Tolkien Transactions XI

March 2011

http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/p/tolkien-transactions.html

Time for a new issue of my attempt to extract the best (in my highly subjective estimate) of Tolkien related ‘goings-on’ on the 'net. Anything appearing in the Tolkien Transactions is under strict quality assurance to ascertain that it complies with the three strict selection criteria, which are:
1: I have seen it
2: It has some kind of Tolkien connection (at least in my mind)
3: I have deemed that it is interesting enough to share

Regardless of how much time I (mis)spend reading blogs and other stuff, I will never be able to find everything (that's criterion number 1), so please chime in with interesting stuff that you have found elsewhere that you find ought to comply with criteria 2 and 3. Nor do I imagine that all of this is new to you, so the usual disclaimers apply about newness, completeness and relevance (or any other implication of responsibility) :-)

= = = = News = = = =

Rob Sharp (The Independent), Friday, 4 March 2011, ‘Rescued from the bonfire, the lost work of C S Lewis’
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/rescued-from-the-bonfire-the-lost-work-of-c-s-lewis-2231809.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4b9z3kj
It may be telling of my general interest in the other Inklings that I had no idea (I resisted the pun here) that there was a supposedly lost translation of the Aeneid by C.S. Lewis — that is, not until finding that it has been found :) The story of how this work nearly ended in cinders is at once tragic and thought-provoking: after such a story I am inclined to be even more grateful to Christopher Tolkien's great work to preserve his father's literary legacy.

JF, Friday, 4 March 2011, ‘Lewis's Lost Aeneid’
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/03/lewiss-lost-aeneid.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6hhmfbs
Jason Fisher takes up the thread with Lewis' Aeneid translation, providing additional details and ending by expressing his hope that ‘it opens the door a little wider to let Tolkien’s unpublished Beowulf translations come through in the near future as well.’ All I can say to that is an enthusiastic ‘Amen!’

Morgan et Al., Sunday, 6 March 2011, ‘'Introduction to Elder Edda' by Tolkien?’
http://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1479&forum=9
http://preview.tinyurl.com/68pkrm8
A small lesson on wariness when finding seemingly Tolkien-related items on-line. This one is fortunately rather primitively done, but others are not. The Tolkien Collector's Guide is a good place to ask about for advice if you find something that sounds dodgy — or too good to be true.

PhysOrg, Friday, 11 March 2011, ‘The Eye of Sauron’
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-eye-sauron.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6dpcm8m
Cosmic powers!
Here is an image of the Eye of Sauron that manages what Jackson's did not (to me): to appear as an ominous presence, incorporeal, a mental projection, a symbol of power.

JDR, Thursday, 24 March 2011, ‘THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT, second edition’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/history-of-hobbit-second-edition.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3eln8k9
There will be a second edition of Rateliff's The History of the Hobbit. In that connection, Rateliff issues a call for errata:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/call-for-errata.html

JDR, Friday, 25 March 2011, ‘The New Arrival: Arne Zetterstein’ (sic)
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-arrival-arne-zetterstein.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3z8nu88
I can't decide if it is only because I am envious that I don't have the books, but sometimes I do wish that bloggers would refrain from merely posting that now they have received (or ordered, even) a new book and wait until they have actually read it. A solid review would be far more useful. I do think that I'll need to get hold of this — in Danish, of course ;)

Andrea Shea (wbur), Friday, 25 March 2011, ‘Middle-Earth Conference Revived After 40 Years’ (sic)
http://www.wbur.org/2011/03/25/middle-earth
There have been some reports on this, the third ‘Conference on Middle-earth’ which follows a mere forty years after the second, and arranged by the same person, Howard Finder, now 72 years old and diagnosed with prostrate cancer.
There is more on this conference on its web-site, http://www.3rdcome.org/ and a more in-depth article that preceded the conference here:
Geoff Edgers (Boston Globe), Thursday, 24 March 2011, ‘At Westford conference, a fellowship of Tolkien fans’
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/03/24/at_westford_conference_a_fellowship_of_tolkien_fans/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4yyslml

JF, Thursday, 31 March 2011, ‘Conference schedule for CSLIS 14’
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/03/conference-schedule-for-cslis-14.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4x6nb7f
Even if you are a Tolkien enthusiast with little sympathy for the work of his friend, C.S. Lewis, there is likely to be something of value for you at the conference of the C.S. Lewis and Inklings Society (CSLIS), which was held this weekend. In an ideal world I'd have the time and the money to go to every conference I'd like, and this would be one of them. Now I'll just wait for reports to filter through.

Janet Brennan Croft, Thursday, 31 March 2011, ‘Mythlore 113/114 Table of Contents’
http://www.mythsoc.org/mythlore/113-114/
This issue of Mythlore also promises to be a great read for Tolkien enthusiasts. Essays include investigations of The Battle of Maldon, Pearl and Purgatorio as inspirations for Tolkien, an essay on Tolkien and Wagner (a subject where Wagner-lovers are prone to exaggerate the similarities wildly, and Wagner-haters are prone to emphatically reject even obvious similarities), and one on Túrin and Aragorn's different approaches to fate from Janet Brennan Croft's own hand. On the MythSoc list she has also announced that this issue was sent to the printer on the last day of March.

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

David Levary, Jean-Pierre Eckmann, Elisha Moses, and Tsvi Tlusty, Friday, 11 March 2011, ‘Self reference in word definitions’
http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.2325
This paper deals with an analysis of a dictionary using network graphs with directed links. The authors investigate only nouns, and link from a word to those words that occur in its definition. This creates a graph that has some interesting characteristics. In particular they found that there was a ‘core’ of 6310 that appear somewhere down the definition chain for nearly all the words in the dictionary. Within this core, they found that it could be decomposed into a number of strongly related components in which there are circular definitions of five or fewer steps. These components were further investigated.

The manner in which we were able to reach the core suggests the somewhat counterintuitive idea that all words are conceptually interconnected. (‘The Decomposition’ p. 3)

Their finding that the graph can be decomposed into a number of strongly connected components that are semantically strongly related, and which are (on average) introduced in English about the same time suggests to me that these semantic components are close to what Barfield was thinking of — one component, one original, un-splintered, semantic concept. That this appears to be the same for words introduced in Old English and the scientific words introduced in the last couple of centuries suggests either than Barfield was wrong in his idea about some primordial language in which these conceptual clusters were contained in one word, or that this primordial language lies so far back in the history of language that the thousand years or so covered in this study is insufficient to show any temporal variation. Finally, from the conclusion:

While the central concept of the loop cannot be directly communicated, we propose that the juxtaposition of the partially defifined elements within the loop allows the receiver to infer the common link among the words, thereby completing the definition of all words in the loop. Such a system is consistent with our finding that words within a loop tend to enter the lexicon at the same time and, if correct, suggests that definitional loops are not simply a mathematical artifact of dictionaries, but rather a key mechanism underlying language evolution. (‘Conclusions’ p. 5-6)

Simone Pompei, Vittorio Loreto, Francesca Tria, Monday, 21 March 2011, ‘On the accuracy of language trees’
http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4012
It is well-known that Tolkien was a philologist, and that philology is basically a scientific approach to historical lingustics, particularly to the evolution of langauages and the relations between them. This article takes the ‘science’ part a step (or more) further than I think Tolkien would have imagined, using 'state-of-the-art
distance-based methods for phylogeny reconstruction using worldwide linguistic databases' the authors strive to contribute to the field of historical lingustics, the aim of which they state is ‘inferring the most likely language phylogenetic tree starting from information concerning the evolutionary relatedness of languages.’ Combining staticstics and lingustics — how could it be better? ;-)

Daniela Schiller and David Carmel (Scientific American), Tuesday, 22 March 2011, ‘How Free Is Your Will?’
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-free-is-your-will
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4kwkcrp
Over the past few years, the topic of free will and fate has been very popular in Tolkien circles, being the focus of the Tolkien Society Seminar in 2008, papers by Verlyn Flieger and Carl Hostetter in Tolkien Studies vol. VI (2009) and by Thomas Fornet-Posse in vol. VII (2010), of essays in various issues of Mythlore and of countless discussions on the internet. Thus I thought it would be interesting to include an article on some contemporary neurosurgical research that bears on this issue.

