer provide a means of escape.

The review has more to say about escapism, and I find it interesting though I do not agree with the view that ‘the popularity of escapist media derives from a deep-seated need to immerse ourselves in a world that makes sense to us’ (I believe the popularity derives from them being a natural and rational — perhaps even necessary — means of making the Primary World make sense to us).

Matthew Wright, Sunday, 30 October 2011, ‘Why Tolkien wouldn't be published today — and what that means for writers now’
http://mjwrightnz.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/why-tolkien-wouldn%E2%80%99t-be-published-today-%E2%80%93-and-what-that-means-for-writers-now/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6yzdx2n
While the blog post is interesting enough, there are, I think, two things that the author doesn't quite get right. The first thing is in the premise of the title — Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was extremely unlikely to be published also in the fifties, and while we might discuss degrees of ‘extremely unlikely’ I think the reasons that are listed are wrong: these things would also have prevented publishing in 1954 — if there is a smaller probability today of an author such as Tolkien to get published, this is, I believe, more due to changes in the company structure in the publishing industry: it is, I deem, more likely to find the kind of willingness to accept a loss in order to publish a prestige book in smaller, family-owned publishing houses than in the huge companies of today. The other thing that Wright, in my view, doesn't get quite right is the popularity of The Lord of the Rings prior to the release of the paperback editions. LotR was actually selling extremely well for its price and availability, and the main reason for the sales numbers to soar in the mid-sixties was, I believe, the dramatic changes in price and availability that associated the release of the Ace and Ballantine paperback editions.

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

LotR Plaza: ‘A Strong Sense of 'Place'’
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=242613
This thread investigates the strong sense of place in Tolkien's writings. This includes specific places, but it also takes off where Carl Phelpstead left in his investigation of Tolkien's general ideas of regional identity in Tolkien and Wales.

RABT & AFT: ‘Elrond remaining in Rivendell’
news:7bf12b41-9d9f-425a-894c-f4c41fb2d8b5@s7g2000yqd.googlegroups.com
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/alt.fan.tolkien/d3QM2EUvBHY/discussion
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6k3pute
This discussion has, as discussions in RABT & AFT are wont, wandered down every possible by-road and side alley, including discussions of the the One Ring, what Sauron knew and guessed about Aragorn (prior to Aragorn joining the Company of the Ring) and the early history of particularly the Three. Good stuff!

= = = = In Print = = = =

I was pleased to find, in Mythprint issue 351, a small piece by Mark T. Hooker on ‘The Name Bolger.’ Though I often find it difficult to believe that Tolkien was actually conscious of all that is suggested, I always like these word-games very much. In this case the Hobbit name Bolger is tied to the Anglo Saxon bælg which is again related to Latin bulga. This immediately attracted my attention as bælg is in contemporary use in Danish where it is used for pods (e.g. pea pods) and all such are called bælgfrugter (bælg fruits, pod fruits), and from the word for the bellows, blæsebælg (blowing bælg). It is also used for a sword scabbard, though this is considered archaic and is these days only used in poetry or deliberately archaisms. It would be a fine play on this to have, in the Danish translation, Fredegar, as he collapses on the doorstep of a house in the beginning of chapter 11 of The Lord of the Rings, gasp as a bellows.

= = = = Web Sites = = = =

Tolkien Studies Blog, Michael Martinez
http://blog.tolkien-studies.com/
Sometimes you wonder how it could be that you had missed something — that is very much the case for me with Michael Martinez's blog on his tolkien-studies.com (which is, as far as I know, not affiliated with the scholarly journal in any way). Let that, then, be amended!

Middle-earth Blog, Michael Martinez
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/
Martinez runs a Tolkien-related blog also on the Xenite site. He is far too prolific for me to go through all the posts, and many of them are addressed mainly at Tolkien students that are not familiar with The History of Middle-earth, Tolkien's letters and other stuff. Still, many of the posts do contain rather interesting bits of information, and I can only recommend looking them over. In these transactions, however, I will focus on those of his posts that seem to me the most interesting.

Tolkien Index
http://www.tolkienindex.net/index/Main_Page
According to one of the creators, ‘Tolkien Index is nothing more (or less) than a page index of names for publications by J.R.R. Tolkien lacking an index (with a focus on Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar).’ Currently the index covers PE 17 and 19, VT 6, 26, 45, 46 along with some things from Quettar #13 and #14. Trusting that the authors will continue the work, this promises to be a very valuable index resource.

= = = = Sources = = = =

John D. Rateliff (JDR) — ‘Sacnoth's Scriptorium’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com

Jason Fisher (JF) — ‘Lingwë — Musings of a Fish’
http://lingwe.blogspot.com

Michael Drout (MD) — ‘Wormtalk and Slugspeak’
http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/

Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull (H&S) — ‘Too Many Books and Never Enough’
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/

Pieter Collier (PC) — ‘The Tolkien Library’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/

Douglas A. Anderson (DAA) et Al. — ‘Wormwoodiana’
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com

Corey Olsen (CO), ‘The Tolkien Professor’
http://www.tolkienprofessor.com

David Bratman (DB), ‘Kalimac’
http://kalimac.blogspot.com/
and the old home:
http://calimac.livejournal.com/

