Bakshi,
Ralph (1938-) -
Barry Langford
Comments by squire, March 1,
2007
This is an excellent treatment of Bakshi's
ambitious but flawed animated film of the first
half of The Lord of the Rings. The
explanation of the technical problems and
solutions is particularly good, but Langford
also provides judicious critical opinion and
interpretation wherever needed.
His comparison of the film to other animated
features of Bakshi's own time and earlier is a
good approach. I think it's a little less
meaningful to compare Bakshi's choices in
structuring the screenplay with Peter Jackson's
subsequent film treatment. Langford's sources
are few, but obviously valuable. I believe I've
read somewhere an article by Peter Beagle
describing his experience developing the Bakshi
screenplay in the 1970s; and I think there is at
least one retrospective interview with Bakshi
done just before the release of the Jackson
films, where he speaks in defense of his film.
But the most important information in them is
probably covered here from the other sources.
As with the "Peter Jackson" article, the
title is deceptive. This is not a biographical
sketch of Bakshi, nor should it be. Properly, it
would have been listed as The Lord of the
Rings: Film by Ralph Bakshi. The See also list is sketchy, omitting the
"Rankin/Bass", "Film Scripts (Unused)", "Philippa
Boyens", and "Dramatizations" articles, to name a
few.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, April 25, 2007
Fantastic!
Langford is exceptionally good on cinematic
technique and questions of adaptation, and I
like his comparisons with Peter Jackson’s film
version, which suggest, for example, the near
inevitability of certain book-to-film choices,
like opening LotR with a historical
prologue.
One point in
the entry confuses me: as is well known,
Bakshi’s story ends abruptly at Helm’s Deep, but
originally was intended to conclude in a
sequel. Referencing a 2002 article in
Cinefantastique, Langford notes a
disagreement between writer Peter Beagle and
producer Saul Zaentz, who denies Beagle’s claim
that Zaentz, aware that no second film would be
produced, “reversed the sequence of the first
film’s scenes” (that’s Langford not Beagle)
Langford is not clear on exactly which
concluding scenes might have been reversed, but
he quotes the film’s “obtuse and inexact
voiceover résumé” as follows: “The forces of
darkness were driven forever from Middle-earth
by the valiant friends of Frodo.” On the DVD
version of the film, that narration plays as
Gandalf turns on his horse; as he throws his
sword into the air, it concludes with, “As their
gallant battle ended, so too ends the first
great tale of The Lord of the Rings”.
Then Gandalf and company ride toward and past
the camera position as the music plays for
another twenty seconds before the credits roll.
However, on the
VHS version, there is no narration for Gandalf’s
turn and toss. Instead, after the company rides
past and the music concludes, there is a briefer
and different remark: “So ends the first part of
the history of the War of the Ring” just before
the credits roll. Curiously, Vincent Canby’s
contemporary review in the New York Times,
which Langford cites on other matters, gives the
concluding voiceover as: “Here concludes the
first part of the history of the War of the
Ring”, which nearly agrees with the VHS ending.
It’s mildly frustrating to me that Langford
brushes against but never addresses this odd
little conundrum.
Though Canby’s
negative
review of Bakshi’s film doesn’t appear in
Langford’s bibliography, it’s cited several
times, so perhaps I should note that Canby
expresses a dislike for Tolkien’s work: he
mentions Edmund Wilson’s criticism of LotR
with approval, and writes, “since I reached
voting age I haven't been as fascinated by
confrontations between good and evil (with the
exception of ‘Star Wars,’ which was funny)”.
Then again, Canby does work in references to
other films like Olivier’s Henry V and
Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, whereas
Langford makes relatively little effort to place
Bakshi’s LotR in the context of film
history.
Barfield, Owen (1898-1997) -
Verlyn Flieger
Comments by squire, August 27,
2007
Flieger, facing the usual dilemma in writing
about an Inkling for the Encyclopedia, finds and
sticks to the narrow path that connects her
subject and Tolkien. She properly spends most of
her time on Barfield's work, rather than his
life; and she takes care to remind us repeatedly
of Tolkien's debt to Barfield in working out the
relationship between his two life-works,
language-history and myth. A few awkward layers
of expository repetition are due to Flieger's
characteristic style of laying out her argument
in brief and then returning to it in depth,
which is a degree of structure unneeded in so
short an article.
For all of Flieger's deft touch in presenting
this material, I found I had questions while
reading this that went unanswered. I wanted to
know more about the relationship between the
time Tolkien met Barfield and read Poetic
Diction (1928 and after), and his changing
conception of his inventions. It was around and
after that same time, I believe, that he recast
the history of his Elvish languages, and
rethought the nature of his mythology, renamed
the Quenta Silmarillion, casting it
further back in time so that it was to be
presented as translations of written records
rather than transcriptions of oral "tales". In
other words, Flieger simply credits Barfield
with influencing Tolkien across some unspecified
time of his life; could we not be more exact,
given what we know now through the History of
Middle-earth material?
Likewise, Flieger states that Barfield added the
key concept of "human consciousness" to
Tolkien's already developed awareness (since
1914) of the relationship between "language and
legend". But she never explores what I believe
Tolkien eventually had to confront: that his
immortal Elves might not have had a "human"
(i.e., mortal) consciousness when they created
their legends. As he eventually arranged it,
they changed their languages not according to
philological or psychological principles but to
aesthetic ones -- which is hardly in congruence
with Barfield's theories! The early "legends"
did similar backflips as he thought through the
implications of an immortal race with a
constantly increasing store of wisdom about the
nature of the physical world. I would love to
know how Barfield and Tolkien got along, if at
all, in later years, as Tolkien's art matured;
in its specifics, this essay essentially
revolves around just a few years after 1928.
Flieger properly refers us to the article on
"Language, Theories of", where Allan Turner
gives an interesting précis on this same
relationship in a larger context. While he
strangely does not cross-reference this article,
he does cite Poetic Diction, and
Flieger's own Splintered Light, where she
discusses Barfield's influence on Tolkien in
more depth. Flieger does not clue us in to her
very valuable book, but cites only Carpenter's
Inklings, which is rather inadequate for
researching so interesting a subject. See also could be a lot broader, starting with
the articles on "Silmarillion, The",
"'Mythology for England'", "History of
Middle-earth: Overview", and those on the
theories of text like "Fictionality",
"Textuality", etc.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, August 28, 2007
Although squire says that
Flieger "takes care to remind us repeatedly of
Tolkien's debt to Barfield", Tolkien's name
appears nowhere in the first 500 or so words of
this article --
which is also the poorer for omitting Tolkien’s
explicit acknowledgement of Barfield’s influence
on his fiction. In Letter #15, he comments on
the philological theory underlying the sentences
expressing Bilbo’s “staggerment” at seeing
Smaug’s hoard in The Hobbit.
Flieger’s omission from 'Further Reading' of her
own Splintered Light is a strange loss.
Not only does that book feature her
chapter-length examination of Barfield’s
influence on Tolkien (for instance, she
says that Tolkien's poem, "Mythopoeia", is "pure
Barfield"),
but it also has references to her correspondence
and interview with Barfield himself.
