Tolkien

Feb 6 23:41 UTC 1999

JRR Tolkien
This item is for discussion of the author that has written so many wonderful
books, from the hobbit and the lord of the rings to less known poetry books.
I belive many of you have read his work, and i was surprised not to find an
item about him already.

response 2 of 37:

Feb 7 22:46 UTC 1999

I've read The Hobbit, LORT, The Tolkien Reader, & Smith of Wootton Major (?).
Very cool stuff.  Don't know what i'd try next of his if i had the time,
thought.

response 4 of 37:

Feb 8 13:03 UTC 1999

That's a bit oversimplified, at least.  Tolkien's son Christopher has been
editing (for many years) a long series of volumes containing his early,
unpublished writings which led up to the published ones.  (The series name
is History of Middle-Earth.)  These include extensive critical discussion of
various fragments & alternate versions; the way Tolkien worked produced
**many** alternate versions of most everything, often only partially legible,
sometimes erased and overwritten with something else.

I think it would be somewhat closer to put it like this: Tolkien's (personal
and professional) interest in historical languages was one major thread in
the development of the works everyone's familiar with.  He also started out
with some story ideas, which he thought of (fairly early on) as providing an
imaginary mythological/historical background for England.  He worked on these
things over many years, and developed them in quite a bit of detail.  They
(roughly) form what after his death was put together as the _Silmarillion_.
_The_Hobbit_ emerged somewhat independently, though this extensive, developing
background kind of broke in at a number of points.  (But the whole idea of
*hobbits* didn't come from it, & didn't fit in very well.)  As he worked on
a sequel to _Hobbit_, it started tying in with his "mythology", a few millenia
down the road.  By now this could no longer be a background for England,
however, though you find echoes of this all over the place.

The languages were developed along with the "mythology", starting quite early.
However, I'd have to say that some story elements which were there pretty much
from the beginning were at least as important.

response 6 of 37:

Feb 8 22:41 UTC 1999

Heh.  Yes, there are echoes of extant languages all over the place.  A lot
of the dwarves' names, for example, are in fact names of dwarfs in some OE
(or something) text.  As for the Hobbit names, yes again.

response 8 of 37:

Mar 9 01:53 UTC 1999

My impression is that _The Silmarillion_ is good reading if you really 
liked the material appended to _The Return of the King_ and isn't if
you didn't.  

response 10 of 37:

Mar 12 20:20 UTC 1999

silm. i a really great book, trouble with it is that is a  very difficult
book, lot's of names and old english. 

response 12 of 37:

Mar 14 01:21 UTC 1999

Two examples from LOTR, Appendix F:

"But Sam and his father Ham were really called Ban and Ran.
These were shortenings of Banazir and Ranugad, originally
nicknames, meaning 'half-wise, simple' and 'stay-at-home';
but being words that had fallen out of colloquial use they
remained as traditional names in certain families.  I have
therefore tried to preserve these features by using Samwise
and Hamfast, modernizations of ancient English samwis and
hamfaest which corresponded closely in meaning."

"Hobbit is an invention.  In the Westron the word used,
when this people was referred to at all, was banakil
'halfling'."

response 14 of 37:

Mar 14 01:28 UTC 1999

[I keep misspelling the author's name.  Tolkien.  Sorry.]

response 16 of 37:

Mar 14 19:32 UTC 1999

The ents also don't fit in very well, but at least there are a lot of
them, not just one.  But yes, Bombadil does not fit in.

I've just been reading that part (first time through) in
_The_Return_of_the_Shadow_ (which is an account of the writing of
_The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring_, based on the early mss.).  Of course,
Bombadil already existed, in print, in a poem called "The Adventures
of Tom Bombadil", which involved Old Man Willow, Farmer Maggot, and
barrowwights, among other things.  What's interesting (to me, anyway)
is that almost from the very beginning, before Tolkien had more than
the foggiest idea of what was going on in the story, a visit to Bombadil
was intended.  At that point there was very little goal besides getting
Bingo (earlier main character) to Rivendell, with some adventures on the
way.

The whole story (of LotR) didn't really fit into the rather complex world
Tolkien had envisioned (whose history is given in the Silmarillion,
basically); it started as nothing more than an attempt to write
*some* kind of sequel to _The_Hobbit_, which was not intended to be in
that world.  For the most part, LotR came to be fully and comfortably
connected with the larger background, but (despite the bits at the
Council of Elrond) Bombadil does not AFAICS fit in.

Nonetheless, the decision to leave it in seems to me to be correct from
every point of view.  From my first reading (almost 35 years ago) to date,
the Bombadil episode has been one of my favorite parts of the whole thing.

response 18 of 37:

Mar 14 22:54 UTC 1999

One writer makes a convincing argument that Tom Bombadil
is a god who stayed behind when the others withdrew to 
the West.  By this theory, he is Aule and Goldberry is 
Yavanna.  Other writers say that Tom is a Nature spirit 
of some sort.  (Bombadil started life as the name of one 
of the Tolkien children's dolls.  J.R.R. made up stories 
and poems about him.  Imagine having *him* telling you
your bedime stories.)  There is a scene in which Tom 
tells the Hobbits a story that gradually travels back to
the creation of the world; after a long pause, Frodo says,
"Who are you, Master?"  It doesn't get much stranger than
that in LOTR.  

response 20 of 37:

Mar 15 11:26 UTC 1999

Re 18: The early name for the character that became Frodo was "Bingo",
apparently named after a family of stuffed pandas belonging to the Tolkien
kids.  Christopher says that this seems really strange, citing their (the
pandas') malevolence, religious monomania, and tendency to blow everything
up with explosive devices.  JRRT was never a simple man, I think.  (I could
find that footnote, if pressed, & give exact wording, but that's the gist
of it.)

("Christopher" meaning Christopher Tolkien, & *not* meaning to suggest that
I'm on first-name terms with him.)

response 22 of 37:

Mar 17 20:03 UTC 1999

Anyone here unaware of the three movies in production of The Lord of 
the Rings? If so, then http://www.xenite.org/faqs/lotr_movie.htm could 
be a good starting point for you. (My apologies for writing about 
movies in the book forum)

response 24 of 37:

Mar 21 23:09 UTC 1999

Well, as I say I've just been reading the (edited/collected) early
manuscripts; still much in the middle.  I was flabbergasted to find that
initially Treebeard (sometimes Tree Beard) was a bad guy.  Tolkien was trying
to come up with a reason why Gandalf wouldn't have warned Bingo/Frodo that
the ringwraiths were about; Saruman had not yet come into the picture, at all,
and so Tolkien had Gandalf be taken prisoner in Fangorn Forest by the Giant
Treebeard, who was to later pretend to Frodo to be a Good Guy.

It's very interesting, reading this.  We've been reading systematically (and
slowly) through all the History of Middle Earth stuff (for Mythopoeic Society
discussions); most of it I've found *very* hard going, hard to make myself
do it.  Now that we're into the background for LotR, I suddenly can see that
this was because I'm really only slightly familiar with what the earlier parts
led to (roughly, the Silmarillion).  As I read the early versions of (what
became) _The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring_, I can pretty much say easily and
instantly which things were kept and which changed and which were removed,
and it's very interesting.  But I've read LotR dozens of times over almost
35 years, now, so I am mostly very familiar with it, & *care* about it.