Book Review: The Unfinished Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Book Review, J.R.R. Tolkien, Middle-Earth, Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales

Kudos to Jamie over at Books and Beverages for selecting this book to read for her August discussion. Now that I have had a few weeks to let it all mull over since I finished, I thought it would be time to get my thoughts out in the form of a review. There are a few things I learned by reading this book:

• I will gladly read anything and everything Tolkien I can get my hands on and enjoy every minute of it. I pretty much already knew this, but going through this book confirmed things.
• The stories of the Third Age are not superior simply because those are entwined with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Tolkien had a wealth of grand stories that took place long before those books, and some of them are possibly even better than the Lord of the Rings.
• I can’t get enough of Túrin Turambar, even though I just read The Children of Húrin and reread The Silmarillion last year.

If I had to pick out the three pieces in this book that I enjoyed the most, they would be “Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin”, “Narn i Hîn Húrin (The Tale of the Children of Húrin)”, and “Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife”. While the pieces on Galadriel, the history between Gondor and Rohan, and Gandalf’s recounting how he convinced Thorin to take Bilbo and journey to reclaim Erebor were all fascinating, the three stories I mentioned all stole the show and I found myself wishing they all were longer.

Title: Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (9/19/2001)

Pages: 472 (Hardcover)

Blurb: A New York Times bestseller for twenty-one weeks upon publication, UNFINISHED TALES is a collection of narratives ranging in time from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Ring, and further relates events as told in THE SILMARILLION and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

The book concentrates on the lands of Middle-earth and comprises Gandalf’s lively account of how he came to send the Dwarves to the celebrated party at Bag-End, the story of the emergence of the sea-god Ulmo before the eyes of Tuor on the coast of Beleriand, and an exact description of the military organization of the Riders of Rohan and the journey of the Black Riders during the hunt for the Ring.

UNFINISHED TALES also contains the only surviving story about the long ages of Númenor before its downfall, and all that is known about the Five Wizards sent to Middle-earth as emissaries of the Valar, about the Seeing Stones known as the Palantiri, and about the legend of Amroth.

Writing of the Appendices to THE LORD OF THE RINGS, J.R.R. Tolkien said in 1955, “Those who enjoy the book as a ‘heroic romance’ only, and find ‘unexplained vistas’ part of the literary effect, will neglect the Appendices, very properly.” UNFINISHED TALES is avowedly for those who, to the contrary, have not yet sufficiently explored Middle-earth, its languages, its legends, it politics, and its kings.

My Take: A man who is as thorough in his revisions as Tolkien was will inevitably leave behind tales that never quite reach that state of completion. It is no surprise that there are many stories from The Silmarillion that Tolkien attempted to expand upon and never quite reached the end. After all, he was notorious for not only going through a manuscript thoroughly to revise it if there was any indication of interest in publishing it, but he also would start at the beginning of a tale every time he picked it back up to work on it. This habit led to many great beginnings to work that never quite reached that status of being complete. And thus they find life in this publication, alongside various essays on topics such as the Istari and Palantiri, and that is a great thing for fans of Tolkien and of fantasy.

The collection in here ranges from fascinating narratives to a genealogical listing of the kings written in a style that you would expect to find within a history book. There are some items that will interest certain readers more than others, and the impulse of the reader may be to skip ahead to the things of interest and leave the others unread. Which, in many cases, would be to skip over all of the First Age and most of the Second Age stuff. That, I believe, would be a tragic mistake. The best of the tales appear in those two ages, being longer narratives that, while incomplete, give a flavor of the epic nature of the characters rooted in Middle-Earth history. Fans who have read The Silmarillion will certainly enjoy getting a deeper dive into the adventures of some of these familiar figures, such as Túrin Turambar, and even a reader who has not enjoyed The Silmarillion will still find much to enjoy in some of those tales. I’d argue that they are presented in a far more compelling manner than The Silmarillion, having more development and storytelling than appears in the other work.

All in all, this is a welcome piece to any Tolkien collection and an enjoyable group of stories and essays to read about Tolkien and his work. It would also appeal to any writers of fantasy to see some of how Tolkien worked, and the depth he put into fleshing out the history of the fictional world he created. I cannot recommend this book enough and know I will be diving back into this one as often as I will be The Silmarillion.

