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The J.R.R Tolkien Discussion Thread


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In terms of Tolkien-related works (concerning Middle-earth), I still have to pick up The Art of LOTR and The Art of The Hobbit as well as The Annotated Hobbit. I'd like the Deluxe Slipcased Editions of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales at some point too, as I have the equivalent versions of LOTR, The Hobbit and The Children of Hurin. I see they've also released a Tales from the Perilous Realm volume in that series. It's an expensive business!

On top of these, my collection consists of a paperback LOTR set in a slipbox, an illustrated hardback single volume, separate illustrated hardback volumes in a slipbox, an illustrated hardback Hobbit, an illustrated hardback Silmarillion, a leatherbound hardback Silmarillion, the three hardback CHoME volumes, the hardback illustrated Complete Guide to Middle-earth, Sibley's Maps of Middle-earth set, the Atlas of Tolkien's Middle-earth, a number of art books, Scull and Hammond's Tolkien Companion and Guide two-volume set, their LOTR: Reader's Companion, and Rateliff's History of the Hobbit, which is fantastic as people have said. Also an interesting pop-up Hobbit. Christ knows why I have so many versions of things, it's crazy.

Then there are a number of film-related books. For LOTR I have all the Visual Companions, all the Art books, Weapons and Warfare, the Official Movie Guide, all the photo guide/creatures/Gollum books, and of course Doug's book. For The Hobbit I've only picked up the Chronicles books, though I'm still missing the second DoS volume with Tauriel on the cover. Another one I need to pick up, along with the forthcoming and final volume of course.

Medals for all! It's taken a good few years to build up and still fairly meagre compared to most but I'm quite proud of it.

You've bit some of the nice deluxe hardcover stuff. Would love some of that!

It's ok Inky, I'll buy some stuff I don't have first!

Yeah I was fortunate - when I got my first student loan a good while ago now I was able to pick up a lot of this stuff (when I probably should have been buying academic books). Who needs a social life anyway?

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You should try to purchase other Tolkien's books instead of the same book all over again. Your collection would be complete a lot sooner that way. ;)

I try to do both. History of Middle-earth 4 this weekend I think.

I think it took me about a year to fully collect the series in my student days when my meager budget was stretched over many things. This year I finally binge bought the more esoteric Tolkien related materials, including the non-Middle-earth publications like Beowulf: Monsters and Critics and Finn & Hengest, Tolkien's translations of Sir Gawain the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo and Pearl and the illustrated and annotated The Hobbit and the illustrated three volume LotR. So now my collection is complete as far as official works of Tolkien go and I have never really went for the buying of multiple editions for fun (except for those three examples mentioned above) if there is nothing new included in the text itself. I could try to collect all the Tolkien related materials like the guides etc. done by other hands but I don't feel I really need those at this point having been an avid fan for more than half of my life. I know my Tolkien well enough.

Next phase would probably be to collect the Tolkien studies from various branches of research but I am not too keen on such research literature at this point. I have enough of such material in the History of Middle-earth and The History of the Hobbit, which are really admirable body of work from Christopher Tolkien (and John D. Rateliff) who has done an enormous job of editing, giving textual criticism and commentary of his father's extant writings. The series is also something I don't find myself often perusing with "hey I'd like to read another of Tolkien's stories" kind of attitude but am mostly in a more scholarly mood when I open of the History books as much of their fascination comes from charting the journey of the stories to the finished text and seeing the process of thought or development of a theme or idea to the minutest of details. I find these books a slower read than your regular novel as the foot notes and commentary slow me down considerably when reading (I would never ever think of just bypassing Christopher Tolkien's notes) but they are highly rewarding for the sheer amount of variants, "what ifs" and changing concepts they present on Tolkien's road to the finished (or at least more finished) version of his tales.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I only have The Hobbit, LOTR and the Silmarillion.

What good are you then?

A true Tolkien fan only need these three (the Holy Trinity, as Stiff said). All the rest is useless fluff destined for people who suffer from compulsive buying disorder and who would purchase any book just because it has Tolkien's name on it!

"Oh, Tolkien's Middle-Earth Cooking Book (written by Gordon Ramsay)! Must buy that!"

