|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
squire
Half-elven
Dec 23 2011, 6:28am
Post #1 of 15
(2104 views)
Shortcut
|
|
** App. F – On Translation ** 7. – Hobbit Names: Sam I am
|
Can't Post
|
|
We are still meandering on through Prof. Tolkien’s notes on how he translated the Red Book of Westmarch from (mostly) Westron into the (mostly) English-language works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Provocatively, the first line of this section tells us that the Shire was actually called Sûza in the Westron language, which is largely derived from Adûnaic. Now in Appendix E the author of The Lord of the Rings, who created the languages in it, says:
The use of the circumflex in other languages such as Adûnaic or Dwarvish has no special significance, and is used merely to mark these out as alien tongues (as with the use of k). [bold by squire]
Yet Prof. Tolkien insists, as he has throughout this appendix, that the decision to translate all Westron names into English was both 1) “seldom difficult” because their word-formation in Westron paralleled that found in English, and 2) artistically correct because this approach brought out the difference between familiar “English/Westron” place-names as the Hobbits knew them and the more ancient Elvish names that preceded the Hobbits’ lives in Middle-earth.
A. When you see a word like Sûza, a word deliberately made more “alien” by its creator, being translated as Shire, do you agree that the decision to translate Westron into a comfy form of English best represents the essential “feel” of Middle-earth as it actually is recorded in the Red Book of Westmarch?
B. Should the translator have considered rendering the Hobbits’ language, personal and place-names into a non-English but related language such as German or Dutch, that would have evoked English in comparison to the Elvish names, yet would also have reminded us that these little people of 15,000 years ago were in many ways completely alien compared to the country folk of late 19th-century England?
Prof. Tolkien admits that personal names for Hobbits posed a greater challenge than place-names, because the Hobbits had made a “habit” of giving their families permanent inherited names: surnames, as we call them. Examples are, of course, Baggins, Brandybuck, Took, and Gamgee; also Cotton, Maggot, Sandyman, Bracegirdle, etc. Since many of these names were assembled from common terms, just as the place-names were, they “presented little difficulty” to the translator. But other names were of obscure origin and Prof. Tolkien simply transliterated their sounds into English form: “Took for Tûk, or Boffin for Bophîn.”
C. Is it remarkable that for his two examples of original Hobbit surnames that were not easily translatable, both should have the circumflex (ˆ) which the language-creator has said has no purpose except to mark the Westron/Adûnaic language as alien and difficult?
While it’s unclear exactly why and how various cultures adopt surnames, the general consensus is that the process takes place when the population becomes so dense that single names (the default among tribes) no longer suffice to distinguish individuals. In England, anyway, this is observed to have started around the 12th century.
D. Is “the habit that had grown up of having inherited names for families” a satisfactory explanation by our translator for the unique occurrence in Middle-earth of Hobbit surnames, especially when he has made it clear that language is really the only lens through which he is interested in viewing the cultures of Middle-earth?
E. Why would the Men of the ancient and densely populated Minas Tirith, for instance, not have surnames (Beregond, for example, is only “Beregond of the Guard”)?
With Hobbit first names, we learn that females were often named for “flowers or jewels”, but that most male names (and some female) “had no meaning at all in their daily language.”
F. Since translation from Westron to English is meant to make hobbit-culture more familiar to us readers, why use the overwrought terms “maid-children” and “man-children” here instead of “girls” and “boys” or “females” and “males” or “lasses” and “lads”?
G. Why jewels – as un-Hobbitish a vocabulary as can be imagined – as a typical basis for their female names?
We learn that Hobbit-names conventionally end with -a for males and -o or -e for females. The translator acknowledges that such typical nonsensical Westron Hobbit names as Otha, Oda, Droga, Coro, Doro and (presumably) Bilba and Froda have usually been rendered with the opposite endings, to match the expectations of an English-speaking readership.