Larry Swain (LS), ‘The Ruminate’
http://theruminate.blogspot.com

‘Wellinghall’, ‘Musings of an Aging Fan’
http://wellinghall.livejournal.com

Various, ‘The Northeast Tolkien Society’ (NETS), ‘Heren Istarion’
http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com

Bruce Charlton (BC), ‘Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/

Andrew Higgins (AH), ‘Wotan's Musings’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com

Various, The Mythopoeic Society
http://www.mythsoc.org

Henry Gee (HG) ‘cromercrox’, ‘The End of the Pier Show’
http://occamstypewriter.org/cromercrox/

David Simmons (DS), ‘Aiya Ilúvatar’
http://www.aiyailuvatar.org/

Michael Martinez (MM), ‘Tolkien Studies Blog’
http://blog.tolkien-studies.com/

Michael Martinez (MM), ‘Middle-earth’
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/

Troels Forchhammer (TF), ‘Parmar-kenta’
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com

Mythprint — ‘The Monthly Bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society’
http://www.mythsoc.org

Amon Hen — the Bulletin of the Tolkien Society
http://www.tolkiensociety.org/

- and others

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or ‘Tolkien’ in subject.

The idea that time may vary from place to place is a
difficult one, but it is the idea Einstein used, and it is
correct - believe it or not.
- Richard Feynman

Tolkien Transactions XIV

June 2011

This has, at least in my perspective, been a quiet month, which has suited me quite well. At a personal level, my work situation is now more sorted out, so that I know what tasks remain for me in Nokia and when I will be fired (end of April 2012). This hopefully means that I, when I come back from holiday in the middle of July, can address the remaining tasks with new energy.

Enough of this private stuff — this is my collection of the most interesting Tolkien-related things from the internet in June 2011. All my usual disclaimers naturally apply as well as any implication of any responsibility on my part ;)

Obviously I am ignoring a lot of stuff here — in particular the stream of news relating to antipodean film project. Though this stream has been steadily growing as the work progresses (or not), I really do not find such news very interesting — I couldn't care less about who is chosen to play some part, nor about what changes Jackson is going to introduce to make the work conform to his own vision of what a film has to contain. I look forward to watching his Hobbit films in the cinema, but I find the perpetual stream of trivia that fills the news rather annoying.

Have a nice summer!

= = = = News = = = =

Ethan Gilsdorf, Wednesday, 1 June 2011, ‘Tolkien hippie stickers resurface’
http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/ethanfreak-blog/2011/6/1/tolkien-hippie-stickers-resurface.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3btovnl
Ethan Gilsdorf (author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms) evidently attended the 3rd. Conference on Middle-earth (see the March issue) where he got to speak with Ed Meskys, one-time president of the Tolkien Society of America, from whom he got some old The Lord of the Rings stickers that are both terrible and wonderful — I'd hate to see them as illustrations of the book, but viewed like this they have a definite charm (at least for one who is old enough to remember the end of the era that produced them).
There is also a short mention here:
Ethan Gilsdorf, Wired.com, Monday, 6 June 2011, ‘Groovy Lord of the Rings Stickers Unearthed’
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/06/groovy-lord-of-the-rings-stickers-unearthed/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3jnxv9c

Josh Vogt, _ Examiner_, Thursday, 2 June 2011, ‘The Hobbit fans reenact Tolkien's Battle of Five Armies’
http://www.examiner.com/tolkien-in-national/the-hobbit-fans-reenact-tolkien-s-battle-of-five-armies
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4xwrj5a
If you wish to experience the Battle of Five Armies in full detail, but are hesitant to expose yourself to the vision of Mr Jackson, this might be the solution — watch out for details on next year's reenactment.
Another article on the same event:
Jan Flemr, abc-cbn news.com, Monday, 6 June 2011, ‘Have at ye! Goblins battle elves in Tolkien reenactment’
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/06/06/11/have-ye-goblins-battle-elves-tolkien-reenactment
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6dsx7hq

Steve Morrison via Discover Magazine, Thursday, 2 June 2011, ‘The nameless things that gnaw the world — found!’
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/06/01/meet-mephisto-the-worm-that-rules-the-underworld/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3moh8y3
Thanks to Steve for pointing this out in the Tolkien Newsgroups (the link is to the original article rather than to his post). Though possibly not exactly what Tolkien had in mind, imagining these things in 10 feet versions inhabiting the lowest levels of Moria will surely produce the effect he was aiming for.

JF, Thursday, 16 June 2011, ‘Proofing, indexing’
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/06/proofing-indexing.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5w3a375
A brief update on the progress on Jason's upcoming book on source criticism in a Tolkien context. As is noted often, including in the comments, a good index is one of the best investments of time for a scholarly book. Tolkien enthusiasts will know how much The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien was enhanced by the expanded index by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull.

Helly, the Fail blog, Friday, 17 June 2011, ‘LOTR FAIL’
http://failblog.org/2011/06/17/epic-fail-photos-lotr-fail/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3hzwfbu
Definitely in the humorous end, this shows why one shouldn't always go for the cheapest manufacturer for one's merchandise.

H&S, Thursday, 23 June 2011, ‘Art of The Hobbit Progress’
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/art-of-the-hobbit-progress/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/635j2hd
Another progress report on a piece of upcoming Tolkien scholarship. This time the news is that the outside design for the book has finished, and a nice picture illustrates this blog entry.