Tony DiTerlizzi (Los Angeles Times), Friday, 25 March 2011, ‘'The Hobbit' illustrated by Maurice Sendak? The 1960s masterpiece that could have been’
http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/03/25/the-hobbit-illustrated-by-maurice-sendak-the-1960s-masterpiece-that-could-have-been/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/48lp6uu
Based on the idea that unearthing pieces of the publishing (or in this case, almost-publishing) history of Tolkien's works is also an interesting contribution to Tolkien scholarship. This piece retells one side of the story of an abandoned attempt to get illustrator Maurice Sendak to illustrate an edition of The Hobbit. Here we get Sendak's version filtered through an interviewer in 2004 who has retold it to DiTerlizzi. Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull tell the story slightly differently e.g. in the LotR-Fanatics Plaza:
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=240865
See also
JDR, Monday, 28 March 2011, ‘Sendak's HOBBIT’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/sendaks-hobbit.html
In which Rateliff summarizes and comments upon the above.

AH, Sunday, 27 March 2011, ‘Turambar and the Foaloke - Etymological Archaeology’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/03/turambar-and-foaloke-etymological.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3klemku
Andy Higgins dives into the possible origins of three names found in a non-erased pencil version underlying a page of Tolkien's early ‘Turambar and the Foalokë’ story. As with Jason Fisher's zestful play with the word-webs surrounding the spiders of Mirkwood, my fascination of words tends to lower my defences — it doesn't matter if Andy is ‘right’ in the sense of actually inferring connections that existed between words in Tolkien's mind (whether conscious or not) — the playing with the words is for me rewarding in and of itself.

‘Trotter’, Wednesday, 30 March 2011, ‘Invented Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien - MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PDF file’
http://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1488&forum=7
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3t684qm
Perhaps this is rather ‘olds’, but since I hadn't seen this before, it was news to me ;) Trotter gives a link to a pdf-version of a booklet that is associated with the exhibition ‘The Invented Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: Drawings and Original Manuscripts from the Marquette University Collection’ which was held at the Haggerty Museum of Art in the end of 2004 and start of 2005. The booklet reproduces a number of Tolkien items from the collections of the Marquette, and also includes Zettersten's essay, ‘The AB Language Lives’.

‘Trotter’, Wednesday, 30 March 2011, ‘Tom Shippey Lecture 23rd March 2011 Cardiff’
http://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1489&forum=12
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4yobqvy
Links to the first two parts of a recording of the lecture Tom Shippey gave on 23rd March in Cardiff with the title ‘Writing into the Gap: Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun’. I fully share Trotter's hope that UWIC will eventually get the whole lecture on-line. For updates you might follow the YouTube channel associated with Dmitra Fimi's courses at UWIC: http://www.youtube.com/user/TolkienFantasyUWIC

= = = = 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 ;-)

DB, Thursday, 3 March 2011, ‘walleyed criticism’
http://calimac.livejournal.com/508355.html
This is not an example of damning with faint praise — Bratman calls it a ‘calimac Demolition Special’, and goes on to point out inconsistencies in the book. The name of the book or the author is not revealed, but clearly others do know — one comment claims this ‘possibly the worst — and certainly the worst written — piece of Inklings criticism’ the commenter has ever seen. The greates value of reviews, in my opinion, is that they help us prioritize the books we'd like to get, or, in this case, not get.

Emily A. Moniz, Mythlore 111/112, Thursday, 3 February 2011, ‘Middle-earth Minstrel’
http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/middle-earth-minstrel-moniz/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4r8qj2m
The Mythlore review of Bradford Lee Eden's (ed.) book, Middle-earth Minstrel has now appeared on-line. Moniz is quite positive, and I look forward to finding the time to take this book down from my shelf.

PC, Tuesday, 8 March 2011, ‘A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany The Lord of the Rings’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/991-A_Tolkien_Tapestry.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/49u7uj9
Pieter Collier of the Tolkien Library site has made a book on Cor Blok's illustrations of Tolkien's work. I am myself not very visually minded, preferring the printed word to an illustration, and as such I am, as Tolkien described himself, a ‘man of limited sympathies (but well aware of it)’ and the work of Cor Blok lies ‘almost completely outside them’ as Charles Williams' work did of Tolkien's. However, I suspect that if Pieter's book accompanies Blok's pictures with some attempt to analyse and criticize them as narrative figurative art, then this might help bring them inside my sympathies.

JDR, Thursday, 10 March 2011, ‘Hillard's MIRKWOOD (spoilers)’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/hillards-mirkwood-spoilers.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/68zezxc
John Rateliff has managed to get through Hillard's book, and doesn't recommend it. Rateliff also offers another theory for why the Estate may have issued a cease-and-desist order against this book (see also the section on news in the February issue of the Transactions for more on the legal issue) — and no, it is not just because it is a very bad book, which it apparently is.

TF, Saturday, 12 March 2011, ‘Mythlore issue 111/112’
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/2011/03/mythlore-issue-111112.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6736xmx
A review of the seven Tolkien-related essays in the autumn 2010 issue of Mythlore. Most of the essays are excellent and all of them contain something worth reading, though the density of the ‘worth reading’ stuff does vary somewhat :-)

JDR, Wednesday, 9 March 2011, ‘THE HOBBIT (Children's Play)’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/hobbit-childrens-play.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/44qksd3
A review of a children's play based on The Hobbit. Rateliff doesn't say if it is the case for himself, but I like to think that I'd be inclined to hold a children's play to a less exacting standard than a Hollywood production. Rateliff certainly seems to have enjoyed himself.

Brian Warmoth, Thursday, 24 March 2011, ‘Sam Bosma's ‘Hobbit’ Illustrations Are Nothing Short of Awesome [Art]’
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/24/sam-bosma-hobbit-art/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4cg7vqs
Praise for Sam Bosma's Hobbit illustrations. I might not go quite as far in my praise of Sam Bosma's illustrations in general, but I do think they are very good, and my appreciation of his Hobbit illustrations is of course coloured by my knowledge of this work, and my familiarity with the author's own illustrations of his story. However, even though I think that some of the illustrations don't work for the story, I still find that there is generally something interesting in the illustration as a commont to Tolkien's story (more than as an illustration of it). A good example of this is his goblins.

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

Leo Grin, Big Hollywood, Saturday, 5 March 2011, ‘Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3’
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2011/03/05/catastrophe-vs-eucatastrophe-the-ennobling-fantasy-of-j-r-r-tolkien-part-3/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4tbnj8m
In this third installment Leo Grin works his way to to Tolkien's concept of Eucatastrophe, ending up concluding that ‘Eucatastrophe is revealed truth on a biblical scale’. As earlier the treatment is perceptive and essentially correct, and the conservatism of the web-site is not intrusive. Leo Grin's series is still a good choice for an introduction to Tolkien criticism.
Leo Grin, Saturday, 12 March 2011, ‘Bored with the Good: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 4’
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2011/03/12/bored-with-the-good-the-ennobling-fantasy-of-j-r-r-tolkien-part-4/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6ye9ng7
Leo Grin continues his series aimed at an American Christians and political conservatives. This time the political agenda shines through far more clearly than in the previous installments, which detracts considerably from the quality. Skip this if you're likely to get upset over fools trying to twist Tolkien's work to support their own political agenda --something I generally find utterly foolish regardless of what that political agenda might be. There might be an interesting discussion in what Tolkien's actual political views were — and perhaps even to what extent his views on the ideal society can at all be called political.

