P.803/93 40 November 2002 The Journal of the Tolkien Society The Tolkien Society ounded in London in 1969 Notes for Contributors the Tolkien Society is an Prose items (including fiction) may be sent as a manuscript or on disk/by email in any standard format; if in hard copy form Finternational organization they should be typed double-spaced, with margins, and on registered in the UK as a charity one side of the paper only, with the title and the author’s (No. 273809) dedicated to name at the top of the first sheet and the page number clearly furthering interest in the life and marked on every sheet. Contact the editor if in doubt about works of the late Professor J. R. R. the acceptability of a digital submission. Tolkien, C.B.E. (1892 - 1973) who In any case the definitive version must be in hard copy form. Take special care if the text includes any character which you remains its president in perpetuo. think may not convert properly (for example, those with His daughter, Miss Priscilla accents). Either write them in by hand, or enclose a table Tolkien, became its honorary showing substitute characters (the printout should have the Vice-President in 1986. real characters, not the substitutions). In addition to Mcillorn, the Society Similarly if your word-processor or typewriter cannot cope publishes a bi-monthly bulletin, with characters which you wish to appear, draw the editor’s attention to this by marking them in by hand. Amon Hen. Handwritten contributions will be considered, but should be, please, extremely legible, and should in any case be in the In addition to local gatherings format outlined above. The editors may, with regret, have to (‘Smials’) there are annual national reject the less than completely legible. As a general rule, meetings: the AGM and Dinner in prose items should be between 1,000 and 5,000 words in the spring, Summermoot and the length (including notes); authors of longer submissions may be asked to make cuts as necessary. Quotations should always Seminar in the summer, and be identified. Citation should be made in the numbered “Oxonmoot”, a celebratory format, referenced to the explanatory line giving the author's weekend held in Oxford in late surname, the date of publication, and the pages referred to. September. The references should be in the form Author, date, title For further information about the (journal and page numbers), place of publication, publisher, and numbered in text order.. society, please contact Sally Verse items, which should not usually be more than 50 lines, Kennett, 210 Prestbury Rd, may be presented either in the format indicated above, or in Cheltenham, Glos GL52 3ER or calligraphed form, in which case the specifications for visit the Society’s homepage: artwork given below should be followed. http://www.tolkiensociety.org. Artwork may be in colour or black and white, no larger than A4 size, and must be either the original or a high quality photocopy. The artist's name should be written clearly on the back in pencil. Editor L Sanford General notes: Contributors who want their material Consultant editor J Ellison returned should provide a self-addressed appropriately stamped envelope, or TWO IRCS. The editors reserve the right to reject any item, or to ask for changes to be made. ©The Tolkien Society 2002. Copyright Please write a few lines for the contributors’ page. © in individual papers and art work is Contributions should be sent to: 92 Perrymans Farm Road, the property of their authors/artists. Ilford, Essex, IG2 7NN. Copyright to the publication as a whole email [email protected] is held by the Tolkien Society. ISSN 0308-6674 Copy date for Mallorn 41 is April 30th 2003. M allorn XL Editorial 2 Fiction The nine herbs charm 3 By Lynn Forest-Hill J.R.R.Tolkien’s moral imagination 7 By Gary L. Willhite, John R. D. Bell Tolkien’s Marian vision of Middle-earth 13 By Donald P. Richmond The Hamletian Hobbit 15 By Laura Marples Review Massed reviews of The Film 22 Reviews of Peter Jackson’s ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’. Charles Noad, Christine Davidson, Chris Garbowski, John Ellison, Susanne Stopfel Other voices 26 Members reviews, behind the scenes insights Treebeard’s voice 28 By John Ellison The Lord of the Rings and the Four Loves 29 By Dale Nelson Binary issues and feminist issues in LOTR 32 By David Pretorius J.R.R.Tolkien’s use of an Old English charm 39 By Edward Pettit The Ring: an essay on Tolkien’s mythology 45 By Hdken Arvidsson About the authors inside back cover Artists Pauline Baynes front cover Lorenzo Daniele 9, 35 John Ellison 27, 30, 43 Lynn Forest-Hill 3 Natasha Gorton 19 Kay Woodard 1, inside