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FarFromHome
Valinor
Jun 20 2007, 6:01pm
Post #26 of 135
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I don't think it's about comprehension
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Actually, it might be interesting to compare the style of The Name of the Rose with that of CoH, just to see what the differences are. My Italian's not great, but I did read The Name of the Rose once in Italian (after reading it a couple of times in English) just to try to get the flavour of the original. I find Eco's style much more convincing, objectively, than Tolkien's "archaic" style. Yes, there's a lot of difficult stuff at the start of Rose, but the book itself doesn't have that mannered style that bothers me sometimes with Tolkien. Of course, Eco is more prepared to play with the modern/historical interface, while Tolkien, in his First Age stories at least, wants you to stay in historical mode with no nod to the modern at all (hmmm, maybe that's why I need hobbits - I need to feel that tension between the historical and the modern. I need to think about this some more...)
...and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew,
and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth;
and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore
glimmered and was lost.
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Stanislaus B.
The Shire
Jun 20 2007, 6:09pm
Post #27 of 135
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Some more "over-written" authors
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If you think Tolkien has "a mannered or over-written prose" style, I can only suggest a few books:
From Elfland to Poughkeepsie by Ursula K. Le Guin
http://www.amazon.com/Elfland-Poughkeepsie-Ursula-K-Guin/dp/091401000X
The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed bu Kenneth Morris
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/dyfed/fates-hp.htm
Book of The Three Dragons by Kenneth Morris
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Three-Dragons-Kenneth-Morris/dp/1593600275/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1562206-5681412?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182362170&sr=1-1
Jack Vance, The Dying Earth
http://www.sfsite.com/10b/tde91.htm
The Well at the World's End by William Morris
http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1892/wwend/
Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter
http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/LordDunsany.php
And E. R. Eddison, Mistress of Mistresses
http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/EREddison.php
http://ww2.wizards.com/books/Wizards/default.aspx?doc=main_classicworm
http://www.ereddison.com/criticism.html
‘Upon a table by the couch, in a golden bowl, were roses, withered and dead. She took one and held it, like Cleopatra’s aspick, to the flower of Her own breast. And, as if to show upon experiment that in that place nothing but death can die and corruption self-corrupted fall like a foul garment to leave perfection bare, all the starved petals of the rose, shrivelled and brown, opened into life again, taking on again the smoothness and softness of the flesh of a living flower; a deep red rose, velvet-dark that the sense should ache at it, with a blueness in its darkest darknesses, as if the heavy perfume clung as a mist to dull the red.... Upon the sudden, She put on Her full beauty, intolerable, that no eye can bear, but the heart of Her doves turns cold, and they drop their wings. So the eternal moment contemplates itself anew beside the eternal sea that sleeps about the heavenly Paphos. Only She was: She, and the hueless waiting wonder of the sea at daybreak, and Her zephyrs, and Her roses, and Her hours with their frontlets of gold.’
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Wynnie
Rohan
Jun 20 2007, 6:28pm
Post #28 of 135
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*mods up* thanks for that blog link
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What a brilliant review!
None such shall return again.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Jun 20 2007, 6:41pm
Post #29 of 135
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They are uncommon, nowadays. I was trying to explain why Tolkien's style in the first paragraph might seem archaic and difficult to modern readers. It's difficult because of the many proper names. It's archaic because of the word choices: "dwelt" for "lived".
As for Eco, it sounds less like he's opposed to "immature readers" than to those who haven't read what he has. (Tom Stoppard is notorious for this also.) I daresay he too could be stopped cold by a text that went outside his expertise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Discuss The Children of Húrin in the Reading Room, June 11-October 14.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Jun 20 2007, 6:45pm
Post #30 of 135
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Tom Shippey uses a similar argument.
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He responds to one of Christine Brooke-Rose's complaints --that LotR is bogged down in excessive realistic detail-- with the argument that other works, in this case Tolkien's own drafts for LotR, are even more so burdened (as with the "hobbit talk" excised from "Three is Company"). But it doesn't prove Brooke-Rose wrong about supposed faults in LotR to show that other texts are even worse.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Discuss The Children of Húrin in the Reading Room, June 11-October 14.
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Stanislaus B.
