JRR Tolkien

Niniejsza praca ma na celu przedstawienie teorii mitotwórczej J. R. R. Tolkiena, z perspektywy jej wymiaru duchowego. Od czasów antycznych teorie, tudzież filozofie, opierały się na myśleniu abstrakcyjnym i miały za zadanie wyjaśnienie ówczesnemu człowiekowi otaczającej go rzeczywistości. Nie inaczej było z Tolkienowską teorią, na potrzebę której ukuł swój termin Mitopoeia. „Duchowy wymiar Tolkienowskiej Teorii Mitotwórczej” – tłumacząc tytuł tej pracy na język Polski – przekłada się na wiele sfer życia Tolkiena. Pierwsza z tych płaszczyzn, to przypisywany mu przez niektórych krytyków program filozoficzny. Na tym wymiarze skupia się pierwszy rozdział tej pracy: „The Philosophical Disenchantment.” Jednak jak sugeruje tytuł, stanowi on zaledwie tło wszelkich dalszych poszukiwań, gdyż oferuje badaczom Tolkienowskiej myśli jedynie jej racjonalizację i demitologizację. Życiowa pasja Tolkiena, filologia komparatywna, daje wystarczające zrozumienie jego fenomenu, a przynajmniej zdaniem kilku krytyków. Niezaprzeczalnie stanowiła ona inspirację, a zarazem była narzędziem, którego Tolkien użył podług swej ogromnej wiedzy z zakresu językoznawstwa. Pomimo, iż w tej pracy „Comparative Philology” jest omawiana w drugiej kolejności, to właśnie ta dyscyplina była źródłem znajomości filozofii u Tolkiena. Podążając krokami Tolkieniany nie można jednak na tym poprzestać. Trzeci wymiar, jakże metafizyczny i filozoficzny w swych założeniach i implikacjach to odkrycie Owena Barfielda, znajomego Tolkiena. Barfield odkrył Teorię „Jedności Semantycznej,” co Tolkienowi przyszło łatwo przyjąć do wiadomości: język jako narzędzie może również być transcendentny, ze względu na swe początki. Dla Tolkiena była to jedna z tych rzeczy, która pozwoliła mu uwierzyć w smoki. „Philological Philosophy: Let There Be Dragons” – jest zatem łącznikiem między dwoma światami. Jednakże Tolkien nie był byle fantastą, oderwanym od ziemi. Teoria Barfielda, obudziła w nim nadzieję. Pomimo to, tak jak każdy rozsądny i racjonalny człowiek Tolkien musiał dowiedzieć się, „czy to prawda.” Potrzebował czegoś, aby idee odnieść do nie tyle rzeczywistego doświadczenia, ile prawdy. Prawda, bowiem wyzwala. Mimo nieustannego negowania jego wiary, to właśnie ona umożliwiła mu dalsze rozważanie tych teorii. I nie da się inaczej wytłumaczyć jego mitotwórstwa, jak przez uznanie jego wiary. Miłości do Boga, która była tak głęboka, że aż sięgała wiedzy teologicznej. Tego, między innymi, tyczy ostatni rozdział tej pracy: „Myth Becomes Truth.”
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In fantasy literature, the setting is as important to the story as are character and plot. This article demonstrates how topofocal (place-focused) perspectives yield valuable insights into various fantasy texts. The examples include discussions on how the nature/culture relationship is tied to the ideological centre in Charles de Lint’s Newford stories; how a careful examination of Sauron’s land in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings reveals how the text views the nature of evil; and how the structure of the land develops along with the stories in the Mythago Wood novels by Robert Holdstock. In a genre where there are no limits to the shape a setting can take, the central question must be: Why is it shaped the way it is?

All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest: and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not.  Christianity does not simply replace our natural life and substitute a new one:  it is rather a new organization which exploits, to its own supernatural ends, these natural materials.’  (Lewis) Tolkien, in his Lord of the Rings trilogy orients the natural towards an ambiguous supernatural culmination.

From Winston Black in The Medieval Review 15.06.24...

