Source Criticism II

I found this lying about in my drafts, where it had lain idle for a goodly while, so I went through it, changed a few bits here and there, and here goes.  The approach is perhaps a bit circumlocutory, but please bear with me — it does become relevant :-)

For the past 9 years I have been working with mobile phones — particularly with their wireless performance (the ratio of erroneously received bits to the total number of transmitted bits) in a variety of situations. When I have analysed the performance of two phones, the inevitable question has always been ‘which is best?’ After I have carefully explained how one is better under some circumstances while the other is better in other circumstances, the next question has always been, ‘yes, but which one is best . . . overall?’

But how are we supposed to compare?

Should we compare the very best that one phone is capable of to the very best that another is capable of? Or perhaps we should compare the worst to the worst — for which phone does the largest fraction of test scenarios fail completely? Or should we perhaps compare the bulk of the data? In statistical terms the median^[1] or the mode^[2]? If we want a definitive answer, we can only compare one set of numbers.

I start with this illustration of a professional problem because it is, to my scientifically conditioned mind, very similar to the problem of saying something about the value of source criticism of Tolkien's work.

Based on the argumentation in Tolkien and the Study of His Sources edited by Jason Fisher, it is my impression that many would wish to dismiss source criticism as a legitimate critical approach because Tolkien himself disliked it, but I have never agreed with this argument: there are many points where I would disagree with Tolkien; in some cases I even appreciate Tolkien's views as an integral part of his sub-creation and despite disagreeing with him, I wouldn't have any adaptation that took a different position on it (this was my main complaint against the New Line Cinema adaptation of The Lord of the Rings). If new technology and new machines appear to make my life easier, I don't really care if it is at the cost of a few trees . . ..

There is, of course, the question of purpose: if we wish to do source studies, it is fair to ask why, and what we would wish to achieve by it. Verlyn Flieger, at the panel debate on source criticism at the Return of the Ring conference in Loughborough this August, suggested that the purpose was to understand the mind of the author (an endeavour I find no less daunting than Kristine Larsen's wish to “improve our individual chances of holding our own, if only for a brief moment, in a lively discussion with the Good Professor in whatever version of the Eagle and Child awaits the Second Born beyond the Walls of the World.”) In the panel, the conclusion was that we should do source criticism in order to better understand the “mental landscape” of the author. As landscapes can be understood in various levels of detail and abstraction (just play around for a bit with Google maps), I have no problem with that definition, and I would agree that it is a worthwhile effort: even if you wish to understand the story-internal origin of the Orkish race, you will need to understand Tolkien's mental landscape, and understanding it ever better can only help us in our pursuits to also achieve a better understanding of his sub-creational work.

The main issue that I have had with source criticism of Tolkien's work has been that so much of it has been so very badly conducted. I have, in my earlier post about source criticism, listed a number of the problems I have encountered in such studies and I will not expand on that here. One thing that Jason Fisher's book has done for me has been to open my eyes also to those few excellent to perfect examples of source studies that are also there while the bulk of the source studies are still poor. I've tried to illustrate this with a figure — the majority of source studies of Tolkien's work lie between the abominable and the tolerable (with most being merely poor), but a small fraction are good, excellent or even better. In the top we have a few studies such as Verlyn Flieger's Splintered Light.

The following paragraph is inserted after first publication in response to Jason's insightful comments below:
I should add that this represents my personal impression of “Tolkien Source Criticism” alone. As Jason Fisher points out in comments below, this is likely to also be true of other approaches, or indeed of all approaches (I do believe I could find other approaches for which I would say that the same picture to be true). This is also based on what is, after all, a limited sample (I have not read all Tolkien source studies) which may of course not be representative, and it is based on my personal ideas and preferences. I have targeted source studies specifically in response to reading Jason Fisher's book in which he sets out to improve on Tolkien source studies, not because I find that this approach shows particular problems compared to other approaches.

Looking at this, the big problem is upon what we should base our evaluation of source studies as a method for Tolkien criticism. Should we base it on the fact that a select few can use this approach for sublime results? I would venture that this is probably the result of the people rather than the method. Similarly I would claim that those conducting the abominable studies would probably do so regardless of the method. On the other hand, why should we judge the method on what the average guy can make of it?

When we realise that the quality of the resulting study will depend at least as much on the scholar and the specific topic as it does on the chosen method, why should we expect to be able to say anything general about the method at all? As in so many situations, the only answer is, ‘It depends!’

Jason Fisher's book, and in particular his own contribution to it, ‘Tolkien and Source Criticism: Remarking and Remaking’, gives a set of rules and sets up a standard that may help shift the distribution towards something less bottom-heavy — wouldn't it be wonderful if the bulk of Tolkien source-studies were good rather than poor? Certainly in Fisher's book itself the skew is the other way around and the bulk of the essays are better than tolerable.

