I·Lam Na·Ngoldathon: The
Grammar and Lexicon of the Gnomish Tongue - Carl
HostetterComments
by squire, June 24, 2007
As inherently interesting and accurate as
this is, it falls awkwardly between two stools.
The subject of the article is ostensibly the
manuscript document with this imposing title.
Tolkien worked on it for several years in the
late 1910s at the same time that he was writing
down the Lost Tales. It defines and so
creates one of his two original "Elvish"
languages. Hostetter deftly reviews its history,
organization and even its physical appearance.
But then nevitably, Hostetter gets into the
language itself, Goldogrin - and why not, since
it is pretty much recorded only in this one
document. But...
But then we ask: since Hostetter reviews
Goldogrin in his comprehensive "Languages
Invented by Tolkien", why have another article
performing the same task? Should all of
Tolkien's language manuscripts have gotten a
separate article, as this one and the
Qenyaqetsa did? I don't know the answer to
that; the editors' commitment to the language
side of Tolkien studies seems somewhat variable.
The best that can be said is that a
specialized article on something always allows
more detail. Here Hostetter clarifies a point
left quite obscure in his survey article:
Goldogrin may be the ancestor language in
Tolkien's imagination to the later Noldorin and
eventually Sindarin, but unlike those languages
this one did not emulate Welsh phonology nearly
as strongly. Its plurals were not formed, for
instance, by vowel affection, and its past
tenses are strongly influenced by the model of
how vowel sounds changed when Middle English
became Modern English. This is great stuff, and
I could only wish that Hostetter had spent less
time on a detailed description of the manuscript
and more time on how it demonstrates how
Tolkien's early language invention differed from
his later, more familiar, exercises.
For instance, the article concludes with an
unhelpful description of Tolkien's multi-layered
script notations on the actual manuscript. I
think we should have been given, in place of
that section, a few concrete examples of
Hostetter's assertions about Goldogrin. He says
this lexicon contains a vocabulary "far richer"
than the later conceptual phases of this
language family: how so? Or (as in the
Qenyaqetsa article) tell us just a little
about how the language definitions in this
document add to our understanding of
Middle-earth as it existed at its beginning, in
the Lost Tales stage.
The 'Further Reading' looks excellent. As
with his "Languages Invented..." article, there
is no See also list to help people connect
this article with the discussions of Goldogrin
and Noldorin/Sindarin in that one, and with the
various articles on "Elves", and other related
ones like "The Book of Lost Tales" (I &
II), "Secret Vice, A", "Unpublished
Manuscripts", etc.
Immortality - Christopher Garbowski
Comments by squire, March 19,
2007
Garbowski dives into this subject's deep end
with his first sentence, and doesn't come up for
air until his last sentence. He races along,
assuming his reader has at least some
acquaintance with most of Tolkien's work
including the HoME ephemera. If you can
keep up, you will get a first-class briefing on
the meaning and implications of immortality and
mortality as Tolkien worked them out across his
entire legendarium.
From the beginning of The Silmarillion to
Aragorn's death in the Appendices of The Lord
of the Rings and even beyond in the
philosophical no-man's-land of Morgoth's Ring,
Garbowski shows how Tolkien plays with the
paradoxes he defined in "On Fairy-stories", that
mortals long for deathlessness while immortals
long for death. Most importantly, he highlights
what is central but deeply hidden in Tolkien's
philosophy of Middle-earth: that mortal men may
die and depart from the world but are
nevertheless destined to live forever in God's
heart, while the "immortal" Elves are merely
extremely long-lived and will expire forever
when the world itself wears out: appropriate
metaphors respectively for Adam's children
redeemed by Christ, and for fantastical beings
whom no one "believes in" any longer.
Unfortunately, as is all too usual with
brilliant tours de force like this,
Garbowski does not cite any other critical work
on this key Tolkienian subject. His "See Also"
list seems scanty; certainly references to "Men,
Middle-earth", "On Fairy-stories", "Morgoth's
Ring" (to name a few) and a vast selection of
the entries listed in the Thematic category
"Theological/Philosophical Concepts and
Philosophers" would not be out of place here.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
1, 2008
The opening paragraphs of Garbowski’s articles
on “Death” and “Immortality” both refer to the
same letter by Tolkien, in which he identifies
those subjects as key themes in The Lord of
the Rings (however, Garbowski’s
parenthetical citation in both cases should be “Letters,
246” not “Letters, 186”).