The Shire
Jun 20 2007, 6:56pm
Post #31 of 135
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If I understand you correctly, you are saying that Tolkien managed to write using an archaic style, but perfectly understandable words - the effect of archaism, but no need to reach for a dictionary.
That would mean that he succeeded.
Obviously, strange and alien style, even if understandable, may not be easy and comfortable to read. It may even (o horror!) require some attention and effort.
But Hurin in general isn't an easy and comfortable read, so it fits, I think. It would be dishonest if Tolkien began with Hobbit-style cosy talk, and ended with incest and suicide. Better to get rid of the "cosy" readers at the start - you won't torture them needlessly.
That is what Eco meant, by the way - he wanted to signal to his reader that the book will require some effort, and there will be some parts diffcult to understand.
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squire
Half-elven
Jun 20 2007, 7:28pm
Post #32 of 135
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"easy and comfortable" vs "engaging"
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I think CoH may not be easy and comfortable to read, but it's a lot more easy and comfortable than this thread seems to assume. The rhetorical archaism is generally minimalized and modernized, just as it was in LotR.
The opening section is not hard to read, of itself, but the subject matter and overwhelming amount of unexplained information puts one off. It does not warn the reader of what's ahead: very little in the book is so strange and difficult as these opening sections where the reader is being brought "up to speed" in a story that, as originally written, was part of a long and integral cycle of history and legend. The incest and suicide at the end races along clearly and horrifically, and is probably the easiest and most engagingly-written part of the entire story.
My objection to the opening of the story is along the lines of Tom Simon in his blog: the saga-like geneology of the opening just does not engage the modern reader (the way it may well have engaged medieval listeners). This is something Tolkien knew perfectly well how to do when he felt like it, and it is usually what the opening of a book aspires to do. We don't need hobbits for this. Why, in fact, not open with the abduction of Hurin and Huor to Gondolin, which comes just a page later?
I think Christopher Tolkien was ill-served by his instincts or his editors when he chose not to take a slightly more aggressive stance towards rearranging or omitting elements to help this story stand on its own - if he was serious about wanting to get LotR readers (and viewers!) involved with the best that the Silmarillion can offer.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Footeramas: The 3rd TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Jun 20 2007, 7:40pm
Post #33 of 135
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Well, Eco is a very interesting writer
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and certainly not averse to adding popular elements to his tales. The Name of the Rose manages to address the Inquisition, and the folly of attempting to control ideas, in a medieval detective-story format. I expect it was the detective story that made the book so popular, although as Stanislaus B says, there are some difficult ideas in there. For me, the biggest hurdle was trying to absorb the late-medieval history of Italy that formed the background of the story, and that was all presented up-front. In that at least, his approach resembles Tolkien's in CoH. (Although we don't really know whether Tolkien would have left in this opening as a challenge to the reader - the version we have, as I understand it, was not intended for publication but was still in a form that Tolkien presumably chose to please himself rather than with a readership in mind.)
...and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew,
and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth;
and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore
glimmered and was lost.
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a.s.
Valinor
Jun 20 2007, 8:34pm
Post #34 of 135
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 It's not really boring, I just couldn't pass on the pun of "Ouroboros".
Here's an excerpt from "The Worm Ouroboros:, the only Eddison book I've read. It took me a while to get used to the flow of the language, but once you begin to read you get hooked. It's very interesting. It's also archaic, but not dry and not dispassionate:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/...o/two15.htm#page_143
At length, on an even, they came upon a heath running up eastward to a range of tumbled hills. The hills were not lofty nor steep, but rugged of outline and their surface rough with crags and boulders, so that it was a maze of little eminences and valleys grown upon by heather and fern and rank sad-coloured grass, with stunted thorn trees and junipers harbouring in the clefts of the rocks. On the water-shed, as on an horse's withers, looking west to the red October sunset and south to the far line of the Didornian Sea, they came upon a spy-fortalice, old and desolate, and one sitting in the gate. For very joy their hearts melted within them, when they knew him for none other than Brandoch Daha.
So they embraced him as one beyond hope risen from the grave. And he said, "Through the Straits of Melikaphkhaz was I borne, and wrecked at last on the lonely shore ten leagues southward from this spot, whither I won alone, having lost my ship and all my dear companions. In my mind it was that ye must fare by this road to Muelva if ye suffered shipwreck in the outer coasts of Impland.
