Parma-kenta

Saturday, 1 October 2011

Tolkien Transactions XVII

Tolkien Transactions XVII September 2011 September has been a rather busy month, both with respect to on-line content relating to J.R.R. Tolkien and his works, but also with respect to my work and other off-line obligations: I've barely had time (in my own eyes) to participate in the many interesting discussions.

= = = = News = = = =

JDR, Friday, 2 September 2011, ‘Farewell, FRODO FRANCHISE’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/farewell-frodo-franchise.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6fmua6e
John Rateliff laments the stop of Kristin Thompson's blog, The Frodo Franchise, which has focused mainly on the Peter Jackson films (the subject of her eponymous book). I haven't had time to look into the past posts, but of course the loss of any intelligent Tolkien-related blog is a loss to be lamented.

PC, Saturday, 3 September 2011, ‘Online course: J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth and Middle-earth in Context starts again in October’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1003-Tolkien_Online_Course.php?426
http://preview.tinyurl.com/66eqpwq
Another deep sigh — I have neither the time nor the money to follow Dmitra Fimi's on-line course, but I would dearly love to do so.

PC, Monday, 5 September 2011, ‘On October 8th the Tolkien Shop in Leiden celebrates its 25th Anniversary’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1005-Tolkien_Shop_25_Years.php?428
http://preview.tinyurl.com/62ekfrj
What it says . . . celebrations ensue :-)

Pat Reynolds, Return of the Ring, Tuesday, 6 September 2011, ‘A Year of Celebrating 'The Hobbit'’
http://returnofthering.livejournal.com/2489.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5r9s7gb
A whole year of celebrations up to the 75th anniversary of the first publication of The Hobbit — and more information on The Return of the Ring conference next year (finally something that does not elicit a sigh on my part, but an expectant smile).

Pat Reynolds, Sunday, 11 September 2011, ‘Special Guest: Colin Duriez’
http://returnofthering.livejournal.com/2573.html
Well, what it says: Colin Duriez will be one of the special guests at The Return of the Ring.
Sunday, 18 September 2011, ‘Green Dragon’
http://returnofthering.livejournal.com/3048.html
Another special guest, La Compagnie du Dragon Vert, which is a French group doing what might best be termed secondary historical re-enacting.

BBC News, Saturday, 24 September 2011, ‘Tolkien fans hold annual Oxonmoot in Oxford’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-15038836
http://preview.tinyurl.com/64xu6h8
A rather nice little piece about the Oxonmoot.

AH, Sunday, 25 September 2011, ‘On A Sunny Saturday and Monday Morning.....’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-sunny-saturday-and-monday-morning.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5vwdj7s
A rather more personal and interested piece on the Oxonmoot — and the Charles Williams book that Andy Higgins bought while there.

Nicki Thomas, Edmonton Journal, Monday, 26 September 2011, ‘University of Alberta clubs nothing if not eclectic’
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/University+Alberta+clubs+nothing+eclectic/5457944/story.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/68vc7kj
The various clubs and societies devoted to the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien have long played a pivotal part in the advancement of his writings. I even suspect that the ready-made audience of the societies may have helped pave the way for Tolkien studies in the academic world, as the base of organised fans has ensured the financial success of good books about Tolkien. In this piece about the on-campus clubs of the University of Alberta, the Tolkien club, ‘The Last Alliance’ is given a prominent place, and we are told of the embarrasment of the co-founder, Megan Engel, over not being able to speak fluent Elvish (though we are not told whether she means Sindarin or Quenya). Despair not, dear Megan — thou art not alone ;-)

The Orcadian, Thursday, 15 September 2011, ‘Danish frigate arrives at Hatston’
http://www.orcadian.co.uk/2011/09/danish-frigate-to-call-into-kirkwall/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/68sa856
A member of the Tolkien society referred to this piece of news asking ‘Are the Danes trying to take Orkney back?’ You just wait! Once we have dealt with the Swedes for stealing Scania in 1658, we will begin plotting revenge for all that the British have stolen from us — we'll steal every oak tree on the British Isles and then we'll rebuild the navy that Lord Nelson took and once more ravage the coasts of Britain! Or something ;-)

Kelsey Sheridan, Lexington Herald Leader, Thursday, 30 September 2011, ‘Tolkien-themed convention brings Middle Earth to Shaker Village’
http://www.kentucky.com/2011/09/29/1902683/tolkien-themed-convention-brings.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5s4pohx
A rather nice, in both length and angle, report from the Tolkien-themed convention, ‘There & Back Again’ (even if it is a local paper, I think it's quite good publicity).

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

BC, Monday, 19 September 2011, ‘Hierarchy, reverance and worship in Tolkien's work and life’
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/09/hierarchy-reverance-and-worship-in.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6c233ol
As you know my education is in physics and computer science, and I am certainly not well read in matters of Roman Catholic thought and practice — only through my interest for Tolkien's work have I begun to read a little here and there as it has become relevant. Thus I had not previously encountered this idea of the hierarchical mediation, but once encountered I can immediately see its relevance for Tolkien's writings. See also my comments directly to the blog.

BC, Wednesday 21 September 2011, ‘Abel Pitt as Adam Fox’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/09/abel-pitt-as-adam-fox.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5u4w34p
One should of course not trust Google completely, but it does appear that Bruce Charlton is just a few months too late with this identification, which also appears in the essay by Diana Glyer and Josh Long in Tolkien and the Study of his Sources (edited by Jason Fisher).
Rob Sharp, The Independent, Friday, 23 September 2011, ‘Why do adults read children's books? Blame modern life’
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/why-do-adults-read-childrens-books-blame-modern-life-2359349.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3pyml2h

Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, Friday, 23 September 2011, ‘This theory could have come from the Soviet era’
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/boyd-tonkin-this-theory-could-have-come-from-the-soviet-era-2359350.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6xf7zeb
Here we have couple of interesting pieces, not in themselves scholarship, but referring to a piece of scholarship that is underway, the study by Dr Louise Joy of the adult appeal of many children's books. I, too, find myself getting irritated over people's theories about what attracts me to certain children's books: usually, even though I don't doubt that it is honestly meant and well-intentioned, it merely reads as so much self-aggrandizing nonsense (not to use a stronger word). One of the things that fascinate me about good children's literature is the ability to take up some of the fundamental questions of the human situation without all the postmodern idiocy (pardon my expression) — and this is also a part of my fascination with Tolkien's more mature work: he dares take on such questions as death and mortality, ways of being good and ways of becoming evil, and he does so in a way that is not quite as simplified as that of the children's books, but still no more complex than he avoids getting lost in the grey slush of real-life complexity.

Edith Crowe, MythCon, Monday, 26 September 2011, ‘MythCon 43: Call For Papers’
http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/43/papers/
Though I won't be attending, I hope that some good and strong scholarship will come out also of next year's MythCon for us to enjoy in print later.

Jannet Brennan Croft, Mythlore, Wednesday, 28 September 2011, ‘Mythlore 115/116: Table of Contents Announced’
http://www.mythsoc.org/mythlore/115/
At least a couple of Tolkien-related papers that look very promising.

