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balbo biggins
Rohan
Nov 19 2020, 10:39pm
Post #1 of 6
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The Nature of Middle-earth book release
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Great news! The blurb says these are unpublished writings from. Tolkien which sounds promising.
Does anyone else think this might be a rehash of some of the history of Middle earth stuff that C Tolkien either used or rejected? Seems unlikely he would Have missed releasing some of this stuff already if it was deemed important.
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squire
Half-elven
Nov 20 2020, 2:01am
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I wonder if this is the "Best of" material from Vinyar Tengwar
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VT is the publication series of linguistic and philological notes by Tolkien that people like Carl Hostetter have been working on for decades now. Although the issues are primarily about Tolkien's linguistic essays, vocabularies, grammars, etc. - such that Christopher Tolkien knew perfectly well that a general readership would have no interest, and so contracted the work out to other scholars - the Prof himself did not draw hard boundaries between language building and world building.
So VT is known to have a number of informative essays on Middle-earth, written by Tolkien to illustrate, or even just spin off from, some question of language or phonics or script that he had been working on. From the description of the publisher, and from Hostetter's emergence as editor rather than the old reliables from the Tolkien Studies community (Shippey, Hammond/Scull, Flieger, Rateliff, Bratman, Fisher, Fimi, etc. - sorry to have left so many out), I am guessing that's where this book's content is coming from.
If I'm right, then actually it's all been "published" before, but only in a scholarly journal. This will just be the first publication in book form, aimed at the mainstream Tolkien fan audience.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Nov 20 2020, 2:39am
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Solicitr said previously that it was genuinely new.
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And he's known to have corresponded with Christopher Tolkien. New to all readers, at least. Here's what he posted on TORN a few months ago.
I don't know any more myself about this project, but Solicitr indicates it "didn't quite make the cut" for later History of Middle-earth volumes. A few years ago, Arden Smith told Jason Fisher and me that the elvish linguistic fellows were roughly halfway through their publication of Tolkien's linguistic material, so I imagine that if not for the new book, this might have been incorporated into future issues of Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon. Earlier numbers of those journals have included material of value to non-linguists (particularly vol. 17 of Parma, in which Tolkien elaborates on names in The Lord of the Rings).
Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature.
But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend.
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Felagund
Rohan
Nov 24 2020, 8:32pm
Post #6 of 6
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I agree with squire's speculation. And in that vein, I reckon we can reasonably expect "The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor" to make an appearance. This was published in Vinyar Tengwar #42 (2001) and was edited by none other than... Carl F. Hostetter!
According to Hostetter, it's basically a 'cutting room floor' item from The Peoples of Middle-earth, shared with him by Christopher Tolkien. The Guardian article linked by Ataahua refers to content on the geography of Gondor, which this essay awesomely covers.
One of the things I've always loved about this essay is that it appears to have been prompted by a letter from a fan (one Paul Bibire) in 1969. Tolkien replied to Bibire's very specific question about the River Glanduin, then characteristically expanded into wider linguistic, geographic and geopolitical themes. And, after sending the letter, Tolkien penned an essay that expanded these themes even more, to cover pretty much every river west and south of the Misty Mountains - with the Beacon-hills thrown in for good measure.
All that said, I'd love there to be 'new' material in the coming package of lore.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
(This post was edited by dernwyn on Nov 25 2020, 2:56am)
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