You guys make me sick!

There's some great stuff in some of the histories. It's a shame Tolkien gave up on The Lost Road - what's there is absolutely brilliant.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Up to book 9 in the History of Middle-earth series. Can't wait to get time to read these but they look great on the shelf!

I have to admit it is a bit like reading the same thing over and over again with changes great and small when you peruse the Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2, The Shaping of Middle-earth, The Lost Road, Morgoth's Ring and War of the Jewels as much of the material is concerned with the evolution of Tolkien's mythic elvish history of the First Age. What is fascinating is the slow development of themes, ideas and characters and crystallization of some of his major ideas and how in some respects his multiple versions gradually reveal the final or the last form the stories ever got before the author's death. Often whimsical gives way to profound and poetic and convoluted to simplification. Sometimes one is lost in the sea of ever changing nomenclature as places, people and languages evolve alongside the tales and e.g. the elven naming formulas with various stages emerge. Again it is fascinating to see how some story ideas and elements come to the author with such clarity they are fully formed from their inception and change very little after and how others go through rigorous realignment, change and even deletion along the way to what we finally have in Silmarillion.

Of course the four book collection in the History of Middle-earth series on the writing of the Lord of the Rings (6 through 9) is very much of the same cloth with several stages of writing laid out and explored, often jumping back to the beginning to show the slow chiselling of the masterpiece, but the most delightful things for me at least are the radical original concepts or changes compared to the final form of the story. Trotter the wild ranger hobbit who finally became Aragorn son of Arathorn in the final book, Treebeard the evil giant who imprisoned Gandalf, the initial sketching and figuring out of the whole ring lore and myth along with ringwraiths and number of rings etc.

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I apologize in advance for taking the conversation in a different direction, but I did have a question concerning the Valar:

Would you count Morgoth amongst the Valar? Explain your answer.

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I apologize in advance for taking the conversation in a different direction, but I did have a question concerning the Valar:

Would you count Morgoth amongst the Valar? Explain your answer.

Melkor was one of the Ainur, the divine spirits beyond the world ere its creation but he was never counted among the Valar, the Powers of the World. Melkor or Morgoth was not counted among them even though he was the most powerful of all the Ainur as he was the dark enemy of the world, a fallen Ainu, who was in essence the personification of evil in the world. The Aratar, the eight highest of the lords and ladies of Valar, were originally nine and included Melkor (probably as the greatest of them) but he was removed from this 'order' after his rebellion, which began almost as soon as he entered the world.

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Up to book 9 in the History of Middle-earth series. Can't wait to get time to read these but they look great on the shelf!

I have to admit it is a bit like reading the same thing over and over again with changes great and small when you peruse the Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2, The Shaping of Middle-earth, The Lost Road, Morgoth's Ring and War of the Jewels as much of the material is concerned with the evolution of Tolkien's mythic elvish history of the First Age. What is fascinating is the slow development of themes, ideas and characters and crystallization of some of his major ideas and how in some respects his multiple versions gradually reveal the final or the last form the stories ever got before the author's death. Often whimsical gives way to profound and poetic and convoluted to simplification. Sometimes one is lost in the sea of ever changing nomenclature as places, people and languages evolve alongside the tales and e.g. the elven naming formulas with various stages emerge. Again it is fascinating to see how some story ideas and elements come to the author with such clarity they are fully formed from their inception and change very little after and how others go through rigorous realignment, change and even deletion along the way to what we finally have in Silmarillion.

Of course the four book collection in the History of Middle-earth series on the writing of the Lord of the Rings (6 through 9) is very much of the same cloth with several stages of writing laid out and explored, often jumping back to the beginning to show the slow chiselling of the masterpiece, but the most delightful things for me at least are the radical original concepts or changes compared to the final form of the story. Trotter the wild ranger hobbit who finally became Aragorn son of Arathorn in the final book, Treebeard the evil giant who imprisoned Gandalf, the initial sketching and figuring out of the whole ring lore and myth along with ringwraiths and number of rings etc.

A TORN member suggested they should do a book similar to the History Of Middle-Earth ones, but for the Peter Jackson films. I think that's a good idea. Could be a fascinating read.