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Tolkien’s Poetry in the Hobbit

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Critical Insights, Guest Post, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josh Brown, Poems and Songs, The Hobbit

Today’s post is provided by Josh Brown, who has been featured on here a few times before. He has a piece on Tolkien’s poetry and songs that will be coming out next month in Critical Insights: The Hobbit, and this is something I’m very excited about and going to have to try to get my hands on. The table of contents for this piece can be found at the end of the post. Enjoy this guest post from Josh and be sure to check out his other work.

 

When someone says “J.R.R. Tolkien,” Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit almost always come to mind first. No doubt he is most well-known for these seminal works of fantasy fiction, works that very nearly defined the genre and have been praised and admired for multiple generations.

But J.R.R. Tolkien was also a very accomplished poet (and linguist), and he made good use of poetry within his works of fiction as a means to worldbuild, support the plot, and bring life to the characters. Not a single chapter goes by in The Hobbit without a song or poem. Have you ever wondered why?

Take the dwarves’ poems, for example. Most are written as quatrains with rigid form and meter. In “Far over the misty mountains cold” the reader gets information about dwarvish history, heritage, craftsmanship, and traditions. The poem actually outlines the entire basic plot of the book: they are about to set forth on a journey to reclaim their lost inheritance.

Elvish poetry arouses imagery of nature, while at the same time keeping a playful and light-hearted tone. Consider “Roll-roll-roll-roll,” where the elves can make even the most repetitive kind of work seem like a game of sorts. They are whimsical and cheerful, and express and expose these traits of theirs through their poetry.

Goblin poetry is dark, evil, even terrifying, just like the goblins themselves. Goblins are basically the opposite of elves, and this comes through in their verse. Their poetry has clipped lines that brings forth images of jagged teeth and snapping jaws. The mono-syllabic word choices in their poems portray them as simple and grotesque.

Tolkien was a master of his craft. There’s no doubt he crafted each line, each word, and each syllable of every poem within The Hobbit for a very specific purpose. Whether dwarvish, elvish, goblin, or hobbit, Tolkien’s poetry offers a contrast between the races of Middle-earth in verse, structure, and theme.

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Josh Brown is a writer living in Minneapolis, MN. He is the creator of “Shamrock,” a fantasy/adventure comic that appears regularly in Fantasy Scroll Magazine. His comic work has appeared numerous places, including the award-winning Negative Burn. His poetry and short fiction can be found in Mithila Review, Star*Line, Beechwood Review, Scifaikuest, SpeckLit, and a variety of anthologies such as Lovecraft After Dark (JWK Fiction), The Martian Wave 2015 (Nomadic Delirium Press), King of Ages: A King Arthur Anthology (Uffda Press), and many more.

Josh’s “Poems and Songs of The Hobbit” is an essay included in Critical Insights: The Hobbit, available from Salem Press in September 2016. Critical Insights: The Hobbit, features in-depth critical discussions from top literary scholars.

http://www.salempress.com/press_titles.html?book=480

Critical Insights: The Hobbit

Table of Contents

Introduction

Stephen W. Potts: The Portal to Middle-earth

Context

Kelly Orazi: J. R. R. Tolkien’s World: Cultural and Historical Influences on Middle-earth’s Subcreator

Alicia Fox-Lenz: An Unexpected Success: The Hobbit and the Critics

Jason Fisher: The Riddle and the Cup: Germanic Medieval Sources and Analogues in The Hobbit

John Rosegrant: Bilbo Baggins, Harry Potter, and the Fate of Enchantment

Critical Views

Hannah Parry: “Of Gold and an Alloy”: Tolkien, The Hobbit, and Northern Heroic Spirit

Jared Lobdell: “Witness Those Rings and Roundelays”: Catholicism and Faërie in The Hobbit