While I shall probably still approach source studies with a certain degree of scepticism (so as to avoid disappointment), I will also do so with the small hope that this one might be one of the excellent studies, knowing that such studies do exist and are possibly not quite as rare as I had previously thought.

Oh! I do hope to have more to say about Fisher's book at a later point — this is not meant to be a review, but rather some further thoughts on my personal perception of source studies as a critical approach to Tolkien's work.


[1] The point where exactly half the results are better and half are worse. Somewhere between ‘Poor’ and ‘Tolerable’ in the figure.

[2] The point where the most results are concentrated — where the function peaks at ‘Poor’ on the figure.

Taum Santoski's Aphorisms 1 through 6

Since the beginning of August, John Rateliff has, acting as Taum Santoski's literary executor, been posting a series of aphorisms by Taum Santoski in, as I see it, a celebration of Santoski's life and work on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his death.

John Rateliff calls them ‘Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy,‘ though he acknowledges that ‘… of Tolkienian Fantasy’ might be ‘nearer the mark.’ The aphorisms appear to me to be rather cryptic (in his commentary John Rateliff also has to occasionally give in and tell us that he has ‘no idea what Taum is talking about here’ so I am at least in good company), so I thought that I would put down my thoughts in the hope of attracting comments that may help my understanding.

My understanding of these first six aphorisms has already been helped a lot by John Rateliff's comments to which I will frequently refer.

First Aphorism

‘Odin the Wanderer’
by Georg von Rosen
(from Wikipedia)

Here Santoski asserts that Tolkien's work is aetiological in nature. Santoski refers to the effort to ‘make comprehensible the human situation of doubt, fear, and hope,‘ and David Bratman, in comments to the original post, speaks of Tolkien's work being also aetiological in an etymological and an historical sense.  To this I would add that Tolkien's work also deals with the basics of causation.  When Tolkien speaks of The Lord of the Rings as being ‘a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,’ I think that this is most clearly visible in the basic fabric of causation in Middle-earth: we see how grace and providence affects the causation, not by wrestling the world into a certain path, but by making certain paths possible and by making some paths more or less likely to be followed than they would have been without the action of grace and providence.  In this way Tolkien deals with the fundamentals of causation. If we take Tom Shippey's ideas of Tolkien creating an asterisk-reality, then Tolkien's work can also be seen as aetiological in the sense that it investigates the (possible) cause of the later European mythologies (Túrin as the asterisk-source of Kullervo and Mithrandir as the origin of the image of Odinn wandering Midgard rather than the other way around).

John Rateliff has seen Tolkien's world as being rather teleological, but I am not convinced these two views are necessarily at odds: within Tolkien's sub-creation, I would say that the purpose of Arda is also largely the cause of much of what is and happens within Arda — one might even argue that Arda, and indeed all of Eä, is caused by Eru's purpose with it.


Second Aphorism
The first part, where Santoski states that the world of Tolkien's mythos (his sub-created world) is ‘related to but not identical’ to our Primary World (to borrow the phrasing of Tolkien's ‘On Fairy-Stories’) seems at first obvious, though it does of course, as David Bratman implies in his comment, depend on what Santoski meant with that phrase.  Tolkien said that ‘The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary,’ and though this means that there is a very great overlap between Tolkien's Secondary World and our Primary World (Middle-earth, as Ian Collier states in a comment, ‘ springs from Tolkien's experience and knowledge of the primary world’), they are still not identical — Tolkien both subtracts from and adds to the Primary World in the sub-creation of his Secondary World, and net result of this process can, to my mind, very well be described by saying that the two worlds are ‘related to but not identical.’  As I say in a comment, Tolkien sets up a situation in which his Secondary World in external fact derives from our (or rather his) present world, but also where, in internal fact, our present Primary World derives from his Secondary World.

Taum Santoski goes on to note that Tolkien's world is not merely a mirror image of the Primary World (not even, I will add, an image in a distorting mirror), but that it contains its own (secondary) reality. Lastly he asserts that Tolkien's world, by this very reality that it uniquely its own, impinges ‘very efectively, but with a newness and nowness, upon our world.’ I am not sure whether there is more to this than a simple statement that any good story worth telling has applicability for the reader, but, as Rateliff notes in connection with aphorism no. 6, ‘perhaps I'm simply not seeing a subtlety here.’