Tolkien can write like this. Parts of the Sil and other stories read like this. But the beginning of COH is dry,
I'll see if I can compose my thoughts about why I find it "dry" later, when I have the book in front of me.
a.s.
"an seileachan"
"Some say once you're gone, you're gone forever, and some say they're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Savior if sinful ways you lack.
Some say they're coming back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be."
~~~~~Iris DeMent
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Stanislaus B.
The Shire
Jun 20 2007, 9:27pm
Post #35 of 135
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It is dry because it is not a novel, it is a saga. And sagas are comparatively dry. Asking why it isn't constructed as a novel is pointless - it isn't one.
Woudn't it be better as a novel? It certainly would be quite different. A saga is much terser. Childer of Hurin covers the whole life of Turin, and is not very long. A novel would have to be enormous, or select only a short period to describe.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Jun 20 2007, 9:44pm
Post #36 of 135
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Why don't people write sagas anymore?
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Why has the novel superseded the saga?
Were they normally written anyway? Or are those which are written just oral compositions preserved by chance? (If so, was it a mistake for Tolkien to write what should have been an oral creation?)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Discuss The Children of Húrin in the Reading Room, June 11-October 14.
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a.s.
Valinor
Jun 20 2007, 11:04pm
Post #37 of 135
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(or, I think the question is)
Why specifically do some of us find the writing dull? Or, as Modtheow asked "what it is that people find archaic or long-winded about this style; a number of reviewers have complained about this. Is it the subject matter -- the fact that there are so many character sketches in a row with a lot of names -- that makes the style appear difficult or boring? Or is it something about the actual wording?"
It is dry because it is not a novel, it is a saga. And sagas are comparatively dry. Asking why it isn't constructed as a novel is pointless - it isn't one.
I am not complaining that it's a saga. I'm complaining that it doesn't interest me, this writing, although I can't put my finger on exactly why. I don't mind all archaic-sounding text (not being a scholar I can't tell the difference between archaic-sounding and truly archaic, in actuality!). I don't think it's the archaic terminology or the fact that it's based on the way actual ancient sagas are told.
I think it's the "far remove" I sense in the beginning of this story, in which Tolkien tells in a few short sentences the history behind this family and this time. The narrator is standing very very far away, somehow...the far-awayness of his sentences gets on my nerves sometimes. This bare recitation of factual information is fine for the battles and the begats, but when he turns to talk about love and loss it loses me. I don't feel it. I reads like a teenager writing about stuff he only knows from books. It's not so much "archaic" as falsely flowery: "Her love was given to trees and to the flowers of the wild, and she was a singer and a maker of songs" doesn't really tell me about a real woman. I'd prefer he stuck to bald recitation of who did what when and who wedded who and begat who (whom?) than digress into this precious treacle.
I'm not sure I can explain why I don't like the beginning any better than that. It's the same thing that bothers me about the Sil; this kind of writing leaves me cold unless I already know the characters and this kind of statement is turned into a song or even discourse. But from a narrator it is irritating (to me).
In fact, I'd prefer he said something like "they say that she was a lover of trees" or "she was a singer, or so the stories tell us".
a.s.
"an seileachan"
"Some say once you're gone, you're gone forever, and some say they're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Savior if sinful ways you lack.
Some say they're coming back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be."
~~~~~Iris DeMent
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Modtheow
Lorien
Jun 21 2007, 3:03am
Post #38 of 135
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The bare recital of facts and the faraway narrator are typical features of saga style. Usually, a saga narrator will give terse descriptions of characters, concentrating on what they say and do. So if you don't like those features of the story, it sounds to me as if you are complaining about the saga style. Not that everyone has to like the style, of course, but I agree with Stanislaus B when he says, "Asking why it isn't constructed as a novel is pointless - it isn't one." A lot of the reviewers' complaints and questions that I've seen seem to be asking that pointless question.
However, the "precious treacle" that a.s. identifies in the following sentence might be something different -- maybe it's more of a Tolkienian flaw:
"Her love was given to trees and to the flowers of the wild, and she was a singer and a maker of songs"
I'm not sure you'd see anyone quite like this in a saga, where time to spend hugging trees and loving flowers probably wasn't available among the daily chores of preparing food and clothing for the farmstead in Iceland, even if you were the senior woman and in charge of servants. It sounds too refined, too effete somehow, to fit the hard view of life, honour, and fate that we often get in the sagas. However, I disagree that this line doesn't tell me about a real woman. Rian doesn't like hunting or war; she's "gentle of heart"; she's an artist; she loves beauty and nature. That's a lot of information that allows me to imagine a certain kind of character. It's especially a "hard fate" for her to be born into such times because she is totally unsuited to them, unlike Morwen, whose pride and sternness are brought out all the more by the contrast with Rian.