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

DB, Wednesday, 1 June 2011, ‘Race in Earthsea’
http://calimac.livejournal.com/529509.html
Not really Tolkien, but related to a question that often comes up in a Tolkien connection, and since I was introduced to Ursula Le Quin's Earthsea novels by other Tolkien enthusiasts, I thought this analysis by David Bratman belongs here. It might be interesting to do the same for Tolkien's work, though I suspect that there would be far more references there — the physical characteristics of peoples do have a greater place in Tolkien's world than in Le Guin's.

BC, Saturday, 4 June 2011, ‘TCBS — Inklings — Notion Club’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/06/tcbs-inklings-notion-club.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6frxtum
There has been a lot of focus on the Inklings, who they were and what the social aspect of the club meant to them and their work, but outside of John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War (absolutely brilliant book!) there has been little focus on the TCBS, Tea Club and Barrovian Society. I am sure that there is much more to say about the TCBS as a formative social context for young Ronald Tolkien, in particular on how this group helped shape Tolkien's artistic aspirations and interests, but possibly also on other aspects of his life. Bruce Charlton here suggests one line of research that connects the dots all the way to Tolkien's fictional representation of the Inklings, which is the title of Bruce's blog. The emphasis here is on the last days of the TCBS when they decided that they could change the world, how this decision shaped Tolkien's artistic work, and how this aspect was not a deliberate part of the later real and fictional clubs, nor an aim that was shared by all the members of the real club.

TF, Tuesday, 7 June 2011, ‘Fans and Scholars?’
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/2011/06/fans-and-scholars.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/434hlyf
Spurred by my comments on The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, I take up a debate we had in RABT & AFT some time ago. In particular I comment on the interdependence of the story-external and the story-internal views.

DAA, Friday, 10 June 2011, ‘Roundup: TS8, More Stybiorn news, etc. etc.’
http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/2011/06/roundup-ts8-more-stybiorn-news-etc-etc.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3wwb9es
Douglas A. Anderson shares some news on Tolkien Studies vol. 8 (mine arrived on the 22nd), and some other book news. It lands in this section due to the research into blurbs comparing the present book to Tolkien and in particular to The Lord of the Rings. The earliest examples listed in the blog piece and the comments date from 1965 — 1967. Some of the examples listed are hilarious — particularly the attempt to sell a book as ‘an erotic Tolkien’.

BC, Saturday, 11 june 2011, ‘How Tolkien could/ should have published The Silmarillion’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-tolkien-could-should-have-published.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4x6u35h
Basically Bruce Charlton is suggesting that Tolkien should have published his disparate material more or less ‘as is’

as a compendium of various modes of writing, varying in finish and completeness and of various fictional provenance — held together by some kind of editorial apparatus.

This approach to Tolkien's legendarium is akin to the discussion by Gergely Nagy in ‘The Great Chain of Reading’ in Tolkien the Medievalist by Jane Chance (ed.), but ultimately I don't think that Tolkien saw things that way — this way of looking at the great collection of material as versions of the same myth is, I believe, alien to Tolkien's own thinking. I strongly believe that he saw each new version as the only valid version (the exception being the period when he was considering both a ‘round world’ and a ‘flat world’ version of the Ainulindalë). The evidence, as I read it, points to Tolkien desiring the tales he wrote to be consistently ‘true’ within his sub-created world, and that the evolution and everchanging versions of the tales represent the changes and evolution in his conception of what was ‘true’ rather than experiments in different narrative perspectives, different forms, etc.

Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, Thursday, 16 June 2011, ‘The Revision of Ruel-bone in the OED’
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=241541&PID=7400796&title=the-revision-of-ruelbone-in-the-oed#7400796
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6xu24bc
From the authors of The Ring of Words comes a contribution to the LotR Plaza's Scholars' forum that investigates the newest revision of the word ‘ruel-bone’ in the OED and of course its Tolkien connections.

= = = = Reviews = = = =

Perhaps this section would be more appropriately called ‘Book Announcements’, but some of all these books that we see announced must at some point be reviewed as well ;-)

PC, Thursday, 2 June 2011, ‘The Art of The Hobbit by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/998-The_Art_of_The_Hobbit.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6keryys
A piece by Pieter Collier on the upcoming book by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, The Art of The Hobbit.

TF, Thursday, 2 June 2011, ‘The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún’
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/2011/06/legend-of-sigurd-and-gudrun.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5relo7v
Not a review as such, but a few thoughts and comments upon finishing The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún — in particular I comment on some of the desires that fuelled Tolkien's effort.

JDR, Friday, 3 June 2011, ‘As Catholic As The Day Is Long’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/06/as-catholic-as-day-is-long.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6782pls
A review of a TV documentary by Joseph Pearce on Tolkien as a Catholic author (originally made for a Catholic station). While commending the biographical details, I think the position of the review is best summed in the statements that

By overstating his case, Pearce has weakened it. I think it's one of those times when, having picked up a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Though this is certainly not unheard of in other lines of academic criticism of Tolkien's work, it has always struck me as being particularly annoying when the perspective is a religion that is shared between Tolkien and the critic (or by some other author and the scholar / critic) — it seems to me that there is a tendency to not only see the whole world as made of nails, but to also start preaching the singular value of hammers . . .
Rateliff has a particularly well-worded comment, saying that

Tolkien was a complex man. To seize upon one aspect of his life — his medievalism, his faith, his love of trees, his language-creation, his status as a writer of fantasy or a survivor of the Great War or a mid-century writer, his compulsion to write even without hope of publication, his belonging to the Inklings or being a friend of Lewis's — and insist it's the only one that's important is to seriously distort the picture.

