The Feanorian Alphabet, Part 1; Quenya Verb Structure by J.R.R. Tolkien (Review)
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The Feanorian Alphabet, Part 1; Quenya Verb Structure by J.R.R. Tolkien (review) Nelson Goering Tolkien Studies, Volume 14, 2017, pp. 191-201 (Review) Published by West Virginia University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tks.2017.0015 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/678505 Access provided by Oxford University Library Services (23 Mar 2018 09:56 GMT) Book Reviews cent resurfacing of interest in the Lay, and with far less reliable infor- mation to go on. Dimitra Fimi Cardiff Metropolitan University Cardiff, Wales Works Cited Burns, Marjorie. Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle- earth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Fimi, Dimitra. “ ‘Mad Elves’ and ‘Elusive Beauty’: Some Celtic Strands of Tolkien’s My thol ogy.” Folklore 117.2 (2006): 156–70. _____. “Tolkien’s ‘ “Celtic” type of legends’: Merging Traditions.” Tolk- ien Studies 4 (2007): 51–71. Flieger, Verlyn. Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2012. _____. Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien’s My thol ogy. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2005. Phelpstead, Carl. Tolkien and Wales: Language, Lit er a ture and Identity. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011. Yates, Jessica. “The Source of ‘The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun.’ ” Leaves from the Tree: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Shorter Fiction, ed. T. A. Shippey, et al. London: Tolkien Society, 1991. 63–71. The Feanorian Alphabet, Part 1; Quenya Verb Structure, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Gilson and Arden R. Smith. Mountain View, CA: Parma Eldalamberon, 2015. 170 pp. $40 (oversize paperback) [no ISBN]. Parma Eldalamberon 22. The latest volume of Parma Eldalamberon focuses largely on linguistic materials produced by Tolkien during the enormously creative decade- and- a- half span of c. 1936–1951, the same period which saw signifi- cant elaboration of the ‘Quenta Silmarillion’ (Lost Road 199–338), the writing of The Lord of the Rings, and an energetic return to the matter of the Elder Days (WJ vii). Many of the documents published in Parma since volume 18 make it clear that Tolkien’s creative linguistics some- what paralleled his literary work on the Silmarillion (in its broad 191 Book Reviews sense), with the periods both just before and just after The Lord of the Rings being particularly fruitful (though language invention, evidently to a greater degree than the Silmarillion, seems never to have been set wholly aside). The materials edited in t hese last several issues of Parma have generally covered a roughly similar span of years, being distinguished less by period than by topic: volume 18 dealt with the most archaic and essential features of Elvish root structure and basic morphological operations, 19 with the phonology of Quenya, and 21 with nouns (volume 20 was devoted wholly to writing systems). The pres ent volume contains documents on two topics: spelling (both in Elvish and Roman letters), and the verb; the editors tell us that future volumes w ill cover further writings from this same period on personal pronouns, and demonstrative, relative, and correlative stems. The first text edited here is “The Feanorian Alphabet, Part 1,” de- scribed by the editor, Arden R. Smith, as dating from “sometime in the late 1930s” (see below for more on the date). This is both the longest document in the volume, and prob ably of the most general interest to readers of Tolkien. In one sense, this text can be regarded as a continuation of Smith’s formidable pre sen ta tion of the history of Tolkien’s in ven ted scripts, which have formed part or all of many pre- vious volumes of Parma. The current text is, however, of a very dif fer- ent nature from most of its forebears: where the “Pre- Fëanorian Alphabets” or “The Qenya Alphabet” (issues 16, 18, and 20) mostly presented curt notes, scattered charts, and samples of the scripts put to vari ous modern or whimsical uses, “The Feanorian Alphabet” is a coherent and eloquent essay, systematically outlining the history and development of vari ous modes of Elvish writing within Middle- earth. This subject matter is strongly reminiscent of Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings, outlining the structural princi ples of the writing sys- tem, its adaption for the writing of dif fer ent languages, and the vari- ous sound- values and names of the individual letters. “The Feanorian Alphabet” is, however, rather longer, and differs in numerous details from Tolkien’s later conceptions. A fter a “general or phonetic” mode of the Tengwar, held to be in ven ted by Feanor (so