Tolkien's Middle-Earth: He was just Beorn this way

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Tolkien's Middle-Earth: He was just Beorn this way

«‹›456 »

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

Phy posted:

Conversely I love it and will be repeating "Monsieur Bilbon" to myself for half an afternoon

i wanna hear someone pronounce it

# ? Oct 31, 2023 20:02

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 9, 2024 13:31

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

What. Tolkien was a punster to a criminal degree. The Sackville-Bagginses send their regards

Or every single king of Rohan being named OE kennings for �king�

skasion fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Oct 31, 2023

# ? Oct 31, 2023 20:08

YaketySass: Jan 15, 2019; Blind Idiot Dog

With the new translation you've got a choice between Bilbon Sacquet and Bilbo Bessac.

ChubbyChecker posted:

i wanna hear someone pronounce it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFHgYw5y3GA

# ? Oct 31, 2023 20:48

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

It's impossible to say Hobbitebourg without sneering gallicly

# ? Oct 31, 2023 21:26

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

YaketySass posted:

With the new translation you've got a choice between Bilbon Sacquet and Bilbo Bessac.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFHgYw5y3GA

pity, it didn't sound nearly as comical as in my mind

# ? Oct 31, 2023 21:46

algebra testes: Mar 5, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

skasion posted:

What. Tolkien was a punster to a criminal degree. The Sackville-Bagginses send their regards

gently caress I only just got this. gently caress.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 04:39

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

Its nuts that Tolkien would go for such low hanging fruit to make a ballsy joke like that.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:28

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Not that it doesn't have, uh, layers

https://www.thehistoryreader.com/cultural-history/vita-sackville-west/

# ? Nov 1, 2023 10:28

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

The gildor part where frodo, Sam and pippin meet the elves is kinda crazy. It really gives you the sense that elves are all really in tune with a world "beyond" the one that the Hobbits see.

I also like this part

"‘Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod. We are Exiles, and most of our kindred have long ago departed and we too are now only tarrying here a while, ere we return over the Great Sea. But some of our kinsfolk dwell still in peace in Rivendell."

Because I suppose when you first read this, you're like huh wtf did they get exiled for, and maybe you think theyre tarrying in this random spot in the shire on their journey from rivendell. But later you learn more and you kinda realize he means exiles from valinor here, talking about how he probably has spent thousands of years in middle earth and considers it "tarrying".

Maybe not, but I feel like most noldor elves left middle earth probably in the time period from around when eregion was conquered by sauron and after the last alliance? Would that be right? Maybe there's not a lot of info on that.

SHISHKABOB fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Nov 2, 2023

# ? Nov 2, 2023 13:03

Lemniscate Blue: Apr 21, 2006; Here we go again.

SHISHKABOB posted:

The gildor part where frodo, Sam and pippin meet the elves is kinda crazy. It really gives you the sense that elves are all really in tune with a world "beyond" the one that the Hobbits see.

I also like this part

"‘Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod. We are Exiles, and most of our kindred have long ago departed and we too are now only tarrying here a while, ere we return over the Great Sea. But some of our kinsfolk dwell still in peace in Rivendell."

Because I suppose when you first read this, you're like huh wtf did they get exiled for, and maybe you think theyre tarrying in this random spot in the shire on their journey from rivendell. But later you learn more and you kinda realize he means exiles from valinor here, talking about how he probably has spent thousands of years in middle earth and considers it "tarrying".

Maybe not, but I feel like most noldor elves left middle earth probably in the time period from around when eregion was conquered by sauron and after the last alliance? Would that be right? Maybe there's not a lot of info on that.

Lots and lots of them were killed in the wars against Sauron, but yeah I always had the impression that most of the survivors went West either after the fall of Eregion or after the death of Gil-galad, and the remnant in Middle-earth knew they were headed back to Aman eventually but just couldn't bear to leave yet.

# ? Nov 2, 2023 15:07

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

I don�t think why they were exiled is in the lord of the rings.

They being the noldor

# ? Nov 2, 2023 15:22

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

^^^not in the main text, and you would have a hard time guessing just from that. Luckily theres a pr�cis of the Silmarillion in the Appendices.

