Questions for the Lore Masters.

David H wrote:The dog named N**** reminds me of the neighbor who uses "woke" i mentioned. He's got a black dog named Sambo. Another neighbor nearby who the dog visits regularly has mixed race grandchildren and they just call the dog Sam. There's nothing else to do {{short of shooting the dog or shooting the neighbor}}. It's all complicated in real life, but people seem to be able to navigate it.  It's social media that concerns me more.  People don't seem to be navigating the complexities, just calling each other names.

It certainly is complex and tricky to navigate, and what I think I am saying is that trying to cancel or censor things is one end of a slippy slope because where do you stop once you start to censor things, it could snowball out of control. Say for example you show the kids Dumbo, maybe a few kids won't notice anything wrong and just take it at face value, just a couple of black birds singing a song, maybe one kid will question something and ask if this is ok, maybe another will be offended and tell you he/she is not cool with it, but its important for the kid to decide whether to watch it, not the adults. The kid needs to grow up questioning things and having choices, difficult things from the past are important lessons to learn imo, to learn how much things have changed yo need to know how bad they used to be.

I agree that censorship is a very slippery slope, but I'm still unclear on what "cancel" means these days. The definition seems to be changing faster than I can keep up!
And even within censorship, there are certain things that most people agree shouldn't be out there: child porn, how-to videos on terrorism/murder/rape/suicide, etc.
Then the question becomes, is it up to the State to restrict these things, the media platform, or the individual?
And what about an individual bookshop? Are they required to buy and sell material that they find personally abhorrent and disgusting in the name of other people's free speech? Would such a requirement conflict with their own free speech?
These are the sorts of questions that keep supreme court justices up at night!

I agree with you obviously about the defined definitions of harmful content, our common moral codes prohibit overtly violent/sexual/deviant content being available for vulnerable minds to be corrupted, but at the moment I think its swung too far down the micro-offence road, especially on social media, where every last word is analysed and held up as 'racist' or whatever. innocent peoples lives have been ruined. If J K Rowling dares to challenge the 'new normal' because she is a gender critical feminist then immediately a swarm of hate-filled and derogatory Tweets are sure to follow, with a vocal minority 'offended' and on the attack, which is bullying and very aggressive. If I was in the public eye I would never use social media, its a nest of vipers. Its just asking to be abused. If I was Rowling I would delete all my accounts, stop making comments, and just get on with writing books. Some would say that she would have been 'cancelled' in that instance, her voice cancelled, but i think they tried to cancel her on social media, and failed, but she did feel the need to defend herself and explain and apologise, but why put yourself in that position? its bonkers.

Mrs Figg wrote:If I was in the public eye I would never use social media, its a nest of vipers. Its just asking to be abused.

I couldn't agree more! I'd never want to be in the public eye in the first place, and I've learned to avoid social media almost entirely. It seems to bring out the dark side in people, including neighbors, friends and family members that I genuinely like and admire in person.
As for celebrities such as JK Rowling who've chosen to speak out on political and social issues and suffered for it, if that's cancel culture it's a very old story! I'm thinking of people like Charlie Chaplin and all the other actors and musicians blacklisted as communist sympathizers during the McCarthy witchhunts. And of course John Lennon was an extreme case of cancel culture, wasn't he?

John Lennon got seriously cancelled. All jokes aside, it’s one of the saddest days I can remember.

yep

halfwise wrote:Eldy is best positioned to comment on this, see if she pops in.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:From what I could tell Halfy thats all the talks! I dont find it encouraging if thats the direction of travel of thought in the Tolkien world

The Tolkien Society Seminar picks a different Tolkien-related theme every year. This particular installment is for papers touching on concepts relating to "diversity" (broadly defined); there have been a wide variety of other themes since they started in the 1980s. There's no reason to think the seminar will consistently dwell on this topic in the years to come.

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/society/events/seminar/

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Ive got no beef with folk who find something on a personal level which they feel relates to them and their lives, thats Tolkiens applicability. That can be enviomentalism, war, friendship, love, even dope smoking, anything in fact.

Well then, considering that the call for papers refers to Tolkien's concept of applicability, as do at least two of the individual abstracts, I'm not really clear what your objection is.