Kris Swank: Fairy-stories that Fueled The Hobbit

Josh Brown: Poems and Songs of The Hobbit

Sara Waldorf: A Turning Point: The Effect of The Hobbit on Middle-earth

Jelena Borojević: The Hobbit: A Mythopoeic Need for Adventure

Kayla Shaw: Growing Up Tolkien: Finding our way through Mirkwood

Aurélie Brémont: How to slay a dragon when you are only three feet tall

M. Lee Alexander: Tolkien and the Illustrators

A Beginner’s Guide to the Inklings by Jamie Lapeyrolerie

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A Hobbit a Wardrobe and a Great War, Bandersnatch, Books and Beverages, C.S. Lewis, If I Had Lunch With C.S. Lewis, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jamie Lapeyrolerie, Mere Christianity, Reader's Guide to Inklings, She Laughs With Dignity, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, The Silmarillion

Welcome to another guest post, this time from Jamie who blogs at Books and Beverages, as well as a faith-driven blog at She Laughs With Dignity. I originally found Jamie through her Inklings Week celebration this year, and have followed along since. She holds monthly book discussions on the Inklings, ranging from books written by Tolkien and Lewis to books written about Tolkien and Lewis and the other Inklings. I highly encourage you to check her sites out, and to join her in August as she discusses Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales.

Hello reader friends! Thanks David for having me on the blog – I love any excuse to talk about all things Inklings!

There are of course the go-to and obvious picks (and most popular) for Tolkien and Lewis. If you haven’t read them yet (which, why not friends?! Please make your life awesome and read their books!), then I’m here to help. Those include The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (I’d start with The Hobbit) and for Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia (if you want someone to read them with you, just let me know, I’m in). But lucky for us, the options don’t stop there.

There’s so many more books they wrote and books about them, so I wanted to share a few I suggest to folks outside of the previously mentioned ones.

First up, Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. It’s not a quick read, but I love it. It takes you deeper into Tolkien’s brilliant imagination and world. He once said he wanted to create England’s mythology and that he did.

Next up are a few of my absolute favorites of Lewis. I haven’t read every single book from Lewis (but getting there!), but with each new read, I still find myself coming back to these. The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce and Mere Christianity are first up for my non-Narnia recommendations. The first two, not only because they are so creative, engaging and even bring about a laugh or two, but because they get you thinking about the bigger picture, purpose and what you believe.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from The Screwtape Letters (which is an older demon teaching a younger demon how to get believers to fall away)

“You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…” The Screwtape Letters

Here’s one of my favorites from The Great Divorce:

“There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing of God Himself…as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all snares.” The Great Divorce

Then there’s Mere Christianity, and well, where to begin with this one? It’s brilliant and the words he wrote during World War II are just as relevant and needed today. I recommend this book to everyone whether they share my beliefs or not.

It’s impossible to pick one quote to represent any of Lewis’ books, but especially Mere Christianity. I highlighted so much of the book, but here’s one:

“Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”  Mere Christianity

I’ll end with three books I really loved written about Tolkien and Lewis. If you want to learn more about the writers, these are great places to start!

If I Had Lunch With C.S. Lewis by Alister McGrath – This is a quick read and great introduction to Lewis and his books.

A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte – I absolutely LOVED this book. It looks at the war experiences of Tolkien and Lewis and the role it played in their writings. Very worth your time – you’ll grow to appreciate their works even more.

Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer – This talks about the Inklings and the collaboration with the men involved. It’s fascinating and encouraging, especially for writers (but not just for writers!)

There were several other Inklings involved and my goal in the coming year is to start reading some of their books. If Tollers and Jack hung out with them, you know that means they were awesome. Maybe next year I’ll be able to have a Beginner’s Guide to them! Happy reading friends!

Thanks again for joining me and I would love to connect around the internet, so please feel free to connect! I also host a monthly Inklings discussion where we read a book written by or about Tolkien and Lewis and then discuss. It’s a ton of fun and would love for you to join in! You can find our next read here!