Well said! Thank you!

H&S, Tuesday, 7 June 2011, ‘Go, Little Book’
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/go-little-book/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6d3ghhp
A bit of news from Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull on their upcoming book, The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. They have finished work on the book, and give a sample from the introduction. HarperCollins has very conveniently set the (tentative) publication date to my 45th birthday — guess what's on the wish list ;-)

Larry Swain, Mythprint, Monday, 13 June 2011, ‘Languages, Myths and History’
http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/languages-myths-and-history/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5r4ogmv
This review originally appeared in Mythprint 48:3 (#344) in March 2011.
A reviewof the book Languages, Myths and History: An Introduction to the Linguistic and Literary Background of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fiction by Elizabeth Solopova. All in all a positive review ending with a recommendation of the book ‘even for the experienced Tolkien fan and scholar.’

JDR, Thursday, 16 June 2011, ‘The Return of the Emu’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/06/return-of-emu.html
In Danish, when trying to warn that appearances can be deceptive, we advise people not to judge the hound by the hairs (‘sku ikke hunden på hårene’), while in English people are warned not to judge the book by its cover. When, however, the cover is all that is currently available, a reviewer may see how much can be learned and deduced from the cover. Such is the exercise that John Rateliff here engages in with the cover of the book J. R. R. Tolkien, a biography by Alexandra and John Wallner aimed for young children (the reading level is given as ‘Ages 4 — 8’). Though certainly entertaining, I think Rateliff is perhaps taking his analysis one or two steps further than the current evidence can really support, though I would certainly not be surprised to find that he is correct. Also interesting is the comment by David Bratman about Tolkien's birthplace.

Mike Foster, Monday, 27 June 2011, ‘Tolkien Studies VII’
http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/tolkien-studies-7/
This review originally appeared in Mythprint 48:3 (#344) in March 2011.
The nature of Tolkien Studies is such that a review is as much a resume as a review, but by various hints, I can easily see that Mike Foster has a higher opinion of some of the essays than I have (my review has appeared in Mallorn #51), but that is the nature of any collection. However, we obviously do agree on the praise of Flieger's transcription and commentary on Tolkien's Kalevala work and of Garth's paper on Tolkien's relationship with Robert Q. Gilson and his family — work which Garth follow up upon in volume 8.

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

JDR, Wednesday, 1 June 2011, ‘Lewis Loved Being Read To . . .’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/06/lewis-loved-being-read-to.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5vk28la
A confluence of various bits makes John Rateliff suggest that Lewis had problems reading Tolkien's handwriting, and that this is the explanation for some known statements from Lewis and Tolkien. It is not without problems, as Rateliff himself acknowledges, and will require more in the way of evidence, but it's nonetheless an interesting idea.

BC, Thursday, 2 June 2011, ‘The Question of Pengolod - Superb Numenorean Fanfiction’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/06/question-of-pengolod-superb-numenorean.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6h8wjkr
As regular readers of this will know, I have grown very fond of Bruce Charlton's blog. Though I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, I generally find his bloggings interesting and thought-provoking: even when I don't agree Bruce Charlton's pieces usually help me understand my own reading of Tolkien's work better, and that is surely worth a lot.
Therefore, though I am personally not interested in fanfiction at all (which may also help explain some of the negative aspects of my evaluation of the various adaptations of Tolkien's work), I cannot help but feel that a fan-fiction story that Bruce Charlton praises certainly deserves to be known more widely.

BC, Sunday, 12 June 2011, ‘Is reward more dangerous than punishment?’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-reward-more-dangerous-than.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6z7hrh5
For lack of a better description, I will categorize this as showcasing how some of Tolkien's comments re. Númenor can be applied to the modern world . . .. It touches on the applicability of Middle-earth to the world we know, and though I don't particularly agree with the sentiments described, I wonder if, and how far, Tolkien might have agreed.

JDR, Wednesday, 15 June 2011, ‘Getting Very Near the End’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/06/getting-very-near-end.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/666s23e
The sad story that the British author, Sir Terry Pratchett, is very close to succumbing finally to his Alzheimer's disease. Despite, or perhaps precisely because, writing books that are very different from Tolkien's, I have always been very fond of Pratchett's books, in particular his Disworld novels. The loss of his lively and witty imagination will be felt.

JDR, Thursday, 16 June 2011, ‘Pratchett's Homage to Tolkien’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/06/pratchetts-homage-to-tolkien.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6j3sfj7
Following up on the above, John Rateliff has posted a quotation from Pratchett showing the author's awareness of his debt to Tolkien.

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

‘Owen Barfield’ (mythsoc Yahoo group)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/22359
A very interesting discussion on the Mythopoeic Society list at Yahoo Groups focusing on Owen Barfield and particularly on how to interpret the relationship between Barfield's work and Tolkien's (i.e. not the relationship between the two men per se). The advice to go read Poetic Diction is probably sound, but my understanding, based on the comments I've read, is that it is not a very accessible work — perhaps one day when the kids have moved out and I have tons of time ;-)

= = = = Web Sites = = = =

The Tolkien Usenet Groups' Web-site Project
http://users.silenceisdefeat.net/~aft-rabt/
The AFT/RABT web-site project includes a full overview of the Chapter of the Week discussions as well as collections of links.