Mrs Figg wrote:This is fucking embarrassing to humanity, let alone Tolkien. 'Gondor in transition'? is this a piss take or what? This really is 2021 and I hope this nonsense doesn't get any worse. Otherwise Woke is going to destroy Western civilisation, culture and art.

The abstract for "Gondor in Transition" (link) is pretty vague. Since I didn't watch any of the presentations, I'm unsure how "Denethor, Finduilas of Dol Amroth, the Ruling Stewardship of Gondor as a concept, and the trajectory and timeline of Gondor’s development" relate to "the presence and function of transgender realities within Tolkien’s work." That said, I've read some seemingly out there papers about Tolkien that ended up raising insightful points, so I'm not willing to dismiss out of hand something I know almost nothing about. A different paper refers to "cishetero amatonormativity," which perhaps sets off alarm bells because of the stereotypes associated with people who use such terms, but I think the basic observation that Tolkien's works include non-normative (to 21st century understandings, at least) depictions of relationships, families, and gender presentation (eg, bearded Dwarvish women) should be uncontroversial. I'm sure not everyone would agree with the conclusions drawn by this presenter—not that I know for sure what those are—but scholarship would be a pretty boring thing if people weren't allowed to propose non-traditional interpretations.

I have a hard time understanding why many of the other listed abstracts would be bothersome, other than knee-jerk reactions to people mentioning "woke" topics. For example, disability simply is a theme that comes up in Tolkien's works, and I see nothing wrong with examining it closely. The Lossoth are self-evidently based on indigenous Arctic peoples; again, what is the problem with talking about this in some degree of depth? There was a presentation about how LGBTQ people of varying religious backgrounds relate to Tolkien's works and literary interpretations thereof, which is a perfectly legitimate line of scholarly inquiry only somewhat related to the question of Tolkien's own creative goals. The same can be said of the paper about varying perspectives on representation within the Tolkien fanfiction community, or the papers about Eastern European illustrators and Chinese translators of LOTR. A couple presentation titles include the word "queer," and maybe that gives some people hives, but if you read the abstracts, one of those papers is about parallels between The Silmarillion and archetypes in Primary World mythologies, with an eye towards the relationship between mythic archetypes and human psychological needs. I didn't read/watch this one either, but it sounds like pretty classic Joseph Campbell stuff to me (and well-trod ground for Tolkien studies as a field). I don't see a problem in analyzing Tolkien's invented mythology through a lens we use to look at other mythologies. If anything, that indicates respect for Tolkien's accomplishments and a belief that he succeeded in one of his most important creative goals.

David H wrote:I agree that censorship is a very slippery slope, but I'm still unclear on what "cancel" means these days. The definition seems to be changing faster than I can keep up!

It's most commonly a word people use to complain about being criticized and/or others not wanting to associate with them after they express views said others find distasteful. It can refer to more serious actions, but its meaning has been hopelessly diluted through overuse.

This is not in any way meant to excuse online harassment, but that's something endemic to Twitter and various other platforms. It's routinely sparked by controversial statements made by people all over the political spectrum, as well as non-political speech. Harassment is reprehensible, and an unpleasant commentary on group psychology, but if it was grounds to dismiss any group that includes harassers, it would mean dismissing every group whose members have opinions about anything that can spark disagreement.

If they get through the entire topical conference without mentioning the relationship between Frodo and Sam, I think they'll have fairly earned a stinking medal, and pulled the plugs on many of the alarm bells.

When I attended the Tolkien Society, I didn't see tinderbox woke types. I saw people that may put "cishetero amatonormativity" in their abstract with a twinkle in their eye just to see who might come rustling out of the bushes. Seems like plenty from all the sturm et drang going on. In fact I'm thinking they may have put the whole conference together with a twinkle in the eye, but addressing serious scholarship.

This particular installment is for papers touching on concepts relating to "diversity" (broadly defined); there have been a wide variety of other themes since they started in the 1980s. There's no reason to think the seminar will consistently dwell on this topic in the years to come.- Eldy

{{ Problem here I feel is that nothing exists in a vacuum and they are having this choice of discussion at what is a frought time for these very topics in broader society. My fear therefore is for the 'broader travel of thought' that the choice of these particular topics are part of themselves, and that it will therefore feed into other areas of Tolkien. Both in accusations and accolades falsely attributed to Tolkien, or in how his work is treated when adapted for other medium.
The upcoming Amazon series will be a indicator of the direction of travel and how far it has permeated.

'that the call for papers refers to Tolkien's concept of applicability, as do at least two of the individual abstracts, I'm not really clear what your objection is.'

Its sort of an empty topic it seems to me. Applicability recides solely in the reader. It is neither put there by the auther nor could he possibly have any prior knowledge of what it is from your own life which will resonate or how any individual will respond. So turn the quiestion backwards on the author seems a pointless endeavour. It will either judge him by present standards as many already have as being racist and anti-semetic, and with the ability to look at Tolkiens own words in Letters and interviews that support such a viewpoint, or he can praised for how progressive he was on women and how pro-jewish he was, and support that too with Letters and interviews. And neither matters because applicability is brought solely by the reader to the table, not the author.
So to use applicability as an excuse for a subject like 'Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the ‘Feminine Lack’'
doesnt make sense. Tolkien wasnt writing about dwarf women and wrote about women in a very specific fashion and type. But he wrote Aragorn in a very specific fashion and type too. He wasnt interested in the question of the femnine lack, he was interested in the languages and the events that shaped them and the notion of sub-creation combined with a love of old tales and sagas.
The person who is giving the speech on this topic is bringing the idea of their being a femine lack to the table because that is their applicability to the text, thats what has resounded and stood out for them. But its all on their side. Tolkien has nothing to do with it.
He never intended it to be read that way, nor did he set out to write a story in which women played powerful but often offpage roles, and were often still not fully independent by modern standards.
By the standards of his own time he probably thought he was writing strong women, and that for them to have as many freedoms and liberites of even a woman of his own time would not fit the setting or time period or the old sagas he wished to evoke.
All this gender stuff, that comes from the fact what he wrote is applicable.
But the worry that it will be used as a reason to beat the auther, to blame them for such a perceived lack, to damage reputation, and in the worst cases of what 'cancel culture' is to blacklist I feel can be very real when applicability is mistaken for author intent. }}

"The person who is giving the speech on this topic is bringing the idea of their being a feminine lack to the table because that is their applicability to the text, that's what has resounded and stood out for them. But its all on their side. Tolkien has nothing to do with it.
He never intended it to be read that way, nor did he set out to write a story in which women played powerful but often offpage roles, and were often still not fully independent by modern standards.
"By the standards of his own time he probably thought he was writing strong women, and that for them to have as many freedoms and liberites of even a woman of his own time would not fit the setting or time period or the old sagas he wished to evoke." Petty.

I agree with your points Petty, and I would add that Aowyn was not only strong by the standards of his time it would have been strong by the standards of 'Mediaeval' times in the real world. Women never fought in battle, ever, unless she was Joan of Arc, dressed as a man, or a female camp follower who nursed and fed the soldiers. (There have been real world historical cases where women went to sign up as soldiers and were only discovered when they were injured.)

I like to read about Jehanne, and while we can say she "fought" . . .

. . . some "experts" (I use too many "quotes" sometimes) think that the only time she ever hit another person with
a sword (the flat of her sword in this case, one assumes) was to chase prostitutes away from "her" band of men.

I'd have to reread my sources, and perhaps more, to see if I agree, but anyway, for now . . .

. . . by her own admission La Pucelle loved her standard far more "than" her sword, and despite her youth and background, she arguably appears to have had a mind for battle tactics, especially for aggressive stuff. She was "certainly" wounded in battle for example, and yanked from her "horse" at her capture, for instance . . .

. . . but did she wallop foes with a sword? Did Galadriel kill/maim/draw blood at Swanhaven, when fighting  "fierecly" (sorry I can't spell fiercily for some reason) in defense of the Teleri?

And yes, I "have" to add . . . and what "colour" was that aforementioned horse?

Viking women fought.  Not as extensively as the men, but they did.

But literary criticism isn't required to be about an author's intentions.  In college I met a literary critic, and asked her where she got off writing about living writers who could jolly well explain things themselves.  Her answer was along the lines of "we work under the assumption that they may not fully understand what they have created."