H. Does this satisfy? – wouldn’t readers reading Prof. Tolkien’s first translation quite quickly have adapted to Bilba Baggins, in the same way that they did to Dori and Nori, or Kili and Fili?
Now, in contrast to the common and meaningless first names for males, some families “especially those of Fallohide origin such as the Tooks and the Bolgers” gave their children “high-sounding” first names. Recognizing that these noble names seem to have come from legends of the Men from the Northern regions of Middle-earth (the Rohirrim, Dale, Woodmen or Beornings of the Anduin valley), Prof. Tolkien explains that he hit upon the solution of using “Frankish and Gothic” names to capture the proper relationship of such old names to modern English. As he admits, the contrast between first and last names like “Peregrin Took” and “Odovacar Bolger” are comic, and were known to be so by the Hobbits themselves.
I. Who is the joke on?
Interestingly, a similar naming convention was also observed by many American slaveowners, calling their debased slaves such absurdly noble names as Horatio, Calpurnia, Hercules, Neptune, etc. Aside from the classical origins of the slaves’ names – which Prof. Tolkien insists would have been inappropriate for his purposes because the Elves represented the equivalent of “Greece” and “Rome” in Middle-earth and the Hobbits were not versed in Elvish culture – the coincidence of such an odd mode of mocking irony seems remarkable.
J. Is there any connection?
Next is the concept that the Bucklanders (and the residents of the Marish) have “different” names from other Shire Hobbits. This is supposed to stem from the fact (cited in the first section of this Appendix) that a tribe of Stoors settled further south in Eriador, only later returning north to the region of the Shire to populate the Marish and the Southfarthing generally. Prof. Tolkien maintains that he left their “very odd names” “unaltered”, to reflect the “queerness” that they had “in their own day”. To be specific, he maintains that the names “had a style that we should perhaps feel vaguely to be ‘Celtic’.”
K. If the Westron/Adunaic language of the Hobbits has been said by an authority to be “alien” in sound and feeling, how should we take Prof. Tolkien’s assurance that the Stoors’ vocabulary within a Westron-speaking world would “feel vaguely” to be Celtic – a language most English-speakers would probably find familiar in sense at least?
In any case, he translated placenames from the Breeland to match those names in England that appear to have Celtic origins: Bree, Combe, Archet, and Chetwood are given as examples.
L. Wait, why are none of these examples from the Marish or Buckland, the original place whose names are said to feel Celtic?
So, placenames in Buckland/Breeland(?) were translated, but personal names in this ‘Celtic’-sounding category were left alone. Some examples are, from the Brandybuck Family Trees in Appendix C: Saradoc, Rorimac, Gorbadoc, and Marroc. But Meriadoc, our hero Merry, apparently is a product of the translator’s art: his actual name Kalimac (with no particular meaning) had been shortened by his family to Kali (to pick up on the Westron meaning “jolly, gay”). Prof. Tolkien felt this was too good to lose, and so invented Meriadoc as a “Celtic”-sounding Buckland pseudonym for Kalimac, so that it could be appropriately shortened to the English “Merry”.
Well, Kalimac/Meriadoc notwithstanding, when I look up “Celtic” names on the internet, they all seem to end in soft sounds, but the long list of Brandybucks seem mostly to be variations on names that end in a hard ‘c’ sound.
M. What feels “vaguely Celtic” about the “untranslated” names in the Brandybuck family tree?
Many English names are taken from the Bible, and this is what I suppose Prof. Tolkien means when he says that he did not attempt to use “names of Hebraic or similar origin” when changing Westron Hobbit names to bring out equivalent associations from within our own English-language culture. (Some English names that come from the Hebrew Bible are: Aaron, Amos, Abigail, Abner, Abraham, Benjamin, etc.)
N. Since the Harfoot clans of Hobbits are said to have had more to do with the Dwarves than the other branches, and since the Dwarves are said to speak a language with Semitic resemblances, wouldn’t it have been appropriate for Prof. Tolkien to have attempted to introduce “Hebraic” names into the Shire’s Harfoot families to make this connection?