Barrie, J.M. (1860-1937) – David D.
Oberhelman
Comments by Jason Fisher, August 11, 2007
This is a
generally informative and well-organized
entry on the creator of Peter Pan.
Barrie’s connection to Tolkien, however,
seems (to me anyway) pretty small beer
for an entry of this length. This
article does not appear in the thematic
list of entries, and I’m really not
quite sure where it ought to go
in that list either.
I wish
Oberhelman had focused a little bit more
on Tolkien than on Barrie, given the
primary mission of the Encyclopedia. For
instance, Oberhelman merely mentions
“parallels” between Barrie and Tolkien,
but he doesn’t really elaborate on these
in any detail. (In the same sentence, I
think “emerge” is an error for
“emerged”.) A few further similarities
between them are scattered through the
essay, but nothing really substantial in
my view. Likewise, if the comparison is
a bit superficial, so too are the
contrasts between the two authors;
mainly, the differences revolve around
the image of fairies and the question of
dramatic staging as a possible vehicle
for fantasy.
Oberhelman
(or perhaps Mike Foster, whom Oberhelman
is citing) also makes rather too much of
the shared “there and back again” nature
of The Hobbit and Peter Pan.
Isn’t this motif common, if not almost
ubiquitous, in fantasy literature? C.S.
Lewis's Narnian books, Charles
Kingsley’s The Water-Babies, L.
Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz,
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland,
and George MacDonald’s The Princess
and the Goblin all share this in
common – and all these authors,
except Lewis, are
roughly contemporary with Barrie.
The
'Further Reading' is about as good as
one can expect since there has
apparently been little direct critical
study of Barrie and Tolkien together. I
question the Mike Foster telephone
interview, because it isn’t something a
user of the Encyclopedia can read
or even refer to at all. I understand
Oberhelman is simply citing his sources,
but in that case, the ostensible purpose
of the section is at odds with his use
of it. The See also probably
needs references to “MacDonald, George
(1824 – 1905)”, “Lewis, C.S. (1898 –
1963)”, “Death”, “Immortality”,
“Faërie”, and “Fairyology, Victorian”.
Battle of Maldon,
The - John R. Holmes
Comments by squire, August 28,
2007
There seems to be an almost infinite number of
articles in the Encyclopedia vying to discuss
the concept of ofermod. Holmes takes his
shot at it here. He distinguishes himself with
the most detailed inquiry into the etymology
behind Tolkien's controversial translation of it
as "overmastering pride", with a rare attention
to medieval scholarship that came after
Tolkien's time. He also has some interesting
points about the occurrence and non-occurrence
(!) of Tolkien's concept of ofermod in
The Lord of the Rings. His digression into
the ambiguities in translating the name
"Tolkien" is less compelling; it might have been
replaced by more attention to ofermod in
The Silmarillion than the off-center
reference we get to West's seminal Túrin
article.
But can I ask if The Battle of Maldon, as
a work of literature, has any other connections
with Tolkien's scholarship, since E. V. Gordon
acknowledged Tolkien's help in solving "many",
not just one, of the problems he encountered
when preparing his 1937 edition? And am I only
imagining that Beorhtnoth's tactical blunder
influenced Tolkien's late account of the first
Battle of the Fords of Isen that appeared in
Unfinished Tales?
See also names the most obvious of
ofermod's "usual suspects", but should have
included "Kingship", "Old English", "Túrin", and
as many of the various "Beowulf" articles
as seemed appropriate.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, December 30, 2007
There are also possible echoes of Maldon
in the last stand of the Men of Dor-lómin at the
Fen of Serech in The Silmarillion, in the
Battle of Five Armies in The Hobbit, and
perhaps in Gandalf’s confrontation with the
Balrog on the narrow bridge in The Lord of
the Rings. Some of these parallels are
considered in “Maldon and Moria: On Byrhtnoth,
Gandalf, and Heroism in The Lord of the Rings”
by Alexander M. Bruce in the latest issue of
Mythlore. Reportedly “Tolkien and Germanic
Ethics”, a 1986 Mythlore article by
Robert Boenig, also addresses some of these
parallels, but I have not seen that study.
There are also at least two passages in LotR
that echo Maldon’s famous couplet: “Will
shall be the sterner, heart the bolder / spirit
the greater, as our spirit lessens” (that is
Tolkien’s translation, as given by Holmes). In
"The Choices of Master Samwise", Tolkien writes
of Sam, "His weariness was growing but his will
hardened all the more." And in "Mount Doom", he
has, "But even as hope died in Sam…[his] face
grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in
him" (and a few paragraphs later, "their
strength lessened"). The former is noted by
Hammond and Scull in their companion to LotR.
Holmes refers to the poem’s best-known lines as
the “speech of Beorhtnoth in lines 312-13”.
Actually the speaker is not the overbold earl,
who died some 100 lines earlier, but his
retainer, Beorhtwold. Additionally, Holmes
implies that Tolkien used the name “Ælfwine”
only in The Lost Road, forgetting the
Lost Tales and several other works. Also,
it’s not quite right to say that Aragorn, on the
road to the Morannon, “meets a bedraggled host
of recruits ‘unmanned’ by terror” – he’s been
leading them for days. And Tom Shippey is
mentioned in Holmes’ text, but missing from his
‘Further Reading’ list.
Bede (St. Bede the
Venerable, Old English Bæda) (672?-735) -
John Wm. Houghton
Comments by squire, May 30, 2007
Like several other articles, often with a
medieval topic, this one is only barely relevant
to Tolkien. The material on who Bede is and why
he's important to English history is excellent,
but by the third paragraph one is dying for some
connection to Tolkien.
What comes next is essentially padding: an
extended gloss on the month names in the Shire
Calendar, as found in the Lord of the Rings
appendices, and how Tolkien adapted them from
the Old English calendar names which Bede
discussed, in Latin, in his book "The Reckoning
of Time". The entire thing is too long for its
importance: after all, Tolkien generally uses
English names for the months in the actual
story.
Houghton then points out the well-known parody
in the LotR Prologue, where hobbit
history in settling the Shire recapitulates the
history of the settlement of England by the
Anglo-Saxon tribes. Bede wrote about this, but
as Houghton notes, so did other historians of
Bede's time. Finally Houghton recounts Tolkien's
work on who Hengest was, and finds a citation to
Bede in Tolkien's scholarly lecture "English and
Welsh."
This is pretty slim pickings. While Tolkien was
undoubtedly fully familiar with the Venerable
Bede, the sainted historian can hardly be
pointed to as the "source" for these matters in
Tolkien's fiction; too many other Old English
documents cover the same territory.
Comments by N. E. Brigand, May
30, 2007
For all Houghton's attention to Shire month
names, there is a separate article on
"Calendars" that he doesn't mention (and vice
versa, for that matter).
Comments by Jason Fisher, May 31,
2007
Not to
mention that the history and settlement
of England, as mirrored in the
settlement of the Shire, is also
elsewhere discussed in the Encyclopedia
– see the Index. Much of the material
here is therefore not only tangential,
but redundant. Also, where Houghton
explains the meanings of Marcho and
Blanco, it’s actually blanca, not
blanco as Houghton has it (it
occurs in Beowulf, l. 856, in the
dative plural case; the word is also
attested in Bosworth-Toller, p. 108).