BC, Sunday, 6 March 2011, ‘Do orcs deserve mercy?’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/03/do-orcs-deserve-mercy.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5vveus9
Well, do they? Prior to The Lord of the Rings (and, in my opinion, far into the writing of LotR) Orcs were actually demonic: spawned in subterranean slime and with hearts of stone. At some point while writing LotR, Tolkien appears to have had a change of mind (one of many) and decided that Orcs were corrupted Children of Ilúvatar. This would later be the cause of much speculation as evidenced in the texts in ‘Myths Transformed’ (part five of Morgoth's Ring). But what if they were still demons? Would that solve the ethical problems without logical inconsistencies?

DB, Monday, 21 March 2011, ‘a classification of Tolkien scholars’
http://calimac.livejournal.com/512415.html
Heh! Heh! ;-)

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

JDR, Wednesday, 23 March 2011, ‘Harold Bloom disses Tolkien — again’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/harold-bloom-disses-tolkien-again.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3pc2rq3
The interesting point here is not so much that Harold Bloom dislikes Tolkien: that is neither new or controversial, and he is of course perfectly entitled to his prejudices (and I am certain that he is completely indifferent to my disagreement with one or more of them). The interesting part is the ensuing discussion in the comments. This ranges from discussing the concept of ‘canon’ (as in Bloom's book The Western Canon) and longevity as an important aspect in that, to a discussion on the weight of new and old in academic curricula. Quite interesting even for a physicist.

= = = = In Print = = = =

Amon Hen no. 228, March 2011

‘Along the Road’
A progress report from the Return of the Ring: the great Tolkien Society conference next year in Loughborough. Among other news they announce three special guests that are confirmed, Ted Nasmith, Jef Murray and Corey Olsen. Much as I delight in the artwork of Nasmith and Murray, and enjoy Olsen's podcasts (I am looking very much forward to meeting him), I hope that we'll have the pleasure of even more of the recognized Tolkien scholars.

David Doerr, ‘Regarding the Importance of the Date March 25th in J.R.R. Tolkien's Literature’
A fine little overview of the date of the Annunciation, its use in Tolkien's work and its various real-world references. We know that Tolkien chose this date deliberately and carefully, and so one might suspect a bit of typological intention on Tolkien's part.

Mark Bednarowski, ‘Plight of the Dwarves’
An overview history of the history of Durin's folk in the Third Age until Thorin's company set out one morning in the 2941st year of the Third Age. It's a good little overview that Bednarowski has put together, and I have only a couple of very minor quibs: it is very nearly certain that the Seven were not originally ‘made for the Dwarves’ regardless of whether Durin was given the first of them directly by the Mirdain as believed by the Dwarves themselves (and by me); it is possible that the Ring had some influence on Thrór's decision to wander out alone with only Nár as his companion, but in that case it must have been an indirect influence since the Dwarves were not dominated by their Rings; and finally I could have wished that Bednarowski had commented on the remarkable oversight on Gandalf's part when he relates how ‘[n]early a century will pass before Gandalf will realize the full significance of what he obtained from a pitiful old Dwarf locked in the pits of Dol Guldur’ when he has already explained how Gandalf had been searching for Thrain in Moria just five years prior to finding him in Dol Guldur.

Michel Bouchard, ‘Studying Tolkien . . . in Quebec!’
A very nice story from a student who defied custom and braved mockery to do his Master ‘s thesis on Tolkien — studying 'the lives of Frodo, Sam and Gollum using Silvio Fanti's work on micropsychoanalysis to help [him] understand the power of the One Ring over the mind if its bearers.’ If Bouchard's thesis can be written in a style similar to this piece, there is no doubt that he could successfully publish it (beyond the one copy that is now sitting in the university library).

Ruth Lacon, ‘The 2011 Tolkien Calendar’
Kudos and accolades for this excellent review, which balances nicely between respect for the artist and his vision and criticism when he doesn't achieve it. As Lacon puts it, ‘once an artist gets one full Tolkien calendar, we often see more of their work, so learning how to judge Cor Block's art now may well be useful in future.’ Given that she must have been writing this prior to Pieter Collier's announcement of his book on Cor Blok's art, I find that statement remarkably foresighted. She does go on to introduce the reader to just that — accepting Blok's stylistic choice from the outset, she criticises each month's picture on its own merits. I particularly love the first two sentences of the comments for July: ‘It might seem very odd to criticise Cor Blok on grounds of artistic timidity, but this one I feel driven to. If you're going to deny Renaissance realistic perspective, don't shilly-shally — go the whole way.’ Anyone having problems extending their sympathies to encompass Cor Blok's work (which includes myself) should read Ruth Lacon's review, not to have their prejudices confirmed, but to have them challenged in an intelligent manner.

Mythprint vol. 48 no. 3, March 2011, Whole no. 344

Berni Phillips Bratman, ‘Pardon Me, Is That an E-Reader You Have?’
Berni Bratman has been trying an e-reader herself and has been gathering responses from other ‘mythies’ who also use various e-readers, all of which experiences she has gathered into this article on e-readers. Personally I am still holding out — not because I don't want to use an e-reader, but because I want the e-books I buy to be available on my phone and my PC as well as on a dedicated reader. I suspect that when the market mature we will see a consolidation of one or two formats (I'm old enough to remember the old Betamax vs. Video-disc vs. VHS competition for the early video market), and at that point I think it will be easier to have support for the same format on all devices.

Larry Swain, ‘Elizabeth Solopova. _Languages, Myths and Histo-ry: An Introduction to the Linguistic and Literary Background of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fiction_’
Larry reviews this book written particularly for ‘the under-graduate literature course in Tolkien’, commenting on strengths (particularly the treatment of Gothic and Finnish influences on Tolkien's work) and weaknesses (particularly the lacking treatment of Tolkien's work in Middle English and of Greek and Latin influences), and ends by recommending this book ‘even for the experienced Tolkien fan and scholar.’

Travis Buchanan, ‘Gospel Echoes in Fantastic Fiction’
In this two-part essay (the first part was printed in the previous issue of Mythlore, whole no. 343), Travis Buchanan investigates Tolkien's description of the components of Fairy-stories, fantasy, recovery, escape and consolation. Having started (in part 1) by asking into the reasons for the popularity of fantasy fiction, Buchanan concludes (in part 2) that this ‘engrossing and enduring appeal’ can, in part, be understood through the lens of Tolkien's discussion, as an echo of the Gospels: ‘through the fantastic, subcreative worlds of a Tolkien or a Lewis, even a J.K. Rowling or a Stephenie Meyer, primary truth may not only be tasted, but the voice of Ultimate Truth Himself overheard, even if only in echo.’ Personally I would have preferred to see an attempt to relate this ‘engrossing and enduring appeal’ of the fairy-story to Tolkien's discussion without having to resort either to being only valid for Christians (are the fairy-stories of other, non-christian, cultures fundamentally different in kind or popularity?) or to a mystical influence (non-Christians perceiving a Truth that is revealed only in the Christian Gospels). But more on this later, I think.

= = = = Web Sites = = = =

I will try to present a couple of sites every month — if I've found a new site (of any kind, but with a Tolkien connection) that I have found interesting, then I will add that, and then I'll throw in some oldies to keep things rolling ;-)

The FAQ of the Rings
http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
First one more of the sites related to the Tolkien newsgroups: Stan Brown's FAQ of the Rings, which I have used nearly as much as I have Steuard's more general FAQ. For questions regarding the Rings of Power, I know of no better on-line resource. Overall the AFT / RABT FAQs should be commended also for providing thorough references to Tolkien's work — something which all too many, even of the most popular encyclopedic sites, sadly fails to do.

The Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza
http://www.lotrplaza.com/
The LotR Plaza offers many interesting discussions for Tolkien lovers. Having but recently discovered this forum, I can attest to the kindness of the welcome. As so many other web-boards, this one doesn't really offer threading beyond what has been, by old-time usenet regulars, been called the ‘toilet-roll’ model. On the other hand, the options for formatting the text (using tables, font changes, font colours, indenting, italicization etc.) are much greater than on usenet, which allows for some other possibilities. In the end, I think that formatting is at most half the story — the most important thing is the posters, and at the LotR Plaza you will find many very knowledgeable posters contributing in a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

Slam Blogsma
http://sambosma.blogspot.com/
Sam Bosma's blog. Inspired by the review referred to above, I sought out some more of Sam Bosma's work and stumbled across his blog where he has posted about his work on The Hobbit. Whether or no you actually like his final illustrations, his dicussions of their genesis are, I think, interesting in and of themselves.

= = = = 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


You can find the earlier editions at the Tolkien Transactions page at Parmar-kenta:
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/p/tolkien-transactions.html

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

And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left
the path of wisdom.
- Gandalf, /The Fellowship of the Ring/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)

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.

Tolkien Transactions X

February 2011

The tenth issue!

Yeah, I know — ten is not all that many, but still ;-)

It is time for the tenth issue of my summary of Tolkien related ‘goings-on’ on the 'net that fulfill the three strict criteria for being reported here: 1: it has some relevance to Tolkien, 2: I have seen it, and 3: I've decided that it's interesting enough to pass it on here. A slight delay in posting is mostly due to the fact that I accidentally chrashed my laptop in the last week of February — fortunately I had everything backed up and can now work on a nice new laptop.

As always, disclaimers apply about newness, completeness and relevance (or any other implication of responsibility) :-)


= = = = News = = = =

Reuters, Thursday, 3 February 2011, “UK police hold man over Churchill fake signatures”
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/02/03/us-britain-churchill-fraud-idINTRE7126QN20110203
BBC News, Thursday, 3 February 2011, “Arrest over fake Winston Churchill signatures”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-12361124
Following nicely in the wake of last month's advice by Pieter Collier is the news that a man has been arrested over fake signatures, including Tolkien's. See also news from the 7th.

AH, Saturday, 5 February 2011, “Middle Earth Comes to the IPAD”
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/02/middle-earth-comes-to-ipad.html
So, now you can download a map-application for the Apple iPad that shows Middle-earth in the First Age. There are a lot of fan-produced maps of Middle-earth available on the internet — some of them in high resolution and far more beautifully made than this, so this is not something that could make me wish for an iPad (or any other tablet computer).

BBC News, Monday, 7 February 2011, “Man bailed over fake Winston Churchill items”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-12385859
The man whose arrest was reported on the third has been bailed — I just hope that the police is keeping an eye on his activity on E-Bay . . .

The Guardian, Tuesday, 8 February 2011, “Lord of the Rings reworking a hit with fans, but not Tolkien estate”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/08/lord-of-the-rings-reworking-tolkien-estate
The story about Kirill Yeskov's The Last Ring-bearer has been heavily discussed in many places. Here it is the coverage in The Guardian, along with a discussion at a Guardian bookblog:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/feb/08/tolkien-bored-of-the-rings

Kate James (Gather,com), Wednesday, 9 February 2011, “Tolkien Professor Middle Earth iTunes Hit” (sic)
http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979036386
Corey Olsen got into the news this month. Not only in the Gather.com article above, but also a live chat on the Washington Post web-site:
Washington Post, Thursday, 10 February 2011, “The ‘Tolkien Professor’: Corey Olsen”
http://live.washingtonpost.com/the-tolkien-professor-corey-olsen-02-10.html
and The Washington Post, Saturday, 12 February 2011, “'Tolkien Professor’ Corey Olsen brings Middle-earth to iTunes via podcasts”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021106539.html
and The Columbus Dispatch, Monday, 21 February 2011, “He techno-teaches Tolkien”
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2011/02/21/he-techno-teaches-tolkien.html?sid=101
Why this was the month that Olsen hit the news, I don't know, but I think he deserves a lot of credit for his idea and its execution. His own way of putting it is: ‘Instead of spending all my time doing scholarly publishing, which we're told to do — which most people will never read — I basically decided to put myself out to the public.’ One is of course that the academic level of the podcasts is, perhaps, not quite what the college might expect of its tenured professors (Balrog wings . . .), but Olsen has said that he is working on a book on, if I recall correctly, The Hobbit, and I hope this will give him opportunity to go into more depth than what we see in the podcasts.

Eriq Gardner, Friday, 18 February 2011, “JRR Tolkien Estate Threatens Lawsuit Over Book Featuring Tolkien As Character (Exclusive)”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/thr-esq/jrr-tolkien-estate-threatens-lawsuit-101528
So, the story that the J.R.R. Tolkien Estate has sent a ‘cease-and-desist letter’ to one Stephen Hilliard who has responded with a counter-lawsuit has made a lot of headlines. Unfortunately it is not very clear what exactly the estate is reacting against, but judging by the mythies (Mythopoeic Society members) who have commented on the book, they might will react against having Tolkien's name associated with atrociously bad fiction (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/21909). In the MythSoc Yahoo group, there has been discussions of the estate's policies (in addition to the above, you can also see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/21941). It is my impression that Tolkien scholars, geeks and enthusiasts are generally quite supportive of the J.R.R. Tolkien Estate and the Tolkien Trust (there are those who advocate against copyright in general, but that's another issue), and I don't think they will suffer much such much damage to this esteem over the present row, but it does rather raise the question of the nature of this interdependence: we do need each other, the estate, the scholars and the ‘fan-base’, and so there is a limit to how far either party can go without alienating the others. And of course one has to consider that HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin also have some influence on what can be published and what not.
Further items about this story includes:
Scott Edelman, 18 Feb, “Tolkien estate tries to kill novel starring fictionalized Tolkien”
http://blastr.com/2011/02/tolkien-estate-sues-to-ki.php
Rebekah Denn, 21 Feb, “J.R.R. Tolkien as fictional character – fair use or a step too far?”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0221/J.R.R.-Tolkien-as-fictional-character-fair-use-or-a-step-too-far
Bridget Freeland, Tuesday, 22 February 2011, “Novelist Sues Tolkien's Estate Over Book Featuring ‘Hobbit’ Author”
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/02/22/34331.htm
Wellinghall, Friday, 25 February 2011, “The Tolkien Estate”
http://wellinghall.livejournal.com/827078.html
Dalya Alberge, Saturday, 26 February 2011, “JRR Tolkien novel Mirkwood in legal battle with author's estate”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/26/mirkwood-jrr-tolkien-legal-battle

DB, Monday, 28 February 2011, “paddling against the meme tide”
http://calimac.livejournal.com/507589.html
David Bratman addresses some of the negative mention that the Tolkien Estate has had in this month (see e.g. above) on their pursuing their copyrights and trademark rights. He also corrects many of the stories referred to above, explaining that ‘what the estate has demanded cessation of is not the use of Tolkien's name but the commercial appropriation of his name in publicizing and selling the book, a publicity rights issue.’
See also: Cory Doctorow, Friday, 25 February 2011, “UPDATED: Tolkien estate censors badge that contains the word ‘Tolkien'”
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/25/tolkien-estate-censo.html
In which the lawyers for the Tolkien Estate explains that the button was taken down by the on-line seller of its own accord.

JDR, Monday, 28 February 2011, “WHERE THE SHADOWS LIE . . .”
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/02/where-shadows-lie.html
Rateliff has heard of yet another book featuring Tolkien as a fictional character, and wonders if this means that ‘we're on the cusp of a flood of Tolkien-as-character/it's-all-real/modern-day Middle-earth fiction’ and ending by expressing his hopes that this is not so, ‘I sure hope not.’ (In the commentary David Bratman adds information suggesting that ‘Tolkien is not a character, but a reference’ in this book.)