Anyway, the names like Sam, Tom, Tim and Mat which occur among the Shirefolk, which seem to reflect “Hebraic” names like Samuel, Thomas, Timothy, and Matthew, are revealed to be nothing of the kind. Rather, they are straight from the Westron, untranslated, as the short names of Tomba, Tolma, Matta, etc.!
O. If Prof. Tolkien is so concerned about letting his translation work preserve in English the important connections in Westron between Hobbit-names and the languages they come from, why doesn’t he realize that the names Sam, Tom, Tim, and Mat in fact imply Biblical roots to English-speakers, no matter how erroneous that association is by Middle-earth terms?
An exception to this is, again, where an opportunity arose to bring out in the English a feature of the original Westron names. Thus, Sam and Ham Gamgee were not shortened from Samma and Hamma, or whatever. Rather, their actual names were Ban (short for Banazîr) and Ran (for Ranugad). The two full names mean “half-wise” and “stay-at-home” in Westron that was no longer in “colloquial use”. So it seemed obvious to Prof. Tolkien that he should work from the ancient English terms samwís and hámfoest, with the same relative meanings, and give Ban and Ran their new names of Samwise and Hamfast.
P. Clever, or too clever by half?
Q. In general, do you think Prof. Tolkien’s intricate work, as explained in this section, succeeds at its goals?
R. Do any other translators, to your knowledge, work as hard to capture linguistic echoes of the original language/languages in their English (or other) translations?
Next, how to deal with the Rohirric and other Northern Mannish languages when translating them into an English narrative!
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'.
Footeramas: The 3rd (and NOW the 4th too!) TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
 = Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
|
|
|
Faenoriel
Tol Eressea
Dec 26 2011, 3:13am
Post #2 of 15
(1628 views)
Shortcut
|
These are such a treasure read.
Okay, I try with some answers...
A. When you see a word like Sûza, a word deliberately made more “alien” by its creator, being translated as Shire, do you agree that the decision to translate Westron into a comfy form of English best represents the essential “feel” of Middle-earth as it actually is recorded in the Red Book of Westmarch?
I can see the reasoning and accept it. It adds to the story. However, it wouldn't have destroyed the book if the Hobbits would have been more alien to the reader, it would have just made it different. One finds it easy to symphatize with the Elves and Dwarves, despite their strange names.
B. Should the translator have considered rendering the Hobbits’ language, personal and place-names into a non-English but related language such as German or Dutch, that would have evoked English in comparison to the Elvish names, yet would also have reminded us that these little people of 15,000 years ago were in many ways completely alien compared to the country folk of late 19th-century England?
No, that would have caused too much confusion. Many if not most readers would have recognized the words to the German or Dutch, and wondered what's the connection. Besides, it would have been an absolute nightmare to the foreign translators. Should the Hobbist have spoken Italian in Spanish translations, and Estonian in Finnish translations? Oh the headache...
Instead, Tolkien could have simply made up a new language to the Germanic family, one that sounds familiar and comfortable to English speakers. It sounds in many ways a far simplier solution than what he came up with. But I think Tolkien was simply enjoying his own cleverness.
D. Is “the habit that had grown up of having inherited names for families” a satisfactory explanation by our translator for the unique occurrence in Middle-earth of Hobbit surnames, especially when he has made it clear that language is really the only lens through which he is interested in viewing the cultures of Middle-earth?
It's certainly remarkable, considering how the Hobbits are usually seen simply as adopters and adapters of the culture of their more advanced neighbours. Maybe touches like this also hint us that's there's more to the Hobbits than just being the far end of the cultural chain (High Elves > Sindar > Númenorians > Middle Men > Hobbits.) They are in some curious way unexpectedly unique and resourceful.