Besides the
forgoing comments, Houghton missed
another thing or two. He mentions
Tolkien's works Finn and Hengest
and “English and Welsh,” but neglects to
point out that Tolkien mentioned Bede in
“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
In his critical edition of that essay,
Michael Drout discusses Bede at many
points of contact with Tolkien (13
references in the index) – rich ore that
Houghton could have mined for additional
nuggets of useful information.
One bright
spot: the bit about Bede’s popularity
affecting scribal practice was
fascinating! I’d like to learn more
about that!
Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter - Colin Duriez
Comments by N.E. Brigand,
January 25,
2007
Bennett was a
sometime member of the Inklings who receives
what looks to be a perfectly competent 400-word
biography from Duriez. Unfortunately Duriez
mentions Tolkien only once, in passing, as one
of several lecturers Bennett heard in the 1930s.
Compare to the
Reader’s Guide of Scull and Hammond,
whose entry on Bennett notes that Tolkien
examined Bennett’s doctoral thesis, that Bennett
was a candidate to succeed Tolkien’s work on a
long-delayed Chaucer text, that Bennett and
Tolkien both advised for the Early English Text
Society, that Bennett contributed to both the
1962 and 1979 Tolkien festschrifts, and
that it was Tolkien who invited Bennett to the
Inklings, over some members’ objections.
Beorn - John Walsh
Comments by squire, August 27,
2007
There is some fine commentary here on Beorn. On
the other hand, the essay is disorganized and
badly balanced. Walsh seems too determined to
establish parallels between Beorn and Beowulf,
at the expense of other approaches.
The contrast between Beorn's and Elrond's houses
in The Hobbit is especially good, but
Walsh does not follow through in analyzing why
Beorn should be so much more "natural" than
Elrond and his half-Elven folk. The citation of
Rider Haggard on "berserker" is fascinating but
seems to go nowhere unless one has read The
Hobbit. Walsh ignores Tolkien's fascinating
illustration of Beorn's hall, straight from
Norse archaeology. He underplays the inherent
differences between The Hobbit and The
Lord of the Rings that Beorn epitomizes: for
instance, bears do not appear in the later book,
though their counterparts the wargs and the
eagles do; animals walking on their hind feet as
servants would seem absurd in LotR; and
it is not made clear enough that Beorn' s later
career as a "chieftain" is an awkward retrofit,
mentioned at the Council of Elrond and left
undeveloped. More attention to these stylistic
details would allow us to conclude that Beorn, a
classic Hobbit character, half fairy-tale
creature, half Norse epic monster, was never
really integrated into Tolkien's later ideas
about Middle-earth.
This kind of big-picture analysis, and perhaps
even a profitable comparison with Bombadil,
might have been fitted in by tightening the
overly long passages on etymology and Grendel.
It is symptomatic of Walsh's casual style here
that there is no 'Further Reading' given beyond
the standard Shippey, and no See also
at all.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, December 30, 2007
There is also a “Beorn” in The Book of Lost
Tales: Eriol’s uncle, who killed his
father. His absence here is understandable.
Less explicable, given the reference to Beorn’s
“war trophies”, is the omission of any comment
on the amorality of this bear-man who kills his
prisoners: “Beorn was a fierce enemy. But now he
was their friend”. Also, as squire mentions,
the contrast between the hospitality of Elrond
and Beorn is well-observed, but what of the
parallel between Beorn and Bilbo, both of whom
Gandalf tricks into playing host to a troupe of
dwarves?
Douglas Anderson’s Tolkien Studies 3
article, “R.W. Chambers and The Hobbit”,
has some interesting suggestions about how
Chambers’ work inspired Tolkien’s creation of
Beorn (presumably the new History of ‘The
Hobbit’ discusses Beorn as well).
Beowulf and the Critics - Michael D. C.
Drout
Comments by squire, March 13,
2007
It should go without saying that Drout, who
famously discovered and edited this lecture
series manuscript in 2001-02, should know
whatever there is to know about it and its
relation to its more famous published version, "Beowulf:
The Monsters and the Critics" (MC). Drout
emphasizes two things: the history of the work,
and what it shows of Tolkien's academic and
intellectual process. In the latter area, the
focus is on the development and quality of
Tolkien's rhetoric, both in this lecture series
and (by reference) in the subsequent MC.
Fascinatingly, Drout lets us see Tolkien both
spelling out what he later veiled, and veering
away from dissecting major Beowulf critics about
whom he was later "less politic".
I felt the A-B manuscript history was too
detailed for an article of this length. More
importantly, I found it disconcerting that Drout
seems to assume that we must already know and
understand the soon-to-be-famous core argument.
He barely describes the intellectual content of
his topic - unless the cryptic reference to the
"eventual direction of [Tolkien's] argument"
means that there is actually a substantial
difference between this lecture series and the
Academy version...
I was left with a couple of questions even as
I noted that the following article is on MC,
which will evidently pick up and continue the
story of Tolkien and Beowulf without a
missed beat. One, when Tolkien delivered this
lecture series at Oxford in 1934-35, did anyone
in the Beowulf biz blink besides the
undergraduates? That is: was the lecture an
underground hit and so Tolkien was invited to
deliver it to the Academy? Or did Tolkien
himself push it on the Academy to save it from
oblivion?
This article need not have just been about
Beowulf. It is another opportunity, missed
in "Leeds" but of course present in the "Oxford"
article, of characterizing Tolkien's academic
career. Tolkien's attention to his lecture
duties is emphasized in Carpenter as an excuse
for why he published so relatively little
scholarship in his career. Were all his Oxford
English lectures as brilliant, and neglected, as
this one?
And two, which may be beating a dead horse:
why is this article separate from three
other Beowulf articles by the same
contributor? Such balkanization is truly
baffling, not to mention a probable cause of the
comic omission of "Beowulf: The Monsters
and the Critics" from the See also
cross-reference!
Comments by N.E. Brigand, March 22, 2007
Well done but
quite short for an article on a 450-page book.
Drout appears to assume readers have read “Beowulf:
The Monsters and the Critics”, or at least his
good entry on that essay, which follows this
one. Amusingly, this Beowulf and the Critics
article includes not one parenthetical reference
to that book, even though the encyclopedia’s
“Conventions and Abbreviations” page lists it
for just such a purpose. The See also
list should also have included at least The
Adventures of Tom Bombadil (for “The
Hoard”), Alcuin, and Aldhelm.
To take up a
point raised by squire: the Encyclopedia seems
to have been intended to include separate
articles on all of Tolkien’s published works,
except for individual poems and letters, so the
division of Beowulf and the Critics from
“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”,
the former’s appearance following the latter’s
by 66 years, fits a more-or-less regular
practice. (There are some anomalies: for
instance, Tolkien’s “Ancrene Wisse and
Hali Meiðhad” is covered in entries on the
AB Language and Ancrene Wisse; and there
are no entries on his three 1920s “Philology:
General Works” reviews.) That doesn’t explain
the addition of two further Beowulf
articles.