= = = = Taum's Aphorisms = = = =

John Rateliff continues posting Taum Santoski's ‘Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy’.
No. 13, Sunday, 4 September 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/taum-santoski-xiii.html
No. 14, Monday, 5 September 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/taum-santoski-xiv.html
No. 15, Tuesday, 6 September 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/taum-santoski-xv.html
No. 16, Wednesday, 7 September 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/taum-santoski-xvi.html
No. 17, Friday, 9 September 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/taum-santoski-xviii.html
No. 18, Monday, 12 September 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/taum-santoski-xviii_12.html
No. 19, Saturday, 24 September 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/taum-santoski-xix.html

Commentary:
JDR, Friday, 2 September 2011, ‘Taum's Aphorisms, parts VII to XII’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/taums-aphorisms-parts-vii-to-xii.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3h2urhj

Rateliff admits to understanding this second half-dozen of the aphorisms even less than he did the first. Still, I find his thoughts valuable for setting a direction for my own attempt to understand the aphorisms.
TF, Tuesday, 27 September 2011, ‘Taum Santoski's Aphorisms 1 through 6’
http://http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/2011/09/taum-santoskis-aphorisms-1-through-6.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/62j5dpy
Building on Rateliff's comments, and on the various comments to the aphorism posts, I try to share some of my own thoughts on the aphorisms - mostly in the hope that it may attract comments that will help me understand them better.

= = = = Book News = = = =

JF, Wednesday, 7 September 2011, ‘Read a free excerpt from my book’
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/09/read-free-excerpt-from-my-book.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/69noz5z
Jason announces that you can freely read an excerpt of his book, Tolkien and the Study of his Sources, at the publisher's web-site.

AH, Sunday, 18 September 2011, ‘Wotan Has Returned!!!! Autumn Postings Shall Commence’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/wotan-has-returned-autumn-postings.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6dncluu
Andy Higgins has read Arne Zettersten's book on Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien's Double Worlds and Creative Process and found it highly recommendable. My internal bying committee has still not decided on the question of whether to buy this book in English or in the Swedish original, Min vän Ronald och hans världar (My friend Ronald and his worlds).

PC, Sunday, 18 September 2011, ‘Tolkien, le façonnement d'un monde - volume 1, Botany and Astronomy’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1008-Le_Dragon_de_Brume.php?431
http://preview.tinyurl.com/65s5zer
Since I don't speak, read or understand any French I have little use of this book, though I would have preferred it to be otherwise . . . but perhaps some of you may be able to enjoy the French essays and share the good points with the rest of us.

PC, Monday, 26 September 2011, ‘Tolkien and the Peril of War by Robert S. Blackham’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1012-Tolkien_and_the_Peril_of_War.php?435
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5spdl74
From what I have heard, this book appears to be mainly the illustrations for John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War — nothing, or next to nothing, new in the text, but many images, both new and rare, to accompany the words. I suppose that this book will be a true treasure trove for people whose imagination is triggered by images more than by words (I am not trying to be supercilious here, it just so happens that my own empathy and identification is triggered more strongly by words). Still, I also do love a good picture, so this book may at some point reach my book-shelf also (depending on the reviews).

Henry Gee, Wednesday, 28 September 2011, ‘Conversations With My Agent About E-Books’
http://occamstypewriter.org/cromercrox/2011/09/28/conversations-with-my-agent-about-e-books/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6b6k2k6
Henry Gee, editor of the Tolkien Society's journal, Mallorn and senior editor for Nature, promises a new edition of his book, The Science of Middle-earth out as e-book in time for a projected December 2012 release of the first Hobbit film by Jackson.

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

JH, Thursday, 1 September 2011, ‘Tolkien Month, Day One — My Introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien’
http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/12075/tolkien-month-day-one-my-introduction-to-j-r-r-tolkien/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/67lt8p7
Josh Hangarne (JH) of The World's Strongest Librarian had dedicated his blog to talking Tolkien, Tolkien month. He starts out by telling of his introduction to Tolkien through an illustrated edition of The Hobbit. I am sure that most of us will recognize some parts of his experience — he seems to me to have encountered that enchanted state where the successful sub-creator induces Secondary Belief. Since I have failed to find an easily overviewed list of the Tolkien-related blog entries, I will provide one such below.

JH, Saturday, 3 September 2011, ‘On Fairy Stories — An Essay by Tolkien’
http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/12093/on-fairy-stories-an-essay-by-tolkien/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6k79uvw
From a very brief background on The Hobbit to _On Fairy-Stories_? Well, I love to see Tolkien's essay get some more publicity, and getting more people to know it, or at least about it, is in my opinion a good thing, though the PDF version that Josh Hangarne links to may not, as Pieter Collier points out, be entirely legal (it appears to be put up by West Chester University as a service to their students — whether that is legal, and whether it is legal for non-students to access it is beyond me to tell).

BC, Monday, 5 September 2011, ‘Tolkien and Women - a word’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/09/tolkien-and-women-word.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/68kohl7
Charlton, in my opinion, has here a valid point about how we judge Tolkien's ethical position, and in particular about being careful to read what he says without cutting corners. It is, obviously, still possible to disagree with Tolkien (I often do so myself), but it is important to understand exactly where this disagreement arises, and to understand Tolkien's position.

BC, Saturday, 10 September 2011, ‘Humphrey Carpenter and Tolkien’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/09/humphrey-carpenter-and-tolkien.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6hc8pbo
I have never been much of a student of the Inklings as a group, nor of any of the other individual members than Tolkien, and so I have never read Carpenter's book on the Inklings, but the strength of this attack(?) surprises me. Speaking solely about the Tolkien biography, I agree that Carpenter does not seem to be at every point sympathetic to Tolkien's very personal ideas about ethics and aesthetics, but I don't get the impression that he is disloyal to his subject — I rather appreciate that he he lets it shine through that he disagrees, since that allows us to take that into consideration, whereas if the author would seem to agree with Tolkien about everything, I might (depending, of course, on the circumstances) suspect that the author was rather turning Tolkien into his own mouthpiece rather than the other way around. Carpenter, in my opinion, does a good job at portraying a person whose sole claim to greatness is in the works of his mind — and I think it is only right that he leaves the interpretation of that greatness (and of any intention or project associated with Tolkien's art) to others.

JDR, Monday, 12 September 2011, ‘Steig Larsson and Tolkien’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/09/steig-larsson-and-tolkien.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5vukwgy
Rateliff has found a couple of Tolkien references from Stieg Larsson's Män som hatar kvinnor (Men who hate women — English title The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). P.S. It's a little amusing that Rateliff does the e-i inversion in Stieg Larsson's name, but not in Tolkien's ;-)

BC, Monday, 26 September 2011, ‘A note on Hobbit government’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/09/note-on-hobbit-government.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6jy5cws
I am not sure that I agree with Charlton on the details of what is described as the idea rule of a nation in Tolkien's work: the Númenórean set-up appears to me rather to put the King, in terms of worship, first among equals and speaker on the behalf of the people rather than the King representing Eru to the people. I will need some time, which unfortunately I don't have at the present, to get my thoughts together, but it seems to me that Tolkien made much of the difference between governing and ruling, and that this difference is essential to understand his views on the rule of the people.