h ere spelt), is out- lined, Tolkien describes four dif fer ent language- specific applications: for Lindarin, the Parmaqesta variety of Quenya, Old Noldorin, and the Beleriandic or Exilic usage. The uses of t hese terms reflect Tolk- ien’s older view of Elvish linguistic history, particularly as outlined in the roughly con temporary “Lhammas” (Lost Road 167–98). In this view, Quenya was originally the language only of the First Clan (called the Lindar at this stage, later renamed Vanyar), fixed in an early “classi- cal” form, the Parmaqesta or “book language,” recognized by all Elves as a high- status auxiliary language (functionally similar to Latin in 192 Book Reviews medieval Eu rope). The distinction between normal Lindarin and clas- sical Quenya is concretely demonstrated by Tolkien’s invention of separate “modes” of writing for Lindarin and for Parmaqesta. The latter is apparently of far more interest to Tolkien: “The Lindarin Use” is sketched in under three edited pages, while the section on “Parmaqe- starin Use” extends for nearly nine. For the latter, Tolkien describes changes in convention over time, variant ways of representing vowels, the short names and order for reciting the letters as an alphabet (one thinks of Elvish schoolchildren learning their pā, fā, vā’s), and ‘full names’ where each letter can be referred to by an example word (so the letter recited as pā, representing the sound [p], also has the name parma [book]— this princi ple, and indeed many of the specific names, will be familiar from Appendix E). The following section on Old Noldorin illustrates just how detailed and apparently firm Tolkien’s earlier conception of Noldorin linguis- tic history was. At this time, he still held to his original view that his ‘Celtic- type’ language was the native language of the Noldor, de- scended from their already- distinctive dialect in Valinor (though not taking on its full, familiar form u ntil a fter their Flight and Exile). Vari- ous Old Noldorin forms are cited as historical exempla in other lin- guistic writings, but this portion of “The Feanorian Alphabet” stands out for strongly anchoring Old Noldorin forms and writing conven- tions in time and place. This mode of writing was, despite Tolkien’s detailed elaboration of it h ere, destined to become a victim of the great upheavals to the linguistic history that occurred when Tolkien deci ded that ‘Noldorin’ was actually ‘Sindarin,’ a language wholly de- veloped in Middle- earth and only adopted by the Noldor a fter their return from Valinor: the Old Noldorin script became wholly obsolete, since under the new conception ‘Old Sindarin’ naturally could not have ever been written using the Feanorian letters. On the other hand, Tolkien’s second Noldorin mode, “The Exilic or Beleriandic Usage,” is the close forerunner of the style of ‘full writ- ing’ seen on the Moria Gate inscription. This section, even longer than the description of the Parmaqesterin mode, is closely rooted in the early history of the Noldor in Beleriand. Tolkien traces changed uses based on linguistic changes, often noting variations found at dif fer- ent places or dif fer ent times. He at one point contrasts the more ar- chaic Gondolic with “late Exilic ( after Y[ear of the] S[un] 307).” The significance of this very specific date is made clear by the earlier dat- ing in “The L ater Annals of Beleriand,” where the Year of the Sun 307 was the date of the fall of Gondolin (Lost Road 142), an event which prompted the formation of ‘late Exilic’ as refugees speaking vari ous types of Noldorin converged and mingled at the mouths of Sirion. 193 Book Reviews This reference to “Y. S. 307” (and to other dates consistent with this being the year of Gondolin’s fall) can prob ably also help us date this first version of “The Feanorian Alphabet” more precisely. In the course of working on the “Quenta Silmarillion,” Tolkien extended the chro- nology of the Siege of Angband by two centuries, so that the fall of Gondolin was changed to take place in the year 507 (Lost Road 257f). This provides us a probable terminus ante quem for “The Feanorian Alphabet” of 15 November 1937, when Tolkien gave the “Quenta Sil- marillion” to Stanley Unwin (C&G 1:205). As a terminus post quem, Smith in his introduction notes that the use of Númenórea in an example of Parmaqesterin use (19) places the composition of this text after the genesis of the Númenor myth (8). If John Garth’s recent dating of the first appearance of úN menor to 4–8 December 1936 is correct, this would give us a range of less than a year for the composition of this version of “The Feanorian Alphabet,” and prob ably not at the very end of this span, since Christopher Tolkien observes that the extension of the chronology took place “at an early stage” of work on the ‘Quenta’ (Lost Road 258).