"Beowulf:
The Monsters and the Critics" - Michael D. C.
Drout
Comments by squire, March 13,
2007
This is a really brilliant essay. On reading
it one feels like one has come through the
looking-glass from the cryptic world of its
predecessor article about the predecessor
lecture. Here all those mysteries are explained.
Engagingly, the duality that Drout tells us
about in Tolkien's interpretation of the great
poem is present here too, as the article splits
between Beowulf and Tolkien; and just as
Drout assures us that the lecture achieved
immortality through its rhetoric rather than its
arguments, so also with this article.
One immediately wants to know what happened
next: how was Beowulf scholarship
changed, and does Tolkien's approach still rule,
despite the lecture being "mindlessly
venerated"? But we have to move on to the
next article to have those questions
addressed. (Meanwhile, we will ignore that this
article refers to itself in the See also list.)
Comments by N.E. Brigand, March
22,
2007
Superb. But
again, because it includes no internal citation,
new readers will not learn that they can find
Tolkien’s classic essay in The Monsters and
the Critics and Other Essays, one of the
encyclopedia’s basic texts listed on the
“Conventions and Abbreviations” page (and thus
appropriately absent from Drout’s
bibliography). I don’t think it can be assumed
that every encyclopedia reader will have
encountered that page; just one “MC”
abbreviation would clue them in. Additionally,
the entry has but three See also entries,
leading only to the other “Beowulf” articles.
Beowulf:
Tolkien's Scholarship - Michael D. C. Drout
Comments by squire, March 13,
2007
I grit my teeth and say that this is a
well-written and lucid discussion of the hows
and whys of Tolkien as a "famous" scholar of
Beowulf. As interesting as it all is - and
it is: the material on Finn and Hengest
partly answers the question I raised in my
review of "Cruces in Medieval Literature", about
the nature of Tolkien's scholarship - it repeats
with more detail and in slightly different
context very very much of what has just been
related in the article on "The Monsters and the
Critics". The repetition is grating, and begs
the question again of just how the editors
imagined that a researcher on Tolkien and
Beowulf might somehow read one but not
another of these four articles.
If Tolkien's influence on his students and
colleagues via his unpublished lectures may have
been his real contribution to Beowulf
scholarship in the last half-century, as Drout
implies, perhaps he could have named a few of
those who studied with or under Tolkien and went
on to Beowulfian fame, if not fortune. (And yes,
it's eerie how this article addresses questions
about Tolkien's "lecture scholarship" that I
raised two reviews ago.)
The conclusion, suggesting how Tolkien's
views of Beowulf and ofermod
probably evolved over the years is very
interesting but not supplied with any supporting
sense of chronology. Am I out of line to suggest
that Drout's points in this essay about the
variety and subtlety of Tolkien's Beowulf
scholarship throughout his career practically
beg to be integrated with a study of his
changing approaches to writing heroic fantasy?
Again the See also list amuses: no reference
to Finn and Hengest.
On a larger matter, according to the thematic
list of contents, there is no Encyclopedia
article just about Beowulf under
"Anglo-Saxon Literary Sources" for Tolkien. Yet
I think even Tolkien admitted that
Beowulf pervades The Silmarillion, The
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in
any number of ways (Túrin comes out of
'retirement' to fight the dragon, Bilbo steals
the cup, Gandalf & co. challenged by the guard
at Edoras, etc.) *scratches head*
Comments by N.E. Brigand, March 22, 2007
Like squire, I
think this article could have been combined with
the next one into a single Beowulf
article, which additionally could have included
a section on the influence of Beowulf on
Tolkien’s fiction, currently addressed as part
of the “Old English” article, where there is
also a section on Tolkien’s Old English
scholarship. As squire notes, some of Drout’s
fascinating commentary here would have connected
nicely with Tolkien’s fiction, as for example
his note that Tolkien’s approach to Beowulf
appears to have become more Christian over his
lifetime, an attitude some have seen in
Tolkien’s fiction (as with hints at Christ’s
coming in the late “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth”).
Drout repeats
himself when, as in the previous article, he
explains Tolkien’s relation of the unequal
halves of Beowulf to the half-lines of
alliterative poetry. He also has “Beorhtwald”
for “Beorhthelm” in the title of Tolkien’s
dramatic poem. And given one of Drout’s central
ideas, that Tolkien’s more technical work on
Beowulf is evident not in his own
publications but in his influence on others’
work, I would have liked to seen
cross-references, at least, to other cases where
Tolkien’s influence is so exhibited, as with two
Middle English editions, d’Ardenne’s Þe
Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Iuliene and
Gordon’s Pearl.
Beowulf: Translations by Tolkien -
Michael D. C. Drout
Comments by squire, March 13,
2007
This is curious. One and a half translations
of Beowulf by Tolkien and evidently no
one has ever seen them. At least, Drout does not
feel he can comment on their quality or on their
interpretive choices, aside from the example of
one (or is it two?) published excerpt. I
hesitate to say it, but with such minimal actual
information, shouldn't this have been folded
into the referenced article on Tolkien's preface
to another scholar's translation: "On
Translating Beowulf"? And what's a "Siever"?
A cross-reference to Shippey's fine article
on "Alliterative Verse by Tolkien" would also
have been good here; although Shippey seems to
know no more about Tolkien's Beowulf
verse translation than Drout does. Drout does
not mention here what he tells us in his article
on "Beowulf and the Critics": that that lecture
manuscript also contains an excerpt from
Tolkien's verse translation.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, March 22, 2007
There are, I
think, three articles on specific unpublished
works by Tolkien: this one, “Arthurian Romance”,
and “Old Norse Translations”. Were these works,
about which little specific information is
offered, afforded separate entries in an effort
to encourage their publication? On the other
hand, there are known to be some unpublished
short stories in various states of completion,
including “The King of the Green Dozen”, “The
Orgog”, and “Sellic Spell”, that go unmentioned
in the encyclopedia, not appearing even in the
final forward-looking paragraph of David
Bratman’s “Publications, Posthumous” article.
This entry is
well-done, but since Drout notes that Tolkien’s
verse translation of Beowulf was
contemporary with his own alliterative poetry,
See also references to “Arthurian
Romance” and "The Lays of Beleriand"
would have been helpful. In correction to squire's review above: Drout actually mentions
in his first paragraph that B&C has "a
small fragment" of Tolkien's verse translation.
Beren -
Paul Edmund Thomas
Comments by squire, December 15,
2006
The varieties of disappointment in the
Encyclopedia are many.
The history of the character Beren is indeed
complex, but to devote this entire article to a
series of recapitulations of the various texts
in which Beren appears seems to me to be a
misallocation of precious page space.
If the story of Beren and Lúthien is the
"kernel of the mythology" as Tolkien says (and
Thomas notes), why not spend some time
explaining why and how? Surely there is some
good critical work out there, analyzing who
Beren is, and what his relationship is to
Thingol, Tuor, Earendil, Aragorn -- and Frodo.