Otherwise Garbowski’s twin articles, which
possibly should have been combined, largely
don’t overlap. One exception is his treatment
of marriage between Elves and Men. In “Death”,
he writes of Tolkien’s “conceit” that such a
union is “possible if the former sacrifices his
or her mortality”, while in “Immortality”, he
writes of Elves that the “alternative” to the
weariness of immortality “is to marry a
mortal”. Both remarks imply that the cases of
Beren and Lúthien, and Aragorn and Arwen, are
standard practice, not rare exceptions. And
what about Idril and Tuor?
Incarnation - Joseph Pearce
Comments by squire, May 31,
2007
Pearce identifies two points in Tolkien's
writings that plainly refer to Christ's
incarnation, and blows them up out of all
proportion to their importance.
It's very hard to accept his simultaneous
premise and conclusion that the incarnation,
whose instance in The Lord of the Rings
is only inferrable from appendicial material
("tucked away" and hidden, as Pearce puts it) is
"axiomatic to Tolkien's legendarium in general"
and "at the very heart of " LotR. It is
one thing to claim that because Christ's
incarnation and crucifixion traditionally took
place on March 25, the One Ring that is
destroyed in Mount Doom on that day may be read
as an allegorical symbol for the Original Sin
that Christ's life and death redeemed; but it is
another thing altogether to claim that such an
allegorical reading is the key to understanding
all of The Lord of the Rings.
Likewise, Pearce knows of the famous "Athrabeth
Finrod ah Andreth" ("Debate of Finrod and
Andreth"). This late work, never published by
Tolkien, argues from within the story-world
about the possibility and necessity of Eru (God)
"enter[ing] into Arda" to defeat Morgoth and
heal all evil, as has been prophesyed among Men
since their early fall from grace. Clearly this
is Tolkien's speculation about how the
incarnation of Christ might be fitted into his
legendarium. Equally clearly, it is very late in
the literary history of Middle-earth, and has no
precedent elsewhere in the legendarium, which
has a long history of coming to an end with a
Nordic-style Last Battle; the "Debate" was
written at a time (1950s) when Tolkien was
re-thinking the cosmological, mythological and
theological roots of his decades-old world.
Pearce implies by omission that this dialog is
an "underpinning" of Middle-earth, but that is
far too strong a claim.
Pearce runs out the clock by padding his
commentary on this latter document. This leaves
him no room for other more important examples of
incarnation that Tolkien included in his
stories, such as the incarnation of the Valar
(Gods/Angels), and the incarnation of the Isari
(Wizards).
Given the books in the 'Further Reading'
list, the article "Christian Readings of
Tolkien" should certainly be on the See also
list.
Industrialization - Patrick Curry
Comments by squire, January 14,
2007
This is a very interesting and intelligent
article that asks more questions than it
answers. I mean that in a good way, though the
lack of a decent critical bibliography to allow
further inquiry by the interested reader is all
the more dismaying. Curry himself, alone on the
Further Reading list, can hardly be the
only scholar with something to say on so
fundamental a Tolkien issue as this.
Curry makes some interesting points: that
industrialism as a quest for power belongs both
to communism and capitalism, so that Mordor is
not just a critique of totalitarian
dictatorships, as some suppose; that the Shire,
with its implicit labor system, is "half-way"
between the Elven paradises and the Isengard/Mordor
wastelands; that Magic, as opposed to
Enchantment, is just an earlier expression of
the will to power -- though Curry does not
follow through and equate Fëanor with Sauron.
It's a very rich subject indeed, and could there
have been room for more consideration of the
role of Craft (not Enchantment) in Tolkien's
opposition to Industrialism? for a review of
Tolkien's own love-affair with his car, as
comically expressed in Mr Bliss? for the
intersection between Tolkien's ideology and
other 20th century critics and authors (Max
Weber does make a last-minute unattributed
cameo)?