front cover W -3 3^ -3 -3300W Mallorn XL November 2002 1 Editorial Jackson’s film, in the words of Philip Matthews in his perceptive Listener review of the work as a fantasy action movie, leaves one It was a damn good film. It just wasn’t LOR. And since no ‘overpowered, entranced, dazzled, exhausted’. Matthews points possible LOR film could wholly please TS members, (who would out the irony in the title of Lucas’s ‘Attack of the clones’ and how then have to admit the unthinkable - that someone not in the weakly its portrayal of new worlds compares to its distant Tolkien business understood Tolkien as well as we do) we got just progenitor, LOR. what we wanted. Notable among the millions of words of comment is a review But the film is not faultless. It encourages popular by Robert W. Butler and John Mark Eberhart in the Boston Globe misconceptions, such as Sauron’s inability to take human form. that applauds the ‘smart’ moviemakers that beefed up the female There is internal inconsistency, too, and some interesting results roles in the film, primarily, of course, Arwen’s. Linda Voights deriving from the necessary compression. Missed out entirely (professor of Medieval and Old English literature at the were the 17 years between the party and Frodo’s leaving. But the University of Missouri-Kansas City) is quoted as asserting that director felt it necessary to age Bilbo, in the few weeks he spent LOR has few female characters because (a) Tolkien lived in a in Rivendell without the ring, from 50 to 111. Not much of a homosocial world, (b) Oxbridge was a boys’ club where men and recommendation of Rivendell as ‘a perfect place’, especially women lived separate lives, (c) that Tolkien admired literature since Gollum, as we see in Moria, is still perfectly well and such as Beowulf that was androcentric; and further that ‘C S vigorous after 60 years without the ring. Lewis’s problems with women derive from the same cause’. Again, because of the rearrangement of events at Amon Sul, Quite apart from the stunning shallowness of this 3rd-form Aragom is made to give up on accompanying Frodo, to abandon psychology, to state that something is true because it might be true him, not once but twice, when he has him right there in front of is not scholarship, it is pyramid selling, and of merely accidental him. Very unlike Aragorn. Jackson has made an attempt at value to rational thought. And the last comment, which would reconciling this by having Frodo tar Aragom with the Boromir probably be an actionable libel if CSL were still alive, is using a brush. “How will you protect me from yourself?” asks Frodo, mere speculation about one man to implicate them both. presaging an obsession with doubts about self-knowledge that is Let us hope these are misquotes. Ignorance on such a scale in fact a hallmark of our own age, and even then, only among from a scholar is offensive. Guesses of this type may sometimes media folk, who simply can’t leave the subject alone. Presumably be right, but reflect no merit on the guesser. it reflects their own self-obsession. Butler and Eberhart go on to say that Voigts' guess is There are moments of high hilarity. Boromir jumps right out supported by women such as Vera Chapman, the ‘secretary and of his character and suddenly becomes a grief counsellor after founder of the British Tolkien Society’, whom they quote from Moria, pleading for the hobbits to be ‘given a moment’. And in Daniel Grotta's biography, J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect o f Middle- his death scene is twice shot in the shoulder, then in the chest, but earth. “Tolkien just wasn't interested in females. He had a story to ends up with an arrow in the midriff. And how did Gandalf get his tell and the female element just wasn't necessary, except towards staff back (in Rivendell) after Saruman stole it? Why on earth the end when his children, for whom he was writing, were were Merry and Pippin stealing vegetables? Is there a black growing up.” Did Vera Chapman really say that JRRT wrote market in carrots? Presumably there has been a basic everything for his children, and that he wrote in the female misunderstanding of the mushrooms thing; Frodo’s antics have characters later because in their teenage years his children needed been credited to his cousins, and the fact that in the book he was to see sexual, or at least female, content? I don’t think so. In any just a boy at the time has been missed entirely. And I had hoped case it doesn’t support anything, except the growing conviction that they would manage to avoid that much lampooned cliché, that the journalists involved were doing a hack job.