Palantíri
- Jason FisherComments by
squire, December 18, 2006
A rather disorganized essay. Many of the
basic "facts" about the palantiíri are
here, but in no particularly logical or
hierarchical order. Information from the
Unfinished Tales essay imperceptibly blends
into a recounting of the part the stones play in
The Lord of the Rings, yet the two
sources are quite separate, stylistically and
authoritatively.
The palantíri are a classical fantasy device
in LotR; in UT they become almost
technological in their specifically defined
modes of operation. An account of their
mythological forbears and their birthing in the
History of the Lord of the Rings might
have been in order in this Encyclopedia entry. I
would like to have learned whatever the experts
have concluded were the roots of Tolkien's
particular twist on the "crystal ball" of
fortune-teller lore.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
16, 2007
“Some might argue their role was as important
as that of the Silmarils, though more subtle and
less dramatic.” Fisher concludes his
introductory paragraph with this suggestion,
which he presumably intends to support with the
rest of his article.
Unfortunately, though Fisher goes on
carefully to explain the fictional history and
imagined properties of Tolkien’s seeing-stones,
with information derived from LotR,
The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales,
and The Road Goes Ever On (the last work
provides a good linguistic note), the comparison
sits uneasily. This is partly because Fisher
never defines his terms – are the Silmarils and
palantíri being compared in the role of
artifacts within the story, or plot devices, or
significant symbols? – and partly because
Fisher’s article is too constrained by a
“Middle-earth studies” approach that doesn’t
allow for the questions I just raised, leaving
it just a superior entry in the manner of
Foster’s Guide.
Paradise
– Matthew Dickerson
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January 16, 2007
Dickerson makes
a useful distinction between a lost Edenic
paradise and a heavenly paradise to come (Milton
is never named, however) but makes no mention of
medieval traditions that connect these ideas;
two examples known to Tolkien should have been
mentioned.
First, there is
the geography described by Dante, in which the
original earthly paradise sits atop the mountain
of Purgatory; from there souls rise to heaven, a
situation that clearly parallels the fate in
Tolkien’s mythology of mortal souls, who as
Dickerson notes pass to the halls of Mandos in Valinor before leaving the world.
Second, there
is the landscape of Pearl, in which the
narrator glimpses heaven from an unnamed land;
as Shippey has noted, this may represent the
earthly paradise (see The Road to
Middle-earth, 2003 ed., pp. 180 and
218-219). By ignoring this reference, Dickerson
also misses Shippey’s suggestion that Lothlórien
may represent a glimpse of Paradise in LotR.
Dickerson might
additionally mention Cuivienen, the original
lost Eden of the elves, as well as Tolkien’s
vagueness about the first land of his Men. On
the other hand, Dickerson handles what material
he does present on Valinor fairly well –
although his assertion that Lórien is one of the
two “most holy places” in Valinor is not
supported by the text, as far as I know – and he
also includes some discussion of Paradise as
expressed in Smith of Wootton Major and
Leaf by Niggle.
I do wish he’d
cited one or more of the four other authors
listed in his bibliography.
Parodies -
David Bratman
Comments by squire, January 3,
2007
This is a difficult topic since parodies
generally exist below the radar of traditional
bibliography. Bratman has accumulated and
reviewed a noble number of references, both in
book form and on the even more ephemeral
internet. A bibliography of websites and
publishers is sadly missing.
The article follows a more or less straight
line, reviewing the suspects in chronological
and format order. His terminology seems inexact:
"serious pastiche" seems to become "comic
pastiche" at one point, and "satire", "lampoon",
and "parody" are interchanged with
thesaurus-like ease ("Ai! A Thesaurus!"). His
discussion of just why Tolkien's literary style
is "resistant to comic parody" is tantalizingly
unclear; he seems dangerously close to
suggesting that Tolkien's prose is already a
parody of its medieval and pulp-fiction sources!
One almost wishes for more humor in the
article itself: a clever parody of Encyclopedia
prose style would seem to have been within the
topic's scope. Bratman seems not to have found
particularly funny any of the parodies of
Tolkien that he has so diligently unearthed. His
conclusion, that "serious scholars" as well as
"casual readers" are split between those who
find Tolkien parodies funny and those who don't,
seems curiously out of place unless it is
self-referential.
Pearl: Edition by E.V. Gordon –
Patricia Tubbs
Comments by Jason Fisher, April 24, 2007
Really a
terrific essay. I had thought the topic,
frankly, to be of only satellite
importance to Tolkien studies, but Tubbs
takes what little there is and makes
more of it than one might have thought
possible. I found her concluding
paragraph to be particularly persuasive!
The essay is packed with details
throughout, all of them useful and
interesting (to me, anyway), and Tubbs
even comments on the value of the
edition in the context of the profession
of Middle English studies – a
contextualization all too often missing
from entries of this type.
One thing I
found interesting was Tubbs’s
observation that the edition was “the
first in thirty-two years”. That long
delay was obviously due to the edition’s
multiple gestations, but what’s
interesting to me is that, if Gordon and
Tolkien had been able to publish it soon
after they began it (say by 1926), their
new edition would have come only about
five years after the last (and which
edition was that?). So, what led Gordon
and Tolkien to think a new edition was
needed at the time they began
theirs? Or was it not needed, but
prompted solely by the success of Sir
Gawain?
One
typographical error I noted in the text:
stroÞemen should be stroþemen;
it looks as though an upper-case
thorn was substituted for the
lower-case during page layout. The
Further Reading is excellent. A few
corrigenda for the See Also. For
“Gordon, E.V.”, read “Gordon, E.V. (1896
– 1938)”; for “Middle English
Vocabulary”, read “Middle English
Vocabulary, A (1922)”; for “Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and
Sir Orfeo: Edited by Christopher
Tolkien”, read “Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo,
Edited by Christopher Tolkien”; for “Wanderer”,
read “Wanderer, The”.
Penance - Michael
D. C. Drout
Comments by squire, May 2,
2007
Drout strikes a fine balance here between
Catholic doctrine and literary theme. After
establishing his terms (penance is not about
punishment and suffering but rather the
transformation of alienation into joy when
reconciled with God after sinning), he picks
three rather arbitrary examples of the
"penitential motif" from Tolkien's fiction. His
explication of each is crystal clear and quite
satisfying.
Satisfying, but limited. The examples he
gives don't really meet the condition he sets
for them at the end: that the "underlying
penitential motifs" are one of the reasons for
the strong emotional reaction Tolkien arouses in
his readers. Leaf by Niggle's
penance scene is certainly central to that short
story; but Boromir's repentance for attacking
Frodo, or the return of the Elves to Valinor at
the end of the War of the Jewels, seem hardly
large enough moments in The Lord of the Rings
or The Silmarillion to help explain these
books' popularity.
Yet Drout is surely right that LotR,
at least, is shot through at a satisfactorily
deep level with penance. For better examples,
I'd suggest that Aragorn's life's labor to
"repair Isildur's fault"; the Elves' confession
that making Rings of Power was an error;
Faramir's misguided, almost suicidal effort to
appease his father for the death of Boromir;
even Gollum's struggle to redeem himself through
service to Frodo, are all more comprehensive
examples that show the power of Drout's thesis.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, July 9, 2007
I don’t agree with squire that the theme of
penance need underlie a large section of
narrative in order to have a powerful emotional
effect. The examples he suggests of Aragorn
mending Isildur’s error, and the Elves repenting
the creation of the Rings, seem to me less
moving than Boromir’s death, and I like how
Drout has identified the penitential structure
of contrition, satisfaction, confession and
absolution that supports that scene.
