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Penthe
Gondor
Sep 26 2010, 2:02am
Post #101 of 104
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I've always thought Tolkien's essentialism shows more in his attitude to his evil characters - ie that they cannot change to become good (you know, orcs and so on, not the Maiar).
As we used to say in our undergraduate days, you essentialists are all alike! (heh).
Now?
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Sep 26 2010, 10:57am
Post #102 of 104
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How do you define "correctly"?
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(Kind of pedantic, I know, but since this thread is so much about definitions....)
Is Tolkien's deliberately archaic "Middle-earth" - as close to a one-word form as he could get, perhaps to echo the Old English one-word middangeard of Beowulf - the only "correct" spelling of this term? I suppose you could argue that it is, when the discussion is of Tolkien's own work. But if we accept that Tolkien didn't "invent" Middle-earth, but was using a concept, and a term, that preexisted his work, couldn't we also say that the obvious two-word modern spelling of this archaic term would be equally "correct"? (For what it's worth, the entry in the OED has "middle earth".)
They went in, and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly,
deep and unstilled,
the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.
From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Sep 27 2010, 9:04am
Post #104 of 104
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I agree with you - I think pedantry goes deep with a lot of Tolkien fans, one way or another, and I'm as guilty of it as the next fan...
I just think it's important to bear in mind that the rest of the world isn't quite as hung up as we tend to be on minutiae such as Tolkien's personal spellings. If a general-interest publication fails to notice Tolkien's archaic form of a word and instead uses the obvious modern one that just comes naturally (and is equally "correct" by ordinary standards of spelling), it doesn't actually matter at all (in my opinion) providing the article has something interesting to say.
Of course I'm sympathetic to the inconvenience to Professor Drout, but as a medievalist he must be used to dealing with spelling variants that are far wider and more challenging than anything you'll find in the New York Times!
They went in, and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly,
deep and unstilled,
the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.
From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings
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