The Tale of Years has some interesting comments on the topic.

After the War of Wrath and the defeat of Morgoth, �most of the Noldor returned into the Far West and dwelt in Eress�a within sight of Valinor; and many of the Sindar went over Sea also.�

So even in the Second Age we�re already dealing with a minority of the original Exiles. Yet �in the beginning of this age many of the High Elves still remained. Most of these dwelt in Lindon west of the Ered Luin; but before the building of the Barad-d�r [c. SA 1000] many of the Sindar passed eastward, and some established realms in the forests far away�� So this minority of the Noldor, including Gil-galad, Galadriel, Celebrimbor, and less well-born guys like Gildor, was still large enough to expand and found cities and kingdoms. In the years immediately before SA 1700 this seems to come to a halt with the destruction of Eregion��Elrond retreats with remnant of the Noldor and founds the refuge of Imladris�. we don�t hear of any more new elf-realms rising after this time, and Rivendell is not a large one�essentially one big estate, not a city, much less a kingdom. In another 1700 years they march off to overthrow Sauron and presumably a lot of them die doing it too.

the Third Age is said to be �the fading years of the Eldar.� They increasingly stick to their three Ring-powered paradises and shun human contact. Elrond gets married and has kids in the first couple centuries of this age, and these are the last generation of high-elven princes to be born in Middle-earth. And of course the book ends with �last elf out, hit the lights�.

So most of the exiles went home at the end of the Silmarillion, a lot of what remained got killed off by Ring-having Sauron, and the various Noldor we meet in LOTR are seemingly like the last few holdouts that really didn�t want to pull up stakes, or felt some sense of responsibility to see things through before they moved.

# ? Nov 2, 2023 15:40

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

I wonder what the fan theories were for why the noldor were exiled before the Sil came out

# ? Nov 2, 2023 15:50

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

euphronius posted:

I wonder what the fan theories were for why the noldor were exiled before the Sil came out

Remember when it came out. "Fan theories" before Usenet were limited by being lucky if you knew two other people who had spoken the word "hobbit" in conversation"

# ? Nov 2, 2023 16:02

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

I remember the world before the internet and people def talked and communicated fan theories

# ? Nov 2, 2023 16:03

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

J. E. A. Tyler�s �Tolkien Companion� came out between LOTR and Silm originally. Modern editions are updated I think, but there�s an interesting early snapshot of close Tolkien reading in the original. He gets a lot of stuff right based on the Appendices, but there�s a few goofs in there. For example he speculates that Sauron is either a Vala or an elf, because there�s no Maiar (named as such) in LOTR.

# ? Nov 2, 2023 16:15

Phy: Jun 27, 2008; Fun Shoe

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Remember when it came out. "Fan theories" before Usenet were limited by being lucky if you knew two other people who had spoken the word "hobbit" in conversation"

Sittin around in a clearing on the hood of your olive green Pontiac Tempest, passin the joint and talkin bout hobbits

# ? Nov 2, 2023 17:04

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

This is going back but there were fan newsletters advertised in topical �magazines� which came out monthly or so that you could be a part of. Also people wrote �letters� that were published in �magazines� with their crazy theories

# ? Nov 2, 2023 17:08

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

there was some funny video about students talking about readin lotr in the 60s, and what it meant to them

in it some guys just pretended to have read it to get laid

can anyone find it? i tried searching for it but found only some idiotic reaction videos about the movies

# ? Nov 2, 2023 19:20

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

ChubbyChecker posted:

in it some guys just pretended to have read it to get laid

The one tiny window in time where talking about Lord of the Rings could get you laid-

# ? Nov 3, 2023 07:22

webmeister: Jan 31, 2007; The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm.

Those "Frodo Lives!" bumper stickers were semi-common in the 60s and 70s I thought?

# ? Nov 3, 2023 08:21

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

skasion posted:

J. E. A. Tyler�s �Tolkien Companion� came out between LOTR and Silm originally. Modern editions are updated I think, but there�s an interesting early snapshot of close Tolkien reading in the original. He gets a lot of stuff right based on the Appendices, but there�s a few goofs in there. For example he speculates that Sauron is either a Vala or an elf, because there�s no Maiar (named as such) in LOTR.