Another example of penance in LotR,
less powerful but strikingly in line with the
motifs Drout outlines, is Pippin’s confession
after stealing the palantír, followed by
Gandalf’s forgiveness.
Peoples of Middle-earth -
David Bratman
Comments by squire, May 25,
2007
The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME XII)
is a bit of a dustbin, containing the LotR
Appendices material, and all the fragmentary
papers left over after eleven volumes of The
History of Middle-earth had told the full
story of The Silmarillion and The Lord
of the Rings. Bratman limits himself to
summing up the contents of this volume, which he
does well, as always. But he barely
comments on the articles or the volume itself,
either as a work of compilation or as the last
of its series. It seems easy to guess that no
other criticism has been specifically directed
at this volume either, but as there is no
'Further Reading' list, we cannot be sure. The
See also list could be much more complete,
too.
This is the final volume of The History of
Middle-earth. There is perhaps something to
be said here about how Christopher Tolkien
functioned as his father's executror/editor at
the end of his task in 1996, compared to when he
began, with the Silmarillion in 1973-77.
One of Bratman's best points is that the
choicest bits of Tolkien's late writings, that
might properly have belonged in this last
volume, were scavenged early on for The
Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales --
leaving Peoples bringing up the rear
twenty years later with rather scanty
highlights.
It might have been worth reviewing the
question of why the LotR Appendices
(begun in the 1940s during LotR's
writing, but completed in the early 1950s for
publication, after the late 1940s
Silmarillion revisions that are covered in
HoME X & XI) were separated from the four
History of the Lord of the Rings volumes
(VI-IX) that they properly belong to from a
LotR reader's point of view. Attentive
readers have discovered that some material
excerpted in Unfinished Tales reappears
in Peoples, complete; at the time of
editing UT, it seems CT had a different
perception of what rated publication.
Also of interest is the appearance of
Pengoloð in writings from the 1950s when the
Silmarillion was essentially finished, showing
that Tolkien was still holding in his mind his
old framing device of that Elvish scholar
compiling the Quenta Silmarillion for
transmission to later readers. And the last
pieces mentioned, conspicuously called
"Unfinished Tales", are the barely-begun
"sequel" to The Lord of the Rings, and
the tale of the first return of the Numenóreans
to Middle-earth, and should have gotten at least
some contextual commentary.
Phial -
Jason Fisher
Comments by squire, April 12, 2007
For all its length,
this article barely touches on the core
issue - what is the meaning and the power of
Galadriel's phial - before veering away
again into less profitable speculations on
the origins of the word or its occurrence in
other literature. The key paragraph on the
various critical interpretations that the
phial has received is too short, too vague,
and too unattributed, to satisfy.
Fisher's examples of
interpretations ask more questions than they
answer. One wonders what the relationship of
the container to the contents is; why the
phial gives off light when it does; and why
the phial as a totem is compared to the Ring
when its power is most useful against the
darkness of Morgul or Shelob, rather than
Sauron. The core relationship of the phial,
between Water and Light, is central to Frodo
and Sam's survival of their passage to Mount
Doom, but where else in the legendarium is
that particular relationship explicated?
Fisher's references to
other authors' uses of "phial" or earlier
versions of the word are impressive in their
erudition - though he can only hint, rather
than show, that Tolkien was aware of them. I
would like to have learned what the
relationship is between "phial" and "vial"
(as suggested by Malory's "vyolle") in terms
of why Tolkien chose to use the less common
spelling; Fisher approaches this question
with his note on the Victorian fairy-tale
revival of "phial", but does not pursue it.
Over all, the coyness
of his expression ("It seems reasonably
likely", "I will close with a last
reference", "it may be amusing to
speculate", etc.) does not flatter his
arguments. The 'Further Reading' list is
intriguing; the See also is, so rarely,
overly broad. How the articles on
"Carolingians" or "Shakespeare" might
advance a reader's understanding of the
issues surrounding Galadriel's phial is
quite unclear.
Comments by N.E. Brigand,
January 3, 2008
A Google search reveals that Shakespeare did
use the word “phial” in at least Richard
II and Sonnet 6, though Fisher doesn’t
mention this. The See also reference
to “Carolingians” is presumably due to
Fisher’s discussion of Charlemagne and
Roland.
There is one memorable analysis of Tolkien’s
phial that Fisher never mentions, perhaps
deliberately. Brenda Partridge, in “No Sex
Please—We’re Hobbits”, feels that the phial,
as used by the hobbits against Shelob,
“represents a phallus more potent than their
swords” and calls it a “superhuman, symbolic
male organ” (p. 189-190 of J.R.R.
Tolkien: This Far Land). To that end,
she makes much of Tolkien’s phrasing in
Frodo’s encounter with Shelob: “Frodo’s hand
wavered, and slowly the Phial drooped.”
Philately -
Jeff Sypeck
Comments
by squire, May 26, 2007
I have to say, I'm
bowled over by the very concept of this
article. Sypeck has conscientiously
collected every instance of postal stamps
that relate in some way to J. R. R. Tolkien,
and pasted them down in his album, neatly
and in order.
First, stamps as they
appear in Tolkien's fiction: the anomalous
postal service of the Shire in The Lord
of the Rings (although strictly
speaking, stamps are not mentioned!). Next,
real-life postage stamps with Tolkien as
their subject, in order of issue. Then,
imaginary stamps made up by, first, Tolkien
(in the Father Christmas letters) and later,
by fans (and the Finnish region of Karelia).
It all climaxes in a satisfyingly circular
way with the magnificent collision of two
mighty Fandoms: the revelation of
ShirePost.com, a massive fan-fiction-type
creation entirely about the anomalous postal
service of the Shire!
Is there any connection
between all these bits of Tolkienian
philately? Is there any meaning to it all?
None that Sypeck offers, but we have to
accept that that can hardly matter to those
who love both stamps and Tolkien.
Philo-Semitism -
Michael Coren
Comments by N. E. Brigand, December 5, 2006
Michael Coren's article
on "Philo-Semitism" is poor and could be
entirely cut, as all of its points are
better made in three other entries. Coren is
vague and includes no internal citation and
no bibliography. He doesn't even address the
concept of philo-semitism, which wikipedia
defines as "an interest in or respect for
the Jewish people, and the historical
significance of Jewish culture" (a subject
that receives better treatment in the entry
for "Judaism"), instead devoting the entire
article to a weak defense against
unspecified charges of anti-Semitism (a
subject that is handled better in the
entries on "German Race Laws" and "Nazi
Party").