The Tolkien Society
http://www.tolkiensociety.org/
The UK-based Tolkien Society. The Tolkien Society publishes the bulletin Amon Hen and the journal Mallorn and organises various events, of which e.g. the annual seminar focusing on some aspect of Tolkien's work, the annual Oxonmoot as well as less frequent events such as the one-week ‘The Return of the Ring’ conference taking place in Loughborough in 2012.

The Mythopoeic Society
http://www.mythsoc.org/
The Mythopoeic Society is based in the US and focuses on the works of the Inklings in general and Williams, Lewis and Tolkien in particular. At some point it merged with the Tolkien Society of America and is often seen as a sister-organisation of the Tolkien Society. The Mythopoeic Society publishes the bulletin Mythprint and the journal Mythlore where the contents generally has a more academic/scholarly stamp than in Mallorn but on the other hand includes more non-Tolkienian articles. There is also the Mythic Circle that contains ‘original short fiction, poetry, and artwork’ celebrating the work of Tolkien, Lewis and Williams. The society also has its own publishing house, the Mythopoeic Press, which publishes books promoting the society's interests. The Mythopoeic Society also hosts events such as the annual Mythcon.

= = = = Sources = = = =

John D. Rateliff (JDR) — ‘Sacnoth's Scriptorium’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com

Jason Fisher (JF) — ‘Lingwë — Musings of a Fish’
http://lingwe.blogspot.com

Michael Drout (MD) — ‘Wormtalk and Slugspeak’
http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/

Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull (H&S) — ‘Too Many Books and Never Enough’
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/

Pieter Collier (PC) — ‘The Tolkien Library’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/

Douglas A. Anderson (DAA) et Al. — ‘Wormwoodiana’
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com

Corey Olsen (CO), ‘The Tolkien Professor’
http://www.tolkienprofessor.com

David Bratman (DB), ‘Calimac’
http://calimac.livejournal.com/

Larry Swain (LS), ‘The Ruminate’
http://theruminate.blogspot.com

‘Wellinghall’, ‘Musings of an Aging Fan’
http://wellinghall.livejournal.com

Various, ‘The Northeast Tolkien Society’ (NETS), ‘Heren Istarion’
http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com

Bruce Charlton (BC), ‘Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/

Andrew Higgins (AH), ‘Wotan's Musings’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com

Various, The Mythopoeic Society
http://www.mythsoc.org

Troels Forchhammer (TF), ‘Parmar-kenta’
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com

Mythprint — ‘The Monthly Bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society’
http://www.mythsoc.org

Amon Hen — the Bulletin of the Tolkien Society
http://www.tolkiensociety.org/

- and others

Mythlore issue 111/112

So, I finally managed to find the time to read the last of the Tolkien-related material in this volume of Mythlore (the journal of the Mythopoiec Society) — I am not really a fast reader in English, and I didn't start until the start of this year (and this issue is almost entirely dedicated to Tolkien — there is a single essay on Lewis and one on Le Guin, but otherwise it's all about Tolkien's work). With so much good Tolkien scholarship in one place, I just had to write a few words about it ;-)

So without further ado:

Jason Fisher: ‘Dwarves, Spiders, and Murky Woods: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Wonderful Web of Words’
Jason takes a look at the incident from The Hobbit with the spiders in Mirkwood, and the reader is taken along on a playful journey into the world of words from Sanskrit and Old Church Slavonic to Finnish and modern English with stops nearly everywhere in-between. I dearly love words and thus I enjoyed every bit of the ride (my only complaint would be a small sigh that the modern Danish word for a spider is nowhere mentioned: we call it ‘edderkop’ and so I had to have it pointed out to me that there was something special about Tolkien's use of Attercop). Whether Tolkien was aware of all of the connections that Jason's joyous deluge of philological ingenuity uncovers is, in my opinion, highly doubtful. Jason does a good job at showing that Tolkien could have known about them, but in the end it doesn't really matter for me whether he did and whether he was aware of them. For me the main quality of this essay is not whether it tells me anything new about Tolkien's work, but to experience, and share, the joy in the linguistic puzzles. Even had I found it more difficult, Jason would certainly have got me ‘drunk on words’.

Robert T. Tally, Jr.: ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Orcs: Simple Humanity in Tolkien’s Inhuman Creatures’
There is something about the roles of the Orcs in Tolkien's legendarium that attracts me. This has to do both with the ethical questions and philosophical reflections that arose out of Tolkien's speculations concerning the Orcs, but also the fascinating development on the nature and origin of the Orcs. Robert T. Tally Jr. dives into the portrayal of Orcs in The Lord of the Rings in particular, addressing both the humanised aspect of their portrayal as well as the demonization, which he relates to the traditional demonization of the enemy seen in the wars of the Primary World — not least in the two great wars of the twentieth century. The essay is well written and interesting, and my only complaint (vague and vain as it is) would be that Tally doesn't address take into account the shift in Tolkien's view on the Orcs that occurred while he was writing The Lord of the Rings (for a brief summary of this, see my blog entry, ‘“The Lord of the Rings” as a transitionary work’.