Perhaps a note on the archetype of the lost
hand; an elaboration on Tolkien's comment on the
Orpheus connection; an aside on the role legend
plays within the legendarium, specifically how
the legend of Beren and Lúthien appears not just
in The Lord of the Rings, but also in the
Tale of the Children of Húrin. And it's a
shame Thomas does not mention "Light as Leaf on Linden
Tree", Tolkien's fascinating short poem on
Beren and Luthien that connects the Children
of Húrin legend with The Lord of the
Rings.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, April 25, 2007
This article is
a pretty good history of the development of the
tale of Beren and Lúthien, nicely showing how
the story grew and changed through several
different versions, with a few choice comments
from Tolkien’s letters. And it’s all neatly
framed by connections to Tolkien’s life, from
the hemlocks at Roos to the graves at Wolvercote.
Unfortunately,
this article is only a pretty good
history of the development of the tale. Beren
is never addressed as a character, and even the
tale’s evolution, to which Thomas devotes such
careful description, receives almost no critical
analysis. There is no Further Reading list, but
at the very least, Thomas should have cited Tom
Shippey’s remarks on this story, for example:
“there are scenes and images which persist
regardless of their intellectual justification”
(The Road to Middle-earth, 3rd edition,
p. 315).
Though
substantial, Thomas’ See also list misses
Finrod, Lúthien, Sauron, and The War of the
Jewels (all mentioned in his text) and maybe
also Sir Orfeo, because of the connection
Tolkien makes to the Orpheus legend. If room
was tight, the cross-references to Eärendil,
Maiar, and Mountains could have been cut, along
with “Middle-earth: Peoples”, which was the
publisher’s pre-release misprint for The
Peoples of Middle-earth.
Bible – Christina Ganong Walton
Comments by Jason Fisher, August 16,
2007
Not a
particularly satisfying entry in my
view. The essay wanders to and fro,
mainly cataloguing similarities between
The Silmarillion and the Bible,
but without really drawing any solid
critical conclusions. It’s loosely and
vaguely written, full of imprecision,
minor errors, and stylistic faults. I
could enumerate many, but here are just
a few:
-
Walton writes that Tolkien’s “familiarity
[with the Bible] informs […] primarily
The Silmarillion,” but what about his
statement that The Lord of the Rings
is a fundamentally, consciously Catholic
work?
-
Walton’s reference to Tolkien’s
“translations of the Ancrene Wisse”
is not accurate at all. Tolkien wrote the
Preface to Mary Salu’s 1955 translation, but
his own 1962 edition was just that, an
edition.
-
Walton’s discussion of which Bibles Tolkien
may or may not have owned is neither
particularly conclusive, nor particularly
germane to the subject.
-
“The
Silmarillion […] avoids retelling the
Genesis account by focusing on the Ainur and
the Elves” – is that really accurate? If so,
why does Walton present numerous points of
congruence between Genesis and The
Silmarillion throughout the rest of her
entry?
-
“Tolkien’s Eru Ilúvatar is more remote than
God in the Bible” – not really, especially
in the Ainulindalë. In my view, their
positions are quite similar; it’s in The
Lord of the Rings that Eru becomes truly
remote.
-
Walton’s “to prevent contradicting the
Bible” should be “to avoid
contradicting.”
-
Regarding Christ as the Morning Star
(Venus), Walton might have noted that
Lucifer is also sometimes equated with
the Morning Star (see Isaiah 14, which
Walton cited elsewhere in her entry).
But in
general, quibbles aside, the real
problem with the entry is that it should
have been much more than a laundry list
of similarities, vaguely correlated. It
should have discussed the larger issues
not of what, but of why and
how Tolkien adapted elements of the
Bible for his fictive universe. And
why he felt it “fatal” to make
those borrowings too explicit. Greater
emphasis could have been placed on
departures from Biblical tradition and
in the representation of other scholars’
views on the subject, too.
Beneficial additions to the 'Further
Reading' along these lines would have
been: Nils Ivar Agøy’s “Quid Hinieldus
cum Christo? – New Perspectives on
Tolkien’s Theological Dilemma and his
Sub-Creation Theory” and Eric
Schweicher’s “Aspects of the Fall in
The Silmarillion” (both from the
Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien
Centenary Conference). Also William
Dowie’s “The Gospel of Middle-earth
According to J.R.R. Tolkien,” in
J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller:
Essays in Memoriam (Ed. Mary Salu
and Robert T. Farrell).
Bilbo Baggins -
Michael N. Stanton
Comments by squire, February
4,
2007
This article suffers from the odd problem of
seeming to take Bilbo as a real person. While it
recounts Bilbo's career in both The Hobbit
and The Lord of the Rings with concision
and accuracy, it does not take the point of view
that he is a fictional character in those two
books.
I think this is a big mistake in an
Encyclopedia of this kind. "Middle-earth
Studies" is the name given to this kind of
writing, but it is a false and dangerous road to
go down. "Middle-earth Studies" is inherently
only a technical sub-specialty of "Tolkien
Studies". All that can be "known" of
Middle-earth comes from the imaginative writings
of one man, so beyond the limited arena of
textual evolution it is impossible to make any
of the comparative analyses which are the heart
of any field of study. This Encyclopedia in
particular was supposed to be dedicated to
studying Tolkien's works in relation to their
author and his world, not as if they had a
separate existence. It is juvenile to buy
seriously into Tolkien's own device (his "vast
game") of presenting Middle-earth as a recovered
history, as he himself would be the first to
warn us.
Following this unfortunate approach,
Stanton's prose is nearly twee at times: "He
spent later years in quiet deeds of good", "the
ring's evil (for it was a very evil Ring)", "The
Long-Expected Party was an amazing success" are
examples that call for an editor's red pencil.
Stanton also flirts with hagiography, presenting
Bilbo as the brave and mature hobbit he became
by the end of his adventure, thus ignoring what
makes him so attractive as the hero of a
children's tale: that he starts out as an
immature twit of whom the Dwarves are properly
contemptuous. Ironically, Tolkien himself fell
into this trap, and attempted to rewrite this
aspect of Bilbo in later years.
Stanton does make some valuable observations
about Bilbo's character from a critical
perspective, though even then he falls in and
out of a "biographical" tone. Luckily for
inquisitive readers, the "Further Reading" list
is first rate, and shows that Stanton's
disappointing choice of tone is temperamental
rather than unwitting. The "See also" list is
consistently but wrongly limited to other
"biographical" articles.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, July 9, 2007
Stanton’s approach is that of a careless
historian with a peculiar focus. For The
Hobbit, there is no description of Bilbo’s
adventures with Gollum or the Arkenstone – in
fact, neither name appears in Stanton’s article
(or in the See also list) – and no
comment on Bilbo’s loss of respectability, the
motif with which the narrator frames the whole
tale. And Bilbo’s most important moment in
LotR, when he relinquishes the Ring, is
mentioned only in passing: Stanton merely writes
that when Bilbo left Hobbiton, “he was
constrained to leave the Ring behind”.