I think I have that early edition. Never really looked through it, and picked it up as a youngin' just sort of grabbing anything Tolkien-related. Publication info page says BELL 1979 EDITION and Copyright � MCMLXXVI by J. E. A. Tyler.

The opening of Sauron's entry reads:

quote:

Sauron the Great The self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth and declared Enemy of the Free Peoples; servant of Morgoth in the Elder Days and supreme force for Evil throughout two subsequent Ages; Black Master of the land of Mordor, Eye of the Dark Tower, Seducer, Betrayer and Shadow of Despair; the Lord of the Rings of Power.
A discussion of Sauron�s true nature would necessitate an enquiry into the intrinsic nature of Evil itself, since he later became - though he had not always been - the focus for all the greed, lust and terrible energy which was to be found in Middle-earth during the two Ages of his supremacy. All Evil gravitated to him, just as he himself was its ultimate source; and though he was, in the end, like Morgoth before him, cast out into the void for ever, the mischief he had committed during the long years of his ascendancy could never be wholly unmade. And he has had his many successors.
Yet �nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so.�⁵ Concerning his origins, only the Eldar had certain knowledge, and of this they did not speak, nor did they set it down in their books of lore (so far as is known). For these reasons alone it might seem likely to later scholars that Sauron himself was ultimately of Eldarin race, seduced into evil far back in the First Age, when he became �a servant� of a greater Power, Morgoth of Angband.

That ⁵ is a cite to Book II Chap. 2.

And, looking at the endnotes (end-of-chapter (letter?) notes, thankfully, not end-of-volume notes), 13 is a reference to The Silmarillion itself, reading:

quote:

It is intended by the late Professor�s publishers, Messrs. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., that selections from this manuscript shall be published in the not-too-distance future, and work on the project is currently proceeding.

# ? Nov 3, 2023 11:43

keep punching joe: Jan 22, 2006; Die Satan!

Today I learned that Italian fascists are obsessed with LotR. Which should be unsurprising I suppose but I've always taken the book, especially the scouring of the Shire chapter as a distinctly anti-fascist text.

The Guardian posted:

As a longtime fan of JRR Tolkien, I’ve long felt put out by Giorgia Meloni’s bizarre obsession with The Lord of the Rings. Over the years, Italy’s ultra-conservative prime minister has quoted passages in interviews, shared photos of herself reading the novel and even posed with a statue of the wizard Gandalf as part of a campaign. In her autobiography-slash-manifesto, she dedicates several pages to her “favourite book”, which she refers to at one point as being a “sacred” text. When I read the news this week that Italy’s culture ministry is spending €250,000 to organise a Tolkien show at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, and that Meloni will attend the opening, I couldn’t help wondering: why? What is this government trying to achieve by stamping its mark so aggressively on one of the world’s most loved fantasy sagas?

My Italian friends don’t get the fuss. This is everyday politics, they say, a simple branding exercise to soften Meloni’s image. Perhaps. But there’s a deeper, and frankly stranger, side to this story. When The Lord of the Rings first hit Italian shelves in the 1970s, the academic Elémire Zolla wrote a short introduction in which he interpreted the book as an allegory about “pure” ethnic groups defending themselves against contamination from foreign invaders. Fascist sympathisers in the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) quickly jumped on the provocation. Inspired by Zolla’s words, they saw in Tolkien’s world a space where they could explore their ideology in socially acceptable terms, free from the taboos of the past. Meloni, an MSI youth wing member, developed her political consciousness in that environment. As a teenager she even attended a “Hobbit Camp”, a summer retreat organised by the MSI in which participants dressed up in cosplay outfits, sang along to folk ballads and discussed how Tolkienian mythologies could help the post-fascist right find credibility in a new era.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/03/the-lord-of-the-rings-italy-giorgia-meloni-tolkien

# ? Nov 4, 2023 12:28

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Oh god, is that those guys James May visited in his Italy special? Was he hanging out with a bunch of pipeweed blackshirts

# ? Nov 4, 2023 12:39

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

I mean, he built his career hanging out with fascists at home, so it wouldn't be at all surprising

# ? Nov 4, 2023 13:19

keep punching joe: Jan 22, 2006; Die Satan!