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Tolkien on Sub-Creation

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Christianity, J.R.R. Tolkien, Medievalist Monday, Mythopoeia, On Fairy-Stories, Sub-Creation, Sub-Creator

J.R.R. Tolkien was a man who worked to create a mythology for his own nation of England. That was the driving thought behind his entire work, and the reason why his world-building was so extensive and stretched across three ages in his world, including his own version of the creation story. While C.S. Lewis wove Christian elements throughout his Narnia series with allegory, such as having Aslan stand in for Jesus, Tolkien absolutely hated allegory and (mostly) avoided writing it in his own works. Which is why in his books you can hunt for the areas in his book where his own Christian thought influenced his writing, but you won’t find a simple answer such as “Gandalf is Jesus”. It isn’t as simple as that.

The discussions between Tolkien and Lewis on the place of allegory in their fiction ultimately led to Tolkien writing a poem, “Mythopoeia”, in response to Lewis’ claim that myths were “lies breathed through silver”. If you have not read it, the poem is fantastic and worth the 5-10 minutes invested. But the focus I want to spend today is looking at a similar work that Tolkien did, his lecture “On Fairy Stories”, which is also very much worth the 30-60 minutes invested in reading that lecture. I will have links to both of those included at the end of this post.

In the lecture, Tolkien expresses the idea (among many other ideas, such as that Fairy-Stories are not simply for entertaining children) that we like to create things because we were created in the image and likeness of God. When you open the Bible to the first page, the first words you read are “In the beginning, God created”. We serve a creator God, who formed the heavens, the earth, the stars, the oceans, the birds and beasts, men and women, and so much more. When He made man, he created him to be in the image of God. So it stands to reason that, because God Himself enjoyed creating things, it is perfectly normal and natural for mankind to enjoy creating things. Tolkien termed this as sub-creation, because man cannot create something out of nothing like God, but rather can take things and form them into something new. This was, in some ways, Tolkien’s way also of defending his decision to write fantasy stories rather than something that Oxford might find more worthwhile, such as literary fiction.

I have always been drawn to this perspective on the sub-creation, going as far as to view it as an expression of worship. To that end, I strive to glorify God with my writing whenever possible, although sometimes the stories being told may not be obviously Christian. The worldview I have influences many decisions that I make in my own writing, much as it did with Tolkien. That is why, even in some of the darkest and gloomiest moments in his stories, there are times of extreme joy that shine through.

I think it is fitting to allow Tolkien to conclude this post, so here are a few quotes from “On Fairy Stories”, followed by one from “Mythopoeia”.

“Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”

“The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending; or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale — or otherworld — setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

“I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt makingcreatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality’. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.”

A link to “On Fairy-Stories”: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwip9b6c_9nNAhWHx4MKHeYPBIMQFggiMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fidiom.ucsd.edu%2F~bakovic%2Ftolkien%2Ffairy_stories.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFK3iiPL5lTYvB4fU-NZ11XRJHRDg&sig2=1u3yQeAWJbLQiu3bBvc47A

“The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we’re made.“

Link to Mythopoeia: http://mercury.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoeia.html

Tolkien on Translation

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Beowulf, J.R.R. Tolkien, Medieval Literature, Middle English, Old English, Translation

Yesterday we celebrated the works of J.R.R. Tolkien with a Tolkien Reading Day, so it is only fitting that today, for Scholarly Saturday, the post concerns Tolkien. This turned out to be a coincidental scheduling, as I did not remember the Tolkien Reading Day until Thursday, but it was a fun day. I helped run a chat throughout the day on Twitter, and you can search through the #TolkienChat entries to see what we discussed and chime in with your own thoughts on the books, movies, soundtrack, and more.

There are many excellent works of literature out there to read, and understanding how translation affects your experience with a text is essential to getting the most out of anything that was written in a different language. Tolkien was a linguist and a Medievalist. He devoted himself to reading texts like Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and many others. He formed a group known as Kolbitars (Coal biters) that would sit by a fire at night and read their own impromptu translations of Icelandic Sagas. He developed his own languages throughout his works, the most popular being the Quenya and Sindarin (both of them a form of Elvish) languages. He understood the importance of translation and wrote about it at some length.