Third Aphorism
In the third aphorism, Taum Santoski asserts that Tolkien's mythic world is ‘in another order of time,’ referring to H.A. Frankfort's idea of the absolute past:

This deliberate co-ordination of cosmic and social events shows most clearly that time to early man did not mean a neutral and abstract frame of reference, but rather a succession of recurring phases, each charged with a peculiar value and significance. Again, as in dealing with space, we find that there are certain ‘regions’ of time which are withdrawn from direct experience and greatly stimulate speculative thought. They are the distant past and the future. Either of these may become normative and absolute; each then falls beyond the range of time altogether. The absolute past does not recede, nor do we approach the absolute future gradually. The ’Kingdom of God’ may at any time break into our present. For the Jews the future is normative. For the Egyptians, on the other hand, the past was normative; and no pharaoh could hope to achieve more than the establishment of the conditions ‘as they were in the time of Rē, in the beginning.’ 

Before philosophy: the intellectual adventure of ancient man: an essay on speculative thought in the ancient Near East by H. and H.A. Frankfort, John A. Wilson and Thorkild Jacobsen. URL: http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24401493M/Before_philosophy

Receding into the distance,
disappearing from view.

In Tolkien's Secondary World, both past and future are normative — in the absolute past there is the cosmogonical drama and the Golden Age of the Quendi in the Blessed Realm, and in the absolute future there is the promise of Arda Remade, of the Music of both Ainur and Eruhíni — not knowing the relation between the Music and Time, Eru's final chord may come tomorrow or in thousands of years. The events of The Lord of the Rings  can be viewed in both ways. It is clear that events of the Second Age and early Third Age have indeed receded, become mere distant history, but internally we can see Tolkien's ‘discovery’ of the texts as recovering the events of the War of the Ring to an absolute past though they had receded into a far distant historical past that had left only vague traces in the myth of ancient history.

I am not sure what Santoski may mean by saying that the mythic past in Tolkien's world ‘percolates through “history” from time to time,’ though I suspect that this may be because I take the image too literally (there is not a slow seeping through a porous membrane). Still, given Tolkien's use of the musical metaphor, I would prefer to say that the mythical past resonates through all of time, that it is as a standing wave on time between the Word (‘Eä!’) and the final chord.  The Golden Age that is never brought any closer in Time may be Arda remade (or Arda Healed), in which case the Golden Ages that tarnish is every temporary victory within Time, from the Noontide of Valinor through the rule of King Elessar and further. The tarnish on the first Golden Age(s) is light as they remain close in the absolute past, but with the degeneration of the mythological world, the tarnish grows stronger until there can only be an echo of a golden age that quickly recedes in time.


Fourth Aphorism

Four elements  — a
simple explanatory model

The opening statement, that Tolkien's sub-creation is a miniature world sub-created by Tolkien's best efforts, sets the scene for another of my favourite metaphors for explaining what sub-creative literature can do. The author obviously cannot sub-create a full world in all its detail, and so the sub-created world becomes a kind of model understood in the scientific sense. That is, it contains a limited reality that is appropriate for studying some specific phenomena. In physics we will often start mechanics with a model containing only a single force, gradually adding gravity, friction, air resistance etc. as the student progresses. In the same way an author of sub-creative literature sets up a model in which he can study some specific aspects of the human condition without the full noise of reality.

In the continuation Santoski speaks of re-establishing a ‘harmony with the present world’ through participating in the mythic powers of Tolkien's world, mediated by the words. Here I am reminded of Tolkien's statements in ‘On Fairy-Stories’ about Enchantment. I am also reminded of  Bruce Charlton's thoughts in his Notion Club Papers blog that Tolkien's goal was ‘recovery of history as myth,’ though Santoski's aphorisms would, I think, rather lead to the postulation of a goal of restoring an absolute past.


Fifth Aphorism

Inspiration or plagiarism?

Taum Santoski seems here to me to launch an attack against any claim that Tolkien was unoriginal or even that he plagiarized earlier myths, claiming that while some of Tolkien's myths are derived from (or inspired by) ancient mythologies, the sources ‘grow and fructify,’ thus becoming ‘a new thing.’ Having reached some way into Jason Fisher's new book, Tolkien and the Study of his Sources, I think that it might be a worthy line of inquiry for good source studies to attempt to explicate just how Tolkien manages to create something entirely new out of his sources rather than ‘merely a hybridized retelling.’ The focus here would not be on individual sources, but on the interplay of the sources and the literary techniques that allow Tolkien to achieve not a mish-mash (or a ‘hybridized retelling’), but something new that has its own life and its own unique secondary reality.


Sixth Aphorism
John Rateliff thinks that Santoski's claim here is ‘entirely specious, eloquence overwhelming the argument.’ Personally I also suspect a high degree of speciousness, but as Rateliff wisely adds, we may not be seeing the subtlety here.

The argument that if myth and history can be split into two categories, then ‘their definitions must be different processes’ is, I believe, false. There may be different processes involved, but this does not follow necessarily, nor does it follow that such differences of process necessarily the defining difference, even if they exist. I do think that there are procedural differences involved, but I also think that it is more a matter of a complex interplay of many processes where there are differences in the focus and weights of the contributing processes, and thus that the dichotomy of processes is false.