'In the concluding essay, "The Bright Side of the Knife: Dismemberment in Medieval Europe and the Modern Imagination," Lila Yawn clearly takes the most chances and has the most fun in exploring the topic of medieval wounds and wounding. After a review of graphic and supposedly "medieval" dismemberments in modern movies and literature, such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, or Pulp Fiction, Yawn poses the simple question of "how medieval cutting up living bodies really was" (218). In response, she gives a whirlwind tour of nearly two millennia of images and descriptions of amputation, dismemberment, fragmentation, and mutilation from Cicero to Thomas Jefferson. In so doing she demonstrates, as many medieval apologists have already noted, that there is no greater amount or degree of dismemberment in the Middle Ages than before or after, but what leads moderns to equate "medieval" with "dismemberment" is the medieval tendency to celebrate dismemberment and put severed body parts on display, be they of the criminal or of the saint.'

The Medieval Review 15.06.24
Kirkham, Anne, and Cordelia Warr, eds. Wounds in the Middle Ages. The History of Medicine in Context. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014. pp. xvi, 254. $124.95 (hardback). ISBN: 9781409465690 (hardback).
Reviewed by: Winston Black, Assumption College. black@assumption.edu
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/19219/25339

A study of Catholic history, prophecies, mysticism and conspiracy theories that may have inspired elements of JRR Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings', in particular, the 'Great Monarch and Angelic Pontiff' prophecies.  100 page document featuring color illustrations.

Availaible as a free PDF file

... 'I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor' (I.344), Gandalf shouts, blocking the path of the Balrog over the bridge of Khazad-dûm. ... He wanders with Lúthien, as Adam did with Eve, having reached a paradisal reconciliation and restoration. ...

In one of his many letters, Tolkien noted that Elvish was intended to be European in structure, and “specially pleasant”. Whilst the former can be achieved through the study of suitable languages, the likes of which would have been familiar to Tolkien, the latter is not predicated on a similar logic.Tolkien himself acknowledged the inherent ambiguity of his intentions having also stated that “individuals’ personal predilections, especially in the phonetic
structure of languages, varies widely” (letters: 175-76). So in the same way that Marc Okrand intended for Klingon to sound intrinsically extraterrestrial, it was Tolkien’s fundamental interest to make Elvish a beautiful language to speak and to hear. Therefore, despite the intent for creating Elvish being
incorrectly attributed to stories such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it would appear that Tolkien’s ambition was one rooted purely for his own pleasure...

...But what motivated Tolkien to continue developing Elvish languages over the entirety of his career? How close do they resemble the languages he chose to study? Did he give the same importance to an Elvish orthography as he did the spoken word? These are questions that have intrigued the minds of linguists,
fans and academics alike for over fifty years. It is the intention of this paper to address such questions, with reference to the influences of the Elvish language, evidenced by appropriate phonemic theory.

The dramatic confrontation which ensues on the bridge of Khazad-dûm between Gandalf and the just-awakened Balrog not only constitutes one of the turning points in the War of the Ring, but it also provides a glimpse of what Tolkien may have envisioned as a Christian reinterpretation of the traditional model of Germanic heroism. The two notions are, of course, at a clearly detectable ethical variance, the former being fundamentally defined by the self-sacrificial dedication to the cause, the latter by the self-centred pursuit of transient glory. Seen in the light of medieval literature, the bridge episode might also be read as a conceptual reimagining of the roughly analogous situation in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, where the far-too-confident ealdorman Byrhtnoth allows the enemy safe passage across the ford, thus placing himself and his people at a considerable strategic disadvantage. In The Lord of the Rings, the role of Byrhtnoth is obviously assigned (albeit inversely) to the character of Gandalf whose courageous efforts to protect his companions accentuate the wizard's sense of responsibility, upwards (the cause) as well as downwards (his companions).

In the more hidden corners of the Internet, such as on fanfiction forums and mailing lists, it is easy to come across extremely right-wing comments. As can be seen from the two examples with which I began this essay, this commentary manifests itself on several layers. The alt-right commentators I have encountered believe in racial theory, that there is a hierarchy between these races and that you should not mix them. They openly dream of their ideal times (an imaginary past) and places (Utopia) with only white people. To translate this imaginary past into concrete identity markers in their present context, they resort to, among other things, (neo-)medieval symbolism. This has far-reaching consequences, among others for scholarship in the fields of the (neo)medieval and Tolkien.

