An Unexpected Journal: The Worlds of Tolkien: Volume 3, #1

By An Unexpected Journal, Annie Crawford, Annie Nardone and 11 more

J.R.R. Tolkien was the British author who fired the imagination of a generation with his beloved works: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

In this collection of essays, short stories, and poems, we explore the magic of Tolkien's works that defined high fantasy and illustrate the underlying Christian themes that are so essential to the joy his work brings.

Contributors:

C.M. Alvarez: "Melchizedek, Bombadil, and the Numinous in The Lord of the Rings," an essay on the parallels between the mysterious figures found in the Bible and The Lord of the Rings and what they represent.

Donald W. Catchings, Jr.: "The Hero from Bagshot Row," a poem dedicated to the heroism of Sam in The Lord of the Rings.

Annie Crawford: "Courage at the Crossroads" on how the journey of the Fellowship illustrates the truth of the Gospel message.

S. Dorman: "The Common Good in Tolkien's Rural Communities," an essay on the importance of community drawing from illustrations in The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien and In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World by Jake Meador.

Karise Gililland: "One Theme to Rule Them All," an essay on a collection of Catholic essays in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Korine Martinez: "Awakening Joy," an essay on the Christ-inspired joy which infuses The Lord of the Rings

Seth Myers: "Tolkien and Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke and The Lord of the Rings in Conversation," an essay on the fight against evil in The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien and the animated film, Princess Mononoke.

Annie Nardone: "Finishing Well," an essay on purpose as illustrated in "Leaf by Niggle;" "The Finished Work," a sonnet based on "Leaf by Niggle;" and "A Passage to Something Better," an essay on death in The Lord of the Rings.

Josiah Peterson: "Supernatural Words" on the importance of language in the creation of Tolkien's Middle-earth.

George Scondras: "Melkor and Illuvatar" on the Christian hope in The Silmarillion.

Zak Schmoll: "The Beauty of a Growing Friendship," an essay on the importance of fellowship and community illustrated in The Lord of the Rings and a book review on An Encouraging Thought

Clark Weidner: "Tom Bombadil: The Value of an Enigma," an essay on the importance of mystery.

Donald T. Williams: "Loth Lorien" and "To J.R.R. Tolkien, poems inspired by Tolkien's work.

About An Unexpected Journal

An Unexpected Journal is a quarterly publication that presents the truth of Christianity using reason and imagination.

Spring 2020, Volume 3, Issue 1

• Language: English
• Publisher: An Unexpected Journal
• Release date: Mar 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393354390

Book preview

An Unexpected Journal

Tolkien

––––––––

Spring 2020

Volume 3, Issue 1

Copyright ©  2020 - An Unexpected Journal.

Digital Edition

Credits

Managing Editor: Zak Schmoll

Cover Art: Virginia De La Lastra

Journal Mark:  Erika McMillan

Journal Design and Layout: Legacy Marketing

Editors:  Carla Alvarez, Donald Catchings, Annie Crawford, Karise Gililland, Sandra Hicks, Nicole Howe, Jason Monroe, Seth Myers, Annie Nardone, Cherish Nelson, Josiah Peterson

Contributors:  C.M. Alvarez, Donald W. Catchings, Jr., Annie Crawford, S. Dorman, Karise Gililland, Korine Martinez, Seth Myers, Annie Nardone, Josiah Peterson, George Scondras, Zak Schmoll, Clark Weidner, Donald T. Williams

All rights reserved.  This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Supernatural Words

Courage at the Crossroads

One Theme to Rule them All: A Collection of Catholic Elements in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

The Hero from Bagshot Row

The Beauty of a Growing Friendship

Melchizedek, Bombadil, and the Numinous in The Lord of the Rings

Tom Bombadil: The Value of an Enigma

Finishing Well

The Finished Work

Awakening Joy

The Common Good in Tolkien’s Rural Communities

Loth Lorien

Tolkien and Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke and The Lord of the Rings in Conversation

Illustration: Melkor and Illuvatar

Melkor and Illúvatar

Book Review: An Encouraging Thought

A Passage to Something Better

To J.R.R. Tolkien

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Thoughts from a Fellow Traveler

Notes & References

Supernatural Words

Josiah Peterson

J.R.R. Tolkien famously invented the languages of Middle-earth before he crafted the characters and plots which employ them. As with scripture, language precedes and permeates the rest of creation. Tolkien was a philologist, a scholar, and a lover of words. Tolkien’s treatment of language in The Lord of the Rings is more than a Herculean effort at meticulous world-building, though it is that. The languages in Middle-earth convey meaning in their very sounds, and the words invoke the presence of the thing signified and become vehicles of power and authority. Tolkien’s use of language in Middle-earth offers an escape from the constraints of merely materialist or subjectivist worldviews by recovering the supernatural realities undergirding language that often go unnoticed or unacknowledged in our use of language in the real world.

Most moderns reading prose do not expect much from the sound of the language they are reading, but they cannot help but notice the sound of the words in Tolkien’s tale. In describing the reading habits of the unliterary many, C.S. Lewis writes, They have no ears. They read exclusively by eye. The most horrible cacophonies and the most perfect specimens of rhythm and vocalic melody are to them exactly equal.[1] Tolkien’s writing breaks through this visual prejudice in part by interspersing over 50 poems or songs throughout his narrative, which dispose a reader to pay attention to the rhythm and sounds of each word in relation to another.[2] But the effect on the mind’s ear also comes even more directly through the liberal distribution of unfamiliar languages and names in Middle-earth. When a reader approaches a foreign name or phrase, they must slow down and mentally pronounce the word in their mind.

Once readers are paying attention to the sounds of the words, they are bound to notice certain results. C. S. Lewis was particularly pleased effects of the names in the story, writing:

The names alone are a feast, whether redolent of quiet countryside (Michel Delving, South Farthing), tall and kingly (Boromir, Faramir, Elendil), loathsome like Smeagol, who is also Gollum, or frowning in the evil strength of Barad Dur or Gorgoroth, yet best of all (Lothlorien, Gilthoniel, Galadriel) when they embody this piercing, high elvish beauty of which no other prose writer has captured so much.[3]

What Lewis identifies is the fact that the very sounds of the names are evocative of certain meanings or associations. Frodo is not interchangeable with John, nor Gandalf with Steve. And it is not simply a matter of unfamiliarity versus familiarity. Were Frodo and Gandalf to switch names, the altered perception of the characters would be noticeable. Still more so with Gandalf and Pippin or The Shire and Osgiliath or Mordor.

A passage very early on in The Fellowship of the Ring suggests this primary auditory effect of language. The scene is Frodo, Pippin, and Sam’s first encounter with the Elves on their journey to Buckland. Traveling at night, they come across a group of high Elves, crossing the Woody End on their way to the West. Here’s how Tolkien describes the singing of the Elves:

The singing drew nearer. One clear voice rose now above the others. It was singing in the fair elven-tongue, of which Frodo knew only a little, and the others knew nothing. Yet the sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought into words which they only partly understood.[4]

Even not knowing the language, the Hobbits are able to partly understand the meaning of the song just from the sounds of the words and the melody. Lest we attribute the effect all to the melody, note that every word is spoken with some amount of melody.

The effects of the words cannot be merely cultural. The languages are invented, without philological roots in the spoken languages we are familiar with. But even if some of the language’s effects are brought about through the similarities with Anglo-Saxon or Latin grammar, the very syllables still suggest qualities we perceive to be real and independent of, even if delivered by, the sounds themselves. We hear the smallness in Pippin or Frodo, the plainness of Sam, the high honor in Glorfindel and Galadriel, or the menace in Gorgoroth and Grishnakh. There is a fitness connecting the names to the qualities of the characters, but where there is fitness there must be some real correspondence between the thing symbolized and the symbol.