Two introductory
paragraphs give only general and unsupported
statements that anti-Semitism was "far from
uncommon" in mid-20th Century England, that
some writers of the time felt a "poignant
ambivalence" (whatever that is) toward Jews,
and that Tolkien's writing is not
anti-Semitic. Here is what Coren writes to
defend Tolkien from charges of
anti-Semitism:
- Although Tolkien
said in a radio interview "that the Dwarves
perhaps demonstrated certain Jewish
qualities" (that's Coren -- there is no
direct quotation of Tolkien or anyone else
in the article), since Tolkien's Dwarves
"were brave, loyal, tenacious, and tough",
Tolkien could only have meant the comparison
to be complimentary. No mention of the easy
misreading of Tolkien's intent as comment on
the stereotype of Jewish greed. No mention
of Tolkien's observation that the Dwarves
were like Jews in that they were a wandering
people, often living as exiles in foreign
cultures.
- Tolkien's
"conservative Catholicism" is assumed by
some (who?) to imply anti-Semitism, but
"This reveals a misunderstanding of
conservative Catholicism and of
anti-Semitism". No further explanation.
- Tolkien "exhibited
implicit support" for the Nationalists in
the Spanish Civil War (no specifics of
Tolkien's support -- see Letters)
might imply anti-Semitism, but this was
because of the Loyalist anti-Catholicism and
didn't indicate a support for fascism and
anyway, "anti-Semitism was largely
irrelevant within the Spanish equation".
- Tolkien was opposed
to the Nazis before even some British
leftist writers like Wells and Shaw, who
"took far longer to publicly condemn Nazism
than did Tolkien". No information about
Tolkien's supposed "public" condemnation.
- Asked by the
potential German publisher of The Hobbit
if he was Aryan, Tolkien replied with
regret that he wasn't Jewish, that "the
company would never be allowed to publish
him", and that Germans were perverting "the
genuine Nordic spirit". Coren fails to note
that this letter was the version not sent to
the publisher (it is believed that they got
a letter in which he refused to declare his
racial background), that the letter says
nothing about withholding The Hobbit
from the publisher (though that was the de
facto result of the letter that was sent),
and that Tolkien didn't use the word
"Nordic", which he disliked.
- Tolkien's friendship
with C.S. Lewis soured because of Lewis's
marriage to Joy Davidman, and some (who?)
have attributed this to her being a convert
from Judaism; rather it was her off-putting
brashness: "Edith Tolkien certainly found
her a difficult woman". Coren fails to note
Davidman's status as divorcee, the fact that
Tolkien learned about the marriage
secondhand, and the fact that Carpenter's
biography says that Edith and Joy became
friends when both were in the hospital at
the same time.
Pilgrimage -
Jared Lobdell
Comments by squire, June 11,
2007
After the
first two sentences you can ignore the rest
of this article. But then they don't make
much sense either, except to suggest that
despite Gandalf's identity as the "Grey
Pilgrim", pilgrimage has little to do with
The Lord of the Rings.
This is erudition gone
mad. It will tell you nothing about the
theme of pilgrimage either in Tolkien's
fiction or in his scholarship; and I doubt
it will tell you much about any other
manifestation of pilgrimage in English
literature either. Time after time, with
Chaucer, Lydgate, Langland, Bunyan, Fenimore
Cooper and the Gawain poet, Lobdell lays
down the groundwork for some point to be
learned from each new author that he
produces out of his bag of references. At
that moment, he immediately moves on to the
next one, without actually saying anything
about either pilgrimage or Tolkien.
For an example taken
from Lobdell's concluding paragraph, I would
be pleased if anyone would help me
understand how Tolkien's commentary on the
hunt in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
where he notes the use of the word "quest"
for the hounds' pursuit of three species of
beasts, and then suggests the beasts are
symbols for the three ages of Man, has
anything to do with pilgrimage.
Like the article, the provision of
meaningful 'Further Reading' and See also
lists also seems to have been left as an
exercise for the reader.
Comments by N.E. Brigand,
January 3, 2008
Two further oddities in Lobdell’s article
should be mentioned. First, Lobdell gives a
modern English translation of the 17th
Century (modern) English of John Bunyan, but
not of the 15th Century Middle English of
John Lydgate. Second, Lobdell claims that
only in a passing comment in Farmer Giles
of Ham does Tolkien ever mention in his
fiction “the one indubitable quest of
pastoral England that has endured to the
present day, the hunt”. But what of Oromë,
or of the Wood-elves pursuing the deer in
The Hobbit, or even of Aragorn, Legolas
and Gimli’s pursuit of the orcs across the
plains of Rohan?
Pippin -
Janet Brennan Croft
Comments by
squire, November 22, 2006
A fine article. Quickly reviews Pippin's role
in the plot of The Lord of the Rings,
along with some biographical notes from the
Appendices; then gives an accurate but
(necessarily) confusing summary of his invention
from The History of Middle-earth. The
second half of the article -- how refreshing to
see a well-proportioned word count -- discusses
Pippin critically as a literary character and
the uses Tolkien makes of him in the story.
The only thing I miss is a little treatment
of the Tooks and their importance to the
Bagginses in The Hobbit and their impact
on Shire culture in LotR. The irony of
the inexperienced young Pippin in contrast to
his eminent family plays strongly at the
beginning and end of LotR. But these are
quibbles.
Plants -
Patrick Curry
Comments by N.E. Brigand, May 27, 2007
Curry opens
with a Tolkien quote that also appears in the
first paragraph of Matthew Dickerson’s entry on
“Trees”, concerning their “maltreatment” by
humankind. How were the two articles, both of
which appear under “Themes and Thematic
Elements” in the encyclopedia’s subject index,
meant to differ? Though Curry quickly explains
that trees “were not the sole objects of
Tolkien’s attention and affection” for plants,
he still devotes one of his six paragraphs to
the mallorn tree.
The rest of his
article barely extends beyond mere description
of Tolkien’s invented niphredil,
lebrethon, simbelmynë, elanor
and athelas. Curry notes a possible
real-world source for the elanor, but has
nothing to say on the literary purpose and
effect of Tolkien’s plants.
With a tight
word count, Curry can be forgiven for claiming
that mallorn trees are found only in
Lothlórien (plus one in the Shire), which is
true in The Lord of the Rings though
emended in Unfinished Tales to include
their presence in Númenor and Aman. But he’s
wrong to say that Númenóreans brought athelas
to Middle-earth “at the beginning of the Second
Age”: 700 years would pass before they could
manage that journey.
Plato - Gergely
Nagy
Comments by
squire, June 6, 2007
This is a bit of a
grab-bag. Nagy knows his Plato, certainly more
than I do at least, and shows impressive
resonances between Plato's and Tolkien's
understanding of the power of literary
mythmaking. Unfortunately, Nagy admits this does
not constitute "influence", which weakens the
effect somewhat. Still, Plato is Plato and as
with similar articles on Dante and Shakespeare,
it was interesting and valuable enough for me at
least just to get a feeling for how Tolkien
resonated with one of the philosophical and
literary keynotes of Western culture.
Nagy
also offers some more distinct examples of
Platonic and Neoplatonic images and metaphors
that might relate to Tolkien's fiction, such as
a ring of invisibility and the idea of light as
the prime creative force; but even as he does so
he seems to concede that these are commonplace
archetypes, even if Plato did do them first.
Comments by Jason
Fisher, June 6, 2007
Another door Nagy could have opened,
admitting a narrow shaft of Platonic
light into his discussion, is the fact
that C.S. Lewis was a dyed in the wool
Neoplatonist. It’s quite likely he would
have brought Plato (among other
Classical sources) into the circle of
the Inklings on a fairly regular basis.
