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Issue 49 • Spring 2010 MallornThe Journal of the Tolkien Society Mallorn The Journal of the Tolkien Society Issue 49 • Spring 2010 Editor: Henry Gee editorial Production & 4 John D. Rateliff ponders the meaning of knowledge design: Colin Sullivan letters Cover art: Glaurung’s Death 9 Paul H. Vigor examines the power of Mallorn Throes by Sue Wookey Inside pages: Lorenzo reviews Daniele (pp. 2, 52), 10 Tom Shippey on The Epic Realm of Tolkien Part One: Beren and Lúthien Jef Murray (pp. 6, 21, 23, 28, 12 Chad Chisholm on Rhetorics of Fantasy 37), Colin Williams (pp. 9, 13 Mike Foster on Letters From Father Christmas 44, 48, 50), John Gilbey 14 James Bower on Avatar (pp. 16, 42, 43), Phyllis 15 Henry Gee on Born of Hope Berka (pp. 25, 32), Teresa 16 John Gilbey sees Hay on fire Kirkpatrick (p. 51) commentary 17 Maggie Burns ‘An unlettered peasant boy’ of ‘sordid character’ — Mallorn © The Tolkien Shakespeare, Suffield and Tolkien Society. Printed and 24 Mike Pueppke Lewis and Tolkien: bridges between worlds distributed by The Printed 27 Kristine Larsen The words of Húrin and Morgoth: microcosm, macrocosm and Word, 7–9 Newhouse the later legendarium Business Centre, Old 31 Alan Tierney Balrogs: being and becoming Crawley Road, Horsham RH12 4RU, UK. interview 38 Colin Sullivan talks to Chris Bouchard, director of The Hunt for Gollum poetry 42 Tuilinde Slaying the Dragon 42 Ben Gribbin Arwen 43 Teresa Kirkpatrick The Ballad of Sam Gamgee fiction 45 Shelly Li The architect of apathy well, I’m back 50 Gareth Owens seeks out applicability in texts Mallorn is the Journal of the Tolkien Society, and appears twice a year, in the Spring (copy deadline 25 December) and Autumn (21 June). It considers reviews, comment, scholarly articles, original poetry, artwork and fiction (excluding fan fiction). Unsolicited material is welcome, but contributors should decide prior to submission to which category their manuscript belongs, and electronic submission is strongly encouraged. Full details on the preparation and submission to Mallorn are available on request from the Editor by email ([email protected]) or by mail to 89 Connaught Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0DB, UK, on receipt of a stamped addressed envelope (if in UK) or two International Reply Coupons (if outside the UK). Mallorn © 2010 The Tolkien Society. Copyright for individual articles and artwork resides with the authors and is used here under on a nonexclusive licence. The Tolkien Society Founded in London in 1969 the Tolkien Society is an international organization registered in the UK as a charity (No. 273809) dedicated to furthering interest in the life and works of Professor J. R. R. Tolkien, CBE (1892–1973) who remains its President in perpetuo. His daughter, Miss Priscilla Tolkien, became its honorary Vice-President in 1986. As well as Mallorn, the society publishes a bimonthly bulletin, Amon Hen. In addition to local gatherings (‘Smials’) there are annual national meetings: the AGM and Dinner in the spring, Summermoot and the Seminar in the summer, and Oxonmoot, a celebratory weekend held in Oxford in late September. For further information about the society please contact Sally Kennett, 210 Prestbury Road, Cheltenham, Glos GL52 3ER or visit http://www.tolkiensociety.org. Mallorn Issue 49 Spring 2010 3 editorial How do we know what we know? “We … became acutely aware of the him to destroy everything he’d written up uncertainty of all historical claims to that point, thinking it was inspired by the and hence of the futility of requiring devil (sheer fiction, but she was so evasive [absolute] proof . some historical when challenged that I could never tell if narratives and explanations are better it was her own or somebody else’s). Other and some are worse … these should not claims, although bizarre, can’t be altogether be neatly labelled ‘true’ or ‘false’ but as dismissed — for example, did Tolkien falling along a scale of what I have come really feel that the very ground in Ireland to call ‘competitive plausibility’.” (ref. 1) was saturated with ancient evil, only held John D. Rateliff in check because of the piety of its people? Sometimes, it’s good to sit back and ask: George Sayer, who is often inaccurate on how do we know what we know? How detail but reliable on substantive matters, much of what we think we know is based claimed Tolkien told him so; Sayer is on solid fact and how much on inspired unlikely to have invented such a story guesswork? How much of our ‘conventional out of whole cloth, but did he garble or wisdom’ is, if we were really being honest, misunderstand something Tolkien said3? closer to biographical fiction? There are In addition to the perils of misinformation, some things so well documented as to admit there is the problem of sheer lack of data. of no reasonable doubt — for example, the Tolkien himself spoke of “the