Sigurd?
Myth? History? Legend?

Trying to think of examples of the difference between myth and history, I first thought of the events of the later part of the Niflung cycle (the events that Tolkien retold in his Guðrúnarkviða en Nýja, including the fall of both the Burgundians / Niflungs and Attila / Atli. To these events we have both the mythological treatment in the Niflung cycle and the accounts of medieval Greek and Roman historians. Of these the mythological treatment is the later, though we don't know how soon after the actual events they were ‘mythologized’.

The other example I have come up with is the historicizing of mythology that we seen in some medieval accounts, of which the one that I know best is the inclusion by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum of historicized versions of some of the Old Norse myths.

In both of these examples, I do think that Taum Santoski's distinction between perception vs. observation of events can make sense to some degree, but they certainly do not fit a dichotomy, and I believe that this perceived difference, even if correct, is a result of some underlying defining difference that would, I suspect, have to be put in teleological terms: i.e. the defining difference is not in how the account is produced, but rather in why it is produced. To complete the circle of the first six aphorisms, I believe that the differences between the purpose of myth and the purpose of history is to a large extent aetiological: there is in both an element of attempting to explain the present world by causes in the past, but they attempt to explain different aspects of the present world and they look at different causes altogether.

Source Criticism

I am about to embark on reading Jason Fisher's new book, Tolkien and the Study of his Sources, and I thought that I would carry out a little experiment — I am, after all, an experimental physicist by education ;-)

Now, before I start reading, I will record some of my thoughts on source criticism, and when I have finished Jason's book on the practice, I'll post again to note any developments and changes in my position.

First off, what is source criticism? Having decided to do this experiment, I realize that I don't really know the formal definition as such. I know that it involves the identification of more or less probable sources of inspiration for elements in a story — e.g. Kullervo in the Kalevala as the original inspiration for Túrin Turambar — but I don't know if the term is used to cover more than just the identification of the possible source, so here at least there is something for me to learn ;-)  However, for the purpose of this post, I will use ‘source criticism’ to refer to the activity of identifying sources exclusively.

So, source criticism …

Generally my first criterion when evaluating literary criticism is whether it affects my appreciation of the work in question — I like it best if it can heighten my appreciation or deepen my understanding, but I guess that such a positive effect is a luxury one cannot always insist on :-)  Now, in my experience this is very rarely, if ever, achieved by source criticism alone (in the sense given above) — not that it doesn't occur in any study that takes its outset in source criticism, but the effect is then achieved by combining the source criticism with other, often comparative, approaches.

Tolkien discourages source criticism in e.g. his essay On Fairy-Stories, but that is, in my view, not a good reason in itself to abstain from it, even with regards to Tolkien's own writings — he also discourages the study of an author's biographical details, and that at least is a widely accepted and appreciated area also within Tolkien studies, including the study of biographical details as sources of inspiration for his fiction (where source study and biography meet), and I greatly appreciate good biographical studies that give me an increased understanding of the man behind the art.

This also implies one route in which source criticism can be expanded upon: if Tolkien (or some other author — my considerations are not limited to Tolkien, though his work is my focus) knew something and adapted (consciously or not) it into his own art in a given way, does this, then, tell us anything about the man himself? E.g. about his position with respect to the source?

Another route might be to turn the focus to the source itself. The mere fact that Tolkien may have known some other work doesn't necessarily mean that it is interesting to me, but some further description and criticism of the source might make me appreciate the source more (or make me interested in experiencing the source personally).

One can also imagine the route of speculative extrapolation: if indeed Tolkien based some element of his fiction on a certain source, can we then use that assumption to tell us something about this element in Tolkien's fiction, that is not obvious from a study only of Tolkien's work itself?

It should not be too difficult to expand upon this list of routes, but the common characteristic is that even if they do take their outset in source criticism, they all move beyond the mere identification of a possible source and add something that is not, in the sense I use it here, source criticism. When used in such ways, I am all in favour of source criticism as a good and sound basis for critical studies, and I have thoroughly enjoyed many such studies (e.g. by Verlyn Flieger and Tom Shippey to name a couple of the most prominent scholars in the field).


Unfortunately that is not always the case.

Much of the source criticism that I have seen has been self-congratulatorily satisfied with identifying a source, demonstrating the erudition of the critic rather than attempting to understand Tolkien's work in any greater depth. These are, I realize, quite harsh words, but I must insist that the mere identification of a possible source and noting a number of more or less obvious (and occasionally strained) similarities is, in and of itself, quite uninteresting — it is only when the study is expanded beyond the mere source identification that it has the power to add value for the reader (exceptions can probably be found to this blanket rejection, but I do believe it is true for the vast majority of possible source critical studies).