Lynn Whitaker: ‘Corrupting Beauty: Rape Narrative in The Silmarillion’
I freely admit that I started off being very sceptic of this essay - I was somewhat put me off by the title, but I ended up thinking that Lynn Whitaker easily could have gone a step or two further in her analysis. Whitaker analyses the rape narratives (understood in the broadest possible way) of both Aredhel, the sister of Turgon, and Lúthien, and though she asserts in her conclusion that ‘[i]t is in the story of Luthien, however, that the true significance of rape narrative (and the role of beauty within it) as myth is explored by Tolkien’ more space is devoted to the analysis of Aredhel, whose story is, admittedly, also more interesting because of the moral nuances expressed here (what degree of consent is, for instance, implied when Tolkien's narrator states that ‘[i]t is not said that Aredhel was wholly unwilling’?). All in all a well-written paper that manages to convince me of its raison d'être and its premise despite my initial scepticism, and which I thoroughly enjoyed. What praise can I say more?

Jesse Mitchell: ‘Master of Doom by Doom Mastered: Heroism, Fate, and Death in The Children of Húrin’
Mitchell, in my honest opinion, comes off to a very bad start. He starts out by heavily criticising Richard West's view on Túrin, but cites only the very brief reference found in West's essay, ‘Setting the Rocket Off in Story: The Kalevala as the Germ of Tolkien's Legendarium’¹. A check in the list of references does not turn out either West's main piece on Túrin, ‘Túrin's Ofermod: An Old English Theme in the Development of the Story of Túrin’² or Tolkien's essay on Ofermod³. The main thrust of the paper is to employ specific romantic heroic types to describe Túrin, but this, unfortunately, becomes a limitation rather than a help as Mr Mitchell seems overly concerned with these labels and boxes, and so the analysis is brought to a halt against the walls of the boxes: Túrin is forcibly squeezed into the box of the ‘Byronic Hero’, and very little is said of the points where he deviates from this model (which is at least as interesting, if not more, as where he fits the model). This is a pity because it means that the approaches to interesting insights into Túrin's character that are genuinely present in the paper are brought to a stop before they are developed far enough to contribute with new understanding of Túrin. The overall impression is that Mr Mitchell has been more concerned with demonstrating his own understanding of this particular interpretative model and his command of a post-modern jingo than with actually understanding Tolkien's text.

Richard J. Whitt: ‘Germanic Fate and Doom in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion’
As is the case with the Orcs, I am also attracted to the philosophical reflections inherent in the question of free will in Tolkien's fiction, and as a Dane I am naturally favourably predisposed towards attempts to use the Old Norse world-view to aid my understanding and appreciation of Tolkien's work. Whitt does, of course, not limit himself to Old Norse, but investigates the concepts of fate and doom in Germanic thought more broadly. Still, the Old Norse and Old English sources feature prominently in our understanding of Germanic thought and world-view. Whitt investigates the sense of words with meanings in the fate / doom spectrum of meaning, wyrd, rǫk, dōme, and others from various old Germanic texts such as Beowulf, the Poetic Edda and the Heliand and compares to examples of Tolkien's use of fate and doom in The Silmarillion, both his explicit invocations of these concepts, but also his more implicit use. Whitt explains that ‘[f]ate and doom are ever present forces in Tolkien's The Silmarillion’ in several senses, and adding the Christian concepts of providence and the Will of God, he concludes that ‘[t]his combination of fate and doom on the one hand and a supposed omnipotent God on the other finds itself at home in both the Middle-earth of Tolkien and of medieval Germania. Fate and doom are key players throughout The Silmarillion, but as can be seen in Germanic texts such as the Heliand or Beowulf, they ultimately fall in accord with the will of Iluvatar.’

Janet Brennan Croft: ‘The Thread on Which Doom Hangs: Free Will, Disobedience, and Eucatastrophe in Tolkien’s Middle-earth’
One more essay contributing to the understanding the roles of free will and fate in Tolkien's fiction, Janet Brennan Croft focuses on the role of disobedience, which of course requires the freedom of will to actually disobey. Taking her outset in the concept of War in Heaven and how to describe this along several axes, Croft categorizes the War in Heaven in Tolkien's Secondary World as a ‘moderate, eschatological, pro-cosmic system in which the second principle is in rebellion against its creator.’ From there Croft moves into a discussion of obedience and disobedience in such a world, in particular considering the interplay between the obedience / disobedience dipole on one hand, and the free will / providence dipole on the other, concluding that free will is an important weapon for good in a system of the type of Tolkien's War in Heaven, and that Tolkien shows this  by repeatedly showing us eucatastrophe as the result of the right kind of disobedience. In Croft's expert handling, the categorizing becomes a useful tool for understanding Tolkien's work — and in the ensuing discussion of obedience, disobedience, free will and providence, the texts themselves take the centre stage with comparisons to the works of other authors such as Pratchett, Asimov, Bujold and the experiments of Stanley Milgam. Though in the end the conclusions are not surprising, but seem rather intuitive, Croft offers a framework for reasoning about it and thereby build rational understanding of Tolkien's use of disobedience to show the role of free will in producing eucatastrophe.

