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Post by Andorinha on Feb 3, 2008 10:58:54 GMT -6
ACK! Dates, dates, dates, we needs 'em, and I bet they are NOT available. I'm gonna hafta break down and buy Rateliff's books after all. I had hoped to sponge off Fan's copies, but this topic is becoming too interesting to get the research vicariously, and its unfair of me to badger Fan with demands for data that I should be looking up meself. Grumble, there goes my next four "dinner-out" meals.
Meanwhile, oh Fanuidhol of the Grand JRRT library, with the munificent daughter who practices fair child-parent relations, does Rateliff date the various fragments, Pryftan and the second phase? Now that you brought up the precursor oral versions, I'm wondering if the original tales were spontaneous renditions, and, as such might NOT have had direct connections to the mythos, until he began revisions for possible publication? Of course, without recordings, the orals may just as easily have been chockful of background mythos references that were later edited out...
As H. Carpenter says: "We can see certain superficial precedents for this invention The Hobbit: the Snergs, the name Babbit, and in Tolkien's own stories the original four-foot Tom Bombadil and the tiny Timothy Titus." Biog. p. 179
Now that I'm reading ever deeper into "The Land of the Marvellous Snergs," I'm finding so many similarities in narrative style, geographic settings (especially the underworld passages in the Snergs and the Goblin caves; as well as the various dark forest parallels), that I'm wondering how this tale influenced the oral versions of the Hobbit. I can see how JRRT, fresh from reading Snergs (already a proven hit with his children), would -- like the ancient saga masters -- follow the patterns it afforded and even recycle some of the events/ settings into his own oral presentations.
Snergs was published in 1928, and Tolkien tells us that it was in the late 1920's that he first wrote about hobbits in his famous exam-booklet phrase "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." I am getting an image of JRRT feeding bits of his own hobbit creation, done up in a Snerg-like package, to the kids, then his writing down the installments for later revision. I remember reading, somewhere, that JRRT and his kids were/ are a bit vague on the dates of these original oral presentations, but that they thought the first written version came after 1930 when they had moved from 22 to 20 Northmoor Road (Carpenter Biog., p. 181) but definitely before 1935. That would give JRRT a 6 or 7 year period of rumination and development for the final written version of The Hobbit, including the first oral ventures, after the whole thing may have been suggested by the Snergs.
The Pryftan Fragment as presented in J.D. Rateliff's HoH part one, has some suggestions of a connection with the background Silmarillion material, and the Tinuviel/ Beren passage of the "second phase" gives us even more. I'm wondering if these mark secondary attempts to put The Hobbit into a Silmarillion context, or if that context may have crept unconsciously into even the first oral productions? Does Rateliff give us any secure dates for the Pryftan and phase two writings? How long after the oral versions do they come?
Then, why, during final publication, did JRRT apparently remove such Silmarillion connections?
LOL, more to think on here...
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Post by Andorinha on Feb 3, 2008 11:04:37 GMT -6
RE: Stormrider's "A full fledged Valar might be too much for a mere Middle-earth to handle. If he was too wiley for the Valar, then how much more so for the elves, dwarves, men, and hobbits?"
Yeah, I like the way you are thinking here, makes good sense to me that Morgoth might just be a bit too much for mere mortals, especially the Third Age ones. Enough trouble handling a mere Maia!
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Post by fanuidhol on Feb 3, 2008 17:54:27 GMT -6
Andorinha, I was thinking of synonyms for TATTLE-TALE and all I could come up with was RAT and SNITCH. I bet you could think of some others, couldn't you?
Dates, yes, precious, dates! Dating the writing of The Hobbit is difficult. Rateliff believes that the writing began no earlier than the summer of 1930 and that he finished it before January 1933 when he loaned it to CS Lewis to read. It at least had an ending, which Lewis thought was not as good as the rest of the book. Carpenter in the Biography believed that H stayed unfinished for a long period. Rateliff disputes this and believes that the last few chapters remained in a handwritten form for awhile.