I saw that.

Something like the Making of Star Wars books by Rinzler would be ideal, taking in every aspect of the production. He starts off with a short bio of Lucas before going onto the writing process and then pre-production etc. Everything is covered in great detail. A LotR one would be great!

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Melkor was one of the Ainur, the divine spirits beyond the world ere its creation but he was never counted among the Valar, the Powers of the World. Melkor or Morgoth was not counted among them even though he was the most powerful of all the Ainur as he was the dark enemy of the world, a fallen Ainur, who was in essence the personification of evil in the world.

Okay. So where did Melkor end up when Eru banished him?

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Melkor was one of the Ainur, the divine spirits beyond the world ere its creation but he was never counted among the Valar, the Powers of the World. Melkor or Morgoth was not counted among them even though he was the most powerful of all the Ainur as he was the dark enemy of the world, a fallen Ainur, who was in essence the personification of evil in the world.

Okay. So where did Melkor end up when Eru banished him?

The Void.

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Melkor was one of the Ainur, the divine spirits beyond the world ere its creation but he was never counted among the Valar, the Powers of the World. Melkor or Morgoth was not counted among them even though he was the most powerful of all the Ainur as he was the dark enemy of the world, a fallen Ainur, who was in essence the personification of evil in the world.

Okay. So where did Melkor end up when Eru banished him?

The Void.

Yes the Void outside the walls of the world. Yet Tolkien in his later writings proposes and theorizes that the whole world was still full of Melkor's essence as he had bound so much of his own power into it so it became the Arda Marred, forever tainted with Melkor's presence and dark power in such a way the the Earth itself became "Morgoth's Ring" in comparison with Sauron's One Ring and even though he was thrown into the Void his evil remained embedded in the very stuff of Arda.

IIRC Eru didn't banish him technically? The Valar did?

Yes they cast him out in chains.

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Who the hell did those? Bring back Alan Lee!

Don't forget the other two parts of the holy trinity of Tolkien illustrators, John Howe and Ted Nasmith!

Or perhaps they are too obvious and do not allow your imagination to roam with their too accurate portrayals of the scenes and characters from Tolkien's works.

04_HOW_02.jpg

TN-The_Mumak_of_Harad.jpg

Ah...back in the days when mumakil looked like African Elephants (and im sure, Tolkien being southafrican, what he had in mind...)

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Melkor was one of the Ainur, the divine spirits beyond the world ere its creation but he was never counted among the Valar, the Powers of the World. Melkor or Morgoth was not counted among them even though he was the most powerful of all the Ainur as he was the dark enemy of the world, a fallen Ainur, who was in essence the personification of evil in the world.

Okay. So where did Melkor end up when Eru banished him?

The Void.

Yes the Void outside the walls of the world. Yet Tolkien in his later writings proposes and theorizes that the whole world was still full of Melkor's essence as he had bound so much of his own power into it so it became the Arda Marred, forever tainted with Melkor's presence and dark power in such a way the the Earth itself became "Morgoth's Ring" in comparison with Sauron's One Ring and even though he was thrown into the Void his evil remained embedded in the very stuff of Arda.

Wait. Did Tolkien propose or theorize? Because in the area of textual analysis, literary theories arise from the readers, not from the author of the work. My reasoning: It doesn't make sense that an author should have to theorize about his own work since, by definition, he knows all of his own work and can therefore posit any theory as fact (rule of canon) as long as said theory is consistent with the observed narrative.

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Melkor was one of the Ainur, the divine spirits beyond the world ere its creation but he was never counted among the Valar, the Powers of the World. Melkor or Morgoth was not counted among them even though he was the most powerful of all the Ainur as he was the dark enemy of the world, a fallen Ainur, who was in essence the personification of evil in the world.

Okay. So where did Melkor end up when Eru banished him?

The Void.

Yes the Void outside the walls of the world. Yet Tolkien in his later writings proposes and theorizes that the whole world was still full of Melkor's essence as he had bound so much of his own power into it so it became the Arda Marred, forever tainted with Melkor's presence and dark power in such a way the the Earth itself became "Morgoth's Ring" in comparison with Sauron's One Ring and even though he was thrown into the Void his evil remained embedded in the very stuff of Arda.

