Taniquetil - Jason Fisher

Comments by N.E. Brigand, April 3, 2007

In a solid article, Fisher describes the geography of Tolkien’s original holy mountain, gives a history of its appearance in Tolkien’s work, explains the meaning of its names, notes its real world analogues, and relates Tolkien’s own repetition of its imagery with lesser sacred pinnacles (though to Fisher’s list I would add the Silvertine, where Gandalf’s mission was “taken up” by “Authority” [Letter #156], and Halifirien, whose name is Old English for “holy mountain”).

Comments by squire, April 3, 2007

Fisher's fine analysis slackens in the last paragraph, with his comment about Taniquetil's "diminishing afterimages" in Middle-earth. While I agree that Taniquetil is the ur-mountain of Tolkien's legendarium, its afterimages that Tolkien envisioned again and again are complex and multidimensional. They should not be reduced to a quick list to round off a short essay -- especially a list that mixes up explicitly hallowed peaks (Mindolluin, Menaltarma), visually striking but not particularly sacred peaks (Mount Taras), and manmade towers (Elostirion, Barad-dur).

The relationship of towers to mountains in Tolkien's works is an entire essay in itself. Sticking for the moment to mountains, Taniquetil's symbolism as an intersection of earth and heaven, or mind and sight and hearing, can been seen in less obvious but more explicitly potent heights in The Lord of the Rings, such as Weathertop, Amon Hen and Amon Lhaw, and Zirak-zigil.

Fisher's perceptive comment about Barad-dûr with Sauron's all-seeing Eye is good. But in the world of the Silmarillion where Taniquetil and the Valar are more present in the story, we might think instead of Thangorodrim, where Húrin was made to sit in all-seeing witness to Morgoth's evil designs: an obvious burlesque of Taniquetil, where Manwe and Varda see and hear all the world's sufferings.

 

 Tavrobel (or Tathrobel) - Michael W. Perry

Comments by squire, January 31, 2007

This brief account of the Elvish settlement on Tol Eressea where the Lost Tales were composed seems to get in most of the basic facts, but suffers from a fairly casual style and organization.

Without claiming a complete knowledge of the early HoME volumes, I think at some point in Tolkien's ever-changing reconception of the frame-narrative of his mythology, Tavrobel becomes the home of the scholar Pengolod after the fall of Gondolin, and he is the one who writes the Elvish histories in the Golden Book, so that Eriol/Ælfwine becomes a translator, not a transcriber.

It could be made clearer what sequence of houses and villages Tolkien occupied during the 1916-17 period, so that the suggested parallels between his own lodgings where he wrote The Book of Lost Tales, and the House of a Hundred Chimneys where Eriol and/or Pengolod stayed, would make better sense.

I recently discovered that Hammond and Scull in Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator propose one of the houses that the Tolkiens actually stayed in, rather than the great house at Shugborough, as an inspiration for the House of a Hundred Chimneys.

Finally, it seems idle to speculate what Tolkien did or didn't notice about the parallel between the Irish monasteries and his fictional Tavrobel as places where ancient books lingered to be rediscovered ages later. He may well have intended the parallel to be picked up by his readers without his aid.

If, as Perry's bibliography suggests, only Flieger has commented on the meaning of Tavrobel and its relation to Tolkien's later device of the "Red Book of Westmarch" as the vehicle for the transmission of The Lord of the Rings, it just goes to show how much critical work is still to be done in reading and commenting on The Book of Lost Tales.

It's good that the re-use of the name Tavrobel in the later versions of the Túrin saga is noted, though space constraints seem to have limited any further explanation beyond Christopher Tolkien's speculative comment.

Comments by N.E. Brigand, January 5, 2008

Perry never mentions Tolkien’s poem, “An Evening in Tavrobel”, published in Leeds University Verse 1914–1924.  The poem is mentioned in the article on that collection and described in the entry, “Poems by Tolkien: Uncollected”, but none of the three articles refers to either of the others, and the index listing for “Tavrobel” leads only to this entry and that on “Great Haywood”.

 

T.C.B.S. (Tea Club and Barrovian Society) - John Garth

Comments by squire, March 28, 2007

Here is an excellent summary of the story of Tolkien's boyhood circle of artistic friends, given by the expert Tolkien biographer Garth. It is a very familiar story indeed to those who have read Garth's sources: his own book and Carpenter's biography. Garth carefully conveys the TCBS's own high estimation of itself, not his own.