E. Why would the Men of the ancient and densely populated Minas Tirith, for instance, not have surnames (Beregond, for example, is only “Beregond of the Guard”)?
Because the Gondorians are painfully tied to their glorious past. They're not evolving or making new things. But why didn't they start using surnames already in Númenor? Or perhaps they did, but those loyal to Elves and Valar (i.e. the ancerstors of all future Númenorian) kept to the old habits and didn't start using surnames?
G. Why jewels – as un-Hobbitish a vocabulary as can be imagined – as a typical basis for their female names?
Hobbits like pretty things. Even when they´re useless - hence the mathoms. They are familiar with jewels and beautiful handicraft, and not all of them are of middle class, or simple farmers. They certainly have clear class distinctions. Surely the richest Hobbits had jewels, and surely the poorer ones admired them too.
H. Does this satisfy? – wouldn’t readers reading Prof. Tolkien’s first translation quite quickly have adapted to Bilba Baggins, in the same way that they did to Dori and Nori, or Kili and Fili?
The reader would have accepted it, but the idea is to make all the names as English as possible. So there's internal logic.
I. Who is the joke on?
Can't say who Tolkien was thinking of, but it's a familiar occurence. Sometimes parents give ridiciously grandeour or sickenly sweet first names despite the fact that they go very poorly with the humble surname. At least to me it gives the impression of wanting to be (of) higher (birth or social status) than you are, but without the sense of style needed to.
J. Is there any connection?
I doubt Tolkien would consiciously give Hobbits any of the habits of some slave owners. It would be too Sauronian.
K. If the Westron/Adunaic language of the Hobbits has been said by an authority to be “alien” in sound and feeling, how should we take Prof. Tolkien’s assurance that the Stoors’ vocabulary within a Westron-speaking world would “feel vaguely” to be Celtic – a language most English-speakers would probably find familiar in sense at least?
Celtic sounding language would sound familiar, but in a wrong way: it's familiarly infamiliar and exotic. Besides, the Elves are already given "Celtic" names, and Tolkien wouldn't have wanted the Hobbits have Elvish-sounding names.
N. Since the Harfoot clans of Hobbits are said to have had more to do with the Dwarves than the other branches, and since the Dwarves are said to speak a language with Semitic resemblances, wouldn’t it have been appropriate for Prof. Tolkien to have attempted to introduce “Hebraic” names into the Shire’s Harfoot families to make this connection?
A good idea! Though it might not have worked, because the Dwarves are given Norse names. (Something I personaly dislike, as it would have been awesome to have more sources than just Celtic, Latin and Germanic in LotR and Silm. Semitic names would have made the stories richer.)
O. If Prof. Tolkien is so concerned about letting his translation work preserve in English the important connections in Westron between Hobbit-names and the languages they come from, why doesn’t he realize that the names Sam, Tom, Tim, and Mat in fact imply Biblical roots to English-speakers, no matter how erroneous that association is by Middle-earth terms?
I'm afraid this detail indeed escaped him. Sometimes things seem so clear to their inventor he can´t look at them with fresh eyes and realize what they look like someone else.
P. Clever, or too clever by half?
It's fun to read all the cunning Tolkien put into this, but he does take it too far sometimes.
Q. In general, do you think Prof. Tolkien’s intricate work, as explained in this section, succeeds at its goals?
At making the Hobbist and the Shire seem more familiar to the reader? He succeeds. But at least to me it was depressing to learn all the names I had become to love as the names of my friends were in reality fake.
R. Do any other translators, to your knowledge, work as hard to capture linguistic echoes of the original language/languages in their English (or other) translations?
While I´m not as familiar with the fantasy genere as some others here, I can say that in this matter it´s impossible even talk about the other authors and Tolkien in the same sentence.