Bruce Hopkins, RadioLive, New Zealand, “Mike Foster US Tolkien Society”
Part 1:
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Mike-Foster-US-Tolkien-Society-/tabid/506/articleID/18166/Default.aspx
Part 2:
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Tolkien-with-Mike-Foster-part-2/tabid/506/articleID/18449/Default.aspx
A radio interview in two parts with Mike Foster, head of the US Tolkien Society.


= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

BC, Wednesday, 2 February 2011, “The pride of Feanor”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/02/pride-of-feanor.html
Some perceptive comments on the portrayal of pride in Tolkien's work with primary reference to Fëanor. I agree entirely when Charlton asserts that ‘For Tolkien, there is no creative achievement so great that it cannot be undone and reversed by pride.’ I could have wished that Charlton had added some comments relating to Tolkien's ideas about sub-creation, in particular as expressed in the poem Mythopoeia:

Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
[...]
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

BC, Sunday, 6 February 2011, “JRR Tolkien's theology of The Fall and Resurrection”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/02/jrr-tolkiens-theology-of-fall-and.html
This blog entry starts off with another quotation from the ‘Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth’ from Morgoth's Ring — here from Tolkien's commentary concerning Finrod's presumptions and inferences regarding in particular the natures of Eru, of Elves and of Men. Charlton adds some commentary and explication, emphasizing the importance of this text for understanding Tolkien's later conception of his legendarium, but even if I agree with what he says, I still can't quite suppress a ‘yes, and what more?’ reaction.

TF, Wednesday, 9 February 2011, “‘The Lord of the Rings’ as a transitionary work”
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/2011/02/lord-of-rings-as-transitionary-work.html
A bit presumptuous, perhaps, to put myself here, but still . . .
I argue that the years from Tolkien began writing ‘the New Hobbit’ in 1937 until it was published as The Lord of the Rings in 1954 represent just as much a period of transition in Tolkien's views on his legendarium as any other period of equal length since 1917. I also argue that this transition is visible in The Lord of the Rings and that it therefore makes sense in some ways to treat the book as a transitionary work.

BC, Sunday, 13 February 2011, “Depth in Tolkien”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/02/depth-in-tolkien.html
There is nothing controversial to the basic idea that a great part of the attraction of The Lord of the Rings is due to a feeling of ‘depth’, nor to the idea that this depth is, in part, achieved by the text conveying a sense of a vast backcloth of story, legend and myth. Charlton recounts this, and refers to Tolkien's concern that ‘going there’ would ‘destroy the magic’, concluding that going there did destroy the magic: that the published Silmarillion was an error and that only the vast variety of the History of Middle-earth material as long as, in Charlton's words, ‘we take the stance that these are fragmentary and distorted Annals of lost real history.’

H&S, Tuesday, 15 February 2011, “New Addenda & Corrigenda”
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/new-addenda-corrigenda-2/
As the title says, Wayne and Christina have posted some corrections and additions on their website. This time there are new addenda and corrigenda to The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion and The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide on top of which they have made a new page of supplemental bibliography related to the addenda and corrigenda to their Reader's Companion.

Anke Eissman, Wednesday, 16 February 2011, “Illustrating Tolkien”
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=240409
A nice and personal account from Anke Eissman on her experiences with Tolkien illustrations.

Leo Grin, Saturday, 19 February 2011, “Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1”
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2011/02/19/sanity-and-sanctity-the-ennobling-fantasy-of-j-r-r-tolkien-part-1/
and
Leo Grin, Monday, 28 February 2011, “The Order of Grace: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2”
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2011/02/28/the-order-of-grace-the-ennobling-fantasy-of-j-r-r-tolkien-part-2/
This is one of these pieces that are hard to categorize. On one hand there is little original to find here, but on the other hand this essay (or article or whatever we are to call it) is clearly of higher quality than so much else we see on the 'net — with respect to the fact-checking, depth as well as general readability. If you would like to read an introduction to Tolkien criticism that is more accessible than e.g. Shippey's books and at the same time gets their facts right, this is a good choice. I will just add that Tolkien's work speaks to other than just ‘conservatives’ (much less American conservatives), and I don't think that Tolkien's work can be taken as supportive of any of the normal political movements: the ‘enlightened anarchy’ of the Shire is possibly the closest we get to Tolkien's ideals.

BC, Saturday, 26 February 2011, “Legolas, Gimli and the key passage of Lord of the Rings”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/02/legolas-gimli-and-key-passage-of-lord.html
Taking his outset in the conversation between Legolas and Gimli on their way to the Houses of Healing to visit Merry (and Pippin) which Charlton calls a ‘key passage’, he discusses his own changing perceptions of this passage, mentioning particularly his shift of perception due to his reading of the Athrabeth.

AH, Sunday, 27 February 2011, “Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien - The Long Defeat, The Final Battle, and Glimpses of Victory”
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/02/richard-wagner-and-jrr-tolkien-long.html
My own lack of sympathy for Wagner's work obviously makes me very wary towards Andy's on-going project of finding parallels between Wagner and Tolkien. Still, I do read with interest and an open mind (or try to), and I found Andy's explanation of Wagner going through many versions of the end of his Ring-cycle quite interesting, also to see how Wagner responded to various currents in his age. In the end, however, I do lack some kind of indication of what this means — it is, in my opinion, not enough to point at a parallel (we can always quibble about just how far the parallels / similarities go), I wish also to have some indication of how this could or should affect my appreciation of Tolkien's and / or Wagner's work (or at the very least an indication that it could have such an effect).


= = = = 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, Wednesday, 2 February 2011, “_The Ring and the Cross_: Christianity in the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien by Paul E. Kerry”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/989-The_Ring_and_the_Cross.php
An upcoming book with the sub-title ‘Christianity and the _Lord of the Rings_’. It will be interesting to see the reviews — the list of contributors does look somewhat comforting for someone (such as myself) who could fear that such a book would be merely an excuse for the contributors to preach their own faith (as has been the case with some books on Harry Potter and Christianity).

JDR, Tuesday, 8 February 2011, “Forthcoming Publication: PICTURING TOLKIEN”
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/02/forthcoming-publication-picturing.html
This collections of essays offers, according to the publisher (McFarland) ‘a positive consensus of director Peter Jackson’s spectacularly successful adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy’. I quite like the title of Verlyn Flieger's contribution: ‘Sometimes One Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures’, though I'm curious about how it fits into this ‘positive consensus’ mentioned above. Rateliff's own contributions, ‘Two Kinds of Absence: Elision & Exclusion in Peter Jackson's _The Lord of the Rings_’, investigates the claim that scenes left out of the films nevertheless did take place in the film universe (I can come up with a few key scenes that could not possibly have occurred).

JDR, Wednesday, 9 February 2011, “The New Arrival: another book about Tolkien”
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-arrival-another-book-about-tolkien.html
John Rateliff has received his copy of Middle-earth and Beyond: Essays on the World of J. R. R. Tolkien edited Kathleen Dubs and Janka Kascakova and shares the list of contents. Unfortunately it ‘doesn't immediately bump its way to the top of [his] reading list’ so there is no actual review other than this.

JF, Thursday, 10 February 2011, “More new books — and an excerpt”
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/02/more-new-books-and-excerpt.html
Jason is discussing three new books here. One is the recent Middle-earth and Beyond mentioned above to which Jason has himself contributed an essay which is available in the preview pages to which there is a link from the blog entry. The others are announcements of the collection The Ring and the Cross: Christianity in the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien (ed. Paul E. Kerry), and the other is the Picturing Tolkien collection also announced by John Rateliff above.