Additionally, the 'Further Reading'
looks good at a glance but could have
gone still further. I could suggest
adding (and this is just a sampling of
what a quick search turned up, and in
addition to references to Plato in other
full-length studies of Tolkien – e.g.,
Flieger's Splintered Light):
Christopher, Joe R. “The Memory of a
Sunken Land: Numenor as Atlantis.”
Appendix U, June, 6-9.
Joeckel, Samuel T. “Search of Narnia
on a Platonic Map of Progressive
Cognition.” Mythlore 22.1
(83) (1997): 8-11.
Rose, Mary Carman. “The Christian
Platonism of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R.
Tolkien, and Charles Williams.”
Neoplatonism and Christian Thought.
Ed. Dominic J. O'Meara. Norfolk:
International Society for
Neoplatonic Studies, 1981. 203-12.
The See also could have profited by
“Caves and Mines”, “Sauron Defeated”,
and (to judge from the Encyclopedia’s
Index) “Music in Middle-earth”.
Poems by Tolkien in Other Languages - Tom
Shippey
Comments by squire, February 16, 2007
It's very hard not to praise this article, as it
displays Shippey's usual mastery of his subject.
What's not to praise is the lamentable
fragmentation of the "Poems by Tolkien" topic
into six separate articles, and the inevitable
confusion and overlap that results.
In the case of this article, the sub-topic seems
pretty distinct, being Tolkien's poetry in
languages other than English... and Elvish (why?
is Elvish not "another language"?). Still,
Tolkien's creativity is not so easily
compartmentalized, and Shippey runs up against
this fact in his discussion of The Lost Road
and The Notion Club Papers, where poems
in Old English appear side by side with their
equivalents in Modern English - the former are
the subject of this article, and the latter are
not, yet they were written at the same time on
the same subject by Tolkien and surely deserve
consideration in the same article. The Modern
English versions are covered in "Poems by
Tolkien: The History of Middle-earth".
Encyclopedia politics aside, Shippey takes as
his theme the urge of poetic philologists like
Tolkien to write "asterisk-poems", poems that
represent imagined ancestors in Old or Middle
English of present day English poems, in
imitation of the plausible "asterisk-words" that
philologists invent to give ancestry to a
modern-day descendant vocabulary. He does not,
unfortunately, offer an opinion on the artistic
quality of the results.
A side note: Shippey, as should be expected,
comes through with a gloss on Tolkien's poem
Bagme Bloma, which was written in an
imagined Gothic, that exposes the poverty of
understanding of the same verse by the
contributor of the "Gothic Language" article.
It is utterly tantalizing that in closing,
Shippey tells us there is purportedly a poem by
Tolkien in Old Norse, the "New Lay of the
Volsungs", that has not yet been published!
Comments by Jason Fisher,
February 27, 2007
It is utterly tantalizing that in
closing, Shippey tells us there is
purportedly a poem by Tolkien in Old
Norse, the "New Lay of the Volsungs",
that has not yet been published!
There is, for instance, a
well-known gap in the Codex Regius
manuscript of the Poetic Edda, where
some eight pages of the Sigurðr
cycle are missing. But Tolkien wrote
two poems to fill
this gap, in Old Norse, in the
appropriate meter, which are called,
we believe, Sigurðarkvida
hin nyja and
Guðrunarkviða hin nyja.
Unfortunately these remain
unprinted. (emphasis mine)
It's a little strange to see these
differences in the details between two
Shippey essays.
I found it surprising that Shippey,
despite a complete-sounding inventory
("eleven poems by Tolkien, and five
fragments, survive ..."), failed to
mention the complete (if short) Old
English poem at the end of Tolkien's
Obituary for Henry Bradley (q.v. in
the Encyclopedia).
Poems by Tolkien: The Adventures of Tom
Bombadil - Tom Shippey
Comments by squire, February 16, 2007
In the saga of the six "Poems by Tolkien..."
entries, things start to get a little gnarly
here. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is
the only book by Tolkien that is purely an
anthology of his poetry, and it is covered
exactly by two different Encyclopedia articles,
one under the theme of his poems, and one under the
theme of his published books. Needless to say,
it ought to have been possible to avoid this
total overlap of Encyclopedia topics, and David Bratman's
outraged rant is in this case certainly
justified.
That said, Shippey wins the contest, with
this article giving a more nuanced and informed
commentary on the sixteen poems of the
anthology. His attention to the origins and
publication history of each poem tend to
outweigh his summary and evaluation of the
verse. Tolkien himself was both vain and
defensive about the quality of his poetry, and
his sensitivity about publishing a volume of
light verse is documented in Letters. It
would have been worth while, I think, for
Shippey to have offered a bit more critical
opinion on the quality and art of the poems.
I was annoyed that Shippey neglects to
mention that Errantry and Song of
Eärendil have more in common than their
meter, being the beginning and end of a
remarkable poetic evolution from the Nursery to
the Hall of Fire, but I was slightly consoled by
the complete cross-reference at the end of his
article. There he tells us where in the
collected Tolkieniana additional information may
be found about Errantry and the other
poems of complex ancestry.
Would this be the wrong place to note that Paul Kocher gives in his book a complete commentary
on the poems of Adventures, that
inexplicably does not make it into Shippey's 'Further Reading' list?
As a final note for the Department of
Redundancy Department, many of the poems in
Adventures were re-worked by Tolkien from
earlier versions published in obscure university
journals. Those earlier versions are, surprise!
covered by Shippey not here but in his companion
article, "Poems by Tolkien: Uncollected" --
except for those that are covered by another
contributor in the "Poems by Tolkien: The
History of Middle-earth."
Why?
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
3, 2008
“The truth is”, Shippey writes, “that Tolkien
had written all these poems” before undertaking
The Lord of the Rings, but this is not
quite true of “Bombadil Goes Boating”, whose
twenty-line antecedent from the mid-1930s, as
printed on pp. 115-16 of The Return of the
Shadow, is very far from the finished poem,
which is eight times as long. And it is
certainly not true of “Cat”, which was written
in 1956, as Shippey himself notes.
Poems by Tolkien: The
History of Middle-earth - Reno E. Lauro
Comments by squire, February 17, 2007
This is kind of a portmanteau article. The
12-volume HoME covers Tolkien's life-long
creative output in prose and poetry, and there
can be no real thematic unity to any article
that attempts to review all the poems in it. And
in fact the 3-1/2 volume HoME subseries
The History of the Lord of the Rings,
with its extensive discussions of the early
drafts of the poems that appear in LotR,
is not included here. This article really just
covers HoME Vols. 1 & 2, a small part of
3, all of 4 & 5, and the second half of 9. A
better title might have been "Poems by Tolkien:
The Silmarillion and Númenórean Legends".
But Lauro's coverage and commentary on the
poems that did stay in his brief is very good,
and in fact the first section, covering the
poems in the Book of Lost Tales volumes,
is the best part, suffering only from an
overemphasis on dates and biographical
background. After that things deteriorate rather
quickly, swirling into the encyclopedic
whirlpool.