If this is annoying preciousness, though, does it account for the dullness that readers complain of? How many such lines are there in the opening couple of pages? Is this what readers mean when they say that the style is "over-written"? I'm having a hard time with that one, since the word order and the word choice in that sentence is extremely simple. The only "flowery" thing I can see in the line is the actual subject matter being denoted.
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Jun 21 2007, 9:15am
Post #39 of 135
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There's subject-matter and then there's style
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You may well be right that descriptions of people loving flowers and trees wouldn't normally belong in a saga, and this may be a flaw in itself if Tolkien really is trying to recreate the atmosphere of the saga, as several people in this thread seem to believe he is.
But there is also a problem for me, and apparently for others, in what a.s. calls "precious treacle" and I call "over-written". It doesn't mean the words have to be unusual or difficult. It doesn't even mean the word-order has to be particularly odd. It simply means that things are stated in a self-conscious, mannered way when they could be said more simply. "The flowers of the wild" only means "wild flowers". So why not use the simpler phrase? It would seem more honest, more immediate. I understand that an author must choose a style that suits his material, but I think his motivation should be to allow himself to communicate his material in the most effective and honest way he can, not just to embellish it.
As an example, I have recently been reading a book of Irish legends, Over Nine Waves by Marie Heaney. The stories themselves are strange and wonderful, and the teller uses a simple, unaffected style that lets all the strangeness shine through. She doesn't feel the need to embellish the stories with a veneer of faux archaisms, and for me that works much better than Tolkien's approach in the Sil and the UT. (As I've said before, if there's a reason for changes in style, as in LotR, I have no problem with it. It's the unremittingness of the archaic style in Tolkien's other works that bothers me.)
...and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew,
and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth;
and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore
glimmered and was lost.
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a.s.
Valinor
Jun 21 2007, 11:01am
Post #40 of 135
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The bare recital of facts and the faraway narrator are typical features of saga style. Usually, a saga narrator will give terse descriptions of characters, concentrating on what they say and do. So if you don't like those features of the story, it sounds to me as if you are complaining about the saga style. Not that everyone has to like the style, of course, but I agree with Stanislaus B when he says, "Asking why it isn't constructed as a novel is pointless - it isn't one." A lot of the reviewers' complaints and questions that I've seen seem to be asking that pointless question.
I don't like the saga style, if the beginning of COH is an example of saga style.
I am not suggesting or asking why he didn't construct it as a novel, though. I am just trying to explain why I find it irritating, which is what I said originally. If the "far-awayness" I feel is an example of saga style, I don't like it.
But mostly I don't like the effeteness (good word!) of some of the prose used in the saga. I don't think it's the word order, exactly, but the words chosen are made more awkward by that word order.
Let's try substituting other descriptors:
"His hatred was given to orcs and to the Men of the wild, and he was a warrior and a slayer of wolves"
I still dislike his hatred "being given" (how passive a voice can he achieve??) to orcs, but now I don't mind his having been a warrior and slayer. So maybe it's still not the word order exactly but the preciousness of his descriptions of women. Maybe I'm closer with that thought.
Maybe not. Maybe I can't really understand why I find some of the wording awkward to the point of laughabilty.
a.s.
"an seileachan"
"Some say once you're gone, you're gone forever, and some say they're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Savior if sinful ways you lack.
Some say they're coming back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be."
~~~~~Iris DeMent
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Modtheow
Lorien
Jun 21 2007, 1:23pm
Post #42 of 135
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Thanks must be offered to Lothar and to other people of many thoughts. The problem vexes me, but it is good to receive enlightenment from those who speak of these things. Much have I read and much have I thought and now understanding has been given.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Jun 21 2007, 5:49pm
Post #43 of 135
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The flowers of the wild, the Tigers of Detroit.