There is a small factual error in Stanton’s
chronology: he writes that Bilbo celebrated his
131st birthday on “September 22, 3021, as Bilbo
was journeying to the Grey Havens … On September
29, he met Frodo there”. Actually, Bilbo met
Frodo on his birthday, the 22nd, in the Shire,
and they traveled together to the Havens.
The hagiographic aspect of the article to which
squire refers can be seen in Stanton’s comment
on Bilbo’s imagined Translations from the
Elvish, where he writes that “Tolkien quite
rightly describes these volumes as ‘a work of
great skill and learning’”. On what grounds can
Stanton praise the quality of works that he’s
never read?
Finally, since Stanton emphasizes Bilbo’s role
as poet, he should have cross-referenced the
“Poems by Tolkien” entries on The Hobbit,
The Lord of the Rings, and The
Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
Biology
of Middle-earth -
Friedhelm Schneidewind
Comments by Jason Fisher, February
13,
2007
Here is another
entry that collapses under an overindulgence
in pure Middle-earth Studies, taking
Tolkien’s fictional world to be entirely
real and attempting to overlay scientific
speculation onto it – with results that are
far from satisfying. Worse, the speculation
is usually wild, with relatively little
foundation even in the limited context of a
Middle-earth Studies approach. Even given
the questionable scope of the topic, there
were surprising omissions (e.g., a
discussion of Tolkien’s theories of the
Elvish fëar and hröar). For
me, it’s difficult to see why the
Encyclopedia even needed an entry like this
in the first place.
Setting aside
my misgivings on the topic itself, the entry
is actually all over the map, and only
relates to a putative discussion of biology
in Middle-earth at a few points. It’s really
more of a catalog of Tolkien’s invented (or
adapted) species, each of which has its own
entries in the Encyclopedia already. The
author attempts to guess what part evolution
might have played in the races of
Middle-earth, and makes several unfounded
conjectures about the origins of certain
species. For example, Schneidewind makes the
wild guess that Trolls may have evolved
“from giant apes” – where in the world does
this idea come from? Perhaps from
Morgoth’s Ring, which he cites, where
we’re told that “it would seem evident that
[Trolls] were corruptions of primitive human
types” – but it’s quite a leap from
“primitive human types” to unattested “giant
apes.” And the entry is full of such rampant
leaps.
Another major
problem is the 'Further Reading'. First, all
four of the items cited are by the entry’s
author, and all within the last couple of
years, making “Biology of Middle-earth” a
vanity entry as much as anything. These
references also suggest that Schneidewind
may, in fact, be the only person interested
in the topic (aside from Henry Gee)! Second,
none of the references are in English. The
original guidelines for contributors asked
for entries in English, where possible, and
ones that were not overly difficult to find.
Wrong on both counts here. An entry like
this ought to have included at least The
Science of Middle-earth by Henry Gee,
which approaches such questions much more
rigorously (see Amy Amendt-Raduege’s review
in Tolkien Studies 3). It might
perhaps also have directed readers to
Madame Bovary's Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at
Literature by David P. Barash and
Nanelle R. Barash, which has recently
popularized the kind of evolutionary
approach to literature that Schneidewind is
attempting here.
Comments by N.E. Brigand,
April 2, 2007
Questioned in 1954 about the impossibility
of Elvish immortality, Tolkien answered, in
part: “I do not care. This is a biological
dictum in my imaginary world. It is only
(as yet) an incompletely imagined world, a
rudimentary ‘secondary’; but if it pleased
the Creator to give it (in a corrected form)
Reality on any plane, then you would just
have to enter it and begin studying its
different biology, that is all.”
Schneidewind doesn’t mention that important
passage from Letter #153, though he does
quote some of Tolkien’s remarks from that
letter addressing biological concepts within
the conceit of Middle-earth.
It’s
a poorly balanced article. After spending
three paragraphs worrying about Tolkien’s
use of the terms species, race,
breed, and kindred,
Schneidewind devotes more than half his
article to a speculative and rather
unsystematic evolutionary history of
Hobbits, Orcs, Trolls, Dragons, Spiders, and
Ents. He concludes with comments on elvish
immortality and the longevity caused by the
Ring, but does not touch on reincarnation
(whose biological difficulty Tolkien also
acknowledges in Letter #153).
Evolution is of course the cornerstone of
biology, but rather than list six specific
examples in Tolkien, Schneidewind might have
included that topic in a wider biological
examination – for example, I have read
discussions of the population dynamics,
inter-specific competition, and
predator-prey relationships of
Middle-earth.
More importantly, he needed to step back
and address the larger questions of how and
when real world biological questions are
relevant to Tolkien’s world. Already he
has unquestioningly accepted the Ring’s
magical powers at face value, while trying
to explain other aspects of the story in
scientific terms – why?
A minor point: is there a source for
Schneidewind’s description of Shelob as
“only as big as a horse”? In “Shelob’s
Lair”, Tolkien says that Shelob is “huger
than the great hunting beasts”.
Bliss, Alan (1921-1985) - Anthony S. Burdge
and Jessica Burke
Comments by N.E. Brigand,
February 21, 2007
This may be the rare entry that focuses too
heavily on Tolkien. To judge from this
article, Bliss, like Joan Turville-Petre,
gets his own article solely because he
edited one of Tolkien’s posthumous scholarly
works – in this case, Finn and Hengest.
As with Jane Beal’s article on
Turville-Petre, this article probably should
have been a blind entry leading readers to
the longer article on the relevant book.
However, while Beal’s piece all but ignores
Tolkien to summarize her subject’s life and
career, Burdge and Burke pass over Bliss’s
life to focus entirely on his Tolkien
connection: their article is just a summary
of Bliss’s introduction to Finn and
Hengest, which is their only source.
Both articles would have benefited from a
more balanced approach.
Bodleian Library,
Oxford - David Bratman
Comments by squire, August 28, 2007
Bratman's usual fine formality and good
style does not save this odd article from
irrelevance in this Encyclopedia. Static,
with no unique story to tell, it seems to be
cross-referenced by only two other articles
in the Encyclopedia: ironically, one's
brevity comments on this one's superfluity,
and the other contains more useful
information on its subject than this does.
The first paragraph tells us more than we
need to know about the Library's history and
functions, the second reviews the medieval
manuscripts that Tolkien actually researched
there (all of which are covered in articles
on the manuscripts), and the final paragraph
duplicates, with less detail and color, the
excellent account in the second paragraph of
"Manuscripts by Tolkien" of the Tolkien
papers currently held at the Bodleian.
There is no 'Further Reading' list to help us
understand what we should be looking for
here. See also seems limited (and
what is "Education" doing in there): why not
include all the articles that do mention the
Bodleian, even though only two of them
acknowledge this article's existence? A
quick review suggests that, at least, "AB
Language", "Ancrene Wisse", "D'Ardenne,
S. R. T. O. (1899-1986)", "Estate", "'"Iþþlen"
in Sawles Warde'", "Library,
Personal", "'MS Bodley 34: A Re-collation of
a Collation'", and "Tolkien Scholarship:
Institutions" could have been added.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, December 30, 2007
it
seems to be cross-referenced by only two
other articles in the Encyclopedia
In fact, this article appears on the See
also lists of three other entries:
“Manuscripts by Tolkien”, “Tolkien
Scholarship: Institutions”, and “Philately”,
the last of which joins Bratman’s own
“Parodies” entry among the 53 articles to
which no other entry refers. Many but not
all of these were added late, and so did not
appear on the original list of entries to
which contributors referred; examples
include “Bliss, Alan”; “Existentialism”;
“Japan: Reception of Tolkien”; “Saracens and
Moors”; “Trench Fever”; and “Whitby”.