I was younger then, and more convinced of my rightness (she wasn't much older, actually).  I've now come to understand where she was coming from.  Take George Lucas, for example.  There is abundant evidence he did not understand what he wrought, as his fans screamed bloody murder over everything from midichlorians to ewoks.  An author's work does not exist in isolation from the society it was dumped into, and it's perfectly valid to examine those secondary relationships.

Haven seen the Tolkien Society at work, I'd say they are simply taking advantage of a new territory to explore, rather than doing woke work for the sake of going woke (if that works).

{{ Bit of a controversial one on 9/11 anniversary, but happend upon it browsing Letters.
Was Tolkien an anarachist in favour of acts of terrorism to bring about change?

In letter 52, written to Christopher in 1943 who had been called up to the Air Force, Tolkien opens with - "My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs).."

But despite that last caveat about bombs he ends the Letter in the last paragraph commenting- "There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgrunteld men of dynamiting factories and power stations; I hope that encouraged now as 'patriotism,' it may remain a habit! But it wont do any good, if its not universal."

Thoughts? }}

Well, having visted Rjukan/Vemork and the remains of the heavy water factory this summer, that event does spring to mind when you mention dynamiting factories and power stations  (and it did take place in February -43). What is terrorism and what is heroic sabotage depends on the point of view, and it was definitely a heroic tale for our side.

I think he's just talking about stopping the steamroller that was the industrial revolution. I don't think he actively meant it any more than one might fantasize about blowing up all the clocks in the world so we aren't locked into the tyranny of the punch sheet work day.

{{ Was reading about Yorkshire, a county in the north of England and immediately something about its history and lay out seemed familiar. It reminded me of Rohan.
It has a history of Viking invaders and settlement and was split into areas called Ridings, which still exist by that name to this day. But ignore all associations between the word and horses, it has a completely different root and came from the Norse þriðjungr, and comes via Latin and Old English into the modern Riding, meaning a third part (especially of land).
Originally there were three parts of Yorkshire, with its 'capitol' York being a sort of  ruling middle not counted in any of the three.

Rohan is equally split in three- the East and West Marks and the northern Wold. With Edoras as its ruling middle not counted as any of the three.

I am sure Tolkien would have been aware of the Ridings and their Old English and Norse root. So was drunkenly wondering did Tolkien ever make a direct association with the Ridings of Yorkshire and Rohans layout? Or is there any clue in the names he gave to Rohans constituent parts that hints at it? }}

There's also the Shire's farthings - quarthers 1/4. Fjerding in the Norw . Er.. Fjordian books.

We have two counties here in Fjordlandia called Østfold (eastfold) and Vestfold.

(Ok, the don't techically exist since they recently merged with other counties. But Tolkien refers to them in a guide to translation of the names, or so sayeth the Internet.)

Yes, in Nomenclature Tolkien refers to farthing being modelled on: " . . . thriding "third part" still used of the divisions in Yorkshire, with loss of th after the th, t in Northriding, Eastriding, Westriding."

Under folde (includes mention of Vestfold and Østfold as Amarie noted) Tolkien describes that this was the center of
the kingdom in which the royal house and its kin had their dwellings, and that the defensive center of the Folde and Eastfold was at Edoras, of Westfold at Helm's Deep.

{{ Thank you Amarie and Elthir. Funny how you can be reaidng something seemingly unrelated to ME and suddenly think 'thats very Tolkien'. }}

Most of the terms that he comes up with seem so natural that I never think to dig deeper. But I'm not surrounded by old-country names to jigger my thinking.

Hmm...where would the east and west emmets be based on?

halfwise wrote:Hmm...where would the east and west emmets be based on?

Emnet means "plain" in Anglo-Saxon, which Tolkien used to represent the language of the Rohirrim.

{{ Having lost NoM Im back to flicking through Letters in those moments of straining when Im squating in Daves fields on the way home from the Duck 'n' Muck shifting 10 buckies and a deep fired pizza supper, and I stumbled upon this in Letter 131 (a rather lengthy letter touching on a divesrse range of things in a sort of oversight of Tolkien's history of ME).

Anyhow it contained this-

"The Downfall of Numenor, the Second Fall of Man.....The Downfall is partly the result of an inner weakness in Men - consequent, if you will, upon the first Fall (unrecorded in these tales)."