The first phase is aka "The Pryftan Fragment" and "Bladorthin Typescript". PF starts with "As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things..." which is directly after the Dwarves sing "For over the Misty Mountains cold" in the published book. It ends in mid-sentence with the wizard stating "There is no time to lose -- You must be off before daybreak and well on your way -- Dwarves" The previous paragraph was about not being able to find warriors or heroes in the neighborhood. BT begins with "In a hole..." and ends mid-sentence with the description of the side door and "[Bilbo] was getting excited and interested, so he forgot to be shy and keep his"
The second phase begins where the first phase leaves off. And ends with the scene on Ravenhill. The Beren and Tinuviel reference was taken out during the third phase of writing.
The Necromancer was named Thu (U w/circumflex. I am too lazy to find it on the character map.) His debut was March or April 1928, in the Lay of Leithian, Canto VIII, lines 2064 - 2079 specifically. Sometime later, he morphed into Sauron. This poem found in HoMe vol III The Lays of Beleriand was begun in 1925 and abandoned about September of 1931, right when Tolkien was first telling and then writing H.
Have I given your big mouth enough to chew on for a day or two, Andorinha? Fan
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Post by Andorinha on Feb 3, 2008 23:23:39 GMT -6
GULPING it down in Great-White-Shark chunks! Digestion still takes longer than mere ingestion, Fanuidhol, but yes, thank you, this gives me more substance -- now I await ruminative understanding before I can regurgitate my amplifications. Nothing, I say absolutely NOTHING!
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Post by fanuidhol on Feb 4, 2008 20:05:33 GMT -6
I had to go back and re-read the "time-line" difficulty with the Beren and Tinuviel reference before I could properly explain it. In the published Hobbit, we learn that Gandalf gets the map and key from Thrain while he was in the dungeon of the Necromancer. This had to occur sometime within the last 100 years. If Beren and Luthien destroyed the Necromancer's castle, it had to occur sometime after Gandalf had found Thrain. Later, Bilbo and company get the ancient swords of Gondolin and Elrond reads the runes on those swords. As Rateliff puts it, the Beren and Luthien reference was superfulous...Tolkien kept the ancient swords of Gondolin since they were part of the plot. Fan
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Post by Stormrider on Feb 5, 2008 7:13:44 GMT -6
Wait a minute! The timing doesn't make sense in adding Beren and Luthien to the matrix. I thought they were long dead by the time Gandalf found Thrain in the Necromancer's hideout. And wasn't his hideout still in Southern Mirkwood when Bilbo and the Dwarves went through on their quest? How could Beren and Luthien have destroyed it then? No wonder Tolkien took them out of the picture. geeze
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Post by Andorinha on Feb 6, 2008 0:43:07 GMT -6
Yeah, Stormrider, that makes sense to me. But I vaguely recall Sauron going by the name Thu, and he got in a fight with Huan, and was bested. Didn't he lose a stolen castle at that time? Is that the event the passage about Beren and Luthien refers to? But, as you point out, this would still be AGES before Thrain and Thorin, of course. Wonder if the Silmarillion sory line was not all that clearly layed out to JRRT back in the 1930"s?
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Post by Stormrider on Feb 6, 2008 7:08:51 GMT -6
The name Thu does sound familiar now that I think about it. It seems I read that somewhere in the Sil or UT where it listed Sauron's other names. But I looked in the dictionary at the end of the Sil, UT, Peoples of M-E, Sauron Defeated, and Foster's Dictionary and can't find that name anywhere.
I don't remember anything about Sauron and Huan having a fight and losing a castle. This old memory is fogging up. Hmm. I will have to do some digging later on after work.
I bet the Sil storyline was still shaping up and since Tolkien was writing The Hobbit, he was trying to link them in small ways as Rateliff is trying to prove!
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Post by Andorinha on Feb 6, 2008 11:03:50 GMT -6
Ah, found an applicable passage in Simarillion, hard cover version chapter 19, pp 174 - stolen castle was re-named Tol-in Gaurhoth, "Isle of Werewolves," once belonged to Finrod Felagund as Tol-Sirion. Tinuviel, p. 175 destroys this tower fortress. Other than this passage, I cannot figure out what Tolkien was referring to?
Did not find the name "Thu" there, but remember it as one of Sauron's names.
RE Stormrider: "I bet the Sil storyline was still shaping up and since Tolkien was writing The Hobbit, he was trying to link them in small ways as Rateliff is trying to prove."
Makes sense to me! Now we need to find the date for this passage in the Simarillion, and see if it comes before or after the hobbit version?
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Post by fimbrethil on Feb 6, 2008 21:28:53 GMT -6
As I read through this thread, and all that Fan has shared from HotH, I'm struck by how fluid Tolkien's legendarium was.
As for the question of timing, when did Tolkien decide the relative times of his various stories? Did he always know that Beren and Luthien were in the first age, Numenor in the second, and the Hobbit in the third? Or did he simply tell the separate stories and later stitch them together?
When he first considered locating the story that grew from "In a hole in the ground" in his larger world, did he think that it belonged in the first age? He gets pretty far along in the tale before any men show up.
When we read the final versions of the story, we get the impression of a coherent world, with history and geography and races and languages and patterns and rules that all hang together. But when you delve into the creative process that JRRT followed, it seems that the stories are more like separate jewels that he strung together loosely, shuffling them around, trying different connections, etc.
For reasons I don't understand I find this vaguely disturbing. It's shaking up my view of ME.
Fimbrethil
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Post by fimbrethil on Feb 6, 2008 21:41:00 GMT -6
I have another Hobbit question, which has long bugged me. Perhaps it has been dealt with here before, but I'll ask it anyway.
Why is Sauron referred to as "The Necromancer?" Necromancy is the "conjuration of the spirits of the dead for purposes of magically revealing the future or influencing the course of events" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). The root of the word is from the Greek "nekros" which means "dead." It definitely relates to trying to re-animate the dead. Isn't that an odd name for Sauron? Tolkien is very precise in his use of language, normally. What was his intent in using that word here?
To me, it strengthens the argument that he didn't have Sauron in mind at all - that was a later modification of the story to make it fit where he was headed with LOTR. We know that he didn't originally intend Bilbo's ring to be THE RING.
Fimbrethil
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Post by Stormrider on Feb 7, 2008 6:52:51 GMT -6
Fimbrethil: I've often wondered about the name Necromancer, too. Perhaps turning Men into Ringwraiths would explain it. These servants of Sauron are Men who are undead and they shape the future by following Sauron's orders and hunting down The One Ring for him. Is that stretching the definition too much? Anyway, I am not so sure that JRRT had intended Sauron to be the Necromancer when he wrote The Hobbit. I think it was just a tale he wrote modeled after the Snerg Tale that Andorinha is discussing in another thread. When readers wanted more tales about hobbits, JRRT began writing LOTR. JRRT had no idea of what another story about hobbits would be about! I started some threads on the HoME books entitled "The Return of the Shadow" tolkiensring.proboards30.com/index.cgi?board=home&action=display&thread=1179921918 and "Treason of Isengard" (which I should get back into) tolkiensring.proboards30.com/index.cgi?board=home&action=display&thread=1191287696 These threads are located on the "HoME" sub-board of "Other LOTR Tales" in the "Tolkien Manuscript" section of this site. If you look at "The Return of the Shadow" thread, you can see that JRRT had no idea where he was going with the follow up tale! But slowly but surely it began to take shape and became what it is and how he tied into The Hobbit tale not to mention The Silmarillion.
