ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2. Christina Scull
Читать онлайн.Название The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008273491
Автор произведения Christina Scull
Жанр Критика
Издательство HarperCollins
When Rayner Unwin began to correspond with Tolkien in 1952 he addressed him as ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’, and Tolkien replied to ‘My dear Rayner’ or ‘Dear Rayner’. At first Tolkien signed his letters ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’, but by about 1960 he began to sign ‘Ronald Tolkien’. On 15 December 1965 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin:
Do you think you could mark the New Year by dropping the Professor? I belong to a generation which did not use Christian names outside the family, but like the dwarves [in his mythology] kept them private, and for even their intimates used surnames (or perversions of them), or nicknames, or (occasionally) Christian names that did not belong to them. Even C.S. Lewis never called me by a Christian name (or I him). So I will be content with a surname. I wish I could get rid of the “professor” altogether, at any rate when not writing technical matter. It gives a false impression of “learning”, especially in “folklore” and all that. It also gives a probably truer impression of pedantry, but it is a pity to have my pedantry advertised and underlined, so that people sniff it even when it is not there. [Letters, pp. 365–6]
From that point Rayner wrote to ‘Dear Tolkien’. Seven years later, on 30 March 1972, Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘Would it be possible for you to use my Christian name? I am now accepted as a member of the community here [Merton College] – one of the habits of which has long been the use of Christian names, irrespective of age or office – and as you are now a v[ery] old friend, and a very dear one, I should much like also to be a “familiaris”’ (Letters, p. 418).
He did not care whether he was addressed as ‘Professor’ or ‘Mr’; on 12 December 1955 he wrote to Mr Smith at Allen & Unwin that ‘there is no need to alter “Mr” to “Professor”. In proper Oxford tradition professor is not a title of address – or was not, though the habit has drifted in from places where “professors” are powerful little domestic potentates’ (Letters, p. 230).
Names and Required Alterations. Parallel list of names in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented) from The Cottage of Lost Play (*The Book of Lost Tales), with equivalents in Gnomish (Goldogrin, later Sindarin), published in Parma Eldalamberon 15 (2004), pp. 5–18, edited with commentary and notes by Patrick H. Wynne.
This work appears to date from ?1917–?1919. An appendix ‘assembles a variety of isolated words, linguistic notes, and phonological charts from the Lost Tales [Book of Lost Tales] notebooks that could not be conveniently presented in previous issues of Parma Eldalamberon’ (p. 6).
‘Names of the Valar’. List of names of the Valar (*‘The Silmarillion’), arranged by gender, published as part of ‘Early Qenya Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 14 (2003), pp. 11–15, edited with commentary and notes by Patrick Wynne and Christopher Gilson.
Originally written only in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), Gnomish (Goldogrin, later Sindarin) forms were added later by Tolkien. The work is contemporary with *The Book of Lost Tales, but probably later than *Corrected Names of Chief Valar, i.e. from the ?first half of 1919.
Napier, Arthur Sampson (1853–1916). A.S. Napier, educated at Owens College, Manchester and Exeter College, *Oxford, taught at Berlin and Göttingen before becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford in 1885. In 1903 he became, as well, Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon. Napier’s appointment to the Merton Professorship, on the establishment of that chair, strengthened the language side of English studies at Oxford – he was one of three professors of *Philology, together with John Earle and F. Max Müller – to the regret of those who pictured the philologists ‘lecturing simultaneously on Beowulf to empty benches, while there was no one to lecture on Shakespeare and Milton’ (D.J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (1965), p. 87). In fact, Napier would later play a key role, with *Walter Raleigh, in bifurcating the Oxford English syllabus to make it more attractive to students whose primary interest was literature rather than language (from 1908 only four of ten papers were required in common of all students reading English, with the other six oriented to suit the language or literature specialty).
Never robust, during the last ten years of his life Napier was frequently in ill health, but was ably assisted by *Kenneth Sisam, whose B.Litt. thesis Napier supervised. Tolkien later recalled meeting Napier when, as an undergraduate at Oxford, he changed his course of study from Classics to English Language and Literature: ‘I recall that I was ushered into a very dim room and could hardly see Napier. He was courteous, but said little. He never spoke to me again. I attended his lectures, when he was well enough to give them’ (letter to *N.R. Ker, 22 November 1970, Letters, p. 406). These definitely included, in Michaelmas Term 1913, lectures on English Historical Grammar and on Old English Dialects, and in Michaelmas Term 1914 and Hilary Term 1915, on *Pearl and *Beowulf (see further, Chronology).
Narn i Chîn Húrin. Prose narrative of the story of Túrin (see *‘Of Túrin Turambar’), published with notes and commentary in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 57–162, as Narn i Hîn Húrin: The Tale of the Children of Húrin (see below). Some sections of draft and further commentary were included in the account of the Grey Annals in *The War of the Jewels (1994).
When *Christopher Tolkien edited Unfinished Tales he thought that the whole of the Narn was a work of the late 1950s, but during the writing of *The History of Middle-earth he realized that the latter part of the Narn, from the section headed ‘The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin’ to ‘The Death of Túrin’ (Unfinished Tales, pp. 104–46), was written c. 1951 and in close association with the Grey Annals (*Annals of Beleriand). ‘The manuscript was headed (later) “The Children of Húrin: last part”, and at the top of the first page my father wrote “Part of the ‘Children of Húrin’ told in full scale”’ (The War of the Jewels, p. 144). Up to the point where the Men of Brethil discuss what action to take against Glaurung, preliminary drafting for the manuscript text ‘consists of little more than scribbled slips. From here on … there are in effect two manuscripts’, one of which Christopher Tolkien calls ‘the draft manuscript’, being a ‘continuation of the original, which became so chaotic with rewriting’ that Tolkien made a fair copy (The War of the Jewels, p. 152). In his comments on the relevant portion of the Grey Annals in The War of the Jewels (pp. 144–65) Christopher Tolkien includes comparisons of various versions of the story of Túrin, lengthy extracts from drafts for the Narn, and synopses for the end of the story which show Tolkien hesitating over the dénouement.
Tolkien possibly chose to begin this prose account part way through the story because he had already written a lengthy account of Túrin’s earlier life in alliterative verse in the 1920s (*The Lay of the Children of Húrin), but nothing at length of his later life since *The Book of Lost Tales. The part of the Narn dealing with Túrin’s earlier life, however, is a work of the late 1950s.
In The War of the Jewels Christopher Tolkien describes ‘a twelve-page typescript composed ab initio by my father and bearing the title “Here begins the tale of the Children of Húrin, Narn i Chîn Húrin, which Dírhaval wrought”’ (p. 314). This provided the text for the first part of the Narn (Unfinished Tales, pp. 57–65), but two passages describing the sojourn of Húrin and Huor