A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages - Andrew Higgins

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or phrases which defy decipherment are marked as {illeg}

       Words written above other words where neither is cancelled are divided by a slash: /

       Where Tolkien used abbreviations (e.g., ‘Gmc’, ‘&c.’, ‘OE’) we have spelled out the words in full (‘Germanic’, ‘etc.’, ‘Old English’)

       We have regularized some punctuation and (when called for) inserted Tolkien’s marginal notes in the appropriate places in the main body of the text

       Tolkien occasionally wrote abbreviated thoughts instead of full sentences, and while this has sometimes resulted in a syntactical incoherence, we have preferred to let these stand rather than to intrude editorially

       Curly brackets are used to denote editorial material, while square brackets are Tolkien’s own

       A superscript following a word or phrase in Tolkien’s text signals that there is an endnote on this material

      Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson have justly named ‘On Fairy-stories’ as Tolkien’s ‘manifesto’ on the art of writing fantasy (TOFS, p. 9). This volume aims to confirm that ‘A Secret Vice’ is an equally indispensable manifesto for the parallel (and – for Tolkien – coeval) art of language invention, deserving of its rightful place in the Tolkien canon. ‘A Secret Vice’ (and Tolkien’s language invention itself) has often been neglected by critics. One of the aims of this edition is to re-open the debate on the importance of linguistic invention in Tolkien’s mythology and the role of fictional languages in imaginative literature in general. At the same time, the wealth of new material by Tolkien uncovered and presented here affords readers the opportunity to truly appreciate the original ideas on language and art postulated by one of the most innovative academic and creative linguistic minds of the twentieth century.

      We are grateful to the Tolkien Estate for entrusting us with this project and for permission to use Tolkien’s manuscripts. A special thanks to Cathleen Blackburn of Maier Blackburn for her support. We are indebted to Catherine Parker and Colin Harris at the Bodleian Library for their generous assistance. For access to the Exeter and Pembroke College Archives we thank Penny Baker and Amanda Ingram. Extracts from the minutes of the Johnson Society are reprinted by kind permission of the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Pembroke College, Oxford. Many thanks also to Andrew Honey at the Bodleian and Simon Bailey at the University of Oxford Archives. We are grateful for invaluable help and advice from Douglas Anderson, Mark Atherton, Carmen Casaliggi, Verlyn Flieger, Nelson Goering, Alaric Hall, John Hines, Carl Hostetter, George Kotzoglou, Philip Leube, Carl Phelpstead, John Rateliff, Claire Richards and Patrick Wynne. Our colleagues Kathryn Simpson, Meryl Hopwood, Kate North, and Michelle Deininger were a constant source of support during this project. Thanks also to Chris Smith, editorial director of HarperCollins, for encouragement and advice; and to Charles Noad for his scrupulous editing and eagle eye.

      We would also like to express our thanks and gratitude to all the members of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship whose diligent and focused academic editing and analysis of Tolkien’s linguistic papers have given us and all students and scholars of Tolkien’s invented languages an invaluable corpus of work to study and analyse. Many thanks to Christopher Gilson, Patrick Wynne, Bill Welden, Arden R. Smith and Carl F. Hostetter.

      Last but not least, we would like to thank our respective husbands, Andrew Davies and David Thompson, for bearing with us during countless late nights and weekends working on this project.

      DIMITRA FIMI and ANDREW HIGGINS

       INTRODUCTION

       Myth-making and Language Invention

      J.R.R. Tolkien spent a large portion of his life creating an extended and complex mythology set in a fully fledged secondary world. Many readers know this world and its legends primarily through The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–5), although Tolkien composed these works by drawing upon a vast backdrop of mythic narratives developed during a span of more than thirty years. An equally significant part of his life was devoted to the creation