Ä Area: Mythology Echo ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 43 Date: 08-25-96 03:49 From: David Grubbs Read: Yes Replied: No To: Lydia Goodberry Mark: Subj: Re: Mythology in Lord of ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ LG> If I'm not mistaken, Tolkein based at least parts of his books on LG> Beowulf... Tolkien was a philologist at one of the English universities, an authority on Old English and Middle English language and literature; he was also conversant with Finnish, Welsh, Gothic, Norse, Irish, Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages and ancient mythic and legendary literatures. His knowledge of the interelationships of languages was enormous; in his younger days he worked on the Oxford English Dictionary, tracing the origins and history of words as they developed toward their present forms and meanings. His influence in scholarly circles might have been enormous, had it not been for what he referred to as his "secret vice," a hobby of inventing languages that he had enjoyed since his grammar school days. By the time he was a young man, his hobby reflected his deepening understanding of matters philological, and he began what was to become a lifelong project, the creation of two "historically related" languages which derived from a common ancestor-tongue, changing down the (fictional) ages in a regular fashion that gave them the sembelence of real languages. But he knew that a language cannot exist without a population to speak it, so he had to invent the two kindreds of elves, the High Elves and the Grey Elves. Though the details of vocabulary and grammar of these languages were unrelated to any real languages, he deliberately gave them something of the "flavor" or style (phonological and grammatical) of Finnish and Welsh, two of his personal favorites. He also knew that languages inevitably have an intimate relationship with a mythology. (His good friend C. S. Lewis once cynically referred to mythology as "a disease of language"; Tolkien replied that you might just as well call language a disease of mythology). So his Elvish-speaking populations also required a mythos, which he developed over many years into what eventually became _The Silmarillion_. This dealt with the most ancient myths, from the "Elder Days," when the elves, exiled to Middle-Earth by the Valar (gods), warred against Morgoth, Sauron's boss. He created his mythos independently of any "real" mythologies; the only really striking similarity was that between his tragic hero Turin and the Finnish Kulervo of the Kalevala. But again, there was the matter of "flavor" of the stories, and this was modeled on the flavor of North European tales: thus his use of the terms elf, dwarf, etc., and at one point he did write a large portion of the tale of Turin in the Old English "alliterative" meter used in Beowulf. The Lord of the Rings, begun as a sequel to his successful "children's" book _The Hobbit_ carried the mythos forward into a mixed "legendary" and "historical" setting. Here he introduced the Dunedain, the Lords of Men of the West, whose language was "represented" in the book by Modern English, instead of invented as Elvish had been; speaking a language related to that of the Dunedain were the Riders of Rohan, whose language was similarly "represented" by Old English. Mostly they are depicted as speaking the "Common Speech" of the Dunedain (and the hobbits), but their use of Modern English is subtly "flavored" with something of the spirit of Old English, and the samples of their poetry are done in the meter of Beowulf. Though many individual "elements" have their parallels with myths and stories of many lands, Tolkien used them, along with unique elements, to tell a very original tale in a very original way. There are many more parallels to the Edda of the Old Norse than there are to Beowulf. For further information on many of the topics I have touched on here, see Appendix F to _The Lord of the Rings_ (Vol. III) and _The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays_. -!- CNet/4 ! Origin: Into the distance, a ribbon of black. AMLoR (717)396-8543 (1:270/424)