Wait. Did Tolkien propose or theorize? Because in the area of textual analysis, literary theories arise from the readers, not from the author of the work. My reasoning: It doesn't make sense that an author should have to theorize about his own work since, by definition, he knows all of his own work and can therefore posit any theory as fact (rule of canon) as long as said theory is consistent with the observed narrative.

Except Tolkien presents his work as a translated history so he could "in theory" theorise and suppose about aspects of his work in which he hadn't fleshed out or fully decided on.

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that the whole world was still full of Melkor's essence as he had bound so much of his own power into it so it became the Arda Marred, forever tainted with Melkor's presence and dark power in such a way the the Earth itself became "Morgoth's Ring" in comparison with Sauron's One Ring and even though he was thrown into the Void his evil remained embedded in the very stuff of Arda.

Wait. Did Tolkien propose or theorize? Because in the area of textual analysis, literary theories arise from the readers, not from the author of the work. My reasoning: It doesn't make sense that an author should have to theorize about his own work since, by definition, he knows all of his own work and can therefore posit any theory as fact (rule of canon) as long as said theory is consistent with the observed narrative.

Except Tolkien presents his work as a translated history so he could "in theory" theorise and suppose about aspects of his work in which he hadn't fleshed out or fully decided on.

Oh, I see. It's a meta-literary technique of artificially removed authorship (i.e. acting as translator as opposed to sole author).

That actually makes sense.

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Who the hell did those? Bring back Alan Lee!

Don't forget the other two parts of the holy trinity of Tolkien illustrators, John Howe and Ted Nasmith!

Or perhaps they are too obvious and do not allow your imagination to roam with their too accurate portrayals of the scenes and characters from Tolkien's works.

Ah...back in the days when mumakil looked like African Elephants (and im sure, Tolkien being southafrican, what he had in mind...)

Tolkien was 3 when he moved to England from South Africa. I doubt he had much memory or extensive knowledge of elephants based on his early life in Bloemfontain. I don't think he ever specified which species the Mûmakil resembled more. My bet would also be on the African variety.

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My bet would be on English elephants!

Ah the old Elephantus Britannicus Optimus. Haven't seen those in ages. Apparently they still roamed the Midlands in Tolkien's time.

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My bet would be on English elephants!

Ah the old Elephantus Britannicus Optimus. Haven't seen those in ages. Apparently they still roamed the Midlands in Tolkien's time.

As a native of God's country I can confirm that one or two can still be seen on rare occasions.

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that the whole world was still full of Melkor's essence as he had bound so much of his own power into it so it became the Arda Marred, forever tainted with Melkor's presence and dark power in such a way the the Earth itself became "Morgoth's Ring" in comparison with Sauron's One Ring and even though he was thrown into the Void his evil remained embedded in the very stuff of Arda.

Wait. Did Tolkien propose or theorize? Because in the area of textual analysis, literary theories arise from the readers, not from the author of the work. My reasoning: It doesn't make sense that an author should have to theorize about his own work since, by definition, he knows all of his own work and can therefore posit any theory as fact (rule of canon) as long as said theory is consistent with the observed narrative.

Except Tolkien presents his work as a translated history so he could "in theory" theorise and suppose about aspects of his work in which he hadn't fleshed out or fully decided on.

Oh, I see. It's a meta-literary technique of artificially removed authorship (i.e. acting as translator as opposed to sole author).

That actually makes sense.

If you read the Prolgue to LotR you can see that the novel has an invented textual transmission! The version we read is something like the 5th or 6th in the tradition which began with the red book. There's also a little nod by him to explain why there are differences in the two versions of Riddles in the Dark.

This is a great lecture on some of Tolkien's writing technique if people are interested in that kind of thing.