JDR, Thursday, 10 February 2011, “Fairleigh-Dickinson”
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/02/fairleigh-dickinson.html
Continuing the announcements is here John Rateliff's announcement (with comments) of the first of Paul Kerry's (ed.) two-volume collection on Christianity in Tolkien's writings. John Rateliff offers a few more comments on the contents, which in his descripion sound promising. One of the weaknesses, IMO, of many books that focus on the religious aspect of an author's writings is that it often becomes more a vessel for the critic to preach their own beliefs than an objective, scholarly investigation of the actual writings of the author. However, by the descriptions that I have seen, the two volumes edited by Paul Kerry promise to achieve that scholarly investigation.

JDR, Friday, 11 February 2011, “Forthcoming publication: SHE AND TOLKIEN Revisited”
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/02/forthcoming-publication-she-and-tolkien.html
One more book announcement from John Rateliff. One is the book edited by Jason Fisher that was mentioned on Jason's blog last month, The Bones of the Ox, now apparently tentatively titled Tolkien & The Study of his Sources: Critical Essays, for which Rateliff provides essentially the same list of contents as Jason (except that Jason lists Shippey's piece as the introduction). Rateliff's own contribution, ‘_She_ & Tolkien, Revisited’, is the paper he gave at the 2010 Mythcon, and a reworking of the first piece he wrote (for Mythlore) back in 1981.

JF, Wednesday, 23 February 2011, “Verlyn Flieger’s forthcoming collection”
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/02/verlyn-fliegers-forthcoming-collection.html
Here Jason announces a book that will make it instantly to the top of my wish-list. A collection of essays by Verlyn Flieger on matters Tolkien. Wow!
See also JDR, Saturday, 26 February 2011, “Verlyn's Book”
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/02/verlyns-book.html
and Verlyn Flieger's own web-site http://www.mythus.com/greensuns.html

JF, Friday, 25 February 2011, “Details on Light Beyond All Shadow”
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/02/details-on-light-beyond-all-shadows.html
Here we get the list of contents for Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien's Work, the companion volume to The Ring and the Cross, the second of the two books containing essays on christianity edited by Paul Kerry and Sandra Miesel and published by Fairleigh-Dickinson.

Bill Peschel, Sunday, 27 February 2011, “Author David C. Downing takes a novel approach to lives of Lewis, Tolkien”
http://blog.pennlive.com/life/2011/02/author_david_c_downing_takes_a.html
In part a review and in part reporting an interview with Downing. Apparently Downing's book has caused some strong reactions in some quarters — I suppose that it is not entirely undesirable for an author to evoke strong emotions, even if it means getting negative reactions that are ‘more intensely hostile than [he is] used to getting for [his] interpretative books.’


= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

BC, Wednesday, 2 February 2011, “The elven ‘argument from desire'”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/02/elven-argument-from-desire.html
Mostly a quotation of what Tolkien has to say about desire in the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (Morgoth's Ring) with some brief comments added.

H&S, Friday, 4 February 2011, “Books in 2010”
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/books-in-2010/
Wayne and Christina discussing the ‘only’ 242 volumes that was added to their collection in 2010 is inevitably Tolkien-related — and of course I find that I relate quite well to that love of books that I detect (or believe that I detect . . .) whenever Wayne and Christina write about their books.

JF, Friday, 11 February 2011, “Friday Diversion”
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/02/friday-diversion.html
A nice little diversion game here. Jason posted a list names, and asked what they have in common (to the exclusion of other, more well-known, names from the same source). I admit I didn't get it until it was pointed out (there's a couple of confusing elements there — let me just say that it is about these specific names rather than the things they name). Can you guess without looking at the answer in the comments?

AH, Sunday, 13 February 2011, “J.R.R. Tolkien, The Rivals and Mrs Malaprop”
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/02/jrr-tolkien-rivals-and-mrs-malaprop.html
A nice and personal retelling of the story of Tolkien playing Mrs Malaprop in a production of Sheridan's The Rivals at King William's School in Birmingham along with others of the TCBS followed by a call for Tolkienian malapropisms.

BC, Monday, 14 February 2011, “Death in Tolkien”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/02/death-in-tolkien.html
Being mainly a rather bald and brief summary of Tolkien's views on death, and particularly human death (counterposed with Elvish death), I have chosen to put this post here. Perhaps it should rather be put as a lemma to the later discussion of “Legolas, Gimli and the key passage of _The Lord of the Rings_” to which I believe this post leads up both in result and in the intention of the author.

JF, Friday, 18 February 2011, “Books versus “books””
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/02/books-versus-books.html
Following on from a discussion in the Mythopoeic Society Yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/21840), Jason discusses why he dislikes E-books (at least as it is usually set up), though of course he uses electronic texts for searching etc. The ensuing discussion is also worth reading (I learned quite a lot from reading this).


= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

RABT: “Did Tolkien read Cooper?”
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.books.tolkien/PgHDUpVqRtU
Not a long thread, but interesting nonetheless. And of it diverges quickly into something else entirely — it's usenet ;-)

LotR Plaza: “The Order of Things”
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=240395
Originating in a simple question regarding the relations between the various orders of created beings in Tolkien's sub-creation, this evolved into discussing also the multiplying of entities (or, if you will, the positing of plurality) when discussing story-internal questions.


= = = = Web Sites = = = =
I will try to present a couple of sites every month — if I've found a new site (of any kind) that I have found interesting, then I will add that, and then I'll throw in some oldies to keep things rolling ;-)

“Thoughts from Eryn Lasgallen” (sic)
-- ‘A Tolkien reference guide’
http://thoughtsfromerynlasgallen.blogspot.com/
The first site is a blog that I have only recently discovered, but which has been going since 2008. In essence a series reviewing a number of Tolkien-related websites (these have been running since December 2008), and thus a great opportunity to discover new Tolkien-related sites. It has also been the inspiration for me to create this section of my Tolkien Transactions, but since my interests are not entirely co-inciding with those of Lynn-Marie Gildersleeve who runs the Thoughts from Eryn Lasgallen blog, I thought I'd do my own reviews.

“The Tolkien Meta-FAQ”
http://tolkien.slimy.com
Though I've chosen to give L.M. Gildersleeve's blog the right of first place as both the direct inspiration for this section and for being the most recent addition to my bookmarks, it is clear that any list of Tolkien-related sites that takes its origin from the Tolkien newsgroups must start by mentioning Steuard's site of FAQs and essays. I will emphasize the Tolkien Meta-FAQ itself: a single point of entry to at least five different FAQs on Tolkien's writings, and of course the essays section, http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/, housing learned essays by Steuard Jensen (e.g. What is Tom Bombadil and Tolkien's Parish) and Conrad Dunkerson (including the series The Truth About Balrogs). All in all this is a must-have bookmark.

“Heimskringla”
http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Main_Page
The Heimskringla is, in their own words, ‘an online collection of Old Norse source material: Primarily the Eddas, the Icelandic sagas and scaldic poetry. In addition to this the collection consists of background material and other related texts.’ This is a wonderful collection of texts in the Old Norse languages, though the majority of the site is only available in the Norse languages (Old Norse and modern Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Faroese) the original texts in Old Norse are here available for any Tolkien scholar to see. One example is the Völuspá, http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/V%C3%B6lusp%C3%A1 where stanzas 10 through 16 contains the list of Dwarf-names where Tolkien found most of the names for Durin's folk.


= = = = 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

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

And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left
the path of wisdom.
- Gandalf, /The Fellowship of the Ring/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)

‘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.

Tolkien Transactions IX

January 2011

So, we have now reached the ninth issue of my attempt to extract the best (in my highly subjective estimate) of Tolkien related ‘goings-on’ on the 'net. This issue is a little delayed, for which I apologize: an unfortunate combination of business both in the on-line Tolkien world and in my own work and private life — there are, after all, times when, against all rational logic, other things must be prioritized before Tolkien . . .