In his essay, “On Translating Beowulf” (originally published as “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of Beowulf“), Tolkien writes that, “No defence is usually offered for translating Beowulf. Yet the . . . publishing of a modern English rendering needs defence: especially the presentation of a translation into plain prose of what is in fact a poem, a work of skilled and close-wrought metre” (Tolkien, ix). In other words, the translator fails to defend their reasoning for providing this new and different translation of Beowulf to the world (when there are already many good translations to be had), and felt that those who translated the poem into prose especially needed to provide a strong defense for their decision. A poem loses something when it becomes a prosaic story, yet the ironic thing is Tolkien’s own translation of Beowulf was in prose form. Granted, he never anticipated this translation being published and, if he had, I imagine he would have either done a poetic translation or else offered a suitable defense for his decision to translate it into prose. For, as Tolkien himself stated regarding a prose translation of Beowulf, “The proper purpose of a prose translation is to provide an aid to study” (Tolkien, x) rather than one to read and study on its own. A prose translation was to function as a supplement to a poetic translation, or the text in its original form.

Tolkien also weighed in regarding the choice of using modern words or the words that would have been fitting for the time period of composition. Tolkien believed, “if you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient, but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic . . . in the day that the poem was made” (Tolkien, xvii). So he was firmly entrenched in the camp that believed using older terms, fitting for the time period, was the way to go rather than pandering to the modern crowd’s choice of vocabulary. This is something you can see not only in his translation work, but also seeping through all of his writing. Even children’s tales, such as Roverandom, use words that fit the story rather than ones that fit the audience. Yet while Tolkien was a proponent for a traditional translation, he also cautioned that “words should not be used merely because they are ‘old’ or obsolete. The words chosen . . . must be words that remain in literary use, especially in the use of verse, among educated people” (Tolkien, xix), which is why you won’t see thees and thous and other completely outdated stylistic language in his work.

This is only scratching the surface on Tolkien’s thoughts regarding translation. I highly recommend getting a copy of The Monsters and the Critics, which has his essay “On Translating Beowulf” in full along with six other worthwhile essays/lectures from Tolkien.

When it comes to translations, here is a list of the works he translated and had published:

Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Pearl
Sir Orfeo
Ancrene Wisse
The Old English ‘Exodus’
Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode

Works Cited

Tolkien, J.R.R. “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of Beowulf.” In Beowulf and the 

          Finnesburg Fragment: A Translation into Modern English Prose. Tr. John R. Clark Hall.

Ed. C.I. Wrenn. London: Allen & Unwin, 1950: ix-xxvii. Print.

I Write Like…

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1984, Animal Farm, author, Fantasy, finalist, George Orwell, Hannah Anne, I Write Like, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, ogre, princess, short story, The Hobbit, Writing, writing contest

This morning begins with an announcement: I have made the final ten on the Writer’s Week contest at Seuss’s Pieces. Between now and October 24th you can go read the ten entries and vote for your favorite. Be sure to check out my story, The Unobliging Princess, and cast your vote for the story you think should win. And then share the contest with others so they can enjoy reading the ten blog posts as well.

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Yesterday a fellow blogger, Eric from Sinistral Scribblings, posted something on his Facebook. He had discovered the website known as I Write Like, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with famous authors. He used the tool with his Hannah Anne series, which he plans on novelizing for NaNoWriMo, and was given the result that he writes like Neil Gaiman. He expressed excitement about those results, claiming it reassured him that he was on the right track with that story.

So, of course, I was now interested to find out what famous author I write like. I took my two biggest stories from the blog and inserted them into the website’s analyzer. I was shocked by the results, to say the least.

My serial novel, The Curse of Fierabras, was the first thing I tested. I copied my entire first draft in there in order to get the most accurate results, and I discovered that I write like George Orwell. How cool is that? I write like the author of great novels like 1984 and Animal Farm!

I write like
George Orwell

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

And then I took my other multi-part story, Ogre Hunt, and put it in the website’s analyzer. I thought Orwell was good, but the results from this one turned out to be even better. It told me that I write like J.R.R. Tolkien. Yes, the author of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. My jaw hit the floor from those results. Tolkien is the master of the fantasy novel. To be compared in any way to his writing is a humbling honor.
Are you interested to find out who you write like? Go check out their website and share your results. They might just surprise you!

I write like
J. R. R. Tolkien

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!