Also, I bought another copy of the Hobbit. I now have all three movie tie in covers of the book. (Took awhile to track down an AUJ copy because they replaced them with DoS covers in 2013, and BotFA covers in 2014)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just finished reading the Annotated Hobbit. It is really my definitive version of the book as it comes with such wealth of research and commentary on various aspects of the story, large and small. This is also much more readable than John. D. Rateliff's The History of the Hobbit, which of course is done in a different style and is brilliant in its textual analysis and revelations of the textual history and various manuscripts of the text but tends to be a bit weighty and fragmented read because of all the in-depth commentary interrupting the text. Andersson's notes flow quite nicely along with the story and I really prefer the new revised format where the notes follow the text on the side of the page instead of having them at the end of each chapter like in the original version. A nice surprise is the addition of some of Tolkien's own unpublished poetry e.g. the Bimble Bay poems that have not appeared outside the scholarly periodicals they were first published in during the 20's and 30's. Another aspect that Andersson's work reveals are the various influences that Tolkien drew upon, which doesn't take away from his accomplishment but rather illustrates the processes and ways a writer uses his experience to mould a tale that he has always wanted to read but hasn't found in anything he has read so he had to come up with one himself. And by this synthesis a unique and original creation is born.

One aspect that is noticeable in Tolkien's work as an author is that he usually takes enormous time in his groundwork, setting up the story, the subsequent chapters where the pace is leisurely and painterly and how by the time he reaches the story's end, the reader can easily see enormous amount of compression and brevity. This happens both with The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, perhaps writer's fatigue, perhaps a change of heart, perhaps requirements of the events in the story, perhaps all required has been said. Up until around Not At Home chapter things move with less speed, with more detail, discussion, narration and dialogue and then when the finale comes it is quite breathless, no less powerful but markedly more quickly described and told in all. Still by the end and that last scene at Bag End you feel that you have come to a satisfying conclusion where our small protagonist has come a full circle and could well live happily ever after.

The discussion about the various illustrations for foreign prints of the novel open up a fascinating window to a whole range of artists who illustrated the book in various countries around the world. From the very Moomin-feeling pictures by Finnish Tove Jansson (the creator of the Moomin characters) to the quite faithful ones by the Japanese Ryuichi Terashima there obviously is wide scope to the work that inspired many able artists to create a great range of visual counterparts to the written word. Tolkien, who was so specific about his world and its visual look, being something of an artist himself thought many of the artists had gone too wide of the mark with their drawings and I think he thought there was maturity and dignity to the tale that most illustrator's of children's works missed. I have to agree as although there are among them some singular visual styles these artists often take the road of high fairytale with penchant for exaggeration and naivete. But the great amount of Tolkien's own paintings, drawings and sketches presented among the text made me appreciate his artistic style and efforts all the more and I took the opportunity to order the somewhat recently released Art of The Hobbit and Art of the LotR books where Tolkien scholars Hammond and Scull take an in-depth look at the art the author made for both novels.

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I too ordered the two art books the other day (they're going to be a Christmas present to myself). The only Tolkien-related books I want now are indeed The Annotated Hobbit, which I can't believe I don't have yet, and that Adventures of Tom Bombadil edition that was released recently.

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These art books are probably some of the last Tolkien books my collection needs as I was on a Tolkien book-binge this autumn and got most of the missing links from my collection. Until one of the Tolkien scholars will do another "The Unearthed Grocery Lists of J.R.R. Tolkien" type of release with new original writings from the author.

I have the Adventures of Tom Bombadil in two versions, The Alan Lee illustrated Tales from the Perilous Realm and the version from The Tolkien Reader with Pauline Baynes's black and white illustrations, which was really a bonus as I was after the The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son, which happens to be part of the Reader.

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You're just jealous of my pop-up Hobbit book aren't you? Admit it.

I am! John Howe illustrated no less!

Those Art books just arrived. At a quick glance the Hobbit generated much more art in terms of illustrations and LotR seems to have yielded much more maps and less pure illustrations.

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I like maps, so that's not a problem.

Yes I too find them fascinating so it will be interesting to delve into the whole work. To me it seems with the Hobbit Tolkien had real artistic ambitions with his paintings while the Lord of the Rings material is much more done for the author to illuminate or visualize parts of the story to himself and in this way further crystallize and clear certain narrative points, locations and geography. But in the end Tolkien did create e.g. some impressive dust jacket designs for LotR so it was not all map drawing.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Nice to see another little piece of Tolkien arcana unearthed.

 

I wonder when it will be published with 200 page commentary. ;)

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