All the usual disclaimers apply about newness, completeness and relevance (or any other implication of responsibility) :-)


= = = = 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


= = = = News = = = =

Tuesday, 4 January 2011, “Iran to celebrate J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday”
http://www.ibna.ir/vdcauino.49nuw1gtk4.html
Just a curious little bit of information out of a country that is not exactly known for its openess to Western culture. Iran's Association of Children and Teenager's Authors celebrated Tolkien's birthday, and the Fantasy Academy of Iran held its first session this winter on assessing Tolkien's work.

DB, Thursday, 6 January 2011, “Words by JRRT”
http://calimac.livejournal.com/494746.html
David Bratman discusses music that is not only inspired by Tolkien's work, but which actually sets music to Tolkien's words. It appears that the Tolkien Estate has adopted a policy of not allowing anyone to do this any longer (apparently this was done ‘some years ago'), leaving the Danish/English Tolkien Ensemble to be the last to set music to Tolkien words and publish — at least for some time.

H&S, Sunday, 9 January 2011, “The Tolkien Collector no. 31”
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/the-tolkien-collector-no-31/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5rgpbpr
Wayne and Christina announce that issue no. 31 of The Tolkien Collector is ‘almost ready for posting to subscribers.'

JC, Thursday, 20 January 2011, “A new trend on Youtube — Reading the books by JRR Tolkien”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/977-Reading_Tolkien_on_YouTube_trend.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/643rxck
Apparently fans reading out of Tolkien's books has become a new trend on YouTube. Pieter gives some examples and some background.

PC, Sunday, 23 January 2011, “Overview of JRR Tolkien related news from last week”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/980-Tolkien_news_last_week.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4mklw5x
Pieter Collier has begun to make a weekly overview of Tolkien-related items in the news. Some of these items will also appear on my list, but most probably will not. You can find these, and other articles that I do not include here, in the archives of Pieter's Tolkien Library website: http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/archives.php

‘Trotter', Sunday, 30 January 2011, “Year's Work and Review of English Studies”
http://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1454&forum=9
http://preview.tinyurl.com/47vt8k5
Links to a number of articles by Tolkien in various Oxford publications — unfortunately one does need to have access rights (and I don't know how to get that).

DAA, Sunday, 30 January 2011, “Wormwood indexed, also Avallaunius, Faunus and Tolkien Studies”
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2011/01/wormwood-indexed-also-avallaunius.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6azljff
Douglas A. Anderson announces an on-line database of magazines that has now indexed some journals that he is involved with, including Tolkien Studies. The database is available at http://www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm


= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

ArwenAmidala, Saturday, 1 January 2011, “Survival of the Tolkienist.”
http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2011/01/survial-of-tolkienist.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/65ballu
A collection of four ‘reaction papers' addressing some very different aspects of Tolkien's work, The Lord of the Rings, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Children of Húrin, The Silmarillion and probably other stuff that I have already forgotten ;) Quite interesting — there are some things that I don't necessarily agree with, which I consider a high quality, since, at least in this case, it shows that the analysis and opinions are not merely indifferent.

BC, Monday, 3 January 2011, “Tolkien and the sea-yearning — the meaning of Earendil”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/01/tolkien-and-sea-yearning-meaning-of.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/64dhtdm
The two key passages, in my opinion, are

I think Tolkien regarded the sea longing as an aspect or representation of saintliness, where sainthood is conceptualized as being a link between the earthly and heavenly realms, the saint as intercessor for humankind with God.

and

He [...] wrote about those individuals (and races) who were subject to this sea-yearning, and seemed to accord them the highest esteem — yet I would guess Tolkien himself did not directly share this yearning, which is why he wrote comparatively little about the sea itself, and even less about the experience of sea-going.

It is a very interesting idea, and I should very much like to hear your comments on this.

AH, Monday, 3 January 2011, “Wagner and Tolkien Thread: Strange Ring Fellows”
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/wagner-and-tolkien-thread-strange-ring.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6ennvsb
Andrew continues his investigations into similarities, parallels, or whatever we wish to call it, between Wagner and Tolkien. Personally I don't like Wagner, and I am aware that this makes me more sceptical than I would probably otherwise be, but I do try to keep an open mind, and Andrew's posts are generally quite interesting.

BC, Friday, 7 January 2011, “The essential meaning and purpose of the Notion Club Papers”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/01/essential-meaning-and-purpose-of-notion.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5ru5rjn
Bruce Charlton is moving on from the specific to the general. Admitting that he has been brooding obsessively (his own words!) over the Notion Club Papers (NCP), he takes a stab at the ultimate intention behind the text. In essence he thinks that the NCP was supposed to establish the link between the mythical world of his legendarium and the modern world: a replacing of the Eriol / Aelfwine figure.

DB, Saturday, 8 January 2011, “the Inklings in fiction”
http://calimac.livejournal.com/494909.html
Announcing an update of his list of fictionalisations of Inklings, either individually or as a group, David Bratman has a list that is much longer than I had thought, currently ranging from 1933 to 2010.

BC, Saturday, 8 January 2011, “Curing the ‘vulgarization' of England — from Smith of Wootton Major”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/01/curing-vulgarization-of-england-from.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6bq42g7
Continuing from his entry on “[t]the essential meaning and purpose of the Notion Club Papers”, Bruce Charlton here combines his ideas on what Tolkien was trying to achieve with the Notion Club Papers with what is know about Tolkien's thoughts on his short story ‘Smith of Wootton Major'. As usual Charlton's observations are interesting and non-obvious.

BC, Friday, 21 January 2011, “An imaginary completed Notion Club Papers — form and character”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/01/imaginary-completed-notion-club-papers.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4vkdykf
This was a busy day on Bruce Charlton's blog. In this first entry on this day he shares some ideas and thoughts on what a the Notion Club Papers might have looked like if Tolkien had ever finished them — the ideas presented here are then built upon in the following entries published on this Friday.

BC, Friday, 21 January 2011, “Who is Dolbear? A wizard/ angel/ messenger from Faery”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/01/who-is-dolbear-wizard-angel-messenger.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/49d4ke8
A good thing about Charlton's Notion Club Papers blog is that he normally uses a title that actually tells you what he is discussing in the entry — an old-fashioned virtue, I know, but I like it ;-) Dolbear is a character in the Notion Club Papers, and Charlton here ponders the significance of this character, speculating that he may be a kind of messenger from Faërie or a human link to Faërie. This links to some of the things that Charlton said in earlier entries this month about the inhabitants of Faërie actively seeking to renew the links between Faërie and the world of humans.

ArwenAmidala, Friday, 21 January 2011, “In which I argue against the Professor with great fear and trepidation.”
http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2011/01/in-which-i-argue-against-professor-with.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5r6jkrw
ArwenAmidala discusses the Battle of Maldon and Tolkien's interpretation. Taking into account Tolkien's propensity for rhetorics[*], I am not convinced that she is actually arguing so much against Tolkien. It appears to me that Tolkien's main point was that the use of ofermod is meant negatively, and it does not appear that she disagrees with this. (Of course, to a Dane it is very hard to imagine that the word could be positive: the Danish word overmod does mean excessive pride / self-confidence / courage).
[*] See for instance also the essays by Michael Drout and Tom Shippey in LotR Plaza's Scholars’ Forum:
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=77&title=scholars-forum
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6fkcn9j

BC, Friday, 21 January 2011, “The Notion Club Papers — why England, why Oxford?”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/01/notion-club-papers-why-england-why.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6kh9gjh
It will not have escaped the notice of the observant reader that I am rather fond of Bruce Charlton's Notion Club Papers blog. A part of this is that he often comes up with ideas and thoughts that I would not have thought of myself. Of course that also means that I am often not convinced by his arguments, but it is nonetheless interesting to see his ideas. This entry, in which he discusses the reasons why the Notion Club Papers are set in Oxford, England, is a good example of ideas that are interesting and thought-provoking even though I don't think he is entirely right.