William H. Stoddard: ‘Simbelmynë: Mortality and Memory in Middle-earth’
This essay, the shortest of the Tolkien-related essays in this issue of Mythlore, deals with elegiac elements in The Lord of the Rings. The lament for the lost past, he says, is seen in e.g. the traces of the past that the Fellowship encounters (particularly the ruins), but also in the songs that remember and celebrate the past, and in the great care Men take over the dead. Stoddard asserts that ‘[m]emory seems essential to the nature of the Elves’ and further that this eternal (within Time) memory of the Eldar means that they ‘offer the closest thing to immortality that natural men can hope for’. Moving to the primary power of all the Rings of Power, to preserve and to heal, he investigates the negative side of this aspect of the role of the Elves, that they become not just preservers of Middle-earth, but embalmers. Stoddard speculates that the strong elegiac element in The Lord of the Rings is, in part, a result of Tolkien's own experiences with loss, losing both parents while still a child, and losing most of his close friends as a young man in the Great War. I could have wished that Stoddard had expanded his investigation to also encompass the negative aspects when a culture becomes too reverent of the past, such as described e.g. by Faramir to Frodo and Sam, ‘Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons’ and of course the fate of Númenor should also be recalled, when the fear of death turns the reverence for the past into an unhealthy obsession for the past and a pursuit of true immortality.


This issue of Mythlore also contains two reviews of books about Tolkien's work. Since, however, both reviews are available on-line at the Mythopoeic Society web-site, I will merely link to the reviews here.
Dimitra Fimi, Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits is reviewed by Jason Fisher
Bradford Lee Eden (editor), Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien is reviewed by Emily A. Moniz


1: In Chance, Jane (ed.). Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, The University Press of Kentucky, 2004.
2: In Flieger, Verlyn and Hostetter, Carl F. (eds). Tolkien's “Legendarium”: Essays on “The History of Middle-earth”, Greenwood Press, 2000.
3: Part of the work titled ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son’, e.g. in Tolkien, J.R.R. Tree and Leaf, HarperCollins Publishers, several editions.

‘The Lord of the Rings’ as a transitionary work

There is a tendency to portray Tolkien's legendarium as a single, coherent and consistent sub-creation when discussing his work: a ‘“usable” and “standard” form’ of Middle-earth and its history. This is the view that underlies the fan discussions about a ‘Middle-earth canon’, but even in scholarly work we can also see this idea that one particular version is some mysterious way more ‘true’ than other versions: an example of this can be seen in Vladimir Brljak's paper, ‘The Book of Lost Tales: Tolkien as Metafictionist’ in Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review volume VII.

In his excellent paper, ‘Elvish as She Is Spoke’ (published in The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull¹) Carl Hostetter discusses the attempt, by some, to make ‘Tolkien’s languages, or more properly newly-minted versions of these languages, into “usable” and “standard” forms (their own terminology)’. Hostetter argues that these forms, precisely because of their attempt to achieve a degree of homogeneity and standardisation, are

characterized by conflation of materials and evidence from often widely separated conceptual phases, and by consequent circularity in reasoning about this evidence.
(p. 241)

The most common strategies when attempting to construct a homogeneous and standardised vision of Tolkien's legendarium are to either focus on Tolkien's last thoughts on any given matter, or to focus on the last version of The Lord of the Rings and require consistency with that.

The former of these strategies suffers from a number of problems: first of all Tolkien's last writings were often inconsistent — what he wrote on one subject in, say, 1961, is incompatible with what he wrote on another subject in, say, 1969. The problem here is that none of Tolkien's last writings can be assumed to be his final word on any given subject: in this way there is no reason to presume that the legendarium as a whole ever achieved a greater degree of fixed finality than did his languages.Another problem is that Tolkien's ‘last word’ on various subjects occur over a very long period, in some cases the ‘last’ words were written in the 1930s or even earlier.

The second strategy is the one that is the main focus of this blog entry. When discussing The Lord of the Rings itself, or even when discussing the greater sub-creation of Arda and its history, many people treats the book (in particular the revised version) as displaying the kind of homogeneity and inner consistency that is the very aim of the attempt to create both a ‘Neo-Quenya’ and a ‘Middle-earth Canon’. This, however, is also an over-simplified view that ignores that the years during which Tolkien actually wrote The Lord of the Rings in many ways represents a period of great transitions in his vision of Middle-earth — possibly in part caused by the writing of the book. This transitionary nature of The Lord of the Rings can be traced in a number of threads, but in the following I will focus on the nature of Orcs and in the underlying cosmogony.

Orcs

The Orcs entered Tolkien's legendarium in the very begining. They are a part of the first ‘Fall of Gondolin’ in The Book of Lost Tales, where it is said that

all that race were bred by Melko of the subterranean heats and slime. Their hearts were of granite and their bodies deformed; foul their faces which smiled not, but their laugh that of the clash of metal, and to nothing were they more fain than to aid in the basest of the purposes of Melko.
(The Book of Lost Tales 2 ch. III ‘The Fall of Gondolin’, p. 159-60)

This view of the Orcs as demons created by Melkor stayed valid through the Quenta Silmarillion of the mid-thirties, where it is said that

There countless became the hosts of his beasts and demons; and he brought into being the race of the Orcs, and they grew and multiplied in the bowels of the earth. These Orcs Morgoth made in envy and mockery of the Elves, and they were made of stone, but their hearts of hatred. Glamhoth, the hosts of hate, the Gnomes have called them. Goblins they may be called, but in ancient days they were strong and fell.
(The Lost Road and Other Writings (HoMe 5), part 2, VI ‘Quenta Silmarillion’, ch. 5 §62, p.233)

This view on the origin of the Orcs is essentially what Treebeard is expressing², and which Tolkien later, in a draft letter to Peter Hastings from September 1954³ refuted forcibly. In this early view the Orcs are not ‘demonized’ as such, but rather they are actual demons. This, of course, fits much better as the *reality⁴ behind the orcneas mentioned together with eotenas and ylfe in Beowulf⁵ than does the later concept, which in The Lord of the Rings is given voice by Frodo, who claims that ‘The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own’⁶ which is of course also the view that Tolkien in 1954 supports in his draft letter to Peter Hastings.

