Tolkien's development as a writer of alliterative poetry in modern English (original) (raw)
Related papers
J.R.R. Tolkien produced a considerable body of poetry in which he used the traditional alliterative metre of Old Norse and Old English to write modern English verse. This paper reviews three of his longer narrative poems, published in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún and The Fall of Arthur, examining Tolkien's alliterative technique in comparison to medieval poetry and to the metrical theories of Eduard Sievers. In particular, the two poems in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, which are adapted from Old Norse material, show a number of metrical and poetic features reminiscent of Tolkien's sources in the Poetic Edda. The Fall of Arthur, on the other hand, is in a style that is, in detail and in general, strongly reminiscent of Old English poetry. Throughout all these compositions, Tolkien employs a distinctive alliterative style, closely based on medieval and philological models, but adjusted according to the linguistic needs of modern English and to his own preferences.
Tolkien and Old English: An Annotated Bibliography
An annotated, alphabetized bibliography of all primary and secondary scholarly sources on J.R.R. Tolkien's relationship with, and use of, Old English language and literature in his academic and popular works, of which I am aware. The list is current as of 2017.
The Lord of The Rings: Linguistic Aesthetics and a Mirror to the Past
2020
A short essay on Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" tracing the more specific concept of lámatyáve (phonetic fitness) as seen in the languages of Middle Earth, and the more genetic concept of language as a window to the historical past, as seen in Tolkien's pseudo-history of linguistic development of Middle-Earth's languages.
Translator and Language Change: On J.R.R. TolkiennS Translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an English poem written in the latter half of the 14 th century, constitutes an important part of Tolkien's life as a scholar and translator. The complex language of the poem attracted his attention from the moment Tolkien first encountered it as the Gawain-poet used some native words that were characteristic of Old and Middle English alliterative poetry. On the other hand, more than one third of his vocabulary is not derived from Old English: approximately one tenth of a total of 2650 words has Scandinavian etymologies (although at the time they were no longer considered borrowings, but rather northern dialect words) and about a third is of French origin. In his translation of the poem, Tolkien was primarily interested in special verse words, which resulted in his use of archaic diction such as capadoce 'a short cape' or carl 'man'. However, this study focuses on the second important feature of the vocabulary of the poem: the combination of French and dialect (Scandinavian) words, which are not distributed evenly in the original text. As the author uses the stylistic contrasts between borrowed and native words; he carefully loads some of his lines with French loanwords while others are devoid of them. This paper discusses the stylistic effect thus created by the Gawain-poet and whether Tolkien managed to preserve it in his translation. JEL Classification: Z.
An Analysis of Purpose and Relative Distance among J.R.R. Tolkien's invented languages
2020
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien did not create his many fictional languages so that his fiction may live, but rather created the fictional stories so that his languages may live. It could then be argued that his Middle-Earth saga is predominantly a language study. Deeming it thus, the question I pose is whether the languages Tolkien created for his series of novels are intrinsically related to the language of the common speech, English, and if so, how does this common speech affect the development of the fictional languages? If we regard the language of the Rohirrim as a linguistic mutation of English, how might it be crafted for, say, a French audience with French as the common speech? This dissertation will investigate the extent to which Tolkien's mother tongue influenced the creation of his series of fictitious languages. We shall see how each of his invented languages relates to the language in which the books are written. Examining and disputing some of the findings of other Tolkien scholars, we will discover the purpose of his languages and how translation of the books ought to see translation of the fictional languages. This will lead us to the conclusion that his languages were created first with Middle-earth having been created to give the former somewhere to exist. Pursuing equivalent effect, a translation without altering Elvish et al. will not see this brought to fruition.