Volume 3 of HoME, The Lays of Beleriand,
contains nothing but poetic renderings of the
Silmarillion stories, and Lauro struggles to
avoid the trap that befell the doubled-up
contributors on The Adventures of Tom
Bombadil. He succeeds, by covering only
the shorter poems from that volume which were in
fact ignored in the Encyclopedia article on
Lays. Ironically,
neither contributor directs their readers to the
companion article to get a complete picture of
the contents of that uniquely poetic HoME
volume, although Lauro at least assures us that
such an article exists.
What's most obviously missing overall is some
kind of expansion and commentary on his
meaningful opening sentence: on how to a
remarkable degree the Silmarillion mythos was
originally conceived of as deeply intertwined
cycles of poetry and prose, but was published in
the end with almost no poetry in it at all. Such
a discussion would have to treat with the
artistic quality and tone of Tolkien's
Silmarillion poems as they relate to the
author's life-long literary growth and his
ever-changing outlook on what the Silmarillion
was meant to be. This discussion, which is
actually fundamental to a consideration of all
his lyric and narrative poetry, is absent not
just here but in all the articles on this topic.
A fascinating and relevant article on this
problem is unaccountably omitted from the
'Further Reading' list: Nagy's "The Adapted Text:
The Lost Poetry of Beleriand" in Tolkien
Studies I. Other missing references that
come quickly to mind are Wynne and Hofstetter's "Three Elvish Verse
Modes" and Christopher's "Tolkien's Lyric Poetry", both in
Tolkien's Legendarium, that indispensable
commentary on HoME.
Poems by Tolkien: The
Hobbit - Verlyn Flieger
Comments by squire, February 17, 2007
Flieger strikes a perfect balance between a
laundry list of the poems in The Hobbit,
a review of what they have in common (a sense of
orality and easy rhyming for reading aloud to
children), and an in-depth analysis of each
one's poetic and artistic qualities and its
contribution to the story.
There is a proper effort to relate his poesy
here with that of his larger works; Flieger
addresses the lack of one of his favorite modes,
alliterative verse, and how "The Road Goes Ever
On and On" became the link between Bilbo's and
Frodo's stories. She does not, however, comment
on the "Tom Bombadil" moment of The Hobbit: the "Tra Lally!" verses of the Elves of
Rivendell, which make their subsequent
connection to the Elven folk of LotR and
The Silmarillion rather difficult to believe.
I also think the Dwarves' "Far Over the
Misty Mountains Cold" and "The Wind Was On the
Withered Heath" are superior poems to the rest,
and should be compared to the Lay of Leithian
and Gimli's song in Moria as studies of how when
Tolkien was telling effective and atmospheric
stories using rhymed verses, the distinction
between Elvish and Dwarvish sensibility seems to
disappear.
A lack of references and 'Further Reading' is
noticeable and regrettable, as Flieger usually
provides these.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
3, 2008
Flieger writes of “Far over the misty mountains
cold”, the dwarves’ lament for the lost treasure
of Erebor, that readers “may suppose this to be
a song passed from generation to generation for
centuries”. Except, of course, that it has only
been 120 years, less than half the normal dwarf
lifespan, since the mountain was sacked, an
event that some of these dwarves personally
witnessed.
Poems by Tolkien:
The Lord of the Rings - Verlyn Flieger
Comments by squire, February 18, 2007
What a tour de force, for Flieger to
survey and comment upon each of the 75-odd poems
embedded in the prose epic The Lord of the
Rings. Her comments vary (almost randomly)
from a mere record of meter or subject matter,
to an informed review of sources or an incisive
take on how the poem serves the story. As
always, Flieger's seemingly casual insights,
such as the glimpse of Shakespeare in Bilbo or
the comment about Gollum qua poet, are
alone worth the price of reading this very long
article.
However, there seems to be a sense of her
treading water in places. For instance, the
repeated emphasis on the numeric count or
differing authorship of the poems in each book,
that doesn't seem to go anywhere; the throwing
up of hands when looking for something to say,
for instance on "Through
Rohan over fen and field", "Gondor! Gondor!"
or "In Dwimordene"; the noticeably livelier tone
when discussing the Anglo-Saxon inspired
alliterative verses (reflecting Flieger's
academic expertise), and the sudden and slightly
trite ending, are all signs of over-hasty
composition, perhaps.
I'm utterly baffled by her take on "Over the
LAND there LIES a long SHAdow"
('having neither rhyme nor meter, without
alliteration...free verse best defines the
form...the least traditional and most modern').
I've always thought this darkly mystic prophecy
was strongly alliterative with a loose but
distinct four-beat rhythm. And she inexplicably
ignores the quote from the Elvish Lay of
Leithian in Gimli's "The world was young",
wrongly treating it as an entirely "Dwarvish"
composition. I wonder if she omitted Gilraen's
short linnod by choice or oversight,
since it is found in the Appendices.
Overall, there is the question of priorities.
This article is twice as long as the
Encyclopedia article on The Lord of the Rings
itself. Although that is really an argument for
a much longer and more comprehensive article on
LotR than was provided, still it is
possible to imagine the review here of the
individual verses being shortened or grouped by
class. That would have allowed more space at the
end for a discussion of the big picture: why and
how Tolkien has so many poems in this book
compared to his other works, his own opinion of
them, their effect on the reader, their quality
when considered independently as poems, and
whether their insertion in some places but
omission in others follows any plan on the
author's part.
Flieger gives a good 'Further Reading' list,
although only one (Russom) seems to be an actual
critical consideration of the poems themselves.
Has Tolkien's verse really received so little
attention from his students?
Poems by Tolkien:
Uncollected - Tom Shippey
Comments by squire, February 18, 2007
A reader interested in Tolkien's poetry who has
gotten through the preceding five articles may
well feel some fatigue at facing this last one,
a self-described scrabble through the
"remainders". Shippey does his best, of course,
but really there is no subject here. For one
thing, the poems differ wildly in date, subject,
theme and mode. Then we find that "Uncollected"
does not mean "unpublished" -- many of the poems
described seem to appear somewhere in the vast
corpus of Tolkien scholarship; the rest of
course do remain almost inaccessible in various
archives. Shippey does not discuss why some but
not others of these lesser ephemera of Tolkien's
have been rescued from oblivion, nor whether
they should have been.
I found his reference to "Once Upon a Time", a
third Bombadil poem I had never heard of,
intriguing. Unfortunately he does not cite which
anthology carries it; and a quick pageflip to
the "Tom Bombadil" and "Goldberry" articles got
me nowhere, since neither one mentions or cites
any of the Bombadil poems at all. *scratches
head*
There is, for one last time, quite a bit of
overlap, either literally or thematically, with
poems that have been discussed in the other
"Poems by Tolkien..." articles. Yet some are
still missing. Had Shippey skipped his paragraph
on Imram, which is covered (with a
different emphasis, to be sure) in "Poems by
Tolkien: HoME", he might have found room
for "Wilt thou learn the lore that was long
secret", the alliterative fragment from "The
Istari" in Unfinished Tales. He might at
least have offered the reader a link to the
article on "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth
Beorhthelm's Son", which is as much a poem by
Tolkien as anything else treated in the "Poems
by..." articles, but which for some reason is
never mentioned therein; likewise with
"Mythopoeia", another Tolkien poem which gets
its own article and so is seemingly erased from
consideration or even cross-reference here.