= = = = Tolkien-related entries on ‘The World's Strongest Librarian’ = = = =

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

These are a few of the discussions that I would have loved to have more time to contribute to . . .

Linguistic Archaisms
news:16eb5f8c-d135-472e-bc62-723b6c97bbd3@t29g2000vby.googlegroups.com
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rec.arts.books.tolkien/p2zNWDqjig4/discussion
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5urf93e

Elrond remaining in Rivendell
news:7bf12b41-9d9f-425a-894c-f4c41fb2d8b5@s7g2000yqd.googlegroups.com
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rec.arts.books.tolkien/d3QM2EUvBHY/discussion
http://preview.tinyurl.com/633sm45

Was Narsil bronze?
news:mUedq.9702$Ol1.7921@newsfe07.iad
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rec.arts.books.tolkien/g60xqC2jFd4/discussion
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6ce42r6

Proof that Sauron was Bombadil's "Dark Lord"?
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=238593&PN=2&title=proof-that-sauron-was-bombadils-dark-lord
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5tuxq76

= = = = Web Sites = = = =

Is Tolkien Actually Any Good?
http://www.rilstone.talktalk.net/tolk.htm
This is an interesting piece of criticism that apparently fails to answer its own question, though it seems to me more a matter of the author being unwilling to fully acknowledge the quality inherent (IMO) in his experiences. I find it curious that he relates some of the ‘self-evident’ truths of literary criticism — e.g. that the use of clichés is bad (I've never understood why this is necessarily and immanently bad) — without questioning those, but questions whether his own desire to immerse himself in Middle-earth is indicative of good writing.

Colin Duriez
http://web.mac.com/colinduriez/inwriting/Home.html
The web-place of Colin Duriez, an excellent Tolkien scholar.

= = = = Sources = = = =

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

Jason Fisher (JF) — ‘Lingwë — Musings of a Fish’
http://lingwe.blogspot.com
Michael Drout (MD) — ‘Wormtalk and Slugspeak’
http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/
Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull (H&S) — ‘Too Many Books and Never Enough’
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/
Pieter Collier (PC) — ‘The Tolkien Library’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/
Douglas A. Anderson (DAA) et Al. — ‘Wormwoodiana’
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com
Corey Olsen (CO), ‘The Tolkien Professor’
http://www.tolkienprofessor.com
David Bratman (DB), ‘Kalimac’
http://kalimac.blogspot.com/
and the old home:
http://calimac.livejournal.com/
Larry Swain (LS), ‘The Ruminate’
http://theruminate.blogspot.com
‘Wellinghall’, ‘Musings of an Aging Fan’
http://wellinghall.livejournal.com
Various, ‘The Northeast Tolkien Society’ (NETS), ‘Heren Istarion’
http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com
Bruce Charlton (BC), ‘Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/
Andrew Higgins (AH), ‘Wotan's Musings’
http://wotanselvishmusings.blogspot.com
Various, The Mythopoeic Society
http://www.mythsoc.org
Henry Gee (HG) ‘cromercrox’, ‘The End of the Pier Show’
http://occamstypewriter.org/cromercrox/
David Simmons (DS), ‘Aiya Ilúvatar’
http://www.aiyailuvatar.org/
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

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Taum Santoski's Aphorisms 1 through 6

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

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

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

First Aphorism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Receding into the distance,
disappearing from view.

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

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

Fourth Aphorism

Four elements — a
simple explanatory model

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

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

Fifth Aphorism

Inspiration or plagiarism?

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

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

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

Sigurd?
Myth? History? Legend?

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

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

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

Thursday, 1 September 2011

Tolkien Transactions XVI

August 2011

Matthew Bladen, Monday, 8 August 2011, ‘Öjevind Lång’
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3lvknhg
Early in August the Tolkien Newsgroups were hit by the sad news that Öjevind Lång had died. A long-time regular of the newsgroups, and a personal friend to many of the regulars, Öjevind's warmth, wit and wisdom will long be remembered by those who experienced them in the groups. Öjevind also translated The Children of Húrin to his native Swedish. He will be missed! Namarië!

= = = = News = = = =

Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor, Friday, 5 August 2011, ‘Tea-party hobbits? Hardly, say indignant Tolkien scholars’
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0805/Tea-party-hobbits-Hardly-say-indignant-Tolkien-scholars
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3l98bkd
One of last month's more amusing items was the appearance of ‘hobbits’ in US politics — presumably intended disparagingly. Though gainsaid by such illustrious Tolkien scholars as Jason Fisher and Wayne Hammond, I will maintain what I said last month that the comparison need not be quite as far-fetched as all that (perhaps I should add that I most certainly do not sympathize with the Tea Party movement). This, of course, does not invalidate the points of critique here levelled against the usage.

Arwen, Middle-earth News, Sunday, 7 August 2011, "Mythgard Institute Partners with UWIC"
http://www.middleearthnews.net/2011/08/mythgard-institute-partners-with-uwic.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3skzweg
The news that the two institutes offering on-line academic courses on Tolkien, the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff and the Mythgard Institute, have entered into a partnership and will recognize the credits earned at each other. Strangely the linked pages at the Mythgard Institute appears to have been taken down again — does this mean that the partnership has stopped before it started?

H&S, Monday, 8 August 2011, ‘New Website’
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/new-website/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/43huycw
Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull are moving their web-site to a new host and a new URL — see under web sites below.

Glen Weldon, NPR, Thursday, 11 August 2011, "NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction And Fantasy Novels: Parsing The Results"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/08/11/139346998/nprs-top-100-science-fiction-and-fantasy-novels-parsing-the-results
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3qdrzz4
NPR has had a vote on the 100 best science fiction and fantasy novels, and has now released the results. Not surprisingly _The Lord of the Rings_ comes in first, but it's more surprising that The Silmarillion gets in as number 46. Lewis' Space Trilogy only just makes the list as no. 100. I haven't found any other Inkling books on the list. Children's books and young adult books were banned, which, while this means that The Hobbit and the Narnia books were ruled out together with His Dark Materials and the Harry Potter books, it also kept out such as Twilight and Eragon . . .
John Rateliff comments on the list here:
JDR, Friday, 12 August 2011, ‘And The WInner Is . . . (NPR Fantasy List)’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/and-winner-is-npr-fantasy-list.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/44yxzw8

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

LS, Saturday, 6 August 2011, ‘A Saga sort of post.....’
http://theruminate.blogspot.com/2011/08/saga-sort-of-post.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3lnmdls
Primarily on compounding in Germanic languages with a focus on compounds of the old word for an enclosure, geard or garthi. I first read this post shortly after having helped my daughter with her homework on compounds in modern Danish. In modern Danish there is only one way in which you can put two nouns next to each other an keep them as two words: if the first is a genitive form. Otherwise you run them together in a compound word (you do this iteratively, so you can, if you will, construct completely legal compounds of ten or more nouns run together). Speaking of compounds and words, Larry takes his outset from Miklagarthi (Constantinople) and also touches on Tolkien's use of Mundburg and Isengard.