Vol. 1 of ‘Middle-earth seen by the barbarians’ discussed the history of the indigenous peoples in Eriador and Gondor - the Middle Men - from their wanderings in the early First Age to the War of the Ring; two separate essays investigate the hitherto uncompiled history of Dorwinion and the mysterious Forodwaith in the far north of Middle-earth. Vol. 2 tells about the Men of Darkness in the east and south as well as about the history of the third Realm in Exile – the lordship of Umbar.

Depuis quelques décennies, la Fantasy s’est imposée comme l’un des genres majeurs de l’Imaginaire aux côtés de la Science-fiction et du Fantastique. Le Seigneur des Anneaux, Harry Potter, Narnia, Le Trône de Fer,... On ne compte plus le nombre d’oeuvres à succès relevant du genre et dont les adaptations pullulent au cinéma et à la télévision. Mais pourquoi un tel engouement pour un genre qui semble a priori éloigné des préoccupations quotidiennes avec ses récits de quête fabuleuse prenant place dans des mondes merveilleux inspirés des mythes et des contes ?

En s’appuyant sur l’analyse de quelques oeuvres représentatives, le présent ouvrage se propose d’étudier la mythopoétique de la quête mise en oeuvre par la Fantasy pour mieux mettre en évidence ce qui fait de ce genre une fiction humaniste et propre à plaire au plus grand nombre.

This is an expanded version of a paper I gave at the March 2015 Enchanted Edwardians Conference in Bristol.

In this paper I explore three visionary poems by the Anglo-Catholic poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907): The Hound of Heaven (1893), Sister Songs (1895) and The Mistress of Vision (1897) as examples of how Thompson poetically expressed, and mythologized, his devout Roman Catholic beliefs combined with elements of Classical and pagan mythology and Victorian Spiritualism. I explore specifically how Thompson achieved this blending in the poetic diction and imagery he used in these poems which fused words, phrases and symbols drawn for the Catholic liturgy, the Latin Vulgate Bible, astronomy, pagan symbolism and even, in one compelling case, the poetic expression of two invented place names, 'Luthany' and 'Elenore'.

My paper suggests that Thompson's use of his poetic diction to blend these different belief systems was not only in line with Thompson's own personal faith, but also reflects a broader tradition established by the Victorian Catholic thinker and writer, Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890). Through his teachings and sermons Newman sought to return Roman Catholicism to its pre-Reformation state which included belief in mysticism, spiritual agencies, the powers of nature, angels - and even Elves. I conclude this paper by demonstrating how Francis Thompson's blending of Christian, pagan and spiritual elements in his visionary works served as a model for another emerging Edwardian poet, and budding myth-maker, J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973). Tolkien read Thompson's works from an early age and gave a literary paper on Thompson's poetry when he was an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford in 1914 – a report of which I have analysed in my postgraduate research PhD thesis on 'The Genesis of J.R.R. Tolkien's Mythology'.

The Lord of the Rings film score parallels an ordered triple of races—Hobbits, Men, and Elves—with am ordered triple of harmony—major-minor diatonic, modal diatonic, and chromatic (non-diatonic). Analysis of each race in this series places them on a continuum of familiar to unfamiliar, or ordinary to fantastical.

Whilst linguistics are still being made use of to promote global harmony and international communication, suffice to say that similar efforts are becoming concentrated further towards use within the media. So to what extent does Tolkien's work, and those which followed, deviate from the earlier constructed languages? How do other artlangs compare to Elvish? And to what extent have artlangs affected people having become commonplace in modern-day media? These are questions which will be addressed in this paper, with the intention of illustrating not only how Tolkien influenced the current artlang era, but the extent of the impact that artlangs had, and continue to effect our current view of linguistics.

This essay examines the way we can consider and discuss music of the LOTR films agains specific themes found in J.R.R. Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories." In effect, I demonstrate how Howard Shore's music can both reinforce and problematize Hobbits and Elves when examined from Tolkien's notions of the Primary and Secondary Worlds, i.e. our world and the "subcreated" world of fantasy.

This article is more of a think-piece, and I consider it to be in a developmental state. So it's not polished. But I'm extremely curious to know if any music, fantasy, and Tolkien scholars find the parallels I draw convincing and/or interesting. I do hope to receive some feedback!

Many thanks.