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Post by Andorinha on Feb 7, 2008 11:06:38 GMT -6
Hi, Fimbrethil! RE: "Why is Sauron referred to as 'The Necromancer?'" GOOD point! Wikipedia has a useful section defining Necromancy: "Necromancy (Greek νεκρομαντία, nekromantía) is a form of divination in which the practitioner seeks to summon 'operative spirits' or 'spirits of divination', for multiple reasons, from spiritual protection to wisdom. The word necromancy derives from the Greek νεκρός (nekrós), "dead", and μαντεία (manteía), 'divination'. "However, since the Renaissance, necromancy has come to be associated more broadly with black magic and demon-summoning in general, sometimes losing its earlier, more specialized meaning. By popular etymology, nekromantia became nigromancy "black arts", and Johannes Hartlieb (1456) lists demonology in general under the heading. Eliphas Levi, in his book Dogma et Ritual, states that necromancy is the evoking of aerial bodies (aeromancy). (page 64)" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NecromancyI wonder if JRRT was using the term for its Renaissance, general implication -- any use of the Dark Arts? Another thought on Why Necromancer? If JRRT had decided to use Gorthu, or just plain Thu as the evil master of the Third Age in The Hobbit, would he have given him the title of Necromancer? I'm thinking here that as a maia, a lesser god, an angel of bad aspect, Sauron would have through his own powers a direct access to the working of dark magics and would not need training to use the spirits of the dead? I'm thinking that maybe, originally, the Necromancer of the early Hobbit might have been loosely thought of as a human being who gained great power through the practice of necromancy. In this regard, was Bladorthin (later Gandalf) thought of as anything other than human at the time of the writing of the Hobbit? I think, maybe, the concept of the Five Wizards as being Maiar rather than human, and the Necromancer as being Sauron (who was also given Maiar status) may come after Bilbo's adventure was written. Dates again, sigh. When do we have reliable information concerning the first conception of of the Istari as maiar, and Sauron likewise of that order. I think the manuscripts that tell us this information come from the 1950s, maybe even 1956 in Unfinished Tales? In this hypothesis, both the Necromancer and Gandalf would have been human wizard types at the time of the writing of The Hobbit. Now I gotta get Hammond and Scullard (?) to see if they list the dates for the first presentation of the Maiar conception... What bothers me here is still Fan's presentation of the confusing Beren/ Tinuviel connection with the Necromancer -- not sure what that implies, it may blow my hypothesis all to pieces?
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Post by Andorinha on Feb 7, 2008 11:16:25 GMT -6
Ah, just found the references to Thu (cannot add circumflex on my machine) or Gorthu. Seens familiar to us, Stormrider, because its in the same volume as the Tevildo episodes you presented elsewhere. The Lays of Beleriand index (HOME vol. 3) lists a whole series of pages mentioning Thu. I'll see what I can find there, especially checking to see if the maiar identity is established this early, and if the name Necromancer is ever used (it does not appear in the index).
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Post by fanuidhol on Feb 7, 2008 19:50:43 GMT -6
The brilliance of reply #17 might have blinded you, Andorinha. But, I did give Thu's debut... "His debut was March or April 1928, in the Lay of Leithian, Canto VIII, lines 2064 - 2079 specifically." ’Men called him Thu, and as a god in after days beneath his rod his ghastly temples in the shade. Not yet by man enthralled adored, now he was Morgoth’s mightiest lord, Master of Wolves, whose shivering howl for ever echoed in the hills, and foul enchantment and dark sigaldry did weave and wield. In glamoury that necromancer held his hosts of phantoms and of wandering ghosts, of misbegotten or spell-wronged monsters that about him thronged, working his bidding dark and vile: the werewolves of the Wizards Isle. Fimbrethil, I'm happy to see you on the boards. Would you happen to have a recipe for Dragon's Tail? In partial answer to your question: " As for the question of timing, when did Tolkien decide the relative times of his various stories? Did he always know that Beren and Luthien were in the first age, Numenor in the second, and the Hobbit in the third? Or did he simply tell the separate stories and later stitch them together?" I am going to guess that in the late 20's to the very early 30's Tolkien didn't know about the 2nd or 3rd Ages. At some point while writing The Hobbit, perhaps Elrond's recognition of Glamdring and Orcrist, inspired the division of Ages. That is something to research. Stormy, how about you? Do you have a recipe for Dragon's Tale? Just had a thought! The Barrow-wights. In the House of Tom B. chapter, there is a statement that a shadow stirred the bones. Barrow-wights walked...could the shadow have been Sauron The Necromancer? Fan
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