This also brings me to speak of the problematic elements that mar at least some source critical studies. I will refrain from citing explicit examples of the various types of problematic behaviour, and so you will have to trust me that none of this is my own invention.

My personal background is in the sciences: I hold a master's degree in physics and a bachelor in computer science, and I work with the mathematical and statistical analysis of industrial tests and test results. As such there is often one particular thing that bothers me in source studies: when they ignore to consider alternative hypotheses (including the possibility of an amalgam of different sources, all pointing in roughly the same direction and alloyed in the crucible of the author's creative imagination). It is fine that they identify some source that may have inspired Tolkien, but if they don't consider alternative hypotheses at all, they can only show that a connection is possible, but say nothing about its likelihood: it is actually possible that I will suddenly tunnel a metre into the air, but it is not at all likely. One alternative that should always be considered is that of noise — that any similarities are merely random (I haven't come across a study that tries to quantify the amount of similarities between randomly selected works, but that could surely be interesting).

This is probably tied closely to the idea seems to underlie some source critical studies, namely that everything must have a source. ‘What is the source of this?’ the critic asks rhetorically, implying that they are not willing to consider the idea that there is no source — that we may be dealing with original invention. If we were dealing with original invention, then the similarities would be random, which is why it would be good to know something about this ‘noise-level’ in literature. I should probably add that I do not think that this is intentional — I don't think that any serious source-hunter would deny Tolkien's originality and inventive imagination, but their focus on the sources makes it easy to accidentally alienate some readers by appearing to do so.

A last practice is definitely not unique to source studies, and may not even be more prevalent there than in other critical approaches, but I will include it here because I have seen it in source studies, and I believe it is an example of mild misconduct in scholarship. I am talking of the practice of stating unconnected (and incontrovertible) facts in such a way that the reader is invited to draw the conclusion that they are connected, even though the scholar cannot make this conclusion her- or himself because there is actually no evidence for such a conclusion. The form it takes in source studies is usually to state facts showing that some source (e.g. in the form of a book) was available to Tolkien, for instance by noting that a book was available in a library at a period when Tolkien had access to, or even was using, said library. This invites the reader to conclude that Tolkien not only had access to the book, but also did access it: a conclusion that is completely without basis — in particular since any evidence that Tolkien did access it (e.g. that he took it out from the library) would surely have been given if it existed.


So, this is where I start. Now I look very much forward to reading Jason Fisher's book — I suspect that the definition that I have used of ‘source criticism’ is too narrow, but I have employed it here as a useful way to speak of the source-finding activity alone. It may seem odd, but I hope to be proven wrong, to be able to see the usefulness of source criticism (i.e. the source-hunting alone, as I have defined it above): it is much as with cheese, which I, unfortunately, intensely dislike, but watching friends and family enjoy a good cheese table (with a good red wine, which of course I can share the enjoyment of), I can get the feeling that my tastes prevent me from enjoying something very valuable. I trust, however, that my reason is more easily persuaded by reason than my taste buds ;-)

Tolkien and Wales

Carl Phelpstead. Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011

Christina Scull has posted a review of this book on her and Wayne Hammond's blog, and overall I agree with just about everything Christina writes, and if you take only one thing away from this, let it be that this is a very excellent book that I recommend warmly!




The contents of the book are:

Preface
Acknowledgements
Definitions, conventions and abbreviations
Chronology
Part I: Language

1. Encountering Welsh
2. Linguistic taste
3. Inventing language

Part II: Literature

4. Mythological sources
5. Arthurian literature
6. Breton connections

Part III: Identity

7. Insular identities

Appendix: Tolkien’s Welsh books
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Overall the book is, as said above, excellent — truly a gem! As a non-native speaker, I often find the academic works on Tolkien to be rather slow to read, but Phelpstead's language makes it easier to read this book without, as I perceive it, loss of clarity or precision. There are few specialized expressions, and those that are there are necessary and are well explained (such as i-mutation and i-affection).

The Chronology lists only the main events discussed in the book along with very few primary events of Tolkien's life (presumably to put the events of the book in context). While there is little there that cannot be found in the Chronology volume of Hammond and Scull's The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, I actually found it very useful while reading to have this overview handy.