AH, Saturday, 29 January 2011, “Langon — The Mouth of Melko — Some Etymological Detective Work”
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/langon-mouth-of-melko.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4j6f3h8
An interesting piece of analysis by Andy Higgins — Langon, the Mouth of Melko, indeed!


= = = = Reviews = = = =

Remember to keep an eye on http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/ where the Mythopoeic Society is publishing review — many of which have previously appeared in either Mythprint or Mythlore. This month we got, among others, Jason Fisher's review of Dimitra Fimi's 2009 book, Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits that first appeared in Mythlore 111/112 (Fall/winter 2010).

Wednesday, 5 January 2011, “Tolkien's Double Worlds and Creative Process by Arne Zettersten”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/963-Tolkien_Double_Worlds_Creative_Process.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5r5mzn4
Not so much a review, actually, but rather a bit of reminiscing about meeting Arne Zettersten (and others) along with an announcement of Zettersten's upcoming book.

AH, Saturday, 15 January 2011, “Looking for the King — An Inklings Novel By David Downing — A Review”
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/looking-for-king-inklings-novel-by.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/62nbzhr
There has been a bit of attention for this particular book. The author is professor of English at Elizabethtown College and a well-known Lewis scholar, and the dialogue he gives to the inklings is drawn from what they have actually said or written. Andy Higgins is positive about the book, though not as overwhelming as Pieter Collier was (see the transactions for November 2010).

JF, Monday, 24 January 2011, “Middle-earth and Beyond — first look!”
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/01/middle-earth-and-beyond-first-look.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5wq9zdy
More information on the upcoming collection edited by Kathleen Dubs and Janka Kašcáková, Middle-earth and Beyond: Essays on the World of J.R.R. Tolkien. Another collection of critical essays on Tolkien's work, arguing that it is different because the editors say so. Thinking of the volumes that sit unread on my shelves, I think it's going to take a couple of positive reviews to convince me to buy this volume.

JF, Friday, 28 January 28 2011, “The Bones of the Ox”
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/01/bones-of-ox.html
Following in the tradition that I have established of including announcements of books in the review section, we have here Jason Fisher's announcement that his book (as editor and contributor), The Bones of the Ox”: J.R.R. Tolkien and Source Criticism is forthcoming. This is one book that I am fairly sure that I will buy, if nothing else then because Jason describes its purpose as being in part ‘to explain and justify source criticism as a valid critical approach to Tolkien’s works'. Being somewhat wary of source criticism myself (it can be done very well, I think, but there are many examples where it is not), a book that sets out to justify it, and to ‘lay out a systematic methodology for how it ought to be conducted' will be a good opportunity to get a vocabulary to express what I think is good and useful about source criticism and to express my own critique of source criticism (the bad kind).


= = = = Interesting discussions = = = =

AH, Saturday, 8 January 2011, “The History of Middle Earth — A Chapter by Chapter Exploration”
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/history-of-middle-earth-chapter-by.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6hanqnv
This is not the discussion in itself, but it inspired by a kind of ‘Chapter of the Week' concept sprung from the Tolkien course given by Dimitra Fimi. Unfortunately they have chosen to use Facebook for this extremely interesting project, and the discussion interface on Facebook is abominably bad, so my expectations for this are not too high (already the amount of posts for each chapter seem to be petering out). Still, there is some intersting comments in some of the first chapters, and Dimitra Fimi has contributed some comments.

Various, “Master of Words, by Words Mastered”
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=239720
The thread is started in December, but I have not become aware of it before January. The overall theme is to explore the relationship between Tolkien's philological work and his fictional work. One of the things that seem to be emerging is a view of Tolkien not as a family man, a philogist, a poet and an epic author, but as one whole person whose personality found outlets in various ways. The main focus, however, is Tolkien's relationship to words and language and how this has influenced all his work.


= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

Comments, idle thoughts, curious articles and what-nots that don't really fit in any of the other categories that I have created.

3 January 2011, “Becoming J.R.R. Tolkien”
http://www.legacy.com/ns/news-story.aspx?t=becoming-jrr-tolkien&id=206
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6jak566
A nice enough little piece on Legacy.com about some of Tolkien's sources of inspiration. There is nothing new or controversial here (though it is not entirely precise in all details), and I include it mostly as an example of the tributes to Tolkien on the occasion of his birthday.

BC, Wednesday, 5 January 2011, “A superhero Fellowship of the Ring”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/01/superhero-fellowship-of-ring.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/48z7wpa
Charlton is playing with the idea of creating a more high-powered fellowship to take the Ring to Mount Doom. Personally I disagree strongly with his assessment of Sam, but it's a funny idea in any case.

Justin Olivetti, Friday, 7 January 2011, “The Road to Mordor: The Professor”
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/07/the-road-to-mordor-the-professor/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/645vhbu
A tribute to the Professor from a gamer of ‘The Lord of the Rings On-line' game, detailing for other gamers a quest-chain within the game that is a tribute to Tolkien. Perhaps one ought to try out this game one day . . .

JDR, Friday, 7 January 2011, “A Tolkienian Puzzle”
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/01/tolienian-puzzle.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5ta8f5w
In essence John Rateliff is asking what made Tolkien choose to abandon the prose format of The Book of Lost Tales and adopt the narrative poetic format of the The Lays of Beleriand. He spends a bit more thought on it, but doesn't come up with any suggestions. Any takers?

PC, Friday, 7 January 2011, “Avoid Bying Fake Tolkien Signatures on Ebay”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/965-Avoid_Buying_Fake_Tolkien_Signatures.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/48yyved
Sound advice from Pieter Collier, who not only advises you to avoid the fake signatures (I could have done that), but also on how you can go about at least reducing the risk of buying a fake Tolkien signature.

BC, Sunday, 23 January 2011, “Free-will, purpose, prophecy and providence in Tolkien”
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/01/free-will-purpose-prophecy-and.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4pz57gt
Quoting from ‘The Quest of Erebor' as published in Unfinished Tales, Bruce Charlton makes the following statements:
The Lord of the Rings is permeated by a deep understanding
of the Christian concept of how free-will is compatible
with with purpose, prophecy and providence.

When such matters seem seem paradoxical, or merely muddled,
this is well worth pondering.
I agree on this (obviously — I have myself spent quite some time pondering this), and though I don't really think that a blog is an appropriate medium for that discussion, I do hope that Charlton will take up the thread in another blog entry.

AH, Sunday, 23 January 2011, “To Have and To Have Not”
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/to-have-and-to-have-not.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6cxbacl
Andy Higgins is learning Finnish and in that connection he shares some thoughts on how the idea of ‘to have' is phrased in some non-Germanic languages.

PC, Monday, 24 January 2011, “The amazing art of bookbinding”
Pieter Collier has made a series of articles on bindings for Tolkien's books, where he looks at some absolutely fabulous bindings — the good thing is that the price of these is so high that it is likely to stay outside my reach forever: that way I can read the articles without getting any ‘my precious' urges ;-)
So far this series comprises:
“The Lord of the Rings — Part 1”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/981-Book_art_book_binding_lord_of_the_rings.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4rb3seh
“The Lord of the Rings — Part 2”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/982-Book_art_book_binding_lord_of_the_rings_2.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5rhrxxs
“The Hobbit”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/983-Book_art_book_binding_The_Hobbit.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5rhcdjb
“The Silmarillion”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/984-Book_art_book_binding_The_Silmarillion.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4wg9omt

PC, Monday, 31 January 2011, “The most expensive copies of The Hobbit in the World — Association Copies”
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/987-The_Hobbit_Association_Copies.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5v79bkl
Following up on his articles on rebound (and very expensive) copies of Tolkien's books, Pieter here goes through some of the most expensive copies of The Hobbit that have been sold on auctions — the top scorer being sold at a staggering £60,000!

—
Troels Forchhammer

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
- Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett)