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Old 10-03-2002, 05:54 PM   #43
Child of the 7th Age
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Peeling onions and weeping as she does her post.....

Hey, I fell onto something last night that's very interesting. Maybe we're the only ones who make an artificial division between language and legend. Maybe Tolkien saw things differently. He could perceive the whole in a way that a dimwit such as myself could not. As a result, he would never sharply distinguish, and indeed did not want to distinguish, between language and legend.

Take a look at this whole string of quotes which suggests that, for Tolkien, linguistics and mythology ran in tandem:

Quote:
It was just as the 1914 War burst upon me that I made the discovery that "legends" depend on the language to which they belong; but a living legend depends equally on the "legends" which it conveys by tradition.... So though being a philologist by nature and trade...I began with language, I found myself inventing "legends" of the same "taste" Letters, 231
Another example:

Quote:
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginery languages. I have been at it since I could write....But an equally basic proposition of mine ab initio was for myth (not allegory!)...and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy tale and history Letters 143-44
The italics are mine, as this certainly bears on our image of Tolkien with one foot in the actual soil and history of England and the other in the England of poetic tradition.

Still another comment linking the two:

Quote:
I began the construction of languages in early boyhood....But I was equally interested in traditional tales (especially those concerning dragons) Letters, 345
It can't be mere coincidence that, in each of these cases, language and legend are inseparably linked.

And there's one more, even spookier, example. Tolkien composed his first lexicons as a young man--Quenya was begun in 1915, and Gnomish in 1917. (Is Gnomish Sindarin?) But he did not perceive these as free-standing grammar tools. They had to be co-opted into the legends themselves.

They were presented as texts composed by Eriol, the historical figure of the 5th century English mariner who acted as the narrator of the stories. The Gnomish one was also at another time attributed to Rumil the Sage of Tol Eressea. And remember at this time Tol Eressea was interpreted as Britain.

In fact, last night, I reviewed BoLT, The Shaping of Middle-earth, and the Lost Road in terms of the "English" framing devices which Tolkien used for the Silm in this "early" period. And this period ran from 1916 through at least 1937. In every single major manuscript of this period--and there are about 9--he used an English narrator to tell the tale. There is a great discusion of this in Tolkien's Legendarium --a chapter by Charles Noad on "The Construction of the Silmarillion".

First, there was Eriol the narrator, the 5th century mariner, and from 1925 on, there was Aelfwine the narrator and storyteller, the figure from 10th or 11th century Wessex (Leave it to Tolkien--he keeps changing his mind!). And in this same period of composition, 1916-1937, with only one exception, the country of Britain always appears within the Silm. First, it is identified as Tol Eressea. Later it is separated out and becomes the shattered remnents of Beleriand, an isle sometimes called Leithien. In fact, as late as 1958, Tolkien was still flirting with the concept of the narrator/storyteller as a man of historical English origins.

Later on, of course, with the LotR, the narrators become Bilbo and Frodo. But it is no coincidence that they are from the Shire. That means, in Tolkien's eyes, they are from England! Just like the earlier narrators Eriol and Aelfwine. Because the Shire was certainly England to Tolkien. In fact, near the end of this life, Clyde Kilby stayed one summer with Tolkien, and he asked him why the hobbits never appeared in the First or Second Age. Tolkien said they couldn't because hobbits are English and you can't have hobbits before you have the Shire.(By this time, he had discarded England from the Legendarium except in the guise of the Shire.)

So the Silm/Legendarium is , on one level, a story told by English storytellers who were all Elf-friends(Eriol, Aelfwin, Bilbo, Frodo), and then retold by an even later English storyteller, Tolkien himself, also certainly an Elf-friend.

What's even stranger is if you think of this information in terms of The Lonely Star (or RPG). We have the evolution of the early hobbits occur on the islands that are left from the shattering of Beleriand, the same place that Tolkien claimed was England. Only, of course, we didn't consciously realize this connection when we initially wrote that into the story. (Plays spooky music as the Lonely Star sails away.)

[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]
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