Transmission theory - what if it's ALL true? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

mindil · 01-21-2020, 05:26 AM

A few other random thoughts:

Tolkien clearly understood Sindarin well, by the end, but he might have missed things at the beginning, and there is no reason to think he ever understood Common Speech perfectly. He gives no examples of it in his appendices. He seems to have understood pure Adunaic better than CS, and that not as well as Sindarin.

So his reliability can be filtered through that lens.

The style of the writing can hint to the original narrators Tolkien heard the stories from. Book 1 of LoTR was clearly told primarily by hobbits. "Shadows of the Past" is clearly a pastiche of material from many sources, but the rest till the Prancing Pony is in distinct hobbit style. The chase of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli across Rohan seems more a Rohannish style than Gondorian, Hobbit or Elvish - possibly it comes from the tale of the Ring as told in Rohan. Eomer, who found their feat so astonishing, and in whose lands in happened, might have included it as worthy of note in the larger tale.

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01-21-2020, 05:26 AM	#17
mindil Animated Skeleton Join Date: Mar 2017 Posts: 47	A few other random thoughts: Tolkien clearly understood Sindarin well, by the end, but he might have missed things at the beginning, and there is no reason to think he ever understood Common Speech perfectly. He gives no examples of it in his appendices. He seems to have understood pure Adunaic better than CS, and that not as well as Sindarin. So his reliability can be filtered through that lens. The style of the writing can hint to the original narrators Tolkien heard the stories from. Book 1 of LoTR was clearly told primarily by hobbits. "Shadows of the Past" is clearly a pastiche of material from many sources, but the rest till the Prancing Pony is in distinct hobbit style. The chase of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli across Rohan seems more a Rohannish style than Gondorian, Hobbit or Elvish - possibly it comes from the tale of the Ring as told in Rohan. Eomer, who found their feat so astonishing, and in whose lands in happened, might have included it as worthy of note in the larger tale.