Shippey includes "Rhyme Schemes and Meter" in
his See also list. That article never
made it to publication, perhaps being replaced
by "Alliteration" (which itself refers to
an
also non-existent "Rhyme Schemes and
Alliteration"!).
A final note on the Encyclopedia's treatment of
Tolkien's poems: I believe the entire subject
of "Poems by Tolkien" was originally assigned to
one contributor, who proved unequal to the task.
In a last-minute rush the topic was divided up
into six articles and handed out to the three
valiant contributors I've just reviewed. While
the idea of considering the poems of The
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in
dedicated articles makes sense and worked out in
the end, the other four sub-topics lent
themselves to a lot of overlap and confusion. I
think a
thematic (epic, lyric, and comic) or topical (Silmarillion
legends, derived from Tolkien's professional
work, and personal interests) organization might
have allowed contributors to cover more
coherently the lifelong interweavings and
recyclings of Tolkien's fertile but economical
poetic imagination.
P.S. As per my comment on the relative length of
the articles on LotR and LotR's
poems (1:2), it is worth noting that the
Encyclopedia allots about 23,000 words to 13
articles on Tolkien's poems, and 30,000 words to
23 articles on Tolkien's prose fiction. (This
counts HoME 3 and Homecoming... as
poetry.) Whether this was an appropriate
division of resources I leave to better judges
of the worth of Tolkien's writings than I.
Comments by squire, July 23, 2007
It was recently brought to my attention that
Tolkien left a small body of comic contemporary
verse relating to the Inklings, which gets no
mention in this article (or any of the others
except a brief quote in "Williams, Charles"),
though it has actually seen publication or
gotten critical attention. I am mostly referring
to the satirical tribute "A Closed Letter
to...Charles Williams", kind of an evil twin to
"Mythopoeia", which is printed in full in
Carpenter's The Inklings. Also, there are
extant examples of Tolkien's silly but clever
clerihews, as discussed in a 1992 article by Joe
Christopher. It is a downright shame that these
did not rate a mention in this article, even if
they are not "literary" in their aspiration.
If we are allowed to peek at the new Hammond &
Scull collation, we will find in "Poetry by J.
R. R. Tolkien" (Vol. I), about 40 "unpublished"
poems listed. Shippey's commission here, of
course, was "published but uncollected"; but
perhaps some acknowledgement should have been
made that there remain quite a few Tolkien
poems, of whatever quality, for some future
scholar to anthologize.
Poland: Reception
of Tolkien - Marcin Morawski
Comments by squire, June 18, 2007
I would say this is worth it for the
bibliography alone, a fascinating list of
Tolkien scholarship, mostly in Polish, of
course. But the flavor is authentic, and gives a
good idea of the range of subjects that
Tolkienists in Poland have been writing about,
since at least 1971.
Much of the article itself is, as so often, a
recital of the history of the various
translations and an identification of the
leading fan organizations and activities; what's
interesting there is the mention of conventions
and festivals as well as the usual sites and 'zines.
The paragraph on Tolkien scholarship is not
always found in the "Reception of..." series,
and is very welcome.
I'm probably repeating myself, but I wish
Morawski had attempted to capture the "national
spirit" by which the Poles take their Tolkien.
He makes it clear that Tolkien has been embraced
in Poland. Why? Is there any intersection with
Polish folk traditions in Tolkien's adapted
mythology, or do his linguistic constructions
translate well into Slavic idiom? Why was Poland
the first Communist bloc (not "block", by the
way) country to translate Tolkien, and what were
the censor's objections? And who, if known, is
the readership of Tolkien's translations; and
what, if any, Polish tradition of Tolkien-style
epic fantasy fiction has arisen in his wake, as
in English-speaking countries?
Politics - Hal G. P. Colebatch
Comments by squire, February 14, 2007
Buried in this rambling thing are the bones of a
good article on Politics in Tolkien. Part of the
problem is that it is unclear if the topic is
Tolkien's politics as personally held by him, or
the politics that he devised for his imaginative
fiction. Another part of the problem is the lack
of some kind of coherent theory of what
"politics" is, against which to judge Tolkien's
versions of it; Colebatch tries to distinguish
between "power politics" within a society, and
the "metapolitics" of competing ideologies, but
it's unclear if this is the best way to analyze
the problem of Sauron, for instance.
It is very annoying in a serious critical
essay about Tolkien to have to read about how
Peter Jackson did it in the New Line films; and
as for Darth Vader's unexpected (and predictably
banal) appearance, the less said the better.
I'll conclude with my broken record of complaint
that Colebatch gives only his own critical take
on the subject, and then cites only his own book
(which at least explains Lord Vader's cameo).
Popular
Music - Anthony Burdge and Jessica Burke
Comments by squire, April 1, 2007
Heavy going. Burdge and Burke's style is
weighted down with cliché, vapid sentimentality,
inexact critical vocabulary, and infelicitous if
not actually ungrammatical expression.
They do, however, give an extensive and broad
review of musical compositions influenced by or
based on Tolkien's works, from the 1960s to the
present. I'm unfamiliar with most of it, so I
feel I learned quite a lot. On the other hand, their
characterization of Howard Shore's "Lord of the
Rings Symphony" has enough factual errors (e.g., it is
an originally arranged suite from the movie
scores, not "excerpts"; it is played by local
symphonies worldwide, not the "Howard Shore
Symphony") that I must take the rest of their
specifics with a little salt.
The critical characterizations here seem mostly
to be Burdge and Burke's, or undocumented
hearsay, and they are almost uniformly (and
breathily) positive. The only exceptions seem to
be Howard Shore's film score symphony, and
Leonard Nimoy's performance of "The Ballad of
Bilbo Baggins". I would like to have to read
more incisive and penetrating criticism of all
this music, from the perspective of
popular culture rather than fan culture; or is
Tolkien-inspired music only meaningful to
Tolkien fans?
This conundrum, also raised by Lobdell in his
article "Criticism of Tolkien, Twentieth
Century", raises the still-unanswered question
of whether Tolkien's place in modern culture
is that of a widely accessible work of art, or
of a pop fantasy series with a cult of
slightly-crazed fans (and fan-musicians, in this
case). This question seems not to have occurred
at all to Burdge and Burke.
Although the 'Further Reading' does give two
valuable-looking websites on Tolkien-inspired
music, a discography would have been even more
useful.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
3, 2008
The article is incorrectly titled: it should be
“Music Inspired by Tolkien”, since some of the
music here is “popular” neither in reception nor
in genre, as for example Johan de Meij’s
Symphony No. 1 “The Lord of the Rings”
(twice incorrectly referred to as “the de Meij
Symphony”, though de Meij has written two
others) and the Hobbit Overture of Carey
Blyton (who was, incidentally, not a “her”).
Notably absent here is Aulis Sallinen, one of
the most esteemed of living composers, whose
Hobbit ballet is mentioned in the article on
“Finland: Reception of Tolkien”. (And neither
article refers, etc.) Speaking of Sallinen, one
of his major works is an opera based on the
Kalevala, which raises the question of how
music inspired by Tolkien’s work compares to
other adaptations. As noted in “The Road
Goes Ever On” article, Donald Swann made an
opera from C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra;
likewise, Tolkien’s admirer, W.H. Auden, was the
inspiration for Leonard Bernstein’s second
symphony, sparked by Auden’s long alliterative
poem, The Age of Anxiety.