The part on languages is well-structured, and gives, besides what is hinted at in the chapter titles, an overview of the books that Tolkien owned on Welsh subjects and which are now in university collections in Oxford (the Bodleian or the English Faculty libraries) — valuable new biographical information — and an overview of the subject of Celtic and Celts both culturally and linguistically — this is a very valuable introduction to the question both as it were when Tolkien lived and as it stands now. Apart from this, the first chapter deals with Tolkien's encounter with Welsh and draws heavily on readily available sources, the second chapter dealing with linguistic taste contains the discussion of the evolution of the concept of ‘Celtic’, but I would have liked more depth in the discussion of Tolkien's personal linguistic taste to go along with his general theory, and in the last chapter that compares Sindarin and Welsh, I would have like to see a discussion of how the sounds, the phonemes, of Welsh influenced Sindarin. There may at times be a tendency to trust Tolkien's statements a bit further than may be wise. We know that Tolkien was given to a certain degree of exaggeration for rhetorical effect and to drive his point home, so I think Tolkien scholars need to be a little more careful when evaluating Tolkien's statements.

The part on literature also gives an overview of the surviving medieval literature in Welsh, Arthurian literature and Breton lays (each in the appropriate chapter). We get an overview in each chapter of the work Tolkien is known to have done pertaining to each area, including the influences that this literature has had on his fiction. Generally these influences on Tolkien's fiction are easier to spot in his smaller works such as Farmer Giles of Ham, Roverandom, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun and the unpublished The Fall of Arthur. With respect to the influences on Tolkien's legendarium, from The Book of Lost Tales to the late Silmarillion writings, the influences are often more conjectural. Phelpstead is clearly far more careful than many other writers, but cannot completely avoid what seems a small confirmation bias. He is, however, (as Christina Scull also notes) careful not to present such conjectures as fact.

The final, single-chapter part on identities presents the reader with an excellent discussion of Tolkien's personal identity as a west Midlander, Mercian or Hwiccian. There are some hints at a deeper theory of identity, but these are, I think, not elaborated enough upon to do the topic full justice. Tolkien's general ideas about regional identity may not be politically correct in our day, but they were nonetheless his and would, I think, deserve a closer investigation in a book that dedicates an entire chapter to Tolkien's own regional identity. I think that further work on this topic would be a valuable contribution to the field of Tolkien studies.

There is little for me to say about the addenda. It starts with an appendix listing the books Tolkien owned on Welsh matters that are now in either the Bodleian Library or the English Faculty Library. The forty pages of end-notes are a mix of references and comments (personally I would prefer to have separate systems for citations and explanatory notes), and they are followed by the bibliography and the index. The index seems to be quite good - only a couple of my test keyword searches failed (Beleriand and Lay of Leithian).

For me, one of the best things of Phelpstead's presentation is his inclusion of background knowledge on many of the scholarly topics that he discusses. While the book touches on many topics, and few can be expected to be experts in all of them, a scholar specializing in medieval Britian language and/or literature will probably find most of this superfluous, but to the non-expert is is invaluable. Where else would I have learned about the kingdom of Hwicce, and why this is relevant to Tolkien?

They say that people generally remember only the first and the last of what you say, so let me repeat what I said in the beginning: if you take only one thing away from this, let it be that Carl Phelpstead's book is excellent: a fine piece of Tolkien scholarship which is a rare pleasure to read, and which I warmly recommend.


Other on-line reviews:

Christina Scull: http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/tolkien-and-wales/

Andrew Higgins: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/22418

Pieter Collier (announcement): http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/971-Tolkien_and_Wales-Language_Literature_Identity.php

Fans and Scholars?

As I was revising my last blog entry on The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrùn, my comments on Tolkien ‘ret-conning’ the old sagas made me remember a discussion we had a few years back in the Tolkien Newsgroups, Tolkien Scholars / Writers (2006-07-12)¹

The discussion started with a question on whom were the ‘top 10 of Tolkien scholars’, but the perspective that I remembered in this context was better captured in the question, ‘Would a scholar for example ask whether elves have pointed ears or balrogs wings?’ The central question here is whether this kind of ‘story-internal’ questions are really scholarly? Is it so that there are some topics, some questions, that belong wholly or predominantly in a fan culture and are frowned upon in scholarly circles, and others that belong wholly or predominantly in a scholarly culture that are frowned upon in fan discussions (or somehow out of reach for fans)?

We didn't reach a conclusion back then, but I have occasionally been wondering about this question since then.

It would be easy to point at many of the on-line discussion fora where fans² discuss Tolkien's works and say that these discussions are predominantly taking the story-internal view (and the perspective they take is very often that of creating the kind of consistent whole: a particular vision of Tolkien's sub-creation that can then be standardised and even canonised), and when you read some of the scholarly work such as e.g. the contents of Tolkien Studies which prides itself with the subtitle, An Annual Scholarly Review, the perspective is predominantly story-external (there are many approaches to this type of view of which the biographical and the source-critical are but two).

I think, however, that the picture is more complex than a superficial scan of the titles and abstracts of these papers, books and discussions would suggest.