BC, Saturday, 6 August 2011, ‘Tolkien and the nature of evil: Morgoth versus Sauron’
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/08/tolkien-and-nature-of-evil-morgoth.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3uxa4rp
Tom Shippey has discussed Tolkien's portrayal of the nature of evil in The Lord of the Rings, but I think that the study of this question based on The Silmarillion, and particularly based on the late work on the Silmarillion published in Morgoth's Ring and _The War of the Jewels_ is due. Bruce Charlton makes a start of this and that deserves to be encouraged here.

TF, Sunday, 28 August 2011, ‘Source Criticism’
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/2011/08/source-criticism.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3rrlvf7
Prior to starting reading Jason Fisher's new book, _Tolkien and the Study of his Sources_ I wanted to put down some of my thoughts on source criticism. Jason has stated (see the Tolkien Library interview below) that he would like to win over some sceptics, and so I thought it a good experiment to see if he manages to sway my views with his book.

= = = = Taum's Aphorisms = = = =

JDR, Wednesday, 10 August 2011, ‘Taum: Twenty Years’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/parker.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/423q96h
John Rateliff has been publishing a series of posts containing a set of aphorisms written by Taum Santoski (what Rateliff says might be called ‘Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy’), celebrating Santoski's life and his contributions to Tolkien studies up to the twentieth anniversary of his death.
No. 1: Wednesday, 10 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-i.html
No. 2: Thursday, 11 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-ii.html
No. 3: Friday, 12 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-iii.html
No. 4: Saturday, 13 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-iv.html
No. 5: Tuesday, 16 August 2011.
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-v.html
No. 6: Thursday, 18 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-vi.html
No. 7: Friday, 26 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-vii.html
No. 8: Saturday, 27 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-viii.html
No. 9: Sunday, 28 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-ix.html
No. 10, Monday, 29 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-x.html
No. 11, Tuesday, 30 August 2011:
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-xi.html
No. 12, Wednesday, 31 August 2011
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski-xii.html

Commentary:
JDR, Friday, 26 August 2011, ‘Taum's Aphorisms, parts I to VI’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taums-aphorisms-parts-i-to-vi.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3egfzt4

One of the advantages of writing in aphorisms is that it lends itself to a great deal of ambigiuity, so there is some room for interpretation ;-) Rateliff says, in his comments to no. 6, that he thinks that this one is ‘entirely specious’ though of course he can't rule out the possibility that he doesn't see the subtlety, and this is, I think, one of the dangers of this form. I am trying myself to make sense of it all, and I think that there is some valuable help both in Rateliff's comments and in other comments on the individual aphorisms.

= = = = Book News = = = =

PC, Monday, 1 August 2011, "Interview with Jason Fisher about Tolkien and the Study of His Sources"
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1001-Interview_Jason_Fisher_Tolkien_Sources.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3rghedj
One of the big news of late has been the book that Jason Fisher has been editing on source criticism in a Tolkien context, and here is an interview that Pieter Collier has done with Jason on the subject. I doubt that Jason will win over many of those who reject source criticism as a valid approach to Tolkien's work because they probably will not read his book, but people such as myself, who are very wary of source criticism without rejecting it outright may come to view it in a more positive light. I look very much forward to reading this book.

Damien Bador, The Tolkien Library, Tuesday, 2 August 2011, "Interview with Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull about The Art of the Hobbit"
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1002-Interview_Art_Hobbit.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/43no5yh
A little extra information on the upcoming book by Wayne and Christina on Tolkien's own artwork for The Hobbit. There is very little to add, I think, except to note the intriguing promise of their having ‘one or two ideas’ which they 'hope to develop with HarperCollins and the Tolkien Estate' but which they are 'not yet free to talk about'.

JDR, Thursday, 4 August 2011, ‘The Bones of the Ox’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/bones-of-ox.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3ruob4x
We are, it appears, several who are reading _Tolkien and the Study of his Sources_ edited by Jason Fisher. John Rateliff is one of the contributors, but at the moment of writing, I have not yet reached his essay on She and Tolkien.

Kunochan, Periannath.com, Monday, 8 August 2011, "Glow-in-the-Dark Hobbits & Homophobic Frodos: Rankin Bass' 1980 'The Return of the King' Reviewed"
http://periannath.com/feature/glow-in-the-dark-hobbits-homophobic-frodos-rankin-bass-1980-the-return-of-the-king-reviewed/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3b6tev5
(Thank you, internet, for URL shorteners!) A rather humorous review of the abominable (as most viewers appear to agree) 1980 animated adaptation of The Return of the Ring by Rankin & Bass.

JF, Friday, 12 August 2011, "My book is now published and available!"
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-book-is-now-published-and-available.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3wwhjuu
Jason Fisher is understandably elated that his book, _Tolkien and the Study of his Sources_ is now available from the book sellers.

Kristin Thompson, Thursday, 18 August 2011, "editors discuss ‘picturing tolkien,’ a new anthology on the lotr film trilogy"
http://www.kristinthompson.net/blog/2011/08/18/editors-discuss-picturing-tolkien-a-new-anthology-on-the-lotr-film-trilogy/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4xuvwek
Kristin Thompson, who wrote The Frodo Franchise, interviews the editors of _Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings Film Trilogy_, a new book dealing with Tolkien and Jackson.

TF, Tuesday, 23 August 2011, ‘Tolkien and Wales’
http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/2011/08/tolkien-and-wales.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3szkmeq
My on-line review of Phelstead's book Tolkien and Wales. The short version is: it's an excellent book, buy it and read it yourself! The long version? Well, read the review ;-)

JF, Mythprint, Tuesday, 23 August 2011, "Reviews: A Tolkien English Glossary"
http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/tolkien-english-glossary/
‘This review originally appeared in Mythprint 48:6 (#347) in June 2011.’ Jason Fisher applauds the concept, but doesn't find the execution at all up to it.

JDR, Thursday, 25 August 2011, "My Newest Publication: "Two Kinds of Absence""
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-newest-publication-two-kinds-of.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3fnb3cx
John Rateliff has also contributed to the volume _Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings Film Trilogy_ and here offers a few comments.

PC, Sunday, 28 August 2011, "A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to Accompany The Lord of the Rings Will be Released Next Week"
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/991-A_Tolkien_Tapestry.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/49u7uj9
The text of the news-item from Pieter Collier doesn't appear on the page that it refers to, but the news run:
Next week, on the 1st of September, there will be released the book called A Tolkien Tapestry, that brings together all art by Cor Blok. I'm very proud to announce this, since I was asked to edit the book and find and scan all of the art that was sold all accross the globe. Hope you will all enjoy the result. Further this month there will also be released a signed limited deluxe edition.
Cor Blok's illustrations to The Lord of the Rings have produced some very strong reactions — one needs only to read a few of the on-line discussions on the 2011 and 2012 calendars — but though I have, initially, had to admit that Blok's artwork was outside of my limited sympathies, I have become increasingly curious about his work. I have started to seriously consider buying this book.