great gaps of date upon which Tolkien began drafting ignorance over which we now weave the thin The Lord of the Rings (between 16 and 19 webs of our literary history” (Sir Gawain & December 1937)2. There are others — for the Green Knight/Pearl/Sir Orfeo, page 13) example, the origin(s) and theological and was himself an acknowledged master status of orcs — for which the evidence is of assembling tiny hints with intuitive fragmentary or so contradictory that no guesswork to build a coherent picture. definitive answer is possible. Sometimes, trying to follow his example, we But it is in the vast area between these two are lucky and what little evidence we have extremes where we work, constructing our all points in the same direction. And other theories on the basis of partial evidence, times we are faced with a puzzle in which weighing the reliability of witnesses and the evidence is contradictory: one witness struggling to fill lacunae in the record. is mistaken, some of our ‘facts’ are wrong — Some claims can be dismissed out of but which ones? How to resolve the impasse hand, because of sheer improbability — when two sources with equal authority for example, that Tolkien was secretly disagree? sympathetic to British fascism (debunked For Tolkien scholars, this is made all the by David Doughan, who demonstrated it more interesting because, although the was based on forged evidence), or accounts situation has improved vastly over the past of his cavalry exploits behind enemy 35 years, all the facts are not yet in. There are lines in the First World War (impossible, still uncollected letters out there, unwritten given the trench warfare conditions on memoirs, annotated books from Tolkien’s the Western Front when Tolkien arrived library, overlooked clues, unpublished there). Sometimes, we want to leap to our private material (such as Tolkien’s diaries) feet with a cry of ‘Source, please!’ — as and, yes, still more unpublished poems when I once heard a speaker at a science- and stories and essays (The Fall of Arthur, fiction convention in Milwaukee claim, “Sellic Spell”, The Bovadium Fragments, with perfect seriousness, that Tolkien had a “The Ulsterior Motive” …), which will religious conversion as a young man that led someday add to our pool of knowledge. 4 Mallorn Issue 49 Spring 2010 editorial Those academics who devote their attention writing the core of what we think of as The to long-established figures can draw Silmarillion even before The Hobbit, which on generations of prior scholarship as a in turn was followed by his masterpiece The framework within which to launch their Lord of the Rings, ending in a late twilight investigations, but we get to enjoy the fun in which he worked on many small projects and excitement of being in on the ground but failed to bring his life’s work to what floor of a discipline that is still taking shape. he would have considered a satisfactory Take, for example, one basic tool for end. But the details have been a long time studying an author’s works as a whole: the coming, and there are still a number of creation of a reliable timeline, sequencing decidedly fuzzy spots in the overall picture. when he or she wrote each work. These Back in the long-ago, when I first entered provide a way to see development over Tolkien scholarship, all of Tolkien’s known time and suggest interconnections between works could be found in West’s list4, a mere works: hence collected works, such as 38 items, roughly evenly divided between G. B. Harrison’s Shakespeare: The Complete 16 academic and 22 literary works. With a Works (1968) or T. O. Mabbott’s Edgar Allan little diligence and a good interlibrary loan Poe: Tales & Sketches (1978), often put their respective author’s works in chronological Almost all the materials needed to sequence order, starting from the earliest and ending Tolkien’s works are now available. with their final works. In Harrison’s Shakespeare, this sequencing is sometimes department, it was not that difficult to track based on solid evidence (for example, the down and read virtually all of them, even date a quarto play was registered) and including his more obscure philological sometimes tenuous (when something in pieces. Then came Carpenter’s biography the play seems to be an oblique comment in 1977, which almost doubled the number on current events). Although some parts of known works to 70 items (with his of the resultant construct are guesswork, ‘Appendix C: The Published Writings of the overall structure of the whole can J. R. R. Tolkien’) and not only added a be immensely useful: it organizes all good deal of information about Tolkien’s Shakespeare’s work in such a way that better-known works but established the illuminates his development as a writer, framework we all still use for understanding from his early blood-and-thunder to the shape of Tolkien’s career.

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