<3 Gandy, Raddy, Sharkey, Ally & Pally <3
|
|
|
Morthoron
Gondor
Dec 27 2011, 8:58am
Post #3 of 15
(1665 views)
Shortcut
|
|
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
So, placenames in Buckland/Breeland(?) were translated, but personal names in this ‘Celtic’-sounding category were left alone. Some examples are, from the Brandybuck Family Trees in Appendix C: Saradoc, Rorimac, Gorbadoc, and Marroc. But Meriadoc, our hero Merry, apparently is a product of the translator’s art: his actual name Kalimac (with no particular meaning) had been shortened by his family to Kali (to pick up on the Westron meaning “jolly, gay”). Prof. Tolkien felt this was too good to lose, and so invented Meriadoc as a “Celtic”-sounding Buckland pseudonym for Kalimac, so that it could be appropriately shortened to the English “Merry”.
Well, Kalimac/Meriadoc notwithstanding, when I look up “Celtic” names on the internet, they all seem to end in soft sounds, but the long list of Brandybucks seem mostly to be variations on names that end in a hard ‘c’ sound.
M. What feels “vaguely Celtic” about the “untranslated” names in the Brandybuck family tree? !
First, excellent research Squire!
I have always been fascinated by Hobbitish naming conventions. In perusing the lists of family geneologies, one can't help but notice the 'wealth' of ornate names bequeathed to scions of the more socially-conscious Hobbit families. We have scholary references in Gerontius (perhaps from Cardinal Newman's "Dream of Gerontius", Newman being a strong influence on Tolkien's Catholicity), Isengrim (from the Latin Ysengrimus, a wolf of the medieval tale Reynard the Fox), Adelard (Adelard of Bath, a scholastic philosopher), Odovacar (a Gothic king) and Heribald (mentioned in Bede's Historiam Ecclesiasticam Gentis Anglorum); Latinate forms such as Belladonna, Hugo and Gundolpho; Frankish or Norman forms in Odo, Otho, Otto and Fredegar; from Spain, Esmerelda, Ferdinand and Sancho; and a scattering of Germanic names like Filibert and Gerda.
But I would put the Brandybuck's names not generally from Celtic, but from the Welsh with more specificity: Meriadoc, Saradoc, Gorbadoc, Gormodoc, etc. These are names or derivative forms Tolkien culled from the early material in the Arthurian Cycle found in the Cymric Welsh Mabinogion. In fact, a very early mention of "Cynan Meriadoc" appears in The Dream of Macsen Wledig, and Geoffrey of Monmouth refers to the same character as "Conan Meridiadocus".
Please visit my new blog...The Dark Elf File...a slighty skewed journal of music and literary comment, fan-fiction and interminable essays.
(This post was edited by Morthoron on Dec 27 2011, 9:01am)
|
|
|
squire
Half-elven
Dec 27 2011, 2:02pm
Post #4 of 15
(1614 views)
Shortcut
|
On looking a little deeper, I see that the -oc ending favored by Tolkien is specifically Welsh, but that Welsh is commonly considered a branch of the Celtic languages. The site I first looked at was probably a little less broad-minded or less well-informed, and limited its "Celtic" names to the languages spoken in Ireland. Isn't it wonderful indeed how Welsh-sounding the Brandybuck family names were, to the point that Prof. Tolkien realized he could leave them in the text untranslated.
Great research, in turn, by you for that list of sources for the more ornate Hobbit names*. Tolkien explains their conventions in this Appendix F, but gives the actual names to us in the Family Trees in Appendix C, so I would guess that only the most devoted readers take the time to connect the two. Once again I wish his editors at Allen & Unwin had put the LotR manuscript out for peer review, so the rather sloppy arrangement of the scholarly apparatus could have been whipped into a little more professional shape. As it is, the Appendices read somewhat like slapdash musings and are, really, less than helpful in giving us the tools we need to analyze his amazing work of translated narrative history in the way it deserves.
