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nothinglikethesun9
The Shire
Jan 21 2015, 1:49am
Post #1 of 10
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Was Tolkien's BBC audio lecture on Sir Gawain & the Green Knight saved and made available? Thank-you.
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squire
Half-elven
Jan 21 2015, 2:20am
Post #2 of 10
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You can read it in a modified form
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As far as I know, the only way to engage with Tolkien's BBC 'talk' on the poem is to read his Introduction to his posthumously published translation of Sir Gawain, Pearl, and Orfeo that came out in 1975. Christopher Tolkien, the editor, says he put together the Introduction from several of his father's writings on the subject.
"The second section [of the Introduction, on pp. 4-10], on Sir Gawain, is (in slightly reduced form) a radio talk which he gave after the broadcasts of his translation." (from CT's Preface to JRRT, Sir Gawain, etc.1975. Ed. CT) I've never heard that a recording was made and preserved, but others may know more about that.
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 & 4th TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion and NOW the 1st BotR Discussion too! and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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a.s.
Valinor
Jan 21 2015, 2:46am
Post #3 of 10
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OK, so I don't know much but have a long memory :-)
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Something about your reply reminded me of something (Oh, I'm Old, that's as precise as I can be). I Googled it and remembered where I had read a mention before: Jason Fisher's blog. I have a copy of the Introduction you mention in your post (although I have it in a compilation called "A Tolkien Miscellany" published by QPBC in 2002) and must have gone looking for this before.
Anyhow, in this post from 2010, quoting Jason Fisher:
A year later, Jan wrote to the British Broadcasting Corporation, asking whether a recording of Tolkien’s Sir Gawain radio broadcast was available. Parts of his translation were broadcast on the BBC in December 1953, along with a short introduction written and read by Tolkien. The BBC Secretariat responded to Jan on 24 September 1980 with regrets that “we do not have this recording in our Sound Archives. Even so, we would not have been able to release a copy, for copyright and contractual reasons.”
a.s.
"an seileachan"
"A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds." JRR Tolkien, Letters.
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a.s.
Valinor
Jan 21 2015, 4:33am
Post #5 of 10
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Is he still posting here?
Maybe he's using "introduction" accidently here, because (if I understand the issue correctly) the introduction in the book was composed by Christopher Tolkien at least PARTIALLY based on the talk JRRT gave after the radio broadcast of his translation. In the book intro, Christopher Tolkien says, "The second section [of the Introduction/as] on Sir Gawain is, in slightly reduced form, a radio talk which he gave after the radio broadcasts of his translation".
So when Jason says, "along with a short introduction" he means only "along with a commentary"? Which said commentary became the book introduction, hence the confusion in terms.
Conjecture.
a.s.
"an seileachan"
"A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds." JRR Tolkien, Letters.
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a.s.
Valinor
Jan 21 2015, 12:04pm
Post #7 of 10
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Thanks, dernwyn.
a.s.
"an seileachan"
"A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds." JRR Tolkien, Letters.
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nothinglikethesun9
The Shire
Jan 21 2015, 9:25pm
Post #8 of 10
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Thanks for everyone's detailed reply. I believe Tolkien only gave a commentary after the others had read the introduction and actual text -- I think this was due to either his or his wife's illness at the time.
Too bad the BBC doesn't have it :(
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squire
Half-elven
Jan 21 2015, 10:55pm
Post #9 of 10
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It finally occurred to me that I had a better source about all this
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I have Scull and Hammond's totally remarkable JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology, but I rarely use it. Of course, for a question like this it's invaluable, preserving as it does every documented moment of Tolkien's life from letters, archives, etc.
What I just now found out by skimming the section on the latter months of 1953, is this. Tolkien recorded a 5-minute introduction, including a brief passage of the actual Middle English poem. Then he recorded separately a 20-minute, 2800-word, "talk" on the poem. That was broadcast after the poem itself (which went on the air in several sections, due to length; the sections were called "Fits", just like in Hunting of the Snark). As you say, his original recording date was postponed due to his illness (not his wife's); but it had always been the plan to do the longer commentary after the actual translation had been broadcast. As we had already guessed here, it's the second, longer, essay that was edited and included in the Foreword to the eventual publication of the translation in 1975, by Christopher Tolkien.
Reading Scull and Hammond's excerpts from various letters Tolkien wrote and received, he and his friends were not totally pleased by the quality of the Sir Gawain readings. The original idea, I gather, had been for Dylan Thomas to do the readings, but that seems not to have happened. Tolkien volunteered to do it himself, but the BBC evidently didn't trust him as a professional radio actor. During the broadcasts, his friends seem to have enjoyed his translation, but whoever the actual voices were (the BBC followed Tolkien's suggestion to use four actors to differentiate the various characters in the poem), the Oxbridge Middle English mafia did not approve of their delivery, or phrasing, or something!
Might that expert disapproval, perhaps leaking back to Radio House, be why the performance was never issued as a record?
One other loose thread that I noticed is that the Radio Times, BBC's house magazine for subscribers, ran an article on Sir Gawain that Tolkien wrote for them. It was titled 'A Fourteenth Century Romance'. How much overlap was there between the magazine piece, and the on-air talk, I wonder.
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 & 4th TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion and NOW the 1st BotR Discussion too! 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.
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