Meanwhile, the five articles most often
cross-referenced, each listed more than
thirty times, are “Elves”; “Oxford”; “Silmarillion,
The”; “Old Norse Literature”; and “Valar”.
And there are more than forty titles that
appear only in See also lists, whose
articles were never written (and never meant
to be, in some cases). The most often
listed of these are “Rhyme Schemes and
Meter”; “Philology”; “Middle English”;
“Life”; and “Chaucer, Geoffrey”.
Book of Lost Tales I - John Wm. Houghton
Comments by squire, February 3,
2007
The problem of presenting to the
Encyclopedia's readers the multi-dimensional
literary project known as The History of
Middle-earth is nowhere more pressing than
here, in the article about the premier volume.
What to mention, what to omit, what to assume
about the average reader's knowledge of
Tolkien's published works that preceded the
HoME, are all important decisions that every
HoME writer had to confront (I speak from
experience). Whether from lack of space or time,
this article suffers from rather odd choices in
this regard.
Houghton devotes half his article to the
legendary Foreword, in which Christopher Tolkien
explained why he was publishing his father's
earliest drafts and variations on the legends
that had already been published in The
Silmarillion. Although this essay does
appear in this book, it applies to most of
HoME; one wonders if it couldn't have been
more quickly summarized and the reader referred
to the Encyclopedia article that discusses the
HoME as a whole.
Then, for whatever reason of word count or
editing, Houghton has no room left, and races
through a mere naming of the ten chapters (or
Tales) that constitute the book itself. He also
includes a daunting list of the additional
material (poems, lexicons, maps) that makes this
book such a bear to write about briefly.
Although he properly warns that "nearly every
page contains some new information", he barely
attempts to comment on the more interesting
features of the old Tales to a reader familiar
with Tolkien's later works including The
Silmarillion. Instead, he manages to get
hung up on telling the framing story of Eriol at
too much length. His final notes on the
importance of these early attempts at
legend-creation are rambling and too short,
though the closer about Edith and Ronald is
cute.
There is also a problem with tense in the
writing: as Houghton describes Christopher
Tolkien's 1983 Foreword, he begins to write in
the present or even future tense, mimicking the
voice of the original editor. This could have
been fixed by a relatively simple rewrite to
establish the proper distance between author and
subject.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, March 18, 2007
Houghton opens
well, explaining clearly and briefly how The
Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and
the History of Middle-earth volumes
differ in presentation. At this point he should
have moved on to survey the tales, but as squire
notes, Houghton then devotes another full column
of text to a summary of Christopher Tolkien’s
important foreword that, though it appears in
Lost Tales I, would be more appropriately
treated in the articles on The Silmarillion
and the History overview. That said,
Houghton’s See also section does point
readers to the other two articles, and his
comments on the foreword are good, though if the
History as a whole is to be treated here,
something more than a general statement that the
History’s format has left scholars
“dissatisfied” should have been included to
explain critical response to the series.
Should Houghton
have devoted a couple paragraphs to each of the
book’s ten tales, to match Paul Edmund Thomas’s
much longer article on Lost Tales II? I
don’t think so, given that the other History
volumes, like this one, are treated in articles
each 1,000-1,500 words long (a little more for
The Lost Road, a bit less for The
Peoples of Middle-earth), less than half the
length of Thomas’s piece. But a general summary
of the narrative is necessary here, and missing:
Houghton apparently assumes that readers of his
article have already digested The
Silmarillion and will recognize the tales
here by their titles alone. His in-depth
analysis, generally well-done, is devoted almost
entirely to the book’s framing material.
Additionally, Houghton wastes space merely
listing the page numbers encompassed by each of
the tales, along with all the poems appearing in
this volume, without comment. Why, when there’s
a entire article devoted to the poems in The
History of Middle-earth?
At least
Houghton provides some brief critical discussion
of the Lost Tales, noting their style,
debt to Victorian ideas, biographical
connections, and place in Tolkien’s English
mythology. But he raises and leaves unanswered
one important question, when he writes that the
volume contains much “new information, not all
of it equally significant”. Houghton states as
an example of this that the variations in names
“attract less attention” than Tolkien’s earliest
tale of the Sun and Moon. This comment's
subjective point of view is unclear, but it
seems to imply that the book is more valuable as
a critical resource than as fiction. Is that
Houghton's belief? If so, why? He never says.
Book of Lost Tales II - Paul Edmund
Thomas
Comments by squire, February 3,
2007
The gods must be crazy, the reader mutters as
he turns from BoLT I to the following
article, about BoLT II. Although the
books are of equal length, the article about the
second one is almost three times as long!
Because of this, Thomas is able to give a
column-long précis of each of the six Tales or
sketches of Tales, and still have room at the
end to give some commentary and references to
such scholarship as exists on this most
understudied work of Tolkien's. Since these
books are essentially one book split for
publishing convenience into two volumes, this
odd divergence of word-count allowed by the
editors is particularly strange. Houghton,
writing about BoLT I in far more
straitened circumstances, was either misled or
misinformed about his options -- though Thomas's
command of his subject and his prose is
evidently greater in any case.
All that is missing - and this is a quibble -
is some inline commentary relating each Tale to
its later development in Tolkien's legendarium,
especially with reference to the published
Silmarillion that most Encyclopedia readers
might have some familiarity with. His summaries
are quite good and useful by themselves though,
and any shortening necessary to allow for
accessory comments might have made them less
useful or even unreadable.
Boromir - Alex
Davis
Comments by squire, December 17,
2006
This workmanlike article hits all the right
high notes. I might disagree with the writer's
interpretation of Boromir, but at least he has
an interpretation. And in an article as short as
this one, who can quibble with Davis's extensive
review of the "critical assessment" of Boromir?
That said, I should have liked a quick
one-paragraph review of the first Boromir, from
the Silmarillion, and a note on why
Tolkien chose to re-use the name in just the way
he did. As well, a little more credit to Faramir
as the little brother who could, and how we see
Boromir through Faramir's and Denethor's eyes in
the latter part of LotR, where Boromir is
a major character in absentia, might have added
critical depth to this piece.
I admit, I don't exactly see what Davis might
have cut within his word count to make room for
my additional requests!
Comments by N.E. Brigand,
December 30, 2007
There is also a third Boromir, an earlier
steward of Gondor mentioned only in the LotR
appendices, who was probably created by Tolkien
late, to give the better-known character a
namesake to emulate: he “was a great captain,
and even the Witch-king feared him”. But Davis
was plainly pressed for space, and does quite
well with the material he does present, making
good use of critical references and Tolkien’s
letters. I particularly like his description of
the prophetic dream that Boromir “claims to
share with his brother”, which quietly alludes
to a frequent point of debate among readers.