When Burdge and Burke parenthetically cite
Letter #131, they would have done better to use
their own words or to quote Tolkien, rather than
to closely paraphrase him, as when his “other
minds and hands” becomes “different hands and
minds”. They suggest that Leonard Nimoy is only
“perhaps” best known for playing Spock. And
Peter Jackson’s films, we are told,
“reacquainted” Tolkien fans with Christopher Lee
– are Tolkien’s readers known particularly as
fans of Hammer horror?
Possessiveness – David Oberhelman
Comments by Jason Fisher,
January 24, 2008
I like Oberhelman’s use of
“The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun”, an overlooked
work if ever there were one. He might also have
turned to Tolkien’s poem “The Hoard”
(incorporated into the sphere of Middle-earth
with The Adventures of Tom Bombadil from
an earlier version, “Iúmonna Gold Galdre
Bewunden”, published in 1923).
Overall, the discussion is
adequate – at its best where it approaches the
thornier matters of how the desires to create
and to possess can intersect. It is
weaker in all but ignoring temptation, the
handmaiden of possessiveness. Oberhelman touches
on Sméagol but omits Déagol. And going further,
he might have made good antipodal use of the
examples of Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel, for
instance. Returning to The Silmarillion,
where Oberhelman enumerates the obvious cases,
he misses an important one: the Númenóreans’
possessiveness of life and their temptation by
Sauron. And outside of Middle-earth, Smith of
Wootton Major provides another instructive
example.
In general, then, I would
have preferred Oberhelman to venture beyond the
usual suspects; however, his allotted space may
have made this difficult or impossible. Like the
body, the 'Further Reading' feels a little
thinner than usual for Oberhelman’s entries.
Power in Tolkien's Works - Robert Eaglestone
Comments by squire, April 13,
2007
Eaglestone seems to be overwhelmed by the
problem of what power is in a body of work as
morally sophisticated as Tolkien's. After
briefly considering the powers of rank, talent,
and character, he quickly grasps at the power of
knowledge, as explicated by Foucault and related
to Tolkien originally by Chance, and he spends
the rest of the article developing that idea at
tedious length with scant or simplistic
references to The Lord of the Rings.
Meanwhile, the clumsily formed rhetorical
question in his opening paragraph ("apart from
making one invisible, what does the Ring
actually do to convey its terrible power?") is
never answered, yet as one of the central
metaphors of the book, the nature of the Rings
of Power should surely have been one of
Eaglestone's primary topics.
It goes without saying that an article with the
phrase "in Tolkien's works" in its title should
not limit itself to The Lord of the Rings.
One of the most interesting "arcs" in Tolkien's
legendarium, that he recognized only in
retrospect when LotR had been crafted on
the foundation of the Silmarillion, is
the theme that Evil, taking form as the power to
compel, dominate and possess, cannot be combated
by Good using equivalent power without that Good
becoming Evil as a result. So we see the Valar
successfully fight Sauron in the Third Age with
messengers (the Istari) who forswear power as a
weapon, in contrast to their violent
interventions or disastrous abstentions against
Morgoth in the First Age. Other instances of
power defeating itself can be found in The
Hobbit and even in Farmer Giles of Ham.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, January
3, 2008
One of many possible approaches to Tolkien’s use
of power that Eaglestone leaves unexamined is
Tom Shippey's attempt, in J.R.R. Tolkien:
Author of the Century (p. 115), to show how
Tolkien connects to modern and medieval ideas
about power. Shippey contrasts Lord Acton’s
1887 maxim, “Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely”, to medieval
views, as given in an Old English proverb that
he translates as “A man does as he is when he
can do what he wants”.
Prehistory: "Cavemen" - John Walsh
Comments by squire, December 4, 2006
It's very hard to tell what this article is
about. The first section reviews the "cavemen"
that Tolkien added to his Father Christmas
stories, then peters out with an timid
suggestion that this somehow connects to his
Middle-earth legends.
The second half of the
article discusses how England lacks a robust
native mythology, hence has no mythological
"pre-history" the way that Greece and Rome do.
The prose meanders, slows, and fizzles to a stop
at this point, with some confusing statements
about hobbits (who are not the "focus" of
Tolkien's First Age pre-history) and a muddling
of the concepts of history, legend and
pre-history.
The copy-editing is very sloppy
at points, too. All in all, an uninformative and
unjustified waste of a column of an Encyclopedia
page.
Comments by N.E. Brigand, April 2, 2007
This is a
strange article, from the divided title on.
Walsh attempts to encompass the caveman
paintings of the Father Christmas Letters,
the founding legends of Rome, early English
writings, and the creation of the world as
related in the Ainulindalë under the
heading “prehistory”. That term is not normally
applied to periods for which there are written
records; but in any case, the Middle English
Ancrene Wisse simply doesn’t belong here.
Walsh does note
that, because Tolkien’s stories relate events
dating to before the creation of the universe,
there is arguably no true prehistory in his
imagined world. But Walsh fails to note how
Tolkien left deliberate gaps in his history and
how he struggled in his “Silmarillion”
manuscripts with a presentation that would
impart a legendary aspect to his stories of the
eldest days. Tolkien meant to cast doubt on
their status as what Walsh calls “a cohesive and
complete chronicle of history for
Middle-earth”.
Tolkien’s late
attempts to radically rework the shape of his
world also could have been mentioned.
Finally, when
Tolkien was asked if the Fell Beast of the
Witch-king, described in LotR as a
“creature from an older world”, was a
pterodactyl, he replied in Letter #211 with
reference to “older geological eras” and “the
new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of
the ‘Prehistoric’”.
Pride - Jonathan Evans
Comments by squire, June 10, 2007
Evans does a basically sound job with a large
subject. As he says in his opening, Pride is the
first of the deadly sins, and is also one of the
major themes of Tolkien's fiction. The structure
here is clear and sensible: first the classical,
biblical and medieval readings; then Tolkien's
scholarship on the the Germanic variety of the
subject , The Battle of Maldon's 'ofermod'
and Beowulf's 'oferhyda'; and finally
the instances of fatal pride that destroy the
various anti-heroes in Tolkien's legendarium,
specifically Thorin, Fëanor, Ar-Pharazôn,
Boromir and Denethor, and finally Túrin.
Had
he devoted a little less room to reviewing the
philosophical sources, perhaps Evans might have
made a clearer distinction between Tolkien's
presentation of pride (honest self-regard) and
"overweening pride" (excessive self-regard).
There is a hint of this when he notes that
"Germanic heroic literature valued boasts of
prowess in battle..." but he does not follow it
up. If the medieval Christians purported to
value actual humility as Jesus taught them to,
the pagan Germans would not stoop to that, and I
think that fascinated Tolkien when he began to
write his heroic mythology.
The resulting tension is far more interesting
than that between Christianity's sinners and
saints: when is pride too much pride? Isn't
Aragorn proud when he declares his titles to
Éomer? Isn't Beren proud when he claims
Lúthien's love and boasts of his ancestors'
deeds? Isn't Bilbo proud when he defeats the
spiders or whips the dwarves into shape during
the escape from the Wood-elves? What saves
these heroes from their pride? And as for poor
Túrin: the drama in his character is that
occasionally he does master his pride, or at
least tempers it with pity, so that it is never
clear to what degree his tragic life is his own
fault, or the fault of the curse of Morgoth that
lies on him.