First of all it seems to me obvious (and entirely non-controversial) that the portrayal of a dichotomy is too simplistic: at every turn we see the two approaches mixed so that fans may cite biographical or source-critical points in order to argue their own story-internal view, and scholars will argue a story-internal point in order to support their analysis³. Not only that, but while there is certainly a trend to have the main emphasis in different parts of this scale, you can also find fan-discussions where the main emphasis is on what would, in the simple view, be seen as scholarly topics, and scholarly work where the main emphasis is story-internal.⁴

The other point I'd like to make in this connection is neither new nor not original to me. However, I think it deserves to be highlighted now and again.

A while back (OK, actually it's been more than seven years), Michael Drout posted on his blog on ‘Becoming a “Tolkien Scholar”’ in which his main point is that the scholarly study of Tolkien is still very open and to a large extent dominated by independent scholars, so that it is possible to contribute even without academic tenure or formal education.

Drout goes on to note that

I know for a fact that there are a lot of people out there who know a lot more about the internal elements of Middle-earth than I do. These people are enormous resources for Tolkien scholarship, and they should be encouraged and listened to, not mocked or derided. I think that my additional training in literary study, ancient languages and linguistics gives me the opportunity to add value and context to the analysis and discovery by people who work only within the materials of Middle-earth, but I don't ever pretend that I know more about Middle-earth than they do.

This goes right to the heart of what I aiming at here: the interdependence of the two perspectives that I have outlined above.

This interdependence seems to me to be stronger for fiction that is set in a sub-created world because of the nature of the sub-creative process. We know that in Middle-earth, Tolkien's personal views are fully integrated into the fabric of the sub-creation — most careful readers will be able to point out where his Roman Catholic faith is immanent in the nature of causation in Middle-earth. I know that for Tolkien there is a very strong connection between his personal interests, ideas, beliefs etc. and the way that things work in his sub-created universe, and though I cannot say to what extent it applies to other authors in general, I suspect that there is a tendency for this connection to be stronger the more of the world the author sub-creates her- or himself.

Whatever the details, I will claim that this connection is particularly strong in Tolkien's case, and that this linked to the fortuitous situation that Drout describes in the passage quoted above. The story-internal perspective deals with how things work inside Middle-earth, but solving such questions tells us something about what Tolkien thought. On the other hand, knowing what Tolkien thought can often solve the question of how something is supposed to work.

Sometimes a question may come out of hand — the infamous balrog wings is a good example — but even there a kernel of relevant scholarship may possibly be found. I once saw the argument that the reason that angels in Christian imagery are portrayed with wings is because they were thought of as insubstantial. The reasoning, as I recall it, was that insubstantial associated with air, air with flight, and flight was symbolised with wings.⁵. If this is true, then it could be relevant to know if balrogs had wings, because it might possibly tell us something about Tolkien's view on evil (the balrogs, too, were insubstantial spirits in their origin, but presumably became bound to their shapes in a state that approached incarnation: see ‘Ósanwe-kenta’ for details).

Other, perhaps more plausible, examples can be found:

• What is the detailed nature of the agency of the Master Ring? Sentience? Sapience? Free will?
• Was the Master Ring influencing Isildur to make him reject Círdan and Elrond's advice? And if so, how was it influencing him?
• What is the nature of the invisibility conveyed by the Rings of Power (except by the Three)?

These questions are some that have been debated in fan fora (as far as I know without reaching consensus), and where the answer might tell us something about Tolkien's thoughts that would be relevant for Tolkien scholarship — but also where scholarly findings might contribute to resolving the questions.

So, my dear fellow Tolkien fans, geeks and enthusiasts, let us not be ashamed of quarrelling over the shape of Elvish ears or Tom Bombadil's place in the taxonomy of Middle-earth. Let us rather work to keep these discussions at a level where we can attract also Tolkien scholars to our discussions to our mutual benefit. Why should it not be considered a legitimate subject of Tolkien scholarship to discuss in detail whether the Master Ring could think and whether it had free will? (Now, there's a paper I'd like to see in Tolkien Studies!)


1^ Also available from Google Groups: Tolkien Scholars / Writers  Back

2^ I actually don't like the word fan all that much and I try to avoid using it of myself, mostly for the association with fanaticism. I prefer to describe myself as a Tolkien enthusiast or geek — possibly obsessed, but not, I think, fanatic. It is, however, a widely used word so that references to an on-line fan community or on-line fandom will be instantly recognised, and therefore use the word here to include also my own activities and the fora where I am active.  Back

3^ To give just a single example, Verlyn Flieger's discussion of the workings of Elvish free will in Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World would qualify as using a story-internal question to argue a point in a scholarly work.  Back

4^ An excellent example of this is Vladimir Brljak's paper, ‘The Books of Lost Tales: Tolkien as Metafictionist’ in Tolkien Studies 7 in which the main points is to argue a specific metafictional, but entirely story-internal, tradition of transmission for the books.  Back

5^ I do not know whether this explanation is correct, or a mistake (possibly a previously held, but now abandoned, explanation) — I offer it here only to exemplify my idea. I also realise that I am stretching credibility by choosing the balrog wings example, but that is interesting as an example precisely because it doesn't get much more absurd than the Balrog Wings Flame Wars.  Back

Thoughts on reading about Ents

I have been running late with just about everything this month (for an explanation, see the latest edition of my  Tolkien Transactions), including reading the April issue of Mythprint (vol. 48 no. 4, whole no. 345) — the bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society.

