Lord of the ringsUniqueness of Tolkien's trilogy |
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The only essential feature you ought to possess to understand Tolkien's
books is a bit of ingenuity and true belief in goodness. Tolkien is
thrilling, exciting, captiviting and extremely unpredictable; Tolkien is
mysterious and charming; Tolkien is British to the backbone and international
at the same time.
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THE LORD OF THE RINGS: PREHISTORY |
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J.R.R.Tolkien, was a reader in English from 1920-24.
Tolkien was professor of the English
Language (1924-25) of the University of Leeds, Yorkshire; Rawlisson and
Bosworth. Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (1925-45.)
Tolkien was also Merton Professor of the English Language and Literature 1945-59.
Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to a bank clerk Arthur Reuel Tolkien
and Mable Suffield.
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PHILOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS |
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Burton Raffel, a devoted critic of Tolkien's says of the trilogy the
following : "The Lord of the Rings is a magnificent performance full of
charm, excitement and affection, but it is not - at least as I am here
using this term - literature. It would be foolish to say that Tolkien
does not write well. He does, Tolkien writes admirably, whether his prose is
discursive, scholarly or imaginative, but prose is not autoteic, and if
Tolkien writes admirably one still must ask, to what purpose? That is,
his prose may do admirably just what Tolkien wants it to do and what he wants
it to may be - and in fact is - very much worth doing.
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| PART I |
TONGUES AND RACES OF MIDDLE-EARTH |
Sindarin and QuenyaLanguage of the elves |
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So first of all we should speak about the Elves, who were the immortal
children of Iluvatar-Eru -the creator of Arda - the earth. According to
the chronology of Tolkien, in the Early days of Arda this folk became divided
into several branches: those, who went West ( the Eldar) and those, who
stayed in the East (the Avari).
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Tolkien's dwarves |
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As Tolkien said himself, the Dwarves were a race apart, in everything.
Though the Elves are traditionally considered to be the firstborn human
beings, yet the Dwarves appeared even earlier. Unlike the other children
of Iluvatar the Naugrim (the name given by the Dwarves to their kindred)
were created by Aulė - a spirit of Arda, one of the Lords of the Valar,
who made first the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves.
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Tolkien's ents |
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This race is perhaps most mysterious of all dwelling in Middle-earth.
Old as the first forest, they remember uncountable ages, peoples and the
fall of ancient Elvish kingdoms, and great wars of the Elder Days.
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Tolkien's orcs |
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The inscription on the Ring of Power was in the ancient Black Speech,
which was not forgotten only by the Nazgūl - the Ring-bearers - and the
wizards: "Ash nazg durbatulūk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulūk
agh burzum-ishi krimpatul". It can be rendered as the following: "
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them
all and in the Darkness bind them." In the second volume of the trilogy
called The Two Towers we find a phrase in the Orcish tongue which
Tolkien has left untranslated: "Ugluk u baronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob
bubhosh skai".
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The men of the west and the common speech |
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Men were the younger children if Iluvatar. "The Atani they were named by
the Eldar, the Second People; but they were also called Hildor, the
Followers, and many other names: Ap nonar, the Afterborn, Engwar, the
Sickly, and Firimar, Mortals".
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Tolkien's hobbits |
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We can definitely claim that hobbits were the favourite
characters of Tolkien, for a small hobbit - not a mighty warrior or a noble knight
- was entrusted with the fate of Middle-earth. "Many are the strange
chances of the world, and help oft shall come from the hand of the weak
when the Wise falter."
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Gandalf and Tom Bombadil |
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Gandalf seemed uncorrupted by his magical power and used it for good
purposes. In this sense Gandalf, as Tolkien described him, is indeed an
'angel' come down among men. And as Gandalf is a wizard or 'wise man',
his knowledge of the power of words suggests that he represents
something of Tolkien himself.
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The relationship of the westron to the languages of other peoples
in the lord of the rings |
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Translating The Red Book from the Westron Tolkien has made an attempt to
represent different variants of pronunciation by variations in the kind
of English used. Such persons as Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli do not
hold to the same style. For them it was quite natural and even
intentional to speak more or less after the manner of those, among whom
they found themselves, since they often had to conceal their origin and
business.
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| PART II |
POETRY IN THE LORD OF THE RINGS |
Tolkien's riddles, nursery rhymes and nonsenical songs |
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Tolkien's Poetry is an integral part of the narration. For the characters Tolkien invented it
is as natural to recite verses as to breathe or think. Songs and verses
are used to expound, to emphasize, to rarefy the prose, and always verse
utterances of various characters are natural and appropriate to the
context in which Tolkien has placed them. Burton Raffel though finds the poetry of Tolkien 'embarassingly bad'. He considers
the poetry included in the Lord of the Rings " lacking poetic existence in its own
right, being no independent literary merit. Why then did Tolkien include
it, and what purpose does it serve?
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Tolkien's ballads, poems and laments
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The form of questions and answers seems rather typical of Tolkien's
poetry, since it helps to reveal the state of mind of a person or
describe a situation in a more effective and compressed way than any
other utterance would.
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