Prof. Tolkien never fails to amaze me with his deep understanding of Hobbit naming conventions, and of many other aspects of their and Middle-earth's other cultures and languages. His sources are not exactly apparent in the published material we currently have from him. I have often wondered just how many other ancient manuscripts he had access to, and where he found the time to decipher, read, and think about them in the midst of his professional work at Oxford - all before actually picking up his pen to translate and recast into modern prose and poetry the immensely long and complex narratives that he did publish.
* "Gerontius" is not just a reference to Newman's poem, although I wouldn't say Tolkien as an Anglo-Catholic didn't enjoy that connection. But the word simply means "old man" in Latinized Greek. It occurs across the history of the later Roman world as an obvious cognomen (nickname) for men distinguished by their vigorous old age.
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'.
Footeramas: The 3rd (and NOW the 4th too!) TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
|
|
|
geordie
Tol Eressea
Dec 27 2011, 3:28pm
Post #5 of 15
(1648 views)
Shortcut
|
"Once again I wish his editors at Allen & Unwin had put the LotR manuscript out for peer review, so the rather sloppy arrangement of the scholarly apparatus could have been whipped into a little more professional shape. As it is, the Appendices read somewhat like slapdash musings and are, really, less than helpful in giving us the tools we need to analyze his amazing work of translated narrative history in the way it deserves. "
What peers? Who else knew as much about Middle-earth as Tolkien? Do people really do stuff like that, send out manuscripts (or, more accurately in this case, typescripts) for review? To what purpose?
As for Tolkien's editors at Allen & Unwin; they knew their place. As Rayner Unwin once commented, 'We were his (Tolkien's) liege-men.' He also once said, 'You just didn't 'edit' Tolkien; that was the ultimate sin.'
I don't agree the Appendices look like slapdash musings, either - they're meant to represent the feel of ancient manuscripts. Tolkien had a lot of experience in this field. Which brings me to another question:
"I have often wondered just how many other ancient manuscripts he had access to, and where he found the time to decipher, read, and think about them in the midst of his professional work at Oxford."
I think a lot of Tolkien's professional research would have involved using original manuscripts, where these were available. For instance, he and Simonne 'd'Ardenne co-wrote an article on a Middle English work from the Katherine Group called 'Sawle's Warde'. I have a facsimile copy of Ms. Bodley 34, which contains this manuscript; and also of the article by Tolkien and d'Ardenne. The paper's title is 'Ipplen in Sawle's Warde' (sorry; I don't know how to make a 'thorn' on a keyboard). It's a study of a single, supposed Middle English word, 'Ipplen', which had been garnering a bit of interest in English departments around the world. Trouble is that advocates of that reading had come to their various conclusions about what the word's significance might be, based only on reading copies of the manuscript. Tolkien and d'Ardenne had each spent some time researching this manuscript (he for his work on the A-B language), and so they knew that what looked like Ipplen' only looks like that because of sloppy work by the scribe, whom they call Scribe B. Tolkien writes:
"Poor B. was a blunderer, and not always very attentive to the sense, but it is possible here to feel a little sympathy with him."
(Ipplen in Sawles Warde, reprinted Swets and Zeitlinger, 1947, This is an off-print from the journal 'English Studies'. My copy has a label saying, 'From the Library of JRR Tolkien').
See? Tolkien had sympathy with the poor old ancient scribe. So let's cut him some slack, for, as JRR says of Bilbo in the 1st ed. foreword to LotR:
"Bilbo was not assiduous, nor an orderly narrator, and his account is involved and discursive, and sometimes confused: faults that still appear in the red Book, as the copiers were pious and careful, and altered very little."
So, nobody's perfect!
(This post was edited by geordie on Dec 27 2011, 3:30pm)
|
|
|
geordie
Tol Eressea
Dec 27 2011, 3:52pm
Post #6 of 15
(1640 views)
Shortcut
|
As a Professor at Oxford, Tolkien was a world expert in his field; his field being philology, with an emphasis on the West Midlands dialect of Middle English. He was pretty good at Old English, too; but Middle English was his speciality, and scholars from all over the world would communicate with him. Many sent him off-prints of their own work out of professional courtesy. I have at least one of these in my collection; it's unreadable (to me), being a Latin translation of an Old English text, but never mind...
Anyway; there was this chap called Furuskog, who was doing research into Ms. Bodley 34. He wrote to Tolkien asking him for everything Tolkien had on the subject. Which was awkward; Tolkien didn't have time to sort out all the stuff for this guy (it was war-time; he was practically running the English dept. at Oxford single-handed), and besides; his student Simonne d'Ardenne would probably need it for a project which she and Tolkien had been mulling over. (Simonne was in Nazi-occupied Belgium at the time; she and T. couldn't get back in touch with each other till after the war). Furuskog was persistent, and also pushy. He complained to the British Council. Tolkien remarked that Furuskog's demands were along the lines of 'I want this, I want that.' - 'Yes,' said Tolkien; And I want a secretary'. (horribly paraphrased, from memory). You see; Oxford professors might be world leaders in their fields, but they didn't get secretarial help!
But anyhoo - this chap Furuskog went ahead, and collated Ms. bodley 34. Collation seems to be a definite task. I gather there are conventions; for instance it's not customary for collators to comment on the material. Lots of work had been done on the subject over many years, by people much more qualified than mr. F; a point made by Tolkien and d'Ardenne in another article, called 'Ms Bodley 34: A Collation of a Collation', where they pointed out many of Furuskog's shortcomings, eg that what had seemed an erasure to Furuskog at one point in the manuscript was in fact a worm-hole.
Just goes to show - always work from the originals; and don't try and mix it with the professionals!
(This post was edited by geordie on Dec 27 2011, 3:59pm)
|
|
|
Darkstone
Immortal
Dec 27 2011, 4:21pm
Post #7 of 15
(1607 views)
Shortcut
|
It's obvious to me squire was joking about the peer review.
******************************************
"Oh, Gandalf, Gandalf, you fool! Can’t you see how I feel?"
"Yeah, I see. I see our troubles don’t amount to a hill of beans. You belong with Celeborn. And I need to go find the only one who can save us."
|
|
|
geordie
Tol Eressea
Dec 27 2011, 4:29pm
Post #8 of 15
(1645 views)
Shortcut
|
You think I hadn't thought of that? I'm enjoying myself. e.g. my comment "As for Tolkien's editors at Allen & Unwin; they knew their place."
- besides, there's much of interest in the rest of my post (and the one after that). Took me some time to look up those references, I can tell you. Better than watching the telly.
*oops - seems part of my post has gotten bolded accidentally during an edit. Ignore the bolding; it doesn't mean anything.
(This post was edited by geordie on Dec 27 2011, 4:38pm)
|
|
|
geordie
Tol Eressea
Dec 27 2011, 5:40pm
Post #9 of 15
(1611 views)
Shortcut
|
- I actually do stop and think before I post; and as you'll see, I also read books and other items to check that what I'm saying is accurate. See my response to Squire's
"I have often wondered just how many other ancient manuscripts he had access to, and where he found the time to decipher, read, and think about them in the midst of his professional work at Oxford."
- which involves quite a bit on some of Tolkien's more abstruse writings. I may not always succeed in my attempts at accuracy but if I make a mistake, I say so.
(This post was edited by geordie on Dec 27 2011, 5:44pm)
|
|
|
acheron
Gondor
Dec 27 2011, 5:41pm
Post #10 of 15
(1606 views)
Shortcut
|
As far as making a thorn goes, the easiest way to do it that will work most places is by holding down the alt key and typing 0222 on the number pad for capital thorn Þ or 0254 for miniscule thorn þ.