Fittedness has existential connotations. One might argue, again, that the relation between sound and thought is solely of internal origin, and therefore merely subjective, but however subjectively the sounds are experienced, the connections they suggest are to qualities that exist outside what is perceived directly through the senses. The way Tolkien treats words throughout the rest of the story comports with an externalist explanation of reality, namely, that there are realities that exist apart from ourselves that our words correspond to with varying degrees of accuracy.

The Entish language in particular illustrates this existentially weighted view of language. Treebeard, as he is known in the common speech, says of names that, Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to.[5] That is why it would take him a long time to tell the Hobbits his name in Entish, if he chose to do so:

"For I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate. A queer half-knowing, half-humerous look came with a green flicker into his eyes. For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story."[6]

Readers are told that Entish is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.[7] Besides his long name, the other great example of the purpose of language is Treebeard’s response to the common names Merry and Pippin suggest for the hill they are standing on: "Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped."[8]

Entish is a far cry from modern efficiency, where words are treated almost akin to counters in a game, merely useful so far as they can quickly identify the thing signified. But much is lost in such a hasty use of language. Even if the gains in economy are ultimately worth the loss to language, it is better that we know what it is that we are losing. It is just such a tradeoff that Tolkien is describing when he speaks of modern men having achieved improved means to deteriorated ends in On Fairy Stories.[9]

Thus it is that some languages are better suited to different kinds of discourse. An example that Tolkien approved of is offered in C.S. Lewis’s philologically rich creation, Out of the Silent Planet, in which three rational races living on Mars each have their own distinct language suited to their purposes. Tolkien writes on Lewis’s treatment of language saying:

But the linguistic inventions and the philology on the whole are more than good enough. All the part about language and poetry – the glimpses of its Malacandrian nature and form – is very well done, and extremely interesting, far superior to what one usually gets from travelers in untraveled regions.[10]

On Malacandra, the Hrossa are the poets of the country, the Sorns the philosophers, and the Pfiltriggi are the craftsmen. A Pfiltrigg explains to the philologist, Ransom, that each of the languages is adapted to the different interests and qualities of the three races. He says:

They [the hrossa] are our great speakers and singers. They have more words and better. No one learns the speech of my people, for what we have to say is said in stone and sun’s blood and star’s milk and all can see them. No one learns the sorn’s speech, for you can change their knowledge into any words and it is still the same. You cannot do that with the songs of the hrossa. Their tongue goes all over Malacandra. I speak it to you because you are a stranger. I would speak it to a sorn. But we have our old tongues at home. You can see it in the names. The sorns have big-sounding names like Augray and Arkal and Belmo and Falmay. The hrossa have furry names like Hnoh and Hnihi and Hyoi and Hlithnahi... But my people have names like Kalakaperi and Parakatuaru and Tafalakeruf. I am called Kanakaberaka."[11]

This is one of the reasons why Tolkien loved the Ransom trilogy with a love he was never able to find for Narnia.

There is not so didactic a passage in The Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien’s characters comment on the idiosyncrasies of language in a few passages. When the three companions arrive in Rohan, Aragron sings a song in the language of the Rohirrim, a language unknown to Gimli and Legolas. Legolas responds:

That, I guess, is the language of the Rohirrim, said Legolas; for it is like to this land itself; rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern as the mountains. But I cannot guess what it means, save that it is laden with the sadness of Mortal Men.[12]

The language of each race of Middle-earth is reflective of their character and craft: the high language of the Elves is best suited to music and lore while the secret dwarf-tongue, that they teach to no one, can easily be inferred to be very practical and earthy in nature.[13] The black tongue of Mordor is best suited to malice and deceit.

Indeed the languages themselves bear peculiar virtues, illustrative of the power of language. For Tolkien, words have the power not only to evoke