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

JDR, Friday, 19 August 2011, ‘Taum Santoski’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/08/taum-santoski.html
On the day of the twentieth anniversary of Taum Santoski's death, a brief remembrance.

Tom O'Boyle, _Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sunday, 28 August 2011, "The Next Page / The eternal C.S. Lewis: now, more than ever"
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11240/1170132-109-0.stm
http://preview.tinyurl.com/444ppbq
I love Tolkien's work, and I am interested in the other Inklings insofar as the group was an important part of the context in which Tolkien wrote, but I have never read very much of their work (I've read the Narnia books, which I found preachy, but nothing else). So, I glean what I can from what I can find, and here was some bits that I didn't know about C.S. Lewis, and which I found interesting. The perspective is quite obviously Christian (the article describes what can best be termed a pilgrimage to Lewis' Oxford), but not in an importunate way.

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

RABT/AFT: ‘Jackson's Dwarves are smarter Dwarves’

news:slrnj2s5rv.d9.steuard@steuard.local
http://preview.tinyurl.com/42chjwd
There were some attempts made to try and bridge the usual trenches into which discussions of Jackson's film-versions of _The Lord of the Rings_ too often, and too easily, fall. Though the attempts may not in all ways have been successful, the chance to discover that it is often minute differences in perspective that decide whether you end up being regarded as for or against the films more than made up for the eventual reversal to the entrenched positions of some of the debaters.

LotR Plaza: ‘The Ring and Ofermod’
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=241945
The best thing about this debate, from my perspective, was that I learned something about the scholarly discussions regarding the interpretation of the Old English word ofermod and of Tolkien's interpretation of The Battle of Maldon.

= = = = 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 ;-)

Wayne & Christina
http://www.hammondandscull.com/
That Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond has a web-site is nothing new, but it has now moved to a new URL, so remember to update your bookmarks!

The Tolkien Usenet Groups' Web-site Project
http://tolkien.forchhammer.net/aft-rabt-index.html
The pages at SilenceIsDefeat.net have apparently grown unstable again, and so I will advocate using the mirror I have made on my own web-hotel. Everything that was on the other site is also found here, including the full overview of all our Chapter-of-the-Week discussions.

= = = = Sources = = = =

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Sunday, 28 August 2011

Source Criticism

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

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

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

So, source criticism …

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately that is not always the case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Tolkien and Wales

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

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

The contents of the book are:

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

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

Part II: Literature

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

Part III: Identity

7. Insular identities

Appendix: Tolkien’s Welsh books
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other on-line reviews:

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

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

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

Monday, 1 August 2011

Tolkien Transactions XV

July 2011

July 2011 will, at least in Denmark, be remembered for the tragic events in Norway on Friday the 22nd. When John F. Kennedy wanted to express his sympathy and empathy with the people of the divided city of Berlin, he said that ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ — well, that Friday I wanted to cry from the rooftop that ‘Ei er ein Nordmann!’ — I am a Norwegian.

In other respects, it has been a good month for Tolkien enthusiasts on the internet. In addition to the usual list of blogs that regularly report on Tolkienian matters, it would appear that the general lull in world events that usually occur every year in the northern summer (in Denmark we call this the ‘cucumber seson’) has left some space for a few Tolkien oddities to reach a greater audience than they would otherwise have done. In this category you will find odd news about Tolkien related builds in Lego, a bridge in Poland and in a game world. The release of the last Potter film inevitably provoked comparisons to that other famous fantasy film series, which, just as inevitably, spilled over to comparisons of the Harry Potter series to The Lord of the Rings. Towards the end of the month, the US newspaper Wall Street Journal referred to Hobbits in an article that was quoted in the Senate, and controversy ensued.

In other ,less frivolous, news, there are now two interesting books available for order: the collection of essays by Verlyn Flieger, Green Suns and Faerie: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien, and Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays edited by Jason Fisher. Right now I'm trying to find the money to order both — unless someone can get me a review copy of either . . . (hoping) ;-)

= = = = News = = = =

Chris Phipson, Friday, 24 June 2011, ‘Journey of the Fellowship 2011’
http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/276793
A group of people decided to make Lego builds inspired by The Lord of the Rings for the Brickworld 2011 convention. Most of it is very nice, but I just wish they hadn't used the horror from the Jackson films as their model for the Black Tower — complete with the ludicrous eye :-(

NH/JB, Wednesday, 13 July 2011, ‘Gdansk to get Tolkien viaduct?’
http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/51268,Gdansk-to-get-Tolkien-viaduct
http://preview.tinyurl.com/62gkn33
The story that the city of Gdansk in Poland may name a viaduct after Tolkien is probably not very interesting in itself, but there are other aspects that may be considered interesting. The mayor suggesting the use of Facebook to gauge interest in the idea shows how much influence the internet has in current politics. The use of Tolkien in this way — naming a new construction in a place with which he had no connection — is also, I believe, fairly new: I don't remember seeing it before, though I would be surprised if this is the very first. We have seen the use of Tolkien's name for selling books (see Douglas Anderson's ‘Tolkien and Fantasy’ blog cited below), and of course there are a number of places, particularly in England, that are using even rather tenuous connections with Tolkien for marketing purposes, but apparently Tolkien has now reached a status where his name can be used to name bridges — and who knows what more? Roads? Buildings? Squares? How about a ‘J.R.R. Tolkien Center’ — a new giant shopping center in Frankfurt? Or a ‘Piazza del Tolkien’ in Naples? It is, of course, a good thing that Tolkien's name can now be used by a town council in Poland to promote themselves to their voters, but I can't help wondering what Tolkien would have thought, had he been alive to see it.

DS, Thursday, 14 July 2011, ‘Wits with Neil Gaiman, Adam Savage, and Gollum: 'I Will Survive'’
http://www.aiyailuvatar.org/2011/07/wits-with-neil-gaiman-adam-savage-and-gollum-i-will-survive.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3hu7jts
Adam Savage once more presents credentials as a certifiable Tolkien geek . . .