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
1, 2008
Curry notes how Tolkien’s fond memories of his
childhood at bucolic Sarehole Mill inform his
love for nature over industry. Curiously, in a
2005 presentation in Birmingham, Dimitra Fimi
explained how that mill was itself a notable
relic of the Industrial Revolution. This isn’t
to say that Tolkien was unaware of such
contradictions and elisions in his fiction. In
Letter #154, for instance, he writes that
“Gondor … clearly has many industries though
these are hardly alluded to”.
As for the subject of “craft”, there are some
good comments by Tolkien on that topic in his
recently published essay on Smith of Wootton
Major.
Inklings - Colin Duriez
Comments by squire, March 25,
2007
Duriez is an expert on this topic, and his essay
is clear, informative and straightforward. The
comments on the Inklings' interest in the
problems of narrative, myth, and Christianity
are very good, and the portraits of the members
and their literary contributions are concise and
interesting. However, although Tolkien hardly
missed an Inklings meeting, this article misses
Tolkien. That is, there is no focus specifically
on J. R. R. Tolkien and the impact of the
Inklings on his life and work.
I don't think that is too much to expect in this
Tolkien Encyclopedia. I don't insist on the
inclusion of the apocryphal tale of the
mysterious voice from the back saying, as
Tolkien began to read another chapter, "not more
***** elves!" But Duriez's take on the club's
atmospherics is unfailingly upbeat and
objective, more so for instance than in
Carpenter's Biography. It might have been
worth while to have compressed the other
members' biographies in favor of more attention
to their varying interpersonal dynamics with
Tolkien.
Likewise in the matter of influence, there are
no specific examples using Tolkien's words or
texts to explain Lewis's comment that Tolkien "owe[s]
a good deal to the hard-hitting criticism of the
circle" or for Duriez's statement that Tolkien's
letters credit the "valuable and much-needed
encouragement" he received from his friends. Yet
both the Letters and The History of
the Lord of the Rings subseries of HoME
provide several illuminating episodes on this
crucial subject, I think.
Although Duriez's thorough 'Further Reading'
list has many books on the Inklings which
doubtless give Tolkien his due, it is telling
that there is only one scholarly source there
that explicitly treats the question of literary
influence on Tolkien, and that is an unpublished
thesis.
As well, there are some annoying infelicities of
style that show a missing editorial hand. The
See also restricts itself almost entirely to
the Inklings' biographical articles, plus an
unfortunate reference to a "Notion Club Papers"
article, which does not exist, the subject being
covered in "Sauron Defeated".
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
1, 2008
Diana Pavlac Glyer’s “unpublished thesis” from
1993 has been expanded and recently published as
The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R.
Tolkien as Writers in Community, which also
includes a biographical and bibliographical
appendix by David Bratman, “The Inklings: Their
Lives and Works”.
Duriez lists only The Hobbit and The
Lord of the Rings among the
works-in-progress that Tolkien read to the
Inklings, but there were others: for instance,
Warren Lewis mentions enjoying a version of the
Númenórean catastrophe.
The See also list should be expanded to
include at least “T.C.B.S.” and “Kolbítar”, both
mentioned by Duriez in his text.
Ireland – Don N. Anger
Comments by Jason Fisher, April 24, 2007
For
an entry
on all of Ireland's relation to Tolkien
except its mythology, Anger does a
nice job with a limited word count. He
finds a place for all the relevant
facts, and offers some valuable and
interesting satellite points (e.g.,
Tolkien’s painting “Summer in Kerry”,
and Ireland as the Isle of Íverin in the
“Lost Tales” are particularly notable),
and some mention of the elves in the
Celtic tradition. He also doffs his
chapeau to Tom Shippey and Verlyn
Flieger (though he missed Marjorie
Burns), the scholars who have made the
most study of Celtic influences in
Tolkien’s writing. And he doesn’t forget
to mention the poem “Imram” and The
Notion Club Papers, in which that
poem found a second home. He might have
added the detail that some of the
characters in NCP actually voyage
to Ireland. But there’s not a lot more I
could think to ask for in this solid
entry.