So what was the First Fall? Are we meant to take from this that the Adam and Eve story happened in some fashion in ME? Or was there a ME version of the first Fall being eluded to Im missing, and if so what was it? }}

NOME also had a very similar mention, when the men first met the elves they would sometimes mutter about a shadow in their past, and that's all they could get out of them. I think Tolkien meant this to be mysterious, even in his own thoughts. If I get around to finding the passage I'll post it.

{{ That rings a bell Halfy, I must have got that far, I'd got through the elves time and age issues, and sendingof emmisseries and all and the question of beards, and some philosphical musings on the nature of body and spirit in elves before it ended up in a skip. }}

I'd say the legend of the Fall is a reference to the Tale of Adanel in Morgoth's Ring, which follows the conversation between Finrod and Andreth (Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth).

At one point, Tolkien himself noted:

Query: Is is not right to make Andreth refuse to discuss any traditions or legends of the "Fall"? Already it is (if inevitably) too like a parody of Christianity. Any legend of the Fall would make it completely so?

But JRRT wrote The Tale of Adanel in any case, and I recommend the full context of this from Morgoth's Ring, including Christopher Tolkien's commentary (in which he raises letter 131 among other texts) --  and anyway, I've not enough time, at the moment, to try to summarize the commentary.

I'll try to summarize the Tale of Adanel however, first briefly noting that in the Athrabeth there was talk of (the idea of) Eru entering into his own creation, that is, those of the "Old Hope" saying that the One will himself enter into Arda and "heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end"

[and in Tolkien's own commentary, he notes that: "Since Finrod had already guessed that the redemptive function was originally specially assigned to men, he probably proceeded to the expectation that "the coming of Eru", if it took place, would be specially and primarily concerned with Men: that is to an imaginative guess or vision that Eru would come incarnated in human form. This, however, does not appear in the Athrabeth."]

Spoiler Alert




Tale of Adanel: very very very basically: a Voice is heard among Men, and it says stuff like: your are my children, in time you will inherit all this earth, but first you must be children and learn, call on me and I shall hear. But the Voice seldom answered Men's questions, instructing Men to first seek the answers for themselves: "for you will have joy in the finding, and so grow from childhood and become wise" The Voice instructs Men "do not to seek to leave childhood before your time . . ."

"But we were in haste, and we desired to order things to our will ( . . . ) therefore we spoke less and less to the Voice."

Next a figure appears among Men (at one point Men see him as crowned, with shining raiment like silver and gold), saying that Men should not have been left uninstructed. He speaks of things that Men "could have" to better their lives, and Men take him as teacher. He calls himself the "Giver of Gifts" (noting that Annatar means "Gift-lord" in any case), and begins to speak more and more of the Dark, claiming that he was Master of Dark, for he made Light, and when Men speak of the Voice his face becomes terrible, calling Men fools and saying that that voice was the Voice of the Dark . . .

. . . then more stuff happens, but at last this "he" gets Men to abjure the Voice . . . though ultimately, after more stuff happens, some Men say it is he, "the Master" who lied, not the Voice . . . but many are slain out of fear that the Master might hear this, and some who were caught were burned to death, which (it was said) "pleased him [the Master] greatly."

The tale then tells that some flee from the shadow: "Yet they did not escape from the anger of the Voice, for they had built the House and bowed down to it. And they came at last to the land's end and the shores of the impassable water; and behold! the Enemy was there before them."

"The House" appears in the stuff I didn't describe

NOME spoilers

Over to NOME, in The Awakening of The Quendi it's said that the arising and fall of Men took place during the captivity of Melkor "and was not achieved by Melkor in person, but by Sauron" . . . hmm. Anyway, perhaps compelling from a chronological standpoint, in around 1968 (Notes on Ore, part II, X) Tolkien is still referring to this fall -- he comments on a section of the "The Debate Of Finrod And Andreth" (the Athrabeth), and also references: "The "Disaster" the Elves thus suspected was some rebellion against Eru taking [the] form of accepting Melkor as God." [note 13]

And Carl Hostetter indeed refers the reader to The Tale of Adanel [among other references] in note 13 to Notes on Ore.

So, even based on this one NOME-ish text, it would appear that Tolkien was still considering this fall of Men in his later phase of writing.