With the advent of the final instalment of the Harry Potter film series it is probably inevitable that comparisons will arise between the various hugely succesful fantasy film franchises (which includes the Narnia films and the Star Wars films), occasionally accompanied by comparisons of the original works. A few examples of this genre follow:
James Verniere, Boston Herald, Friday, 15 July 2011, ‘‘Harry’ vs. ‘Lord’: Which will last?’
http://news.bostonherald.com/entertainment/movies/general/view/2011_0715harry_vs_lord_which_will_last/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/66arsuu
Steven Anfield, Benzinga, Friday, 15 July 2011, ‘Harry Potter — Just Go Away Already’
http://www.benzinga.com/general/11/07/1768662/harry-potter-just-go-away-already
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6dej5mq
Louis Bedigian, Benzinga, Friday, 15 July 2011, ‘Is Harry Potter Better Than Tolkien, Narnia, and Star Wars?’
http://www.benzinga.com/media/11/07/1768794/is-harry-potter-better-than-tolkien-narnia-and-star-wars
http://preview.tinyurl.com/65rbdzp
Michael Gerson, Tuesday, 19 July 2011, ‘Harry Potter and the power of myth’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harry-potter-and-the-power-of-myth/2011/07/18/gIQArUChMI_story.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3ktdb67
Allison Gofman & Anaam Butt, PolicyMic, Friday, 22 July 2011, ‘What has stronger political themes, Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings?’
http://www.policymic.com/article/show/id/1101
So far the opinion seems to be to favour Tolkien's work over Rowling's, but I probably won't live to see the final judgement on this war. I went to see the final Harry Potter film myself with the family, and found it a very good film — my only quib being that they didn't seize the chance to improve the story where Rowling had messed it up.

David D. Oberhelman, Mythopoeic Society, Sunday, 17 July 2011, ‘Mythopoeic Awards: 2011 Winners Announced’
http://www.mythsoc.org/news/award-winners-2011/
As it says — the winners of the 2011 Mythopoeic Awards. The award in Inklings Studies this year goes to a C.S. Lewis book, Planet Narnia by Michael Ward, and the award for Myth and Fantasy Studies goes to Caroline Sumpter for her book The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale.

Arwen, Sunday, 17 July 2011, "UWIC's ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth and Middle-earth in Context’ Class Starts in October"
http://www.middleearthnews.net/2011/07/uwics-jrr-tolkien-myth-and-middle-earth.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3tdd2bz
Dimitra Fimi's on-line lectures under the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff continues this fall with a course on Tolkien's legendarium:
http://www3.uwic.ac.uk/english/education/enterprise/courses/tolkien/pages/home.aspx
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3qqotdw

Arwen, Sunday, 17 July 2011, ‘EXCLUSIVE: Middle-earth Net and The Tolkien Professor Launch Mythgard Institute’
http://www.middleearthnews.net/2011/07/exclusive-middle-earth-net-and-tolkien.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/42mp8o4
The announcement at Middle-earth News of the Mythgard Institute (see below in the links section).

Wellinghall, Friday, 22 July 2011, ‘Tolkien slept here’
http://wellinghall.livejournal.com/899607.html
A collection of stories that make various claims about Tolkien's or Middle-earth's relation to some area or other — occasionally some of these claims may actually hold a new hint of something, but unfortunately not very often.

Jeff Mirus, CatholicCulture.org, Friday, 22 July 2011, ‘Ignatius and T. M. Doran: Toward the Gleam’
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=835
http://preview.tinyurl.com/425adr8
A review of yet another fictionalisation of Inklings, though this one apparently isn't quite so vocal about it as other recent works. The premise for this book sounds interesting — one could almost call it a kind of intelligent sequel to Tolkien's work, but in the end I suppose it's unlikely that I'll ever read it.

Platform Nation, Monday, 25 July 2011, ‘Minecraft and Middle Earth: One Build To Rule Them All’
http://www.platformnation.com/2011/07/25/minecraft-and-middle-earth-one-build-to-rule-them-all/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3uhjpw7
There is a new game in town called Minecraft in which you can (probably among many other things) build your own world. Inevitably someone will use it to try to build their version of Middle-earth. I was actually introduced to this by my sons, who had found it very impressive, and I agree. I looked through the Moria part with them, and I strongly suspect that these people are closer to Tolkien's vision of the vast kingdom and mines of the Longbeards than was Mr. Jackson.

DB, Wednesday, 27 July 2011, ‘welcome to the new home’
http://kalimac.blogspot.com/2011/07/welcome-to-new-home.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/43gyk7z
David Bratman's merry blog has a new provide and a new URL — the ‘Calimac’ blog at Livejournal will probably continue to be updated, but we should expect new posts to appear first at the ‘Kalimac’ blog at Blogspot.

Arwen, Middle-earth News, Thursday, 28 July 2011, ‘EXCLUSIVE: Middle-earth Network Takes on Publishing, Producing, and a Record Label’
http://www.middleearthnews.net/2011/07/exclusive-middle-earth-network-takes-on.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3tldvr9
I suppose the headline sums it up pretty well. Only time will show what will become of this, and what quality such a publishing effort may entail (whereby I immediately show my complete lack of interest for the record label or film production — there is a good reason why the title of my Tolkien blog translates ‘Enquiry into the Books’).

JDR, Thursday, 28 July 2011, ‘Well, This Is Weird’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/07/well-this-is-weird.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4x927a5
I was long in doubt whether to post anything about this, but there is, I think, an interesting comment on Tolkien's sub-creation hidden away in this whole situation.
As I read it, the original WSJ article seems to have been reasonably favourable of Hobbits as such even if it does seem to present belief in this Hobbit scenario as being very naïve. Possibly the intention with the mention of Hobbits is precisely to invoke this naïvitée about how the larger world works, and this would, I believe, be reasonably in line with how Tolkien portrayed the Hobbits.
Speaking of Sam as a more representative hobbit, Tolkien describes some truly typical Hobbit traits:
a vulgarity — by which I do not mean a mere 'down-to-
earthiness' — a mental myopia which is proud of itself,
a smugness (in varying degrees) and cocksureness, and a
readiness to measure and sum up all things from a limited
experience, largely enshrined in sententious traditional
‘wisdom’
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Humprey Carpenter (ed.),
no. 246 to Mrs Eileen Elgar (drafts) September 1963
This, it would seem to me, is quite close to what the writer of the original WSJ article intends to imply, possibly together with an acknowledgement also of the good sides of the Hobbits — their courage and indomitability, for example (this should not be construed in any way as a comment on the appropriateness, or lack thereof, of the writer's intention).

Kieran Healy, Saturday, 30 July 2011, ‘Text Editors in The Lord of the Rings’
http://crookedtimber.org/2011/07/30/text-editors-in-the-lord-of-the-rings/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/455qlpf
Thanks to Steuard for pointing out this humorous (though doubtlessly, as a comment on text-editors, also at least half in earnest) attempt to link text editors and Middle-earth locations.

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

JDR, Friday, 1 July 2011, ‘Bilbo's Clue (clew)’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/07/bilbos-clue-clew.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6dz54el
What did Bilbo mean when he referred to himself as ‘the clue-finder’ to Smaug? Well, according to this update by John Rateliff, he certainly meant that he had found the clew. The evidence is compelling that this is another case of a reference remaining in the published book to an episode that was cut — something we also see several examples of in The Lord of the Rings.