It will work on the TORn boards, though you have to use the "Basic Editor" mode (there's a button underneath the editing box), and change the post style to "Markup and HTML" (Post Style is the first option in the basic editor). The easiest thing to do is probably write your post as you would normally, then switch to the basic editor. Once you've done that, just go to the part of your post where you want to insert it, type ALT+0254, and there's your þ.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars, and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man, for precisely the same reasons. -- Douglas Adams
|
|
|
geordie
Tol Eressea
Dec 27 2011, 5:51pm
Post #11 of 15
(1574 views)
Shortcut
|
- doesn't work for me. Still, thanks anyway.
|
|
|
squire
Half-elven
Dec 27 2011, 7:39pm
Post #12 of 15
(1584 views)
Shortcut
|
What I meant by
"I have often wondered just how many other ancient manuscripts he had access to, and where he found the time to decipher, read, and think about them in the midst of his professional work at Oxford."
was not whether Prof. Tolkien worked with Anglo-Saxon manuscripts professionally, as part of his day job. Clearly he did, as your good examples show.
Instead I was wondering how he could possibly know so much stuff that he seems to know. For instance, the baroque and unusual first names of some Hobbits are thought to come from "legends" of the Northern Men of Rhovanion, as he states here:
In some old families, especially those of Fallohide origin such as the Tooks and the Bolgers, it was, however, the custom to give high-sounding first-names. Since most of these seem to have been drawn from legends of the past, of Men as well as of Hobbits, and many while now meaningless to Hobbits closely resembled the names of Men in the Vale of Anduin, or in Dale, or in the Mark, I have turned them into those old names, largely of Frankish and Gothic origin, that are still used by us or are met in our histories.
These Northern Men he refers to are not of the Edain - the distinct race of Men who entered Beleriand in the First Age and became the Heroes of the Silmarillion legends and the ancestors of the Dunedain of Numenor, Gondor, and Arnor. Rather they are (as Faramir puts it) Men of the Twilight, the mortal equivalents of the Wood-elves and other Quendi who refused the Great Journey westward. I don't believe we have ever seen Prof. Tolkien or his estate publish even a hint of the ancient legends of these races. Yet evidently he, on reading the Family Trees from the Red Book that he reproduced as Appendix C, immediately spotted not just enough evidence to conclude that an odd "custom" existed, but even that the custom drew on verifiable resemblances between some gentlehobbits' non-Westron first names, and various names from "legends of the past" as noted above.
How? When? Surely Prof. Tolkien must have read these name and those legends somewhere, as there are no other experts for him to consult or draw upon. Neither the Hobbits' Red Book of Westmarch, nor the commentaries to it added by the Gondorian scribes, would reasonably be expected to record the ancient legends of Dale or the Beornings. Nor is this the only example - far from it - in which he as narrator and editor of the Red Book exhibits knowledge of Middle-earth's history, cultures, and languages far beyond anything one could know just from reading his published editions. Thus I ask: what other manuscripts did he find when he uncovered the Red Book? What else has he read from that dusty trove which he (wisely) refused to identify? Where are those manuscripts now?
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'.
Footeramas: The 3rd (and NOW the 4th too!) TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
|
|
|
geordie
Tol Eressea
Dec 27 2011, 8:07pm
Post #13 of 15
(1586 views)
Shortcut
|
Can anyone tell me how to delete those posts?
(This post was edited by geordie on Dec 27 2011, 8:08pm)
|
|
|
Ataahua
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Dec 28 2011, 6:16pm
Post #14 of 15
(1602 views)
Shortcut
|
Let me know what posts you want deleted and I'll remove them for you.
Actually, post a request on Feedback with links to the post in question (by clicking on the 'copy shortcut' link in the left menu of the post), in case I'm not on TORN at the time. The next admin to come along will see your request quickly.
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded b*****d with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Ataahua's stories
|
|
|
geordie
Tol Eressea
Dec 30 2011, 2:43pm
Post #15 of 15
(1760 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Thanks, but I think I'll let them stand
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
-warts an' all.
|
|
|
|
|