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I vaguely remember a critique of Hemingway's writing in The Old Man and the Sea that argued something similar: when translating conversations from Spanish for an English readership, possessive constructions using "of" make phrasing that would be commonplace to the speakers look unusual to the readers. Though maybe in both cases, Hemingway and Tolkien, the goal is to make us think differently about the Detroit Tigers and the wildflowers?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Discuss The Children of Húrin in the Reading Room, June 11-October 14.
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Curious
Half-elven
Jun 21 2007, 7:24pm
Post #44 of 135
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When people complain about Tolkien's "stilted" dialogue, I think they are complaining that it sounds artificial. It isn't what we would say now if we were talking with each other, and it isn't what people would say at another time and place either, because it is not authentic Old English or Middle English or English dialect of any kind. Instead it is Tolkien's attempt to make modern English sound old without using the authentic language we would find in the King James Bible or Shakespeare or Chaucer, let alone Beowulf. It is, I judge, an artificial style.
The question is whether an artificial style is necessarily a bad style. The word "stilted" is usually considered a criticism, just as the phrase "deus ex machina" is usually considered a criticism. Yet Tolkien consciously writes artificial dialogue that is not authentic to any age, and introduces improbable victories knowing that they come across as improbable -- i.e. deus ex machina. Tolkien is also criticized for being unrealistic, romantic, vague, non-topical, moralistic, and a number of other accusations that grow out of the modern infatuation with the realistic novel, and disdain for the heroic romance. Many of these accusations, including the artificial dialogue, are accurate as objective observations, but perhaps inaccurate as criticisms, unless we assume that heroic romances are bad.
Children of Hurin may in fact get less such criticism because unlike many romances it has a tragic ending and an unlikeable hero. In that sense it is more modern than many of Tolkien's tales, including LotR, but the dialogue and much of the narrative is still in an artificial, archaic style. So a number of critics -- in fact a majority -- have said that they like CoH, even while some complain about or gently mock the dialogue. Some, however, dislike the story as a whole, and so they do not hold back in their criticism of the archaic style, which they call impenetrable or embarassing or cringe-worthy.
The irony is that nearly all dialogue is artificial. No one speaks like they do in novels. If they did we would have to wade through lots of inane dialogue to find something worth hearing. But there are certain conventions about novelistic dialogue that feel realistic. Authors can play with those conventions, but abandon them at their peril. Some who abandon them, like James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake, are lauded as innovative, but rarely read. Tolkien, on the other hand, reaches back for a more traditional style, and is ridiculed by those who do not like it as little better than the geeks who dress up for the Renaissance Faire or the Society for Creative Anachronism. (To which a fan might say, but what is wrong with being such a geek?)
I don't think one can deny that Tolkien uses an artficial, anachronistic style. He does so quite deliberately, and with more knowledge of ancient literature than most authors dream of, but he still does it. Some people automatically dismiss it as bad. Others tolerate it. Some love it. But I think even the biggest Tolkien fans are sometimes disconcerted by the admittedly-artificial anachronisms.
For example, Aragorn says "lo" several times in LotR, and I can never get used to it. I know the word "lo" appears in the King James Bible, a masterpiece of English prose. But it has been mocked many times since then, usually as part of the incorrect phrase "lo and behold" -- it should be, as in LotR, either "lo!" or "behold!", or in rare cases for extra emphasis both without the "and" in between, i.e. "And behold! Lo!" (from "The Field of Cormallen"). I cannot read "lo!" in LotR and forget all the mocking uses of the term. Tolkien may want to recapture the original sense of the word, but it has been a long, long time since anyone could use the word "lo!" in conversation with a straight face.
Similarly, even though I did not like the line "Let's hunt some orcs" in the movie, I cannot imagine movie Aragorn saying "Forth the Three Hunters" or "No niggard are you" and getting away with it. If someone does bring Children of Hurin to the screen, I will forgive them if they abandon Tolkien's archaic dialogue entirely. I have no attachment to it. I would not go to the other extreme and show Turin using hip street slang, and I might even recommend choosing words with Anglo-Saxon roots wherever possible, but there is a middle ground.