JDR, Friday, 8 July 2011, ‘Two Outta Three Ain't Bad’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/07/two-outta-three-aint-bad.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6khnf3l
Not so much scholarship in its own right as a comment on the academic status of Tolkien as an author. Spurred by a claim about signs that ‘an author has "arrived"’ in the book Bloomsbury Pie by Regina Marler (about the Bloomsbury Group), Rateliff takes a look at the signs that Tolkien has ‘arrived’ as an author in the academic world.

DAA, Monday, 11 July 2011, ‘Pre-1970 Paperbacks with Comparisons to Tolkien’
http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/2011/07/pre-1970-paperbacks-with-comparisons-to.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5ug98jz
Following up from last month's round-up post, Douglas Anderson here provides us with more marketing comparisons of books to Tolkien's story. I concur with Anderson noting it as interesting that ‘the bulk of these early blurbs seem to have originated with people who had some connections with Tolkien.’ Both interesting and curious.

BC, Monday, 25 july 2011, ‘On JRR Tolkien's The Marring of Men’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/07/on-jrr-tolkiens-marring-of-men.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3o5r6t7
This post is really just a pointer to, as Charlton puts it, his ‘only official Tolkien-related publication’, which is an essay / article from The Chronicle of the Oxford University C.S. Lewis Society, 2008; Vol 5, Issue 3: 20-29 that he posted on another blog in September 2008. The article, which is essentially an analysis of the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth published in Morgoth's Ring, is, however, well-written and very interesting. Charlton has some points that I haven't seen elsewhere (not that I have seen much criticism of this text, which one would otherwise have thought merited it). Do read the article — it is, in my opinion, well worth the time.

BC, Monday, 25 july 2011, ‘Rank and Pay of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/07/rank-and-pay-of-major-warren-hamilton.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3howl6u
Laying another small piece of the biographical puzzles of the Inklings, Charlton here has something to say of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis, his rank and his pay.

Ruth Lacon, Sunday, 31 July 2011, ‘Image and Glance - Some Thoughts on Tolkien-inspired Art and Illustration’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1000-Review_Cor_Blok_Calendar_2011.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/42chp27
This is not a mere copy of Ruth Lacon's review of the 2011 Tolkien Calendar in Amon Hen #228 from March (mentioned in Tolkien Transactions XI), but a separate essay that nonetheless shows the same insight and appreciation that she showed in the review. I think the best praise that I can give it is to say that it is insights such as this that makes me wish to make an actual effort to stretch my sympathies to encompass Cor Blok's artwork.

Paul Nolan Hyde, Sunday, 31 July 2011, ‘Emotion with Dignity: J.R.R. Tolkien and Love’
http://home.comcast.net/~niggle85/tolkienlove.htm
I have no idea when this was originally put on-line, but it came to my attention in a tweet this month. It is a discussion of Tolkien's treatment of the relationship between men and women that takes its outset in a letter to his son, Michael, from March 1941.

= = = = Reviews and Announcements = = = =

Charles A. Huttar, Mythopoeic Society, Thursday, 7 July 2011, ‘Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration’
http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/tolkien-sources-inspiration/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6hoxrjk
‘This review originally appeared in Mythlore 113/114.’
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings_: Sources of inspiration_ is a collection of papers, proceedings from a conference organised by Exeter College with some extra essays thrown in. Huttar finds the volume varying in quality, though he speaks very well of the papers of the biographical section.

Jason Fisher, Mythprint, Tuesday, 12 July 2011, ‘C.S. Lewis's Lost Aeneid’
http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/lewis-lost-aeneid/
Jason comments not only on Lewis' verse (which he finds excellent), but also on translation in general — a topic that we know also occupied Tolkien (just see his detailed instructions to translators of The Lord of the Rings).

Maggie Hartford, The Oxford Times, Monday, 18 July 2011, ‘Guide to Tolkien's Oxford’
http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/leisure/9145485.Guide_to_Tolkien_s_Oxford/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3z4yvgg
A brief review of The Pitkin Guide to Tolkien by Robert Blackham.

HG, Wednesday, 6 July 2011, ‘Middle-earth News Just In’
http://occamstypewriter.org/cromercrox/2011/07/06/middle-earth-news-just-in/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3dahd5s
It seems that we can expect a new, revised, edition of Henry Gee's book on The Science of Middle-earth — possibly as e-book or print-on-demand.

Christina Scull, Wednesday, 27 July 2011, ‘Tolkien and Wales’
http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/tolkien-and-wales/
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3zny2ac
In her review of Carl Phelpstead's Tolkien and Wales Christina Scull says ‘that it has been a long time since I enjoyed a work on Tolkien as much as I did this one’. Praise from the praiseworthy!

TF, Thursday, 28 July 2011, ‘Tolkien and Wales’
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=240326&PID=7410864#7410864
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3umm5c7
My own review in which I essentially agree with Christina Scull ;-)

JDR, Tuesday, 26 July 2011, ‘The Even Newer Arrival’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/07/even-newer-arrival.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3zmf4v8
And obviously John Rateliff has also received his copy of Phelpstead's book, but has not yet had time to read it ;-)

PC, Saturday, 30 July 2011, ‘A Pocket Hobbit to celebrate The Hobbit's 75th anniversary of publication’
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/999-The_Pocket_Hobbit.php
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3sfvf36
Announcing another book to appear as part of the celebration fo the 75th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of The Hobbit: a pocket edition.

JDR, Sunday, 31 July 2011, ‘More on Horne’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-on-horne.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3kz6j3x
Having read Rateliff's review of the Tolkien biography by Mark Horne is ‘don't buy, but be on the watch for Tolkien-related essays or articles from the author’.

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

JDR, Saturday, 2 July 2011, ‘It Begins’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/07/it-begins.html
Rateliff investigates the first small hints at what changes to the story Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit might bring. So, the speculations begins . . .

JDR, Wednesday, 6 July 2011, ‘Poke-Em-With-A-Stick-Wednesday (Joseph Wright Takes On Saul of Tarsus)’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/07/poke-em-with-stick-wednesday-joseph.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/69zyf9n
From Virginia Woolf and a character of hers who was inspired by Tolkien's tutor, the philologist Joseph Wright, this turns to Wright's attitude towards women (quite enlightened for his time) and finally to speculations over whether Wright's enlightened attitude may have rubbed off on his famous pupil, Ronald, despite the latter's otherwise often fairly conservative attitudes.

XKCD, Wednesday, 6 July 2011, ‘Delivery Notification’
http://xkcd.com/921/
The Tolkien — or rather the Jackson reference should be rather easy to spot . . . ;-)

Starr Keshet, TG Daily, Saturday, 9 July 2011, ‘On geek girls and Lord of the Rings’
http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-features/57126-on-geek-girls-and-lord-of-the-rings
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5w6cuq2
Starr Keshet speculates on the possibility of e.g. a ‘LOTR mini-series that would offer a comprehensive and faithful visual depiction of the beloved trilogy.’ Part of the motivation for such a wish is to see Bombadil included, but while I appreciate the importance of Tom Bombadil in the book and to its author, I am not sure that he would translate all that well to a visual medium. The particular rythm that characterizes all his dialogue would, of course, be strengthened (many readers of the book, including myself, fails to notice this until it is pointed out), but I wonder if the dignity of the character is compatible with a faithful visual representation.

