Entwives

Pettytyrant101 wrote:On the contary Elthir I have found the whole discussion fascinating.

Me too!

Over the weekend I took a brisk ride through some of the chapters of The Lord of the Rings, and stumbled upon the following in Bree...

'He [Sam] had imagined himself meeting giants taller than trees, and other creatures even more terrifying, some time or other in the course of his journey, but at the moment he was finding his first sight of Men and their tall houses quite enough, indeed too much for the dark end of a tiring day.'

So we have at least three different early references to giants. Another something I noticed in The Road to Isengard: three Ents are described 'as tall as trolls they were, twelve feet or more...'

Just a couple more bits to chew on given the earlier discussion.

I think we have found one.

brilliant !
this is one thats happy !
"free of Treebeard ! yea!"

wheres Elthir?

Dunno, but hope he is around had a thought regarding goblins and orcs I wanted to put to him.

Waking me up for a thought about goblins?

But I could have had my own thought about them and remained asleep!

Ah yes but would it be as good as this one? Which is, um, give me a moment, I had the goblins thought roughly 2,376 buckies ago......aha, yes that was it- Tolkien uses Goblin a lot in the TH- a book aimed at children- he prefers orc in LotR's- a book aimed at older readers.

Now in my view 'goblin' is merely a modern translation of the older word (within Tolkiens conceit) and as a scholar in language he was of course aware of (and disliked) the version of elves and goblins made popular by the Victorians.

And it occured to me he was making use of ths in his own version of history- again within his conceit of translating an older text for consumption for a modern (circa 1950's) audience, who if you'd said elf or goblin to them 99.9% would have thought of the dimituve Victroian ideas of them.

So being aware of this I think Tolkien delibretly uses Goblin in certain contexts in LotR's to show that this process of reduction of orcs towards the victroian goblin was in fact culturally underway in bits of ME that had not had dealings with orcs for a very long time.

And what got me thinking this? Fireworks. Goblin Barkers and Elf Fountains- here the goblins and elves are reduced to fun sounding names for light (sorry!) enertainment.
Tolkien begins by continuing the goblin, childish association but later he slowly throws in lines which indicate goblins and the much scarier orcs are one in the same 'these half-orcs and goblin-men' sets out the position clearly- they are interchangable.
But to get to the point of them being interchangable Tolkien first uses goblin in a childish context and then slowly alters the image of them in the mind of his readers to something more adult. In a sense using his own work to reassert the older meaning over the new one (at that time)- and he succeded, as in the modern word more people when you say 'elf' or 'goblin' will think of something closer to Tolkien's version than the Victorian (and that was ture I would say before PJ's films- as D&D, computer games and every fantasy book post Tolkien has shown).

Ok, Im going back to my buckie now...

makes sense to me !

Hmm, well I have now looked up every instance of the word goblin in The History of Middle-Earth series, including The History of The Lord of the Rings. One might think that doing so would help me respond better to Petty's post...

... but actually I am a bit confused. I still maintain [and agree with Petty] that 'goblin' is an English, thus modern, translation of an ancient word, and I hold that that ancient word is Westron orc [among other ancient words like Sindarin orch], but this is what I would claim is the 'ultimate' scenario, landed on and published by JRR Tolkien...

... but [in my opinion] this ultimate decision was not arrived at until as late as 1965/1966. If correct, this is pretty late actually! And well after The Lord of the Rings was written and published of course.

I would say orc was not a well known word in the 1950s, and looking at earlier text we can see Tolkien connecting his orcs to 'goblins' in an external way -- and by that I mean [early Silmarillion for example] the explanation that: 'goblins' we may call them now, but back in ancient days they were strong and fell and of nearly human stature: so we might better call the creatures back then orcs.

In other words orcs were more formidable 'goblins' but only when compared to what we think of today with 'goblins' -- rather more like Quendi and Elves are distinct from this perspective.

That said, when writing The Lord of the Rings there seems to be an 'internal' distinction as well [orcs being a more formidable kind of goblin back in Frodo's day]. An even though any such arguable example will, in my opinion anyway, disappear in revision, Tolkien was still using 'goblin' as if distinct in some way from orc as late as the writing of the Appendices!

And even later (Quendi And Eldar), he was still not characterizing the word Orc as [necessarily] a Westron word, or a word used back in Frodo's day. As I say, Tolkien seems to have arrived at [what I think is] his ultimate scenario in the 1960s, especially with the revised 'Third Edition' of The Hobbit and his advice to translators of The Lord of the Rings.

Actually I've been sleeping, but it's true I did look up 'goblin' as I say above, although earlier than I'm implying. Or something. Anyway, if just after writing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien thought that a goblin was a lesser sort of orc, well, by simple 'luck' of revision it seems to have vanished from The Lord of the Rings, and he could at least more easily revise his thoughts about the matter.

Outside of Orcrist, the two instances of 'orc' in The Hobbit [one added for the 1951 revised edition] may actually reflect this concept that an Orc was a more formidable goblin, it's just that [I think] the 1965 idea can explain even these instances 'away', using the translation conceit.

Well, I know this post is confusing, but I could be sleeping as I write this. And in my slight defense even Christopher Tolkien doesn't seem to know exactly what is going on here, through the years at least.

I still maintain [and agree with Petty] - Elthir

I dont care how confusing the answer I just did a celebratatory lap of the room.
(Now I need a buckie)
Does my prompting you into possible wakefulness merit a star? (running round the room bloody well ought to )

Does my prompting you into possible wakefulness merit a star? (running round the
room bloody well ought to )

Well you are most correct that I am only possibly awake, which I'm guessing would merit something if I were certainly awake to give it.

Well I could administer a buckie wake up call, via this piping. Then you'd definitly be awake and could award me a star
Now where did I put the foot pump?

Found them.

I have the weirdest woody right now

........

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-have-the-weirdest-boner

i am not a complete idiot eldo.

Not completely!

{{{}}}

chris63 wrote:Found them.

 
 

Not a wife I know but, Entish,

I like

Rise of the Ents