Some critical analysis along these lines,
perhaps, might have supplemented Evans's
well-presented series of character
plot-summaries that illustrate the most
egregious cases of fatal pride in Tolkien's
fiction. Evans does provide a valuable 'Further
Reading' list, and a really comprehensive See also reference.
Prophecy
– Julaire Andelin
Comments by Jason Fisher,
August 31, 2007
This short
entry fails to offer any real discussion
or analysis, and instead opts for a mere
“term paper” approach to the subject.
Story elements are recapitulated with
little or no comment, and no firm
conclusions or connections are drawn.
What is missing is an exploration of the
relationship between prophecy and fate /
providence, with perhaps a nod to its
antipodal force of chance / luck. Why
and how does Tolkien employ prophecy as
a narrative element? What is the
importance of Mandos’s function as the
Oracle of Valinor? And what about other
mythological counterparts on which
Tolkien may have drawn? Andelin mentions
only (and only parenthetically, as it
were) Merlin and the Oracle at Delphi,
the weakest of examples. What about the
tradition of the Sybil? What about
Cassandra? What about the Seeress of the
Völuspá – called a völva or
vala in Old Norse, and surely
prefiguring the specialized
foreknowledge of Tolkien’s own Valar?
What about Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters
on whose similar prophecy Glorfindel’s
is based (where wyrd refers,
again, to Fate)? I wish the entry been
less a summary of story points, and more
a theoretical and analytical
investigation.
Unfortunately, Andelin also confuses the
noun (“prophecy”) with the verb
(“prophesy”) at several points in the
essay. And isn’t there a fine
distinction to be drawn between prophecy
– foretelling the future through
apparently divine inspiration –
and a mere prediction, foreboding, or
hunch, as astute as these may be? I
would like to have seen Andelin probe
the differences further instead of
jumbling them all together. Or failing
that, to limit herself to a discussion
of bona fide prophecy, omitting
those lesser examples. And why does
Andelin call the Dagor Dagorath prophecy
a “special instance”? What makes it any
more “special” than Mandos’s prophecy on
the exile of the Noldor?
Throughout,
nothing is said of any critical
scholarship on the subject. Isn’t there
any? Sadly, the 'Further Reading' points
only to Shippey’s Road to
Middle-earth. The See also
is not bad, but I would add “Dreams”,
“Fortune and Fate”, “Riddles”, “Valar”,
“Old Norse Literature” and “Greek Gods”
(this being the nearest the Encyclopedia
has to a more generalized entry on Greek
Mythology); But I’m not sure why
“Finland: Literary Sources” or “On
Fairy-Stories” is here.
Prose Style - Allan Turner
Comments by squire, March 11,
2007
First class. Turner hits all the right notes on
this subject which is a particular favorite of
mine.
I especially appreciated the inclusion of Letter
171, where Tolkien shows just how aware he was
of the accusations that LotR was in too
'archaic' a style. Turner cites his own work,
but hardly showcases it, since he also very
properly cites Drout, Rosebury and Nagy not to
mention the inevitable Shippey. Turner's work's
absence from every Tolkien bibliography I've
collected just goes to show that a good 'Further
Reading' list remains probably the single most
valuable aspect of a first class Encyclopedia
article.
Pseudonym: Bagpuize, K. - Lisa L. Spangenberg
Comments by N.E. Brigand, March 18, 2007
In one of the
encyclopedia’s shortest entries (158 words)
Spangenberg squeezes in much good information
about her actual subject, Tolkien’s poem,
“Progress in Bimble Town”, which he published
under the pseudonym. But why does this poem get
its own entry? And why under this title?
Spangenberg identifies the source of the name
“K. Bagpuize”, but doesn’t say why Tolkien chose
it, nor if his choice has any literary
connection to his study and creation of names in
his scholarship and fiction.
Publications,
Posthumous - David Bratman
Comments by squire, May 13, 2007
This is as fine a summary of the subject as one
could wish for, and Bratman sensibly reminds his
readers to look up any of the works mentioned
under their own articles for more information.
This advice only works some of the time, and
either Bratman or the editors should have
provided a comprehensive See also that would
direct one to the works as they are variously
titled in the Encyclopedia, or to the more
obscure pieces without articles like "Bilbo's
Last Song" or "Vinyar Tengwar" and the other
linguistic publications. One other relatively
inconsequential quirk: why is this article
included in the thematic category "Scholarship
by Tolkien: Medieval Literature"?
Bratman's
introduction nicely explains the phenomenon of
Tolkien's huge posthumous catalog. He credits
Christopher Tolkien for editing and publishing
the additional fictional material from the
legendarium. I wish there was a little more
similar information on just who has been behind
the scholarly, juvenile, and linguistic side of
this business - and why, when the readership
would seem to be even smaller than for the
additional material on Middle-earth. Who is
buying and reading all these books? How have
they been received critically, how have they
sold, and which are still in print? Has no
scholar of popular culture yet analyzed the
unstoppable "I'm not dead yet!" Tolkien
publishing industry from a marketing and
branding point of view?
Publishing
History - Douglas A. Anderson
Comments by squire, May 13, 2007
Anderson leads off with a fresh point of view,
based on his deep knowledge of the scope and
history of Tolkien's creative writing: that "the
most striking fact is how little he sought
publication." Interestingly, we are immediately
told of the numerous times Tolkien tried to get
a collection of his early poetry published: he
received three formal rejections in ten years.
During the same time he had many individual
poems included in anthologies. Now that may not
be the record of an ambitious or dedicated poet,
but it is news to me that Tolkien tried to
publish a full collection at all! And from what
I understand of Tolkien's sensitivity and
shyness, the fact that he tried three times is
indicative of the strength of his self-image as
a poet, that he had acquired in his
undergraduate days with the TCBS.
The later
part of Anderson' s narrative is more familiar
to me, and seems well balanced and thorough to
the time of Tolkien's death. An odd final
paragraph about his posthumous publications
mentions only The Silmarillion and
Unfinished Tales before chronicling the fate
of Tolkien's publisher, Allen & Unwin. Anderson
must have known that the article "Publications,
Posthumous" would pick up the thread at this
point, but he never mentions it or lists it in a
See also reference. In fact, there is no
See also at all, which should have comprehensively
listed such topics as all the Tolkien stories
and poems mentioned, the twin article "Textual
History: Emendations and Errors", "Manuscripts",
most of the "Life of" biographical pieces, and
even such mysteries as Anderson's own "Dagnall,
Susan" piece.
Anderson's final section, on the
complexities of the various editions of The
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, is
equally good though as mentioned it strangely
overlaps "Textual History..". I especially loved
the part where the U.S. copyright issues raised
in the early 1960s by the Ace Books pirate
edition were not settled in court until 1982.
There is a short but excellent 'Further Reading'
list.
One final comment: Anderson takes his brief
for "Publishing History" to mean Tolkien's
fiction only. But any reader of the Encyclopedia
becomes aware that the publishing history of
Tolkien's scholarship is interesting in its own
right, and is also entwined with his fiction
career. I wish Anderson had included that side
of Tolkien's life here. The follow-up article
"Publications, Posthumous" does so as a matter
of course.