It is perhaps too early to expect more in the context of Tolkien studies. Yet I am always put off by Tolkien's early poetry.  I shouldn't wonder that the first  idealistic achievements of his and his friends' youth, cut off too soon by the war, acquired an elegiac permanence in Tolkien's mind that transcended their worth, and so has been conveyed inevitably to his biographers. The death of a thousand TCBS's among the educated men of England and the other Powers in the Great War must have been a commonplace of that time. Yet what was their future anyway, after maturity extended its heavy hand? The geniuses that survived to create great works of art in later life, like Tolkien, were perhaps no rarer than in more peaceful times, and what they survived was not so much the War, as adulthood.

 

Technological Subcultures: Reception of Tolkien - Lisa L. Spangenberg

Comments by N.E. Brigand, April 2, 2007

This is a fascinating look at a world unknown to me.  Spangenberg explains how Tolkien’s work caught on with computer programmers (“hackers”) in the 1960s, she lists a number of examples of his influence in that realm, and she offers some useful advice regarding computer passwords.

I would like some clarification on the chronology of Tolkien’s effect on the likes of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, ARPANET, and the Perl scripting language; apart from her last paragraph (a catch-all on dormitories, asteroids, and a film-inspired prank), the only dates in Spangenberg’s history are the 1965 appearance of LotR in paperback and the “Great Worm” computer virus of 1988.

How has the Tolkien interest among hackers fed back into other Tolkiena?  Spangenberg includes a pointer to the “Gaming” entry in her See also list, but what about connections to other fan responses?  Since she writes that hackers were drawn to Tolkien particularly for his detailed subcreation and his artificial languages, has the computer subculture affected Tolkien fanfiction, art, “Middle-earth studies”, or scholarship of Tolkien’s languages?

Comments by squire, April 3, 2007

N. E. Brigand has touched on the most interesting aspect of this subject, which Spangenberg barely investigates: what is it about Tolkien and dweebs, nerds, wonks, geeks, and dorks? No one could be more anti-"technological" than Tolkien, yet his imaginary proto-medieval magical world captivated the obsessive, super-logical, highly analytical minds of computer programmers from the start.

Spangenberg has done some fine research here into some of the episodes that highlight this seemingly strange conjunction. But I wonder that  in some Cultural Studies field no one has yet embarked on a serious inquiry into the appeal of Middle-earth (and related cultic fantasy and sci-fi realms) to the so-called "technological subculture". For instance, are philologists (c. 1870-1950) and computer programmers (c. 1950-200?) similar personality types?

It would also be interesting to me to learn if any of Tolkien's works besides The Lord of the Rings has really had an impact on the computer guys. Spangenberg tries to connect Tolkien's term "Great Worm" (Glaurung from The Silmarillion) to the so-called "Great Worm" internet virus of 1988 - but I wonder if that might not come from Dune, instead?

 

Technology in Middle-earth - Shana Worthen

Comments by squire, February 27, 2007

Theology in The Lord of the Rings - Cath Filmer-Davies

Comments by Entwife Wandlimb, January 21, 2007

Tolkien, Christopher Reuel - Thomas Honegger

Comments by squire, December 11, 2006

A lovely, straightforward, biographical sketch. Clean, and relatively crisp. How refreshing to learn something of his earlier academic career, and to see the odd progress he made out of, and then back into, his father's literary shadow. One would always, somehow, like to know more about what it is to be Christopher Tolkien.

It is perhaps inevitable that Honegger should not offer any interpretation of C. Tolkien's life, beyond the obvious factor that CT himself was allowed to correct this article. CT is something of a lightning rod among Tolkien fans, because of his role as the eminence grise of the Tolkien Estate. His character has been both disparaged and defended by fans who do not know him. They discuss his personal life with the gossipy attention that movie stars receive in more mainstream popular subcultures.

All that may have no place in a critical Encyclopedia, I admit. But I could wish that Honegger had spent less time summarizing the contents of The History of Middle-earth, which is comprehensively covered elsewhere in this book, and spent more time commenting on the growth and development of CT's editorial style during his most productive years as his father's literary executor, 1973-1996. HoME is filled with little clues and first-person asides that give the attentive reader a most touching portrait of a sensitive, intelligent, extremely knowledgeable, hard-working, and perhaps rather conflicted man.

Tolkien's Legendarium, from which Honegger cites Douglas Anderson's "CT: A Bibliography", also has an important appreciation of CT by Rayner Unwin that I think Honegger might well have included in his reading list.