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Jun 21 2007, 8:11pm
Post #45 of 135
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I wondered briefly if "flowers of the wild" were something different - did Rian actually go out into "the wild" and put herself in danger for the sake of these flowers, for instance? But I couldn't see that any such thing was implied. It just seems to be wild flowers, as far as I can tell. That's what bothers me about "precious" language - it keeps misleading you into trying to find something beyond the ordinary in the words, and it's annoying and disappointing when you find there's nothing there. Or at least, if Tolkien really is trying to make us think differently about wild flowers with this construction, I'm afraid it's passed me by.
As for Hemingway, he seems to be using the Spanish constructions to give a flavour of Spanish within his English story. I wouldn't object to that - in fact Tolkien changes his style for the different modes of speech of the races in LotR, and I find that very effective. Actually, I sometimes wonder if Tolkien was striving for a "translated" feel in these tales - is the style meant to reflect the difficulty (or rather, the impossibility) of rendering the language of the Elves into Common Speech? That's something that's mentioned a number of times in LotR. Are we meant to see this rather stilted style as Bilbo's best efforts at translating tales from a language that is so much richer and more elegant than his own?
...and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew,
and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth;
and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore
glimmered and was lost.
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Curious
Half-elven
Jun 21 2007, 8:52pm
Post #46 of 135
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Are we meant to see this rather stilted style as Bilbo's best efforts at translating tales from a language that is so much richer and more elegant than his own?
Tolkien consistently uses that excuse in LotR when his characters apologize for the quality of their translated poetry, but it doesn't wash when the "translation" becomes the whole tale.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Jun 21 2007, 8:55pm
Post #47 of 135
(811 views)
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...until you've written well?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Discuss The Children of Húrin in the Reading Room, June 11-October 14.
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Jun 21 2007, 9:21pm
Post #48 of 135
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to put the reader in mind of a translation of the Odyssey, say, or Beowulf, or the Bible, might that not be a valid aim? A misguided aim, perhaps, since keeping up this kind of pretence through a whole tale is bound to be wearying for the reader. It's a bit like that annoying approach you sometimes see to non-standard dialect in dialogue, where the mispronunciations are all represented by mis-spellings. A little bit of this to give a flavour is fine, but keeping up the effect just seems annoying and distancing.
It's possible, I suppose, that Tolkien enjoyed writing in this style for his own amusement, imagining the ideal version of his story in his head and just writing his lesser "translation". But then he never was able to summon the intense imaginative and creative effort required to bring the stories up to the level that he achieved with LotR. He clearly had an amazing talent for dreaming up stories, but the honing and shaping was another job entirely.
...and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew,
and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth;
and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore
glimmered and was lost.
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Curious
Half-elven
Jun 21 2007, 10:17pm
Post #49 of 135
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At least it is worse than authentic dialect, such as that found in Huckleberry Finn. The problem with Tolkien's archaic dialogue is that it is not only distracting, it is highly artificial. In LotR he gets away with it because it is used to distinguish between the hobbits and the men of Rohan and Gondor. But even there it can be distracting.
Note that the King James version of the Bible was not written in an artificially archaic manner, but in the formal language of the time. Beowulf and The Odyssey were written in different languages, and I cannot judge how archaic they sounded to the original audiences. Writing in formal language, though, is not the same as writing in artificially archaic language.
If I spoke exactly how I wrote I imagine it would sound quite formal. I would not use contractions, I would speak in full sentences, I would use parallel structure, all without sounding at all archaic. Some of our best orators speak formally when it is appropriate. People do not normally say things like "All we have to fear is fear itself" or "Do not ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
Some of Tolkien's dialogue is merely formal, and often quite beautiful. I love Faramir's speech about what he wants for Gondor, for example, or Gandalf's speech to Denethor about his duties as a Steward. But from time to time in LotR, and even more often in The Sil and CoH, Tolkien steps over the line into artificial archaisms that do get distracting and tiring.
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squire
Half-elven
Jun 21 2007, 10:27pm
Post #50 of 135
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Tolkien liked to hone his writing style by reading it out loud
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At least, he did with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and even Farmer Giles of Ham. I don't suppose he had the chance with most of the material we're reading here. It might have made a real difference.
Nor did he ever get the chance to do what his son has tried to do, which is to make the tale of Hurin and Turin stand alone for publication. With the freedom to make real changes in approach and balance that only the original author could have, he might well have found a way to make it work. The Narn was, of course, his best shot at this -- but it is, as the phrase goes, "Unfinished"....
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Footeramas: The 3rd TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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