Apart from being implied in Treebeard's statement about the Orcs being made in mockery of the Elves, this view of Orcs as demons is implicit also in many other scenes such as e.g. the Battle of the Hornburg where both the game of counting Orc-heads between Gimli and Legolas as well as the total annihilation of the Orcs by the Ents (contrasted by the mercy shown to the Dunlendings) speaks of a de-humanized view of the Orcs that befit their demonic nature far better than the later view.⁷ Indeed, in later years Tolkien felt forced to emphasize that ‘If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost’⁸ and that they never actually did surrender and ask for mercy because Melkor had succeeded so well in his corruption and indoctrination of the Orcs that they thought that their enemies (particularly the Elves) were even crueller than themselves.

Cosmogony

It is well-known that Tolkien long considered changing his original cosmogonic myth so that the solar system would have been created much as it is described by modern astronomy — the Earth, Arda, would always have been a sphere, the Sun, Anar, and the Moon, Isil, would have been created from the very start and thus not from the last fruits of the Two Trees in Valinor. In part one of Morgoth's Ring which deals with the development of the Ainulindalë after Tolkien started writing The Lord of the Ring we learn that the first attempt at a cosmogonic myth incorporating these ideas, a ‘round-world version’, was created in the mid-forties while Tolkien was still writing and revising The Lord of the Rings. In consequence we see traces of both versions of the cosmogonic myth in the work.⁹ When Tom Bombadil says that ‘When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent.’ (emphasis added) he is firmly placed in what Tolkien would call the ‘flat-world version’, but when Gimli sings the song about Durin as the Company of the Ring visits the Khazad-dûm, it strongly suggests the round-world version:

The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.

The Dwarves awoke long before the Noldor returned to Middle-earth, and thus, in the old flat-world version it doesn't make sense to speak of the Moon (stained or unstained) if this cosmogony is used. Similarly Gandalf's riddling poem about the Ents mentions the Moon before it is supposed to have been in existence in the old flat-world version.

Ere iron was found or tree was hewn,
When young was mountain under moon;
Ere ring was made, or wrought was woe,
It walked the forests long ago.

It is curious — even to the point where I suspect intention — that in all cases the passage can be re-interpreted to make sense even in the other cosmogony than the one under which it is written.


I hope with these example to have illustrated that even within The Lord of the Rings there are clear traces of the developing nature of Tolkien's legendarium — Tolkien's views on his own legendarium inevitably developed during the writing of his magnum opus and though Tolkien has done much to preserve the consistency of the work, there are still traces of this development. When we include the greater legendarium, this effect becomes even more obvious, which in its turn shows that any effort to create a ‘“usable” and “standard” form’ of the legendarium: a ‘canonical’ Middle-earth, if you will, is only achievable by

conflation of materials and evidence from often widely separated conceptual phases, and by consequent circularity in reasoning about this evidence.

to borrow Carl Hostetter's words for this context also (as pointed out above, Hostetter applied his statement to attempts to create neo-elvish languages¹⁰).

This does not mean that writings by Tolkien from one period can not inform our reading and understanding of what he wrote in another period, but I propose that instead of trying to create the illusion of a consistent and coherent sub-creation we embrace the evolutionary nature of Tolkien's legendarium, including acceptance of the fact that the writing The Lord of the Rings in many ways marks a transition in Tolkien's conception of his legendarium and that this transitionary nature can still be detected in the book.

Notes
1: Also available on-line from the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship at http://www.elvish.org/articles/
2: ‘But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.’ The Lord of the Rings, book III chapter 4 (The Lord of the Rings has been published in such a great number of editions that giving page numbers is not very useful, so I refrain from doing that).
3: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien no. 153 p. 190-1
4: See e.g. Tom Shippey The Road to Middle-earth ch. 1 (in particular under the sub-heading ‘Asterisk-Reality’ p. 17)
5: See e.g. Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century ch. II p. 88 and also Gilliver, Marshall and Weiner, The Ring of Words ch. 3, the entry for ‘Orc’ p. 174ff.
6: The Lord of the Rings, book IV, ch. 8
7: Tom Shippey, ‘Orcs, Wraiths, Wights: Tolkien's Images of Evil.’ in Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien and also Robert T. Tally Jr. ‘Let us now praise famous Orcs: simple humanity in Tolkien's inhuman creatures’ in Mythlore issue 111/112
8: Morgoth's Ring (HoMe 10), part 5 ‘Myths Transformed’, text X, p. 419
9: Examples are from The Lord of the Rings book I chapter 7, book II chapter 4 and book III chapter 8
10: It is with some trepidation that I thus use the words of a highly respected Tolkien scholar in a different context from what he wrote them for — I can only hope that Hostetter, given that I make it clear that the application to this particular context is mine alone, will forgive my presumption.