Comments by N.E. Brigand, April 2, 2007

This is a steady, clear article, though two of its four columns duplicate material appearing in the “Publications, Posthumous” and “History of Middle-earth: Overview” articles; I wish that space had been devoted to an expansion of Honegger’s fine but broad comments on the “unique combination of talents, scholarship, energy, and filial duty” that Christopher Tolkien brought to his role as editor of his father’s works.

There are a few small lapses:

• Honegger notes the absence of “Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings” from the second edition of A Tolkien Compass but not that it has reappeared, in fuller form, in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion. 

• It’s not correct to say that Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien has been “superseded” by J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, as the latter omits some artwork from the former. 

• The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays is notable not only for republishing “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” and “On Fairy-stories” (and the latter already was widely available) but also for the first appearances of the 1953 lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the essay on invented languages “A Secret Vice”. 

• A few references mentioned in Honegger’s text, like Pictures and Carpenter’s The Inklings, are missing from the bibliography, where I would also suggest the addition of “The Filial Duty of Christopher Tolkien”, a 1977 interview by William Cater. 

• The See also list could be beefed up with entries for the “Nomenclature” and Faith Tolkien, and stripped of the entry for “Life”, because there is no such article.

• There are a sprinkling of editing mistakes, like references to both The Book of Lost Tales, Part One and The Book of Lost Tales I in the same paragraph. 

 

Tolkien, Faith - Douglas A. Anderson

Comments by squire, June 23, 2007

There doesn't seem to be much reason for this entry. Faith Tolkien's intersection with her onetime father-in-law, who is the subject of this Encyclopedia, is restricted to the bust she sculpted of him, that evidently still graces the English Faculty Library at Oxford. That is a kind of footnote-like item that could have been inserted into the article about her husband, Christopher Tolkien. The rest of her biography, even the very complimentary paragraph on her later ecclesiastical sculpture work executed long after her marriage ended, is not really very relevant to any scholarship or critical assessment of J. R. R. Tolkien.

On a point of detail, however, the date of the separation varies in the articles about this couple: under "Tolkien, Christopher" it is 1963, here it is given as 1964.

 

Tolkien, Hilary (1894-1976) - Colin Duriez

Comments by squire, August 8, 2007

Duriez properly focuses on Hilary Tolkien's memories of his shared youth with JRRT, that seem to have contributed to a few episodes or settings in The Lord of the Rings. Other than that, there is little enough to be said about Hilary, but it is remarkable that he seems not to have gone to college, and was an enlisted man in the Great War.

In other words some kind of intellectual and hence social gap must have opened up between the brothers before they were well out of their youth, which Duriez ignores or takes for granted. His comment that the brothers kept in contact as adults "without too much difficulty" begs for some elaboration. I also suspect that Duriez has not listed all of his sources: Carpenter (the only citation) does not specifically mention the "wenches" insult, nor does he give Hilary's war service record.

Comments by N.E. Brigand, August 9, 2007

Duriez’s source for “wenches” is p. 21 of The Tolkien Family Album.

Readers of Tolkien’s letters may be surprised to read Duriez’s assertion that Tolkien and his brother were “able to keep in contact without too much difficulty” – that may be true, but there are no letters to Hilary in the collection, whose index lists only three references to Ronald’s younger brother: two references made late in life to their childhood, and a cryptic reference in 1947 to fans of the then-unpublished LotR: besides C.S. Lewis, the late Charles Williams, and Christopher Tolkien, these included “a solicitor, a doctor… an elderly army officer, an elementary school-mistress, an artist, and a farmer”.  Carpenter’s endnote to that passage indicates that only the first three people can be identified, as Owen Barfield, Humphrey Havard, and Warnie Lewis, respectively, though the artist might be Marjorie Incledon.  Yet as there is no other reference to Hilary Tolkien on that page, the indexer (Carpenter himself?) must have guessed that he was the farmer.

 

Tolkien, John (1917-2003) - Douglas A. Anderson

Comments by squire, June 1, 2007

This bare-bones curriculum vitae of Tolkien's oldest son tells us nothing about the man himself until the very end, where we hear of his affection for his father, from whom he also derived a "passion for ecumenism". This last would have been an interesting addition to the articles on "Christianity" and "Church of England", which focus on J. R. R. Tolkien's bitterness toward or dislike for the protestant denominations. In fact, so would the very fact that John Tolkien was a Catholic priest, which is not even mentioned in the "Catholicism, Roman" article.

