Transcript J.R.R. Tolkien - db
Tolkien
Thomas Honegger [email protected]
Digitale Bibliothek: aufgrund technischer Probleme verzögert sich die Einstellung der PP Präsentationen - wir bitten um Verständnis
J.R.R. Tolkien
Edith Bratt (c. 1916)
Tolkien the Soldier (1915-18)
War and Middle-earth
June 1916: Tolkien at the Somme; serves as Battalion Signalling Officer
November 1916: Tolkien back in England suffering from ‘trench fever’
War and Middle-earth 2
January & February 1917: begins to write The Book of Lost Tales while convalescing
Earendil the Mariner < Eala Earendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended (Christ I, l. 104f)
War and Middle-earth 3
John Garth. 2003. Tolkien and the Great War. The Threshold of Middle-earth.
London: HarperCollins.
TCBS: Christopher Wiseman, Geoffrey Bache Smith (
), Robert Gilson (
), J.R.R. Tolkien
The Kalevala
Kalevala: Finnish National Epic
Product of the national Romanticism movement
Compiled and edited by Elias Lönnrot (Kalevala 1838, New Kalevala 1849)
Ilmarinen forges the Sampo
Kullervo
Lemminkainen raised from the dead
Elias Lönnrot
Elias Lönnrot (*1802-1884), Finnish philologist, poet, and folklorist. Practised medicine in country districts, where he transcribed traditional ballads, among them the Kalevala cycle. Became professor of Finnish literature at Helsinki.
Tolkien a new Lönnrot?
“I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country.” (Letter to Milton Waldman; late 1951)
A Mythology for England?
“It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our ‘air’ (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe; not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), […].” (Letter to Milton Waldman; late 1951)
The geography of Middle earth
The racial geography of ME
The racial geography of ME
Who‘s that guy?
The racial geography of ME
Númenor / Atalante / Westernesse
The racial geography of ME
The racial geography of ME
The racial geography of ME
The racial geography of Middle-earth
The Loss of the ‘English’ Mythology 1
The Loss of the ‘English’ Mythology 2
The Loss of the ‘English’ Mythology 3
matter of Britain (King Arthur cycle)
matter of Rome (Troy cycle)
matter of France (Charlemagne cycle)
*matter of England
Tolkien and words 1
1917 November; birth of eldest son John (who became a Catholic priest and who died only last year)
1918 November returns to Oxford and joins the staff of the NED/OED.
in charge of the entries warm, water, wasp, wick (lamp), and winter.
1922 publication of A Middle English
Vocabulary
Tolkien and words 2
warm, adj.
[Com. Teut. : OE wearm = OFris. warm (mod. WFris waerm, NFris. wa\ rem), Mdu., Du. warm, OS. warm (MLG. war(e)m, LG. warm), OHG. war(a)m (MHG., G. warm), ON. varmur (Norw., Sw., Da. varm) Goth. warm- in warmjan to warm, cherish: –––––– OTeut.*warmo-, also *werm-
A Middle English Vocabulary
Middle English Vocabulary 2
Wordlist accompanying Kenneth Sisam’s anthology of Middle-English verse and prose Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, 1921)
Middle English Vocabulary 3
Contents (among other items):
The Dancers of Colbek
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(excerpts)
The Pearl (excerpts)
The Blacksmiths
Sir Orfeo
Sir Orfeo 1
Written in the first half of the 14th century.
Orfeo was a king, / In Inglond an heighe lording
Orpheo most of ony thing / Louede the gle of harpyng;
This king soiournd in Traciens, / That was a cite of noble defens; / For Winchester was cleped tho / Traciens withouten no.
Sir Orfeo 2
The king hadde a quen of priis, / That was ycleped Dame Herodis
Vnder a fair ympe tre, /[…] this fair quene / Fel on slepe opon the grene.
Visited/abducted by the king of Faery, final abduction announced.
Guarded by many knights but abduction cannot be prevented.
Sir Orfeo 3
Orfeo gives up his kingship and lives in the forest, hoping to find a trace of the King of Faery.
He might se him bisides / Oft in hot vndertides / The king of fairy with his rout / Com to hunt him al about, / With dim cri and bloweing; / And houndes also with him berking; / Ac no best thai no nome, / No neuer he nist whider thai bicome.
Elvish Hunting Party
Sir Orfeo 4
And other while he might him se / As a gret ost bi him te / Wele atourned ten hundred knightes, / Ich y-armed to his rightes, / Of cuntenance stout and fers, / With mani desplaid baners, / And ich his swerd ydrawe hold, / Ac neuer he nist whider thai wold.
Fingolfin
Sir Orfeo 5
And other while he seighe other thing: / Knightes and leuedis com daunceing / In queynt atire, gisely, / Queynt pas and softly; / Tabours and trunpes yede hem bi, / And al maner mentraci.
Sir Orfeo 6
A castel he sighe, / Riche and real, and wonder heighe. / Al the vtmast wal / Was clere and schine as cristal; / An hundred tours ther were about, / Degiselich, and bataild stout; / The butras com out of the diche, / Of rede gold y-arched riche; / The vousour was anow(rn)ed al / Of ich maner diuers animal. / Within ther wer wides wones / Al of precious stones.
A Faery Castle
In the halls of the elven king
Academic career takes off
1919 freelance tutor (in demand for female students); uses Rúmil’s alphabet for diary entries.
1920 appointed Reader in English Language at Leeds University. Birth of second son Michael.
1921 family moves to Leeds, turns down offer of chair at Cape Town.
1922 E.V. Gordon joins staff at Leeds. Tolkien and Gordon begin work on their edition of SGGK.
Rúmil’s alphabet 1
“Die Sarati stellten ein allgemeines Lautalphabet dar, wobei, entsprechend der Sprachtheorie der Noldor, die Vokale nicht als eigenständige Laute angesehen wurden, sondern als ‘Färbungen’ der Konsonanten. Somit wurden nur Konsonanten als echte Sarati geschrieben, die Vokale hingegen als diakritische Zeichen.
Rúmil’s alphabet 2
[…] Die Sarati wurden gewöhnlich in Reihen geschrieben, von oben nach unten, mit einem vertikalen Strich als Leitlinie, wobei die Vokalzeichen zur Linken jeweils folgenden Konsonanten hinzugesetzt wurden.” (Pesch, Elbisch, p. 182f.)
Rúmil’s alphabet 3
similarities to
Hebrew
Ogham alphabet
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English Bookhand & Tengwar
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Tengwar
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Fun and Games
1922 The Viking Club (devoted to reading sagas, drinking beer and sing comic songs)
birth of third son Christopher (who later in his life becomes a university teacher, too, and his father’s literary executor)
Tolkien & Christopher
Poems & Professors
1920-24 various poems with mythological or Middle-earth associations.
1924 becomes Professor of English Language at Leeds University
1925 publication of edition of SGGK
1925 appointed Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. (see Letters p. 12f).
1926 meets C.S. Lewis
Clive Staples ‘Jack’ Lewis
The Tolkien Family 1
The Tolkien Family 2
The Tolkien Family 3
A Day in the Life of Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien (Carpenter, Biography, 120 126)
Next time:
RincCon 04 Lectures: Die Reiter von Rohan & ‘Hübsch ist, wer hübsch tut’