Editors' Introduction

Editors’ Introduction This is the ninth issue of Tolkien Studies, the first refereed journal solely devoted to the scholarly study of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. As editors, our goal is to publish excellent scholarship on Tolkien as well as to gather useful research information, reviews, notes, documents, and bibliographical material. All articles have been subject to anonymous, external review in ad- dition to receiving a positive judgment by the Editors. In the cases of articles by individuals associated with the journal in any way, each ar- ticle had to receive at least two positive evaluations from two different outside reviewers. Reviewer comments were anonymously conveyed to the authors of the articles. The Editors agreed to be bound by the recommendations of the outside referees. Although they are solicited and edited by the editors, book reviews represent the judgments of the individual reviewers, not Tolkien Studies. With this issue Tolkien Studies bids farewell to Douglas A. Anderson, one of the founding editors of the journal. Since 2001 Doug has been co-editor of Tolkien Studies, taking special responsibility for Book Re- views and Book Notes, but keeping his keen eye on every aspect of the journal, making innumerable corrections and additions from his vast knowledge of Tolkien and his works, and employing his sound scholarly judgment on matters great and small. He will be missed, and we wish him well with all his future endeavors, including his own publish- ing imprint, Nodens Books. Starting with our next issue (Tolkien Studies X), David Bratman will be Book Review editor and co-editor of Tolkien Studies, and Merlin DeTardo will be taking over the annual Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies. Michael D. C. Drout Verlyn Flieger Notes on Submissions Tolkien Studies seeks works of scholarly quality and depth. Substan- tial essays and shorter, “Notes and Documents” pieces are both wel- come. Submissions should be double-spaced throughout and use par- enthetical citations in the (Author page) form. A Works Cited page should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. All citations to Tolkien’s works should follow the “Conventions and Abbreviations” of Tolkien Studies. Self-addressed, stamped envelopes should accompany all correspondence unless the author wishes to communicate via email and v In Memoriam Kathleen E. Dubs (1944 - 2011) was a member of the humani- ties faculty at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, and a member of the Hungarian Tolkien Society. Her courses included medieval litera- ture and Old and Middle English, and her lectures on Tolkien revived interest in him in academic circles. She contributed the entry on For- tune and Fate to the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, and with Janka Kas- cáková edited the collection Middle-earth and Beyond: Essays on the World of J.R.R. Tolkien, reviewed in this volume of Tolkien Studies. Conventions and Abbreviations Because there are so many editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, citations will be by book and chapter as well as by page-number (referenced to the editions listed below). Thus a citation from The Fellowship of the Ring, book two, chapter four, page 318 is written (FR, II, iv, 318). References to the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings are abbreviated by Appendix, Section and subsection. Thus subsection iii of section I of Appendix A is written (RK, Appendix A, I, iii, 321). The “Silmarillion” indicates the body of stories and poems developed over many years by Tolkien; The Silmarillion indicates the volume first published in 1977. Abbreviations B&C Beowulf and the Critics. Ed. Michael D. C. Drout. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2002. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 248. Bombadil The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963. CH The Children of Húrin [title as on title page:] Narn i Chîn Húrin: The Tale of the Children of Húrin. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2007; Boston: Hough- ton Mifflin, 2007. FG Farmer Giles of Ham. Ed. Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. London: HarperCollins, 1999. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. vii FR The Fellowship of the Ring. London: George Allen & Un- win, 1954; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954. Second edition, revised impression, Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1987. H The Hobbit. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937. Bos- ton: Houghton Mifflin, 1938. The Annotated Hobbit. Ed. Douglas A. Anderson. Second edition, revised. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Jewels The War of the Jewels. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Lays The Lays of Beleriand. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Letters The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter, with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Lost Road The Lost Road and Other Writings. Ed. Christopher Tolk- ien. London: Unwin Hyman; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Lost Tales I The Book of Lost Tales, Part One. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983; Boston: Hough- ton Mifflin, 1984. Lost Tales II The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mif- flin, 1984. MC The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Ed. Christo- pher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Morgoth Morgoth’s Ring. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: Harp- erCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. OFS Tolkien On Fairy-stories: Extended Edition. Ed. Verlyn Flieg- er and Douglas A. Anderson. London: HarperCollins, 2008. Peoples The Peoples of Middle-earth. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Lon- don: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. RK The Return of the King. London: George Allen & Unwin 1955; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956. Second edition, viii revised impression, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. S The Silmarillion. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977. Boston: Houghton Miff- lin, 1977. Second edition. London:HarperCollins, 1999; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Sauron Sauron Defeated. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: Harp- erCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. SG The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun. Ed Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Har- court, 2009 Shadow The Return of the Shadow. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Lon- don: Unwin Hyman; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. Shaping The Shaping of Middle-earth. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Lon- don: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. SWM Smith of Wootton Major: Extended Edition. Ed. Verlyn Flieg- er. London: HarperCollins, 2005. TL Tree and Leaf. London: Unwin Books, 1964; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. Expanded as Tree and Leaf, including the Poem Mythpoeia [and] The Homecoming of Beorht- noth Beorhthelm’s Son. London: HarperCollins, 2001. TT The Two Towers. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955. Second edition, revised impression, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Treason The Treason of Isengard. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: Unwin Hyman; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. UT Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth. Ed. Christo- pher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. War The War of the Ring. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: Unwin Hyman; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. ix Untold Tales: Solving a Literary Dilemma Peter Grybauskas “Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.” —Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (39) n January 1945, near the end of World War II and about midway Ithrough the long gestation period of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher describing a literary quandary in relation to two different emotions: one that moves me supremely and I find small difficulty in evoking: the heart-racking sense of the vanished past (best expressed by Gandalf’s words about the Palantir); and the other the more ‘ordinary’ emotion, triumph, pathos, trag- edy of the characters. That I am learning to do, as I get to know my people, but it is not really so near my heart, and is forced on me by the fundamental literary dilemma. A story must be told or there’ll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving. I think you are moved by Celebrimbor because it conveys a sudden sense of endless untold stories: mountains seen far away, never to be climbed, distant trees (like Niggle’s) never to be approached—or if so only to become ‘near trees’ (unless in Paradise or N’s Parish). (Letters 110) The paradox of the untold story, and Tolkien’s efforts to resolve it, play a pivotal role not just in The Lord of the Rings, but throughout his entire legendarium. Vladimir Brljak has recently championed the importance of this letter, asserting that “how to tell the untold … was Tolkien’s fundamental literary dilemma,” and arguing that Tolkien’s solution is found in the “metafictional ‘machinery’” of his stories—the mediating conceit that the tales are derived from layered translations and redactions of wholly vanished source texts—which allows for their “telling and untelling…in the same breath” (19). In spite of the importance of this framework, the heart of Tolkien’s solution is found in the stories themselves, in the narrative device which grants what Tolkien called “unexplained vistas.” With a nod to the letter, I would call this device the “untold tale,” and count among its ranks the gaps, enigmas, allusions, ellipses, and 1 Peter Grybauskas loose ends that pepper Tolkien’s narratives. In his analysis of the centrality of this correspondence, Brljak overlooks the two examples given to help illustrate the “heart-racking sense” of untold stories— ”Gandalf’s words about the Palantir” and the name “Celebrimbor.” These references offer a clue to Tolkien’s solution; indeed they are themselves instances of it.

Load more