Works of Tolkien scholarship

Hear hear! I second, err.. I fourth what's been said above.

halfwise wrote:To commence the end of beating this horse, I'd like to switch to an open letter to Eldy.

Eldy - I know you are committed to to writing a scholarly article, but with the new Amazon series coming out, I think you can open your sights to a wider audience.  There would be a market for a book along the lines of The Peoples of the Second Age, with your historical analysis of all the different cultures available to the series.  Your writing is very accessible and a joy to read for anyone who has interest in Tolkien.  I think you could get a couple articles published in scholarly journals to establish your credentials as you work on the book for the wider audience. And the standards are not as confining as scholarly work: you don't have to reference every sentence! (in fact you don't want to).

With the TV series due to come out in a couple years and run for five, you've got time to nail the second or third season.  The publisher would slap some image from the series on it and it would sell like hotcakes.  I'd certainly buy the damn thing even if I didn't know you.

Wow, halfy, thank you. I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner; I was out of town attending an anime convention this weekend (a very Tolkien-scholarly pastime, to be sure). I'm honored and touched that you'd even suggest this as a possibility. One of my biggest concerns about my writing is that it's not accessible enough, so it means a lot to know that people in this thread find it so.

The scholarly article is indeed my ... "priority" might be a strong word at this point since I've been working on a number of non-Tolkien projects recently, but it's the Tolkien thing that's most important to me to get to. Beyond that, I don't really have any plans to get more involved in other Tolkien stuff again, though obviously a lot can change in even just the next year or two.


Also, John Garth is amazing and Tolkien and the Great War is a masterpiece of Tolkien scholarship.

I haven't read as many Tolkien related books as you have, but your writing flows, it's among the best to read. I know what a PITA writing is, but if you write as the mood takes you - write for yourself and your friends not the world at general, a book will eventually emerge from it all. If you collect all your second age writings you're probably a quarter of the way already.

"Whale-road" is a well-known kenning from famous translations of Beowulf, but Tolkien apparently thought it ridiculous. I think it does have a poetic beauty to it, but was amused by his criticisms.

From *Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary* (London, 2014, pp. 142 f.):

“*hronrad* is evidently related to these expressions. Nonetheless it is quite incorrect to translate it (as it is all too frequently translated) ‘whale road’. It is incorrect stylistically since compounds of this sort sound themselves clumsy or bizarre in modern English, even when their components are correctly selected. In this particular instance the unfortunate sound-association with ‘railroad’ increases the ineptitude.

“It is incorrect in fact. *rad* is the ancestor of our modern word ‘road’, but it does not mean ‘road’. Etymology is not a safe guide to sense. *rad* is the noun of action to *ridan* ‘ride’ and means riding — i.e., ‘riding on horseback; moving as a horse does (or a chariot), or as a ship does at anchor’; and hence ‘a journey on horseback’ (or more seldom by ship), ‘a course (however vagrant)’. It does not mean the actual ‘track’ — still less the hard paved permanent and more or less straight tracks that we associate with the ‘road’.

Also *hron (hran)* is a word peculiar to Old English. It means some kind of ‘whale’, that is of the family of fish-like mammals. What precisely is not known: but it was something of the porpoise or dolphin kind, probably; at any rate less than a real *hwael*. There is a statement in Old English that a *hron* was about seven times the size of a seal, and a *hwael* about seven times the size of a *hron*.

The word as ‘kenning’ therefore means *dolphin’s riding*, i.e. in full, the watery fields where you can see dolphins and lesser members of the whale-tribe playing, or seeming to gallop like a line of riders on the plains. That is the picture and comparison the kenning was meant to evoke. It is not evoked by ‘whale road’ — which suggests a sort of semi-submarine steam-engine running along submerged metal rails over the Atlantic.”

I have that book, and thought that nobody would do a better job with Beowulf than Tolkien. But his precision gets a bit in the way, and less educated translators feel freer with the words.

For those who are wondering, Tolkien's translation is "the sea where the whale rides".

So this is so full of psycho-babble that I couldn't keep my teeth gritted long enough to get through it.  If someone else has a stronger stomach for this type of thing maybe they'd like to see it through and report back if it has anything useful to say?  It's about 7 minutes long but I could only last 2 minutes before wanting to bang my head through the screen.

{{ Well I'm very drunk, it's a day with a 'y' in it, I am always drunk on those days, so I'll give it a go Halfy- back in 7 minutes-ish, may need some extra buckie before I go in and take one for the team! }}

{{ I wouldnt bother Halfy- it simply takes the historic archetype of the Magician, in particular the transformation part and crossing from the known (conscious) to the unconscious (the unknown) with the ability to bring the latter into the former. It doesn't help he seems to be using the film to go on, and it in fact doesn't particularly relate directly to Gandalf- its more an excuse for a broader discussion on the meaning of the magician archetype. Sort of then not very well superimposed onto Gandalf, who only fits it in certain aspects. }}

I stuck it out This chap uses far too many words when he could have said things so much simpler. I think he enjoys his cleverness. I understand what hes saying and I can get that what he says could be true but,...... less fecking words ok, we are not acne racked, greasy skin, 19 yr old dandruff heads,

"Spit it out and shut up" sounds like a good synopsis of the critiques. Doesn't seem like his realization is worth the pain.

Then again if I had a physics revelation I'd feel I'd have to spend time putting it in context before the big reveal. And philosophers do feel they are being more precise with all these damn words. I may give him a pass but I'm not clicking on another one of his videos.