C.S. Lewis cuestionó a Tolkien en una ocasión la legitimidad de la fantasía y el mito. Tolkien recoge esta crítica en su ensayo Árbol y hoja aludiendo a «a alguien que tildaba a los mitos y cuentos de hadas de “mentiras”.» (Tolkien 2002: 68), aunque reconoce su amabilidad y su confusión al «calificar la labor de escribir cuentos como “dorar mentiras”» (Tolkien 2002: 68). Al recibir esta crítica Tolkien respondió con la composición de Mitopoeia mostrando de este modo la teoría literaria del escritor.

Il Professor J.R.R. Tolkien visitò l’Italia in due occasioni: nel 1955 quando, assieme a sua figlia Priscilla, visitò Venezia e Assisi e nel 1966 con una crociera nel Mediterraneo con sua moglie Edith. In realtà, i primi contatti fra l’autore del Signore degli Anelli e il nostro paese, risalgono a moltissimi anni addietro e più precisamente alla fine degli anni Venti quando comparvero su alcune riviste letterarie italiane le prime citazioni dell’opera che curò assieme a E.V. Gordon, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fino a poco tempo fa, però, poco si conosceva di un contatto vocale che vide gli italiani che impararono l’inglese attraverso il celebre metodo Linguaphone, tra gli anni Trenta e Cinquanta, ascoltare la voce del Professor Tolkien.

The article "Silmarillion"—J. R. R. Tolkien’s Allotopia From Ardological Perspective aims at outlining the methodology for studying Tolkien’s world-building project without the need of acknowledging the text-centered reading paradigm. Having differentiated tolkienology, as text-focused, philological studies, from ardology, understood as world-building studies, Maj deconstructs the use of Tolkienian’s “subcreation” in literary theory as far too indebted in the metaphysics of presence to establish a neutral framework for studying the process of constructing a fictional reality. With the examples from "Silmarillion"—perhaps the best instance of modern mythography, in no way resembling the narrative arc of a prototypical fantasy novel—the author builds up on the notion of “allotopia” as the world independent insofar to create its own ontologies, topographies, languages, philosophy, history, literature, art, or even physical artifacts—without the need of anchoring the overall creation in a metaphysical paradigm. Correspondingly, the text offers an insight to a number of theories in postclassical narratology or postmodern philosophy that may help in understanding the scale of Tolkien’s solemn contribution to the art of fantastic world-building.

A majority of linguistic research concentrates on the conceptual exchange of information, and as a result the emotional aspects of language are found to be superfluous when observing the characteristics of communication. However, the prosody (or melody) within language becomes increasingly more necessary when observed as poetry or music, and one of the key aims of the present paper is to address the shared characteristics exhibited by the means of communication that exist between primitive language and music.

The 1939 family classic film, The Wizard of Oz, based on the beloved children’s tale by L. Frank Baum, represents a modern example of mythologist Joseph Campbell’s model of the hero quest myth.  This two-part study begins with a theoretical overview contextualizing The Wizard of Oz, as mythopoeic literature, and Campbell’s hero quest paradigm, informed by Carl G. Jung’s theories and methods as well as other key sources.  The second part of the study applies Campbell’s model to the text of Baum’s Oz narrative in both its cinematic and literary forms, examining Baum’s tale for archetypal features described in Campbell’s model of the initial stage of the “leitmotif of the monomyth.”  This comparative analysis emphasizes the myth-motif of the threshold passage accompanied by sequentially interconnected, recurring myth-motifs identified by Campbell and associated with the initial stage of Dorothy Gale’s transformational journey, i.e., separation from ordinary reality.  This narrative interpretation demonstrates key symbolic features of mythico-ritual (initiatory) structure in the initial stage of Baum’s modern fairy tale.  Screenshots from the movie visually illustrate that Dorothy’s journey in the other world of Oz closely follows the archetypal, symbolic structure of Campbell’s classic quest myth of the hero. 

Keywords: archetype, Arnold van Gennep, Carl G. Jung, hero quest, initiation, Jean Houston, Joseph Campbell, J. R. R. Tolkien, L. Frank Baum, Mircea Eliade, monomyth, myth-motif, mythic orphan, mythology, mythopoeic, narrative, night sea journey, primordial image, rites of passage, ritual, shaman, threshold passage, Wizard of Oz

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, held 3rd-14th June 1992, launched the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which operates through its annual roadshow the UN Conference of Parties (COP) that seeks to establish sustainable management of the global climate system.

The  'Earth Summit' by UN in 1992 brought the problems  in climate to the attention of even some of the world's most remote and isolated nations. One of these nations was the Hopi Nation in Arizona, a non-sovereign nation - which the UN labels as 'indigenous peoples'. In a long chain of events beginning from the League of Nations' decision in 1926 to deny the First Nations of Americas and the small island nations' representation in that international forum, its successor the United Nations, turned down four attempts by the Hopi Nation to raise the issue between 1948 and 1992. Finally, in the immediate aftermath of the Rio Earth Summit (1992), the United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar authorised the Hopi Nation to table the matter to the floor of UN General Assembly 10th-11th December 1992.

The First Nations of Americas Ethnoclimatology Motion and the Tradition-Keepers ('Faith-Keepers') background to that motion is elaborated here in this UNFCCC submission with further points were raised in 1st-2nd October 2018 at CRIAS conference. This contextualises the First Nations of Americas UN General Assembly Investigation Request 101292 which was the Concluding Plea of the World Indigenous Peoples' Joint Summit with the United Nations Parties ('Member States') Delegations to open the first UN Year of the Indigenous People (1993) to other ethnoclimatologies appearing world wide. The Geophysical Annotations were discussed at the Cochabamba-Tiquipaya Climate Summit (CMPCC1) in aftermath of the collapsed Copenhagen Climate Summit COP15 (2009) with the request from the UNESCO Delegation of the Plurinational State of Bolivia on 7th January 2010 and His Excellency President Evo Morales Ayma.

The key tenents of the Geophysical Annotations being:

(1) A signal noise from a substantial radiocarbon-dilution effect due to major sea level retreats and rises during the Ice Ages that depressurised methane clathrates - releasing copious amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into air from depressurised seabed clathrates and also from thawing terra firma permafrost; this results in regressive, or sideway, 14C  readings in tree rings ("tree rings in a wrong order"). Thus, the Ice Ages era (the last glacial maxium to holocene thermal maximum period) cores of the tree trunks can appear substantially 14C-younger than the tree trunks' latest (outermost) tree-rings which cannot be the case due to the extreme steadiness of the radiocarbon's decay rate.

(2) Methane accumulates to upper troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere: hence any methane signature in the ice cores is only from methane-in-transit. Additionally the global warming episode that ended the ice ages had heavy methane loads that warmed and melted away most of the era's recent ice surfaces, thus obliterating the-then-most recently laid down snow stratum (leaving behind the earlier less methane rich snow layers). This caused incomplete records (time gaps) in the ice cores, and hence "global warming" always appears "before" higher atmospheric CO2 or CH4 levels (hence appearing as if them being 'respondents', rather than the drivers of climate warning).

(3) Noting that the partial melting equations can also be run inverse direction, it is proposed that the Pleistocene glaciations resulted in damage to Peridotite which partially melted producing basalt deposition in a large scale onto the seafloor in vast effusive eruptions with field emission of heat rather than radial spot emission of heat like in modern-day Surtseyan eruptions that have only a minimal heat crossing to sea surface due to small spatial extent of hot subsea surface. The vaporisation of sea water in field emission is vast due to spatial extent of hot subsea surface greatly exceeding the thickness of overlying water column, leading to runaway snowfalls. This caused an inflated size hydrological cycle which effectively washed out atmosphere-generated radiocarbon while geological seabed-associated depressurised carbon-12 was being released en masse leading to negligible carbon-14 readings (the radiocarbon-dilution effect by the Pleistocene's hydrological cycle / sea bed depressurisation).

On these three premises, the First Nations of Americans Ethnoclimatology Motion at the United Nations General Assembly on 10th-11th December 1992 is proposed as a variant possibility to the climate theories advocated aggressively by the Western Group of Nations and their influential academia. Its implications to present-day climate change suggest that the Polar Ice Caps will continue on their much-faster-than-anticipated loss trajectory to violent collapses. This aspect was highlighted in Sea Research Society's Evidence Giving at the UK Houses of Parliament in Environmental Audit Committee evidence giving on 5th and 24th April 2017. The urgency of situation is underlined by the fact that despite world-wide economic shut down by covid-19, carbon dioxide has continued its rapid rise to 417 parts per million indicating that time to act is running out as the remaining North Pole marine ice cap is soon to melt away and then destabilise the surrounding glaciers post Arctic sea ice (most notably the Greenland Ice Sheet).