XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien
From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid
In message
Paul S. Person spoke these staves:
>
> wrote:
>>
> There are several places, later on in /HOME/, where he states
> that, just because the text under discussion has been compressed
> and doesn't mention , that does not mean that
> has been abandoned.
Exactly.
>> Other things are, of course, also noteworthy. In the first
>> narrative setting, what CJRT calls the 'Eriol story,' Tol Eressëa
>> really _is_ England, and in the later narrative setting, the
>> 'Ælfwine story,' England is still a crucial element -- the old
>> land of the Elves that is explicitly and deliberately copied in
>> Tol Eressëa. Thus these first stages of Tolkien's mythology appear
>> to me not only, as Carpenter put it, a 'mythology _for_ England'
>> (emphasis mine), but actually a mythology _about_ England. This
>> aspect gradually faded (it is still detectable in the early
>> Silmarillion texts).
>
> I have always understood Carpenter as meaning that the original
> goal was to create, for England, a mythology in the same sense
> that other nations had their mythologies, particularly the Norse.
> Since these other national mythologies are about their nation, so
> would JRRT's mythology be about England.
That is close to what Tolkien wrote himself in letter #131:
Also - and here I hope I shall not sound absurd - I was
from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved
country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its
tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and
found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There
was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian,
and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing
English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there
was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is,
it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of
Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I
felt to be missing.
(_Letters_ #131)
However, I think there is something in especially BoLT that doesn't
quite match that ambition -- or rather, that goes beyond that
ambition. Tolkien speaks of stories "bound up with its tongue and
soil" in a way that fits exactly with what I see in BoLT, but which
goes beyond what I see in the Norse mythology or in the others that I
know about (admittedly mostly the Greek, and even that not very
well). BoLT is concerned with explaining the _soil_ of England
specifically at a level that doesn't, as far as I know, happen in the
ancient mythologies; there the focus is on cosmological explanations,
on explaining the forces of nature, the social order, and 'correct'
behaviour. A large part of Scandinavian legends naturally take place
in the Scandinavian lands, but the legends aren't really "_bound
up_" with the soil of the Scandinavian lands the way Tolkien's early
mythology is with English soil -- the Scandinavian legends could be
displaced to other lands and still make sense, but the framing story
of the BoLT can't simply be relocated from England; neither the
Eriol story in which Tol Eressëa physically _is_ England nor in the
Ælfwine story in which Tol Eressëa is, to the Elves, a kind of 'New
England': a recreation of the physical locations of England.
That is what I mean by the difference between the mythology _about_
England rather than _for_ England. Tolkien seems only to a lesser
degree concerned about the people, the social order and the social
conventions of the people he identifies as the true English
(primarily the Angels, apparently), but he is more concerned with
ascerting their right to the English lands and (in the Ælfwine story)
elevating their language by letting it be the language spoken also by
the Elves in Tol Eressëa.
It may be me -- I may misunderstand what is in the mythologies
Tolkien mentions, or I may be reading too much into Tolkien's early
mythology, but as it stands, I can't help but feel that the reference
to the other mythologies and the phrase 'a mythology for England'
misses something that was essential to Tolkien.
> There have been occasional discussions about "filming the
> Silmarillion". How about a TV series using Eriol, pulled from the
> Sea by monks, telling them about The Cottage of Lost Play, Tol
> Eressea, and the stories he heard there?
Or Ælfwine, yes, I think it could be made to work, though I'm not
sure I'd be a good audience for such an adaptation: I'm afraid that I
would have the same problem as with the New Line Cinema films -- when
they modernize the thematic content they must, perforce, change
things in ways that Tolkien wouldn't have approved of, and I cannot
help but to find it distasteful.
> Did you note the first entry in the Glossary (part I, IIRC): the
> one defining "Ainur" as "the pagan gods" and CJRT's note that this
> could only be said by someone standing /outside/ the mythology. In
> other words, that, originally, JRRT considered the Ainur to be
> "gods", not merely "angelic beings".
Actually I'm not sure it's quite that simple. The Ainur are the pagan
Gods, but they are also created beings under Eru. I wonder if there
was any medieval thinkers who thought that (some of?) the pagan gods
were actually angelic beings that the pagans mistook for gods?
>>And now for reading Rateliff's _The History of The Hobbit_ . . .
>
> I hope you enjoy it! I surely did!
I am thoroughly enjoying it, though progress is regrettably slow (I
find it difficult to find time to do much reading these days).
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your
feeling of what reality "ought to be".
- Richard Feynman
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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