Barry Foster posted:

I mean, he built his career hanging out with fascists at home, so it wouldn't be at all surprising

Tolkien or James May?

# ? Nov 4, 2023 13:21

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Probably not Tolkien. I feel like I'd have heard that in the times people discuss whether lotr is problematic or not. But ofc I'm no Tolkien expert.

# ? Nov 4, 2023 13:34

Runcible Cat: May 28, 2007; Ignoring this post

SHISHKABOB posted:

Probably not Tolkien. I feel like I'd have heard that in the times people discuss whether lotr is problematic or not. But ofc I'm no Tolkien expert.

Yeah, he got a fan letter from some nazi or other and told them very politely and firmly to gently caress right off with that poo poo.

# ? Nov 4, 2023 15:44

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

iirc it was a German publisher who wanted to print the Hobbit around 1940 and asked JRRT if he was aryan, and he was like "I regret to say that I have no Jewish blood"

# ? Nov 4, 2023 17:08

Diamonds On MY Fish: Dec 10, 2008; I WAS BORN THIS WAY

He's even cattier about it and it's a fantastic letter.

Tolkien posted:

I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects.

https://www.openculture.com/2014/04/j-r-r-tolkien-snubs-a-german-publisher.html

# ? Nov 4, 2023 17:15

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

It's not as fun or funny, but I always felt the most powerful part was:

quote:

I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

A question: I've always seen the comment that this was one of two replies he drafted, and that it's unknown which was sent on to the German publishers. Is the other draft available? Did it survive? I'm curious how he phrased a refusal when he wasn't saying "I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."

# ? Nov 4, 2023 17:38

Yuiiut: Jul 3, 2022; I've got something to tell you. Something that may shock and discredit you. And that thing is as follows: I'm not wearing a tie at all.

Vavrek posted:

A question: I've always seen the comment that this was one of two replies he drafted, and that it's unknown which was sent on to the German publishers. Is the other draft available? Did it survive? I'm curious how he phrased a refusal when he wasn't saying "I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."

The other one just point blank ignored the request.

# ? Nov 4, 2023 23:40

Runcible Cat: May 28, 2007; Ignoring this post

Vavrek posted:

I think I have that early edition. Never really looked through it, and picked it up as a youngin' just sort of grabbing anything Tolkien-related. Publication info page says BELL 1979 EDITION and Copyright � MCMLXXVI by J. E. A. Tyler.

Sounds like it's the same as my 1977 Picador edition. It never occurred to me before that that was pre-Silmarillion; I must have a read through and see if he made any more interesting guesses.

# ? Nov 4, 2023 23:45

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

"Turning back, when they reached the bottom of the green hollow, they saw Goldberry, now small and slender like a sunlit flower against the sky: she was standing still watching them, and her hands were stretched out towards them. As they looked she gave a clear call, and lifting up her hand she turned and vanished behind the hill."

I'm always troubled by these bits for silly reasons because I'm like "what did she call???"

"Have a good trip!"

Or maybe she just yelled an inarticulate syllable, like "AAAHHHHHH" but in a Goldberry way.

# ? Nov 5, 2023 02:57

Omnomnomnivore: Nov 14, 2010; I'm swiftly moving toward a solution which pleases nobody! YEAGGH!

SHISHKABOB posted:

"Turning back, when they reached the bottom of the green hollow, they saw Goldberry, now small and slender like a sunlit flower against the sky: she was standing still watching them, and her hands were stretched out towards them. As they looked she gave a clear call, and lifting up her hand she turned and vanished behind the hill."

I'm always troubled by these bits for silly reasons because I'm like "what did she call???"

"Have a good trip!"

Or maybe she just yelled an inarticulate syllable, like "AAAHHHHHH" but in a Goldberry way.

In my head she sounds like an NPC in a Zelda game.

# ? Nov 5, 2023 03:09

webmeister: Jan 31, 2007; The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm.

She�s standing on the top of a hill, so �gave a clear call� obviously means she had excellent phone reception

# ? Nov 5, 2023 05:33