Only the See also list truly disappoints,
missing “Denethor”, “Faramir”, “Aragorn”, “Gondor”,
and “Sacrifice”.
Bournemouth - David Bratman
Comments by squire, July 5,
2007
This is rather humdrum. I wish Bratman had
cut back on the details of location, history,
etc. and instead given us a little more about
the impact of the move to Bournemouth on
Tolkien's last few years. For instance, did the
"disruption" of Tolkien's papers have any real
impact on his productivity? Which works later
seen in Unfinished Tales and HoME XII
did he write there? And don't I remember
someone commenting (it has to be Carpenter) that
Tolkien really didn' t like Bournemouth's
dullness, but felt he owed Edith a few years of
a life more to her liking (visits with friends,
chats, strolls, etc.) after she had given him so
much of her life in the intellectual hothouse of
Oxford?
Comments by N.E. Brigand,
December 20, 2007
It is indeed Carpenter’s Biography that
describes Tolkien’s feelings about Bournemouth,
and the Tolkiens’ reasons for moving there;
Bratman alludes to the first part of this when
he writes that “Tolkien regretted the lack of
intellectual companionship”. Unfortunately
Carpenter is not mentioned here: there is no
‘Further Reading’ list (and also no See also
list).
Comments by Jason Fisher, December 30,
2007
N.E. Brigand is correct
that Carpenter's Biography discusses
the move to Bournemouth (as well as Auden's
disparaging comments on the house, which
irritated the Tolkiens). But I would add that
Clyde Kilby also talks about the house (and the
Auden incident) in Tolkien and The
Silmarillion (1976), a year before
Carpenter's biography appeared. It was the
Sandfield Road house where Kilby visited Tolkien
and "assisted" him with his work on The
Silmarillion.
Boyens, Philippa – David D. Oberhelman
Comments by Jason Fisher, August 16,2007
Two out of
the three screenwriters of the New Line
adaptations of The Lord of the Rings
got their own entries, so why not Fran
Walsh? Or perhaps a better question is
why Philippa Boyens got an entry at all;
both Boyens and Walsh could easily have
been footnoted in the entry on Peter
Jackson. Nevertheless, this entry is
lucidly written and well documented;
however, I have a difficult time seeing
the importance of it to the larger
matters of scholarship on and critical
assessment of Tolkien. Really, the only
important matters this entry raises are
largely treated in the lengthy entry on
Jackson as well as the other entries on
film adaptations and adaptors already.
The
'Further Reading', as I hinted above, is
quite good for the entry, but the short
See also could have benefited
from additional points of reference:
“Race in Tolkien Films”, “Bakshi,
Ralph”, and “Rankin/Bass Productions,
Inc.”
Brut by Layamon - Carl Phelpstead
Comments by squire, July 5,
2007
I don't know what to make of this.
Phelpstead's presentation seems impeccable, as
always. Yet Tolkien is almost absent: "a small
number of passing references", and "some echoes
in Tolkien's creative work" are hardly inspiring
qualifications to the limited identifications
and citations that Phelpstead gives. Even more
tellingly, this work was never translated or
critically edited by Tolkien, despite being a
Middle English alliterative poem in the West
Midlands dialect! Hard to believe at this point
in my reading of the Encyclopedia, but evidently
true.
The 'Further Reading' reinforces the
impression given that only Tom Shippey has ever
bothered to read Layamon's Brut with
Tolkien in mind. The See also is absurdly
short, listing only "Arthurian Literature"; what
about "Alliterative Revival", "Riddles",
"Riddles: Sources", "Shakespeare", "On
Fairy-stories", and all the various "Beowulf"
articles?
Buchan, John (1875-1940) - Tom Shippey
Comments by squire, January 9, 2007
The fun of an Encyclopedia is that it invites
you to browse the articles and run across little
gems like this one. I've never read Buchan,
beyond one chapter of Mr Standfast, a WWI
spy novel; the most famous of his books now is
the thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps. I've
always been mystified by the comments that
Tolkien admired his work.
Shippey explains it
all, concisely and clearly. Tolkien may be said
to have admired and possibly been influenced by,
not the thrillers and the spy novels, but the
less well-known patriotic historical novels that
Buchan also produced. Some of the connections
and links between the two writers may seem far
fetched ("Man with a recurrent dream"), but
overall Shippey, having quite responsibly read
enough Buchan to speak with authority, makes as
good a case for a literary connection as one
could hope for.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
25, 2007
This is an
excellent article, for which I have just a few
further notes.
First, Buchan’s
literary reputation may be better than Shippey
suggests: Wikipedia notes Graham Greene’s praise
of Buchan, W.H. Auden compared LotR to
The Thirty-Nine Steps, and C.S. Lewis once
claimed that Buchan and Wodehouse might someday
be seen as the key authors of the early 20th
Century.
Second,
Shippey’s is one of only two articles to cite
Robert Giddings and Elizabeth Holland’s 1981
book, J.R.R. Tolkien: The Shores of
Middle-earth, a work generally and
deservedly scorned for loopy ideas and wild
writing, but Giddings and Holland earn a mention
here for their early recognition of Tolkien’s
debt to popular fiction.
Third, although
Shippey has been pursuing this line since at
least 1991 (see his remarks in the Tolkien
Society collection, Digging Potatoes, Growing
Trees, vol. 2) the Buchan article didn’t
appear on the encyclopedia’s early lists of
entries; perhaps this explains why Shippey gives
Buchan about 1,000 words here, and Dale Nelson
devotes another 2,000 words to Buchan (pp.
373-375) in his very long article on “Literary
Influences, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”,
and neither article refers readers to the
other.
Butler, Samuel
(1835-1902) - Michael N. Stanton
Comments by squire, July 6, 2007
It's hard to respond to Stanton's explicit
divorce of his subject from his article. Butler
wrote a Victorian-era satire Erewhon
imagining the enslavement of man to his
machines, to which Tolkien referred in a letter
deploring the mechanization of the Second World
War. Stanton assures us that "it is doubtful
that Tolkien was influenced by Butler in any
significant way", before quoting extensively
from Tolkien's fiction to demonstrate his
deepset horror for industrial machinery and its
effect on men's souls.
If none of this is about Butler, why then the
article on "Industrialization" covers the same
material with more depth and insight, even
citing the same letter -- not to mention a later
one (No. 96), missed by Stanton, that is even
more apt for a discussion of Butler and Tolkien:
"...the Machines are going to be enormously more
powerful. What's their next move?"
Why have an
article on Butler at all if you believe he has
nothing to do with Tolkien? And if Tolkien was
not influenced by Butler, why would he be
thinking of Erewhon 73 years after it was
written? Stanton's defense is that Butler was
writing satire, but Tolkien was serious...
Wouldn't this beg the question of how or why a
satirical novel in the tradition of Swift is
somehow less serious than a children's fairy
tale, or an epic heroic romance?
Finally, why is this article categorized
under "Theological/Philosophical Concepts and
Philosophers" rather than "Literary Sources"?