The
'Further Reading' section is generally
very good, though I question the value
of including Lin Carter, and I might
have added Carpenter’s The Inklings
to it. In the See also list, “Report
on the Excavation …” omits
“Gloucestershire” from the full name of
the entry and "Celtic Mythology" should
be "Mythology, Celtic". Also, “Joyce,
James (1882 – 1941)” should have been
included, and probably “Lewis, C.S.
(1898 – 1963)” , though his Irish
heritage was arguably of much less
significance than Joyce’s.
Italian Language - Roberto Arduini
Comments by squire, January 28,
2007
This article should be "Italy and the Italian
Language", as far as I can tell. Arduini seems
to have discovered all the connections Tolkien
had to Italian; the result is so scanty that he
has added a lot of (interesting) anecdotes about
Tolkien's relation to Italy and Italian
literature.
Anecdotes they remain. I guess I expected, from
the inclusion of the article in the first place,
some kind of linguistic or philological analysis
that could relate the Italian language to
Tolkien's professional work as a professor of
early English. I'm not sure I expected anything
about Italian's influence on his invented
languages, though I wouldn't put that past
Tolkien.
Italy: Reception of Tolkien - Roberto Arduini
Comments by squire, January 28,
2007
This is another example of a "twin" article, by
the same author, on two topics so intertwined
that they could have been one. This one is more
frustrating than the "Italian Language" entry,
because it introduces so many fascinating facts
without following through. Arudini assumes his
readers will understand what he means by saying
the 1970 Italian translation of The Lord of
the Rings was hijacked by "right wing"
publishers, but I don't! His final comments that
this right-wing influence is still predominant
among Tolkien fandom in Italy is adequately
sourced for Italian speakers but maddeningly
unclear for the Encyclopedia's English-speaking
readers.
Likewise, he skips over the Italian "reception"
of Tolkien between the time of the first
translation and the forming of the first Tolkien
society twenty years later. Was it because
Italian readers were put off by the insertion of
unpopular politics by the translator?
Finally, Arduini is a valuable contributor to
this Encyclopedia, but his occasionally shaky
English prose could easily have been polished by
the editors.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, May 20, 2007
I agree with
squire: this article leaves much tantalizingly
undeveloped. Why does Arduini specify that the
first translator of LotR, Vicky Alliata
di Villafranca, was aristocratic? How are the
early translations by Alliata and Quirino
Principe more or less faithful to Tolkien’s
intentions? And is Arduini’s quote from
Francesco Saba Sardi’s translator’s note the to
Il Silmarillion, that he “trusted to his
hears”, a mistake by Sardi, by Arduini, or an
intentional pun?
Comments by squire, October 9,
2007
I just noticed, thanks to Jason Fisher's recent
review, that David D. Oberhelman's article on
"Marxist Readings of Tolkien" refers to a 1985
article by Roger Griffin (in English!), which
seems to be about the Italian neofascist
movement's ideological attraction to Tolkien.
What a shame that Arduini (or the editors)
missed referring to it in this article.
‘Iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde –
Scott Kleinman
Comments by Jason Fisher,
April 27, 2007
In contrast
to the related essay “MS Bodley 34: A
Re-collation of a Collation” by Anders
Stenström, I think Kleinman gets too
bogged down in the minutiae of his
subject. He spends essentially his
entire two columns recapitulating nearly
all of the material in d’Ardenne and
Tolkien’s short (three-page) note. I’m
not so sure Kleinman could have done
otherwise, though; the topic is so
abstruse that to do much less might have
left readers even more confused
about the point of the note than they
may be with this amount of detail.
Still, perhaps just a bit less
summarizing of the minutest points of
the argument and more assessment of its
overall significance in the scholarly
debates of its time would have been in
order.
What I find
really interesting is this detail:
d’Ardenne and Tolkien first posit
rþ?len as the correct reading of the
mysterious key word in MS. Bodley 34,
and this is the spelling Kleinman
reports. But then they immediately
change their reading – without
explanation – to rw?len (p. 169),
with w replacing
þ!