JDR, Monday, 11 July 2011, ‘The New Arrivals: Eddas and Fanzines’
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-arrivals-eddas-and-fanzines.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/684maym
John Rateliff is quite good at blogging about what new books he gets, and here we learn about two new arrivals, both of which have some Tolkien relevance. Both are the third volume of a series — one in a new English edition of the eddas by Ursula Dronke (‘text, translation and extensive commentary’ Rateliff writes), and the other belongs to a series by Gary Hunnewell who is apparently dedicated to producing a survey of all Tolkien fanzines in chronological order, and Rateliff notes that Hunnewell lists
the contents of each Tolkien fanzine, or other science
fiction/fantasy fanzine that had Tolkien content, with a
brief description of each essay or poem or editorial.
Both series are projects that command my respect.

BC, Thursday, 14 July 2011, ‘The Notion Club visualized by Afalstein’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/07/notion-club-visualized-by-afalstein.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/68mxeym
Charlton has found someone who has tried their hand at illustrating episodes from The Notion Club Papers — interesting.

DB, Tuesday, 19 July 2011, ‘Mythcon 42’
http://calimac.livejournal.com/535544.html
and
DB, Wednesday, 20 July 2011, ‘Mythcon 42: program’
http://calimac.livejournal.com/535647.html
David Bratman's comments / report / review of this year's Mythcon, held in New Mexico. Once again I lament the costs of attending these conferences, which allow me only to attend something every fifth year or so (and probably never in the US).

BC, Sunday, 24 July 2011, ‘If history is myth; then modern socio-politics is also myth’
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/07/if-history-is-myth-then-modern-socio.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3wy6yfb
I suppose one might see this as a kind of manifesto by Charlton. It contains two leaps that I not entirely convinced are justified with respect to Tolkien and the clubs referred to (the TCBS, the Inklings and the fictitious Notion Club): that the ‘core Inklings project’ was ‘the recovery of history as myth’ and that this, even to the extent that it may be true, would mean what Charlton interprets it to mean. Still, as usual one doesn't have to agree with Charlton's analysis in order to find it interesting.

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

Lotr Plaza: ‘Christianity in Lord of the Rings’
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=241382&PID=7400469#7400469
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3tscgdx
Though actually starting earlier than July, this thread has given me the opportunity to express some of the ideas and thoughts that I have been developing regarding the role of Christianity in Tolkien's writings — both in The Lord of the Rings and in the larger legendarium. With a degree of self-promovation the URLs above are to my own contributions, which should definitely not be taken to imply that there is nothing worth reading higher up on the thread.

Dwarves in AFT & RABT
‘Dwarves baiting Wood Elves?’

http://preview.tinyurl.com/442eg7m
and
‘Jackson's Dwarves are smarter Dwarves’

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3wr63eg
Steuard must, for some reason, have been thinking of stunted people this month, for his has posted two sets of intelligent comment on the dwarves in The Hobbit, noting that their actions do not always make sense. This has sparked some interesting comments.

= = = = 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 ;-)

Mythgard Institute
http://www.mythgard.org/
A new project launched by ‘Middle-earth Network’ and Corey Olsen (also known by his kilmessi ‘The Tolkien Professor’) that aims to offer ‘challenging, engaging classes, taught by world-class teachers and leading scholars.’ The classes are on subjects related to Tolkien:
The Mythgard Institute aspires to be an organization that
will support and facilitate teaching and research in
Tolkien studies and related fields into the twenty-first
century.
It costs $150 to audit a class — as they point out, that is a mere $10 per week: about the price of a cinema ticket (actually its a bit less than a cinema ticket here in Denmark: it cost my family $16 per person to watch the last and latest instalment of the Harry Potter saga). I'm sorely tempted, but it also depends on the schedule.

David Simmons (DS), ‘Aiya Ilúvatar’
http://www.aiyailuvatar.org/
Steve Morrison was so kind as to point me to the blog aggregator at http://lotr.zebby.org that had many blogs that I didn't know before. Many of these are now unavailable, and some of them have not seen new posts since 2006 or 2007, but a few of them are still active, and David Simmons' Aiya Ilúvatar blog has contributed an entry to this month's transactions.

TEUNC — probably ‘Tolkien Eccentric Unusual Nut-Cases’
http://www.teunc.org/
TEUNC describe themselves as ‘a humorous offshoot from the usenet groups alt.fan.tolkien and rec.arts.books.tolkien.’ This is, to the best of my limited knowledge, the oldest such organisation. They used to count the highly respected ‘Softrat’ among their membership, and still they have many respected AFT & RABT posters among their membership. TEUNC really defies description — it is one of these things that are like a stone in the shoe that you have grown to like and love and which you wouldn't miss for anything.

UFAT — Who are not TEUNC
http://ufat.150m.com/
Having mentioned TEUNC, I had better also mention UFAT — a rival group for the attention of readers of AFT and RABT. Whatever their position on Balrog wings, UFAT is firmly in the non-pink-fluffy-slipper faction of Balrog scholarship. Sometimes I think one really had to be there . . ..

= = = = Sources = = = =

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your
feeling of what reality "ought to be".
- Richard Feynman

Regarding Pictures

All pictures that are displayed on this blog appear with the kind permission of the artist, for which I am exceedingly grateful. Please do not copy or reuse them without permission, and please recall to always give credit where it is due.

Pictures that are not my own photos, are linked to lead to the artist's page – please click through and visit their page. You support them already by showing an interest, but please consider supporting them also financially – buying some of their works, or otherwise.

The artists that have allowed me to use their images are

Tsvetelina ‘Elmenel’ Krumova

Katarzyna ‘Kasiopea’ Chmiel-Gugulska

Graeme Skinner

Before his untimely death in August 2015, I had a similar arrangement with Jef Murray.

Pages

Saturday, 1 October 2011

Tolkien Transactions XVII

= = = = News = = = =

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

= = = = Taum's Aphorisms = = = =

= = = = Book News = = = =

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

= = = = Tolkien-related entries on ‘The World's Strongest Librarian’ = = = =

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

= = = = Web Sites = = = =

= = = = Sources = = = =

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Taum Santoski's Aphorisms 1 through 6

Thursday, 1 September 2011

Tolkien Transactions XVI

= = = = News = = = =

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

= = = = Taum's Aphorisms = = = =

= = = = Book News = = = =

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

= = = = Web Sites = = = =

= = = = Sources = = = =

Sunday, 28 August 2011

Source Criticism

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Tolkien and Wales

Monday, 1 August 2011

Tolkien Transactions XV

= = = = News = = = =

= = = = Essays and Scholarship = = = =

= = = = Reviews and Announcements = = = =

= = = = Other Stuff = = = =

= = = = Rewarding Discussions = = = =

= = = = Web Sites = = = =

= = = = Sources = = = =