The first article is about Ents, “Tolkien's Ents: Sylvan and Pagan Influences” by Professor Fernando Cid Lucas and translated by the editor, Jason Fisher.

The first thing that caught my attention (that is, it took my attention away from reading the text) was the description of the topic of the article as ‘the Ents (or tree-men).’ It was the use of ‘tree-men’ that caught my eye: why ‘tree-men’ rather than ‘man-trees’ or some other phrase? Of course I can't know what Professor Lucas wrote in the original (presumably Spanish) text, but I was strongly reminded of Gamling's words in The Lord of the Rings when he speaks of ‘these half-orcs and goblin-men that the foul craft of Saruman has bred’ (LotR, book III,7 ‘Helm's Deep’), and in particular of Tolkien's description in text X of ‘Myths Transformed’ in Morgoth's Ring when he speaks of Saruman committing his vilest deed in ‘the interbreeding of Orcs and Men, producing both Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile.’

What is the difference between Men-orcs and Orc-men?

The ‘large and cunning’ as opposed to ‘treacherous and vile’ makes me think that the Men-orcs were probably the Uruks of Isengard, while the Orc-men probably were of the same kind as the Southener the four hobbits and Aragorn saw in Bree. But is my reasoning correct, and can this be presumed to follow common usage — I can't say.

In Danish, I would say that the last part of the compound word is the most important, that this is the base that is modified by the prefixing of other words (we don't use hyphens or spaces in our compounds, which occasionally creates some very special compound words such as ‘sporvognsskinneskidtskraber’ — tram rail dirt scraper). If the same is the case in English (Tolkien's usage in Morgoth's Ring would at least suggest that the last part signified which of the parent creatures the half-breeds most closely resembled physically), then the legend of the Ent and the Eagles (The Silmarillion, part III chapter 2 ‘Of Aulë and Yavanna’ or The War of the Jewels part 3 chapter VI  ‘Of the Ents and the Eagles’) would suggest that it was better to say ‘Man-trees’ of the Ents.


Having now spent this much space splitting hairs on a single term, let me say a few things about the main thrust of the article.

The article posits the so called Green Man tradition as well as the possibly related Jack-in-the-green tradition as influencing Tolkien's concept of the Ents. This in itself is hardly controversial (even if the article doesn't mention that the term ‘Green Man’ was coined by Lady Raglan and published in the journal Folklore in 1939, not long after Tolkien had started writing The Lord of the Rings and before he got to the giant Treebeard), and it does leave me slightly disappointed as there was nothing new for me to learn about the Green Man, Jack-in-the-green, Tolkien or Ents. I am probably slightly better versed in matters of English folklore than the average Dane, but the readership of Mythprint are the members of the Mythopoeic Society, whom I would assume to be familiar with both the Green Man and Jack-in-the-green at the level at which they are dealt with in this article (this may not have been the case for an original Spanish-reading audience).

I am not as such averse to source-criticism, but I do believe that it must contribute more than just a source. A source is, to me, uninteresting if it doesn't tell me something new about the thing, the author, or perhaps even the source itself. In this case I think that there are several routes that could be pursued if the article had been a little longer — could, for instance, the symbolisms of fertility and growth that are present in both the Green Man and Jack-in-the-green help us understand the Ents? We do see the growth aspect realized in Merry and Pippin when they drink the Ent-draughts, so could we use the fertility / spring-rebirth aspects of these figures to learn something about the Ents and their role in Tolkien's stories and in Middle-earth?  Or could we use our knowledge of the Ents to say something about what Tolkien may have believed about the Green Man?

And how is this related to the etymology of Ent? The word is cognate with Norse jotunn which were the opponents of the Aesir in the Norse mythology, and at least some of the jotunn were clearly personifications of natural forces (e.g. Surtr who is the jötunn of fire and heat). Is there a synergy to be found here that might tell us more about the role of Ents in Middle-earth?

So, all in all this was, in my view, a very promising article that was unfortunately cut too short, stopping without fulfilling the promise. I hope that Professor Lucas will take up the topic again with an eye to how the sources may inform our understanding of the Ents or some other angle that will teach us something new.

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.