Kleinman fails to note this. They repeat
the second reading two more times (p.
170), and this is also the reading they
give in “MS Bodley 34: A Re-collation of
a Collation” published the next year, as
Stenström reports in his article in the
Encyclopedia – so I take it to be their
correct, intended reading. I really
don’t know enough about paleography
myself to do more than suggest this
might all be due to the
similarity of
þ
and w in manuscript,
but I’m certainly curious about Tolkien
and d'Ardenne's two divergent readings
of the traditional “‘Iþþlen’ in
Sawles Warde”!
The
'Further Reading' is very good,
including some of the sources d’Ardenne
and Tolkien themselves cited in their
note as well as two or three others. In
the See also,
“MS Bodley
34: A Re-collation of a Collation”
should certainly have been included.
Also, “d’Ardenne, S.R.T.O.” should be
“d’Ardenne, S.R.T.O. (1899 – 1986)”,
“Middle English Vocabulary” should be “Middle
English Vocabulary, A (1922)” – and
once again, we have a reference to the
nonexistent “Middle English" article.
Comments by N.E. Brigand,
July 9, 2007
For this non-linguist reader, Kleinman’s
entry is pretty confusing.
Unfortunately, explaining why requires
me to summarize the article that S.R.T.O.
d’Ardenne and Tolkien published in 1947:
There are three surviving
manuscripts of a Middle English text
called Sawles Warde. In just
one of these copies, there appears a
word of unknown meaning, which
modern editors rendered as iþþlen
until d’Ardenne and Tolkien came
along. The mystery word was
actually written by some later
Middle English reader above the main
text at the place where the copyist
omitted another word. Tolkien and
d’Ardenne identify the missing word
as felen / fele
(“feel”) because that’s how the text
reads in the other two manuscripts.
They also point out that the
substitution doesn’t read iþþlen
anyway, but is probably a misprint
for riwlen (“rule”). Because
that word doesn’t quite make sense,
d’Ardenne and Tolkien identify
another error in this manuscript:
hit (“it”) where the other two
copies of Sawles Warde have
wit (“wit”). The copyist of
this manuscript was careless, but
Tolkien and d’Ardenne feel that the
author must share some of the blame,
because he wrote a confusing
allegory.
So, having read d’Ardenne and Tolkien’s
article, I now can see why Kleinman
claims that it shows "how philological
techniques for reconstructing word
meanings and manuscript relationships
led Tolkien to speculate about the
literary qualities of medieval texts and
the way readers might have responded to
them." However, three difficulties make
it difficult to follow the explanation
that supports this claim.
-
The first problem is that Kleinman,
after providing the Middle English
passage, errs in his transcription
of d’Ardenne and Tolkien’s
translation, because he omits an
important character (a caret mark:
^) that they use as a placeholder to
indicate the location of the missing
word iþþlen in the text. The
character is missing again when
Kleinman writes, as a key to the
translated passage, “(indicates the
untranslatable iþþlen)”. So
encyclopedia readers don’t know
what indicates the missing word
or where it falls in the modern
English translation, unless they
know Middle English well enough to
guess what the words mahen
and hare mean (“can” and
“their”).
-
The second problem is that Kleinman
sets up the meaning of iþþlen
as the study’s key question, then
never resolves it. After claiming
that d’Ardenne and Tolkien’s reject
riwlen as a possibility for
being “inappropriate to the
context”, Kleinman turns to other
matters. Actually the 1947 article
does allow that the corrector
probably intended riwlen, but
goes on to say that that word
however doesn’t fit the original
author’s meaning.
-
The third problem is that there is
no context for the quality of
d’Ardenne and Tolkien’s work. As
presented by Kleinman, it seems that
they resolved cruces in the disputed
manuscript simply by relying on two
other manuscripts of the same text
(where they find felen/fele
for iþþlen and wit for
hit). I would like Kleinman
to have indicated why no one
previously arrived at what looks now
like an obvious solution.