I believe Fr. John officiated at his parents' funerals; and that Carpenter's biography mentions several other instances of how he and his father kept in touch, especially after Edith died. But along with what John's life tells us about his father, it would have been nice to get a little more sense of the man himself than this article is able to offer.

 

Tolkien (née Suffield), Mabel (1870-1904) - Colin Duriez

Comments by squire, April 19, 2007

A more thorough biographical treatment of Tolkien's mother couldn't be desired.

I would say, give us more on her influence on Tolkien, and less on details of her various homes - but Duriez, citing Tolkien's letters, probably gives us whatever there is on so indeterminate a subject.

Or does he? Where is the mention of Faramir's memory of his late mother "who died untimely, and was to him but a memory of loveliness in far days and of his first grief"? And Duriez passes on (though the "Suffield Family" article does not) Carpenter's speculation that The Hobbit's "Old Took and his three remarkable daughters" refers to Mabel and her two sisters. But any further speculation, such as why Tolkien does not write any mature mother characters of note, would probably be outside the scope of this article.

 

Tolkien, Michael (1920-84) - Douglas A. Anderson

Comments by squire, June 10, 2007

Anderson has assembled some remarkable sources to put together his portrait of J. R. R. Tolkien's second son. We get the bald facts of his education, war service, teaching career, and family, but beyond his obviously fond memories of his father's storytelling ability, there is no real evaluation of Michael's personality or talents.

Perhaps nothing more is possible, but I at least missed a note that one of Tolkien's most interesting letters, giving his fatherly advice on sex, marriage and the differences between men and women, was written to Michael. In any case, the first-person anecdotes of Michael's youthful contributions to Tolkien's legendarium are charming.

The 'Further Reading' list is missing Carpenter's Biography - a mundane but necessary source here. See also could be more thorough too: why no reference to "Mr. Bliss", "Hobbits", the articles on the other Tolkien siblings, "Father Christmas", etc.?

Comments by N.E. Brigand, August 15, 2007

Anderson writes that Michael Tolkien “defended aerodromes in the Battle of Britain, and later in France and Germany, but was invalided out of the Army.  He returned to Oxford in 1944…”.  Confused?  Scull and Hammond clarify: in 1941, Michael Tolkien transferred from the Army's anti-air artillery to the RAF, and up to 1944 was a rear-gunner in bombers “in which he saw action over France and Germany”. He was invalided out of the RAF in 1944 (i.e., well before the Royal Army saw action in Germany itself.) (Reader’s Guide, p. 1020, emphasis added).

 

Tolkien, Priscilla (1929-) - Douglas A. Anderson

Comments by squire, June 10, 2007

Perhaps because Priscilla Tolkien has taken it upon herself to speak more in public in her capacity as Tolkien's daughter, this article is able through ample quotation to give us some feeling for her personality: independent, sympathetic and perceptive. This is not inconsistent with her career as a social worker!

The only thing I missed here is some discussion of the legend that Éowyn's icy independence was inspired by Priscilla's urging her father to include some strong female characters in The Lord of the Rings. If I remember correctly, Ms. Tolkien has spent a lot of time denying that Éowyn is "modeled" on her, but I don't remember if the original story was ever verified.

It might or might not be relevant to this article to note that Ms. Tolkien has also gone on the record at Tolkien conferences as saying that the recent New Line films did not at all do justice to her father's books, at least from the point of view of someone like her who grew up with them and who had a strong sense of what her father valued about the story. As far as she is concerned, her father would not be pleased at all, at all, to see the famous films.

As with the other Tolkien family articles, Carpenter's Biography is strangely missing; but the See also here is particularly weak, listing only the 'Oxford' article.

 

Tolkien, Simon (1959-) - Douglas A. Anderson

Comments by squire, August 8, 2007

There's little enough to recommend this article: Simon Tolkien published his memories of his grandfather, and some highlights are given here. The matter of his conflict with his father Christopher Tolkien over the policies of the Tolkien Estate has received sensational if vague coverage, but all that is underplayed here, to put it mildly. The rest is window-dressing: with all respect to Mr. Tolkien, his curriculum vitae and recent second career as a writer of detective novels have nothing to do with the scope of this Encyclopedia.

The lack of a See also list perhaps unintentionally reflects this irrelevance, but why not add "Art and Illustrations by Tolkien", "Bournemouth", "Catholicism, Roman", "Estate", "Jackson, Peter", "Tolkien, Christopher Reuel", and "Tolkien, Faith"?

 

Tom Bombadil - Gene Hargrove

Comments by squire, February 26, 2007

This is infuriating. Although there is plenty of material here about Tom that is accurate, it is mixed in with an unseemly amount of ill-founded speculation, circular reasoning, repetition, and to top it off, clumsy writing.

Without wasting words on a complete plot summary, Hargrove could at least have started his reader out with some mention of Tom's role in the story of The Fellowship of the Ring, to give context to the rest of the article. Nor would it have been a bad idea to cover a bit of Tom's nature like his sing-song speech, and his semi-magical powers; a reference to the long and meaningful poem "Bombadil Goes A-Boating" would not be out of place, I suggest, in an article about Tom.

Hargrove focuses almost exclusively on the problem of Tom's identity. Although his treatment of this question is thorough, it unfortunately leads to the - I'll say absurd - theory that Tom is Aulë the Vala of smithcraft and fabrication (in disguise). This makes Goldberry Yavanna, by the way.

Without getting too far into the problems with this, I'll note that Hargrove's article has in contradiction to this theory both Tolkien's statement that Tom is meant to be an enigma (and Tolkien in his letters was usually glad to explain any keys to his story that were not apparent to his correspondents); and Hargrove's own earlier analysis that "Tom relates to the world through pure science and poetry rather than applied science and technology". Nor is it effective to defy Goldberry's clear identification as a water-spirit with the argument that "if Tom is not Tom" then Goldberry must not be Goldberry either, which must prove that...Tom is not Tom.

The conclusion meanders off into the wilds of The History of Middle-earth and is lost therein. The Further Reading egregiously cites two editions of Hargrove's Tom-as-Aulë theory. There is no See Also cross-reference.

Comments by N.E. Brigand, April 2, 2007

Hargrove’s entry is largely a reduction of his 2004 article, stripped of its inline sources.  This makes it harder for readers to check his facts:

• Hargrove explains, without citation, that Tolkien integrated Bombadil into Middle-earth by making just a few changes, writing: “for example, the feather in his hat was changed from peacock to swan-wing”.  Hargrove’s information here comes from Letter #240. This actually notes that Bombadil in LotR (his first Middle-earth appearance) has an unidentified blue feather; the swan’s feather only appears in the 1962 version of the poem, “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil”.

• Hargrove writes that the question “Who is Tom Bombadil?” is asked three times in LotR. It isn’t. 

• He turns to Grimm to explain the name “Forn”. Tolkien himself notes the word’s Scandinavian meaning in “Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings”. 

• He claims that Bombadil is “the only powerful being in Middle-earth not worried that touching the Ring will corrupt him”, but Sauron and Saruman also seem not to fear that result.

Hargrove shows some interesting similarities in Tolkien’s portrayal of Goldberry and Yavanna, which are too abbreviated here but clearer in Hargrove’s earlier essay. However, Tolkien might have used this common imagery for other purposes than to establish a shared identity. 

To Hargrove’s credit, one of the works in his bibliography, “What is Tom Bombadil?” by Steuard Jensen (whose name is misspelled) argues against Hargrove’s theory that Bombadil is Aulë.

 

Treason - Matthew Dickerson

Comments by squire, June 29, 2007

Dickerson's article is sound overall, but he attacks his topic with a shotgun, or as he puts it, "Treason, taken in the widest possible sense". I feel that treason should be defined more narrowly, along the lines of active betrayal of duty or faith, otherwise every act of villainy or even moral weakness in Tolkien's fiction becomes "treason".

So while I agree with Dickerson that Gorlim, Uldor, Maeglin, Mîm, and Gríma are guilty of treason, I feel that Denethor's case is more complex; he does not so much betray Minas Tirith as fail it. As for treason that is justifiable when held to the standard of a 'higher law,'  to Huan's case I wish Dickerson had added the more well-known example of Beregond, who is exonerated of treason by just such reasoning.

The best sections here are Dickerson's comparison of Maeglin's melodramatic betrayal of Gondolin in "The Book of Lost Tales II: The Fall of Gondolin", with the same scenario as presented in the drier The Silmarillion; and the observation that the instances of treason mentioned invariably turn out to be "instruments toward good" from a larger or more removed point of view.

 

Treason of Isengard, The – John F.G. Magoun

Comments by Jason Fisher, September 25, 2007

Fantastic! This is certainly one of the best of the History of Middle-earth entries, and for once, I am at a loss to find anything to complain about! Magoun covers the most important aspects of the contents of the book – differentiating between Tolkien the father and Tolkien the son when necessary. Even better, he summarizes the reception of the book and offers some examples of how it has been used, both successfully as well as unsuccessfully, by scholars. The 'Further Reading' is sensational. The See also may be overly broad; though all of the items in it appear to be relevant, at least in the main, this fact may not be readily apparent to the Encyclopedia’s readers.

 

Tree and Leaf - Matthew Dickerson

Comments by squire, August 8, 2007

This is very strange. Sometimes you get what you wish for, and...

Dickerson  takes a rare opportunity presented by the physical edition of Tree and Leaf, which (in its second edition) joins "On Fairy-stories", "Leaf by Niggle", and "Mythopoeia". He attempts an integrative summary of Tolkien's philosophy of subcreation as it applies to his own mythmaking aspirations. If one of the complaints about the Encyclopedia is that too many of the articles are too limited in scope, here is one that tries for more.

A couple of things get in the way. One, Dickerson is competing with existing articles on "On Fairy-stories" and "Mythopoeia". He both refers readers to those articles and attempts to summarize their arguments himself. Two, "Leaf by Niggle" has no separate article, and Dickerson writes as if it does. As a result, "Leaf by Niggle" gets no really thorough consideration in the Encyclopedia. Three, Dickerson seemingly twice gives us his "quick summary of the three pieces", once briefly in the third paragraph, and once again with slightly more detail in the fourth and fifth paragraphs (in the fourth, his transition from "Mythopoeia" to "On Fairy-stories" is not consistently highlighted). Surely he could have consolidated this part of his essay.

Most importantly, Dickerson attempts to show that all three works convey the same message -- despite their different genres (a qualification he spends too much time on). But equally important, I should think, would be some critical estimation of how these works' messages differ as well. For instance, "Leaf by Niggle" may be an allegory, but it is clear to readers that Niggle is a "mythmaker", i.e., like Tolkien? Or is he any artist whose reach exceeds his grasp? In other words, is "Leaf by Niggle" really just an autobiographical story that illustrates the arguments of "On Fairy-stories" and "Mythopoeia", as Dickerson maintains?

Dickerson is on solider ground in pointing out the similarities between the other two pieces, but I would have liked a little more investigation into Tolkien's understanding of the differences between "Myth" (treated in the poem) and "Fairy-story" (treated in the essay). Although he calls both "subcreations", did he really think they were the same thing with the same purpose, merely going by (I suppose) different names?

Dickerson's conclusion is pretty well done, though. There are some interesting tidbits I would like to know more about. What's this about the existence of "seven different versions" of "Mythopoeia" (no mention of this in its own article)? Why Tolkien did not think to include this poem in his edition of Tree and Leaf, while his son did 24 years later? Did either Tolkien write any kind of foreword or preface to Tree and Leaf that might have given us their angle on why this collection was published in the first place? (I know JRRT mentions the project in the published Letters.)

In fact, except for publication dates, Dickerson does not treat Tree and Leaf as a Tolkien book per se, but as a collection of previously written pieces (making its inclusion in the category of Tolkien's "Works of Literature" a little questionable). So mightn't this article have shed its nominal guise and just treated its subject under the Thematic title "Subcreation" or "Mythology"? And then "Leaf by Niggle" might have gotten its own article.

 

Treebeard - Matthew Dickerson

Comments by squire, April 14, 2007

Dickerson covers many of the most important points about Treebeard as a character: his symbolism as a spokesman for nature versus the forces of industrialism and utilitarianism; his essential neutrality in the "politics" of the War of the Ring; even his development as a character who was first envisioned as a hostile "giant". What is omitted is his gentility, his poeticism, his conservatism, and his amoral realpolitik once aroused.

The key factor here is the distinction between the Ents as a race, and Treebeard as an individual character, which Dickerson does not always seem to keep clear - at least in part because Tolkien does not do so either. It is too bad, though not entirely unexpected, that Dickerson's only 'Further Reading' source (besides Carpenter's Biography - ?) is his own and Jonathan Evans's article on Ents in an environmental context.

 

Trees - Matthew Dickerson

Comments by squire, April 15, 2007

Some parts of this article just sing, such as Dickerson's discussions of the Two Trees, Tolkien's self-identification with trees as seen in Leaf by Niggle and his Letters, and Shippey's thesis that Oaks and Birches are allegories for Lit. and Lang. in Tolkien's lifelong struggle to preserve a philological approach to studying English literature.

Other parts are less clear, such as the characterization of Mirkwood as a positive force in The Hobbit (an example of the occasional and confusing mixing up of the concepts of trees and forests), and the related explanation of how trees are part of a "state of hostility between Man and Nature" in Middle-earth. This issue could have been the launching-pad for a review of the critical literature on Tolkien and trees, which tends to show a deeper ambivalence in Tolkien than Dickerson reports here, and which Dickerson pretty much ignores in his impoverished 'Furher Reading' list.

It is admirable that Dickerson goes past The Lord of the Rings, and devotes so much attention to the tree allegories in Smith of Wootton Major, though I find his conclusion about quasi-Christian tree-symbolism in Tolkien unconvincing. But there are many other examples of important or meaningful trees in Tolkien, often drawn from medieval literary archetypes, that Dickerson might have included in his analysis had he devoted less space to the examples he focuses on. And shouldn't the Encyclopedia have some discussion of the mallorn tree somewhere? The only reference to the mallorn in the index points us to the "Lothlórien" article, where it is fully described but not analyzed, and which does not refer to this "Trees" article.

Finally, it is noticeable that the trees in The Silmarillion do not get much play here on any level. Did Dickerson truly feel that aside from the key image of the Two Trees, Tolkien did not emphasize trees much in his early mythologizing? Could it be that Tolkien's protective or associative attitude towards trees increased as he got older?

It is no longer surprising for me to report that, as with "Lothlórien", this article does not refer to the highly relevant "Two Trees", "Art and Illustration by Tolkien" or "Environmentalism and Eco-criticism" articles, which in turn do not refer to this one. But the twin "Environmentalist Readings of Tolkien" (why?) article, which Dickerson also ignores, does at least point its readers to "Trees".

Comments by N.E. Brigand, May 27, 2007 

There is a second reference to mallorn trees in the index, for the entry on “Plants” (where the subject is given just a little more attention than in the “Lothlórien” article), but it is easy to miss, because the page number is incorrectly given under the index listing for Mallorn the journal, not the tree.

I agree that Dickerson’s article is promising.  I like that he stretches to consider metaphorical meanings, and would have liked a little more, both from LotR (“Deep roots are not touched by the frost”) and elsewhere (Letter #306 on primitivism and the Catholic Church: “The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is in vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree”).  Since Dickerson lists Tree and Leaf among his cross-referenced articles, and since he notes Tolkien’s use of the tree “as a symbol of subcreative art” in “Leaf by Niggle”, it would have been nice for him to add the reference to the “Tree of Tales” from “Niggle” latter-day companion piece, “On Fairy-stories”.

Finally, though Dickerson is careful to note Tolkien’s portrayal of hostile forests (in general contrast with friendlier images of particular trees), he might have additionally mentioned their status as symbols of earthly life, here on “tree-tangled Middle-earth”, as identified by Tom Shippey.

 

Trench Fever - Elizabeth A. Whittingham

Comments by N.E. Brigand, March 26, 2007

Whittingham gives a good short description of the miseries of trench life and the lice-borne disease that Tolkien contracted there, clearly explaining the symptoms of trench fever and its treatment, in 1916 and now.  She also gives a chronology of Tolkien’s convalescence, and notes that some of his earliest legendarium material was written during this period.  

This article has no bibliography, which should include at least the Biography by Carpenter and Tolkien and the Great War by Garth.  It also lacks a See also list, where “World War I”, “Great Haywood” and the “Book of Lost Tales” entries should appear.  Whittingham might also have referred the reader to “Health and Medicine”; would it be too much to speculate on whether Tolkien's experience manifested itself in his fiction?

Comments by squire, March 26, 2007:

N.E. Brigand has a nice point about Tolkien's experience with trench fever: the symptoms might be the source for some of the Black Breath episodes in LotR. I also wish Whittingham had taken the time to identify more exactly which parts of the Lost Tales and Qenya language Tolkien worked on during this period, compared to what he had written before.

I think it's been remarked that trench fever very likely saved Tolkien's life, or at least he may have seen it that way. Certainly how he survived the war is more complex than is sometimes stated. Garth, as N.E. Brigand notes, is very good on all these matters, but Whittingham doesn't cite him -- or any other critics who may have tried to relate Tolkien's invalid episode to his state of mind about war, the TCBS, his scholarship and his mythology in the years that followed.

 

Túrin - Richard C. West

Comments by squire, January 13, 2007

This is an excellent precis of Túrin's career and literary history.

The only tragic flaw is that it is entirely West's (superb) summary. He does not give us any indication of what various critics have made of Túrin and his place in Tolkien's legendarium. I recall off the top of my head Rosebury's comment that the tale of Túrin has too much plot to be the equal of the classic tragedies it emulates. The lack of a critical bibliography, starting with West's own seminal article on Túrin, is also dismaying.

 

Turville-Petre, Joan - Jane Beal

Comments by N.E. Brigand, February 21, 2007

Beal’s short article lists the titles of thirteen of Turville-Petre’s works, as well as the titles of four journals to which she contributed.  It also gives the first and middle names of her husband and three children.  Only in the final sentence does Beal explain why Turville-Petre merits an article in a Tolkien encyclopedia: she published Tolkien’s unfinished edition of the Old English poem, Exodus, in 1981.  So why wasn’t this article folded into L. J. Swain’s much longer entry on that book?

 

Two Trees - Patrick Curry

Comments by squire, August 7, 2007

This drops below the weakness of adopting a "Middle-earth studies" approach and flirts with being "fan fiction", or perhaps, "fan scholarship": Curry's writing actually attempts to echo Tolkien's own flowery and romantic prose in The Silmarillion. The sopping result needs to be wrung out and allowed to dry, so that there might be some room for some analysis of why the Two Trees are so important in Tolkien's fiction.

Curry gives us nothing in the way of critical thinking beyond "The Two Trees...reveal the iconic status of trees in both [Tolkien's] work and his life." I would have liked some more of the history of Tolkien's idea of the Two Trees across forty years of writing, some consideration of the meaning of the two colors of their light, their relationship in the stories to the earlier Lamps and the later Sun and Moon, their relationship to the two sexes, Tolkien's use of trees in general to represent light in his invented Elvish languages, and perhaps some research into the possible sources for what seems like quite a mythological innovation by Tolkien.

It is as usual unfortunate to realize that Curry does not refer us to the article on "Trees", which at least deals with some of these questions; but then the "Trees" article does not refer to this one either. See also also omits, at the least, "Astronomy and Cosmology", "Colors", "Darkness", "Elves", "Fëanor", "Gondor", "Light", "Morgoth and Melkor", "Ungoliante etc.", and "Valar". There is no 'Further Reading' list at all.

Comments by N.E. Brigand, January 5, 2008

Douglas Anderson has quoted Tolkien as identifying Middle English stories of Alexander the Great as a source for the Two Trees.

 

Tyranny - Christopher Vaccaro

Comments by squire, August 7, 2007

Superficial. After a vague introduction, Vaccaro restricts himself to describing examples of tyrants in Tolkien's Middle-earth stories, and ends with a trite cliché.

Even within this limited scope, he works too hard with too little insight. He gives pride of place to Sauron over Morgoth, perhaps because The Lord of the Rings is better known than the Silmarillion tales. The example of the Mouth of Sauron as the proposed tyrant of the defeated West is overstated; one wonders if Vaccaro simply wished to give a quotation with the actual word. And finally, Tolkien makes it clear that almost none of the hobbit-shirriffs are tyrants; it's Lotho and a few like Ted Sandyman who "take to despotism" in their pathetic hobbit-fashion, and even they are overshadowed in actual evil deeds by the ruffians and the true tyrant of the Shire, Saruman.

Within so short an article, a better approach might have been to focus on the "Thematic" importance of tyranny to Tolkien, as an institutionalized manifestation of the will to Power. One of Tolkien's central concerns is the morality of power, and he uses tyrannical regimes as concrete examples of moral failure in a ruler. In the mid-twentieth century, an era of terrifying dictatorships, it's not surprising he was accused of making simplistic political allegories.

Vaccaro's most interesting statement is that Tolkien in his fiction associated tyranny with mechanized industry and the destruction of the natural environment. These are not particularly associated with classical or medieval ideas of tyranny; nor is it easy to identify the modern tyrant who was destroying Tolkien's beloved English countryside. Vaccaro's perception, as imprecise as it is, highlights how individualistic and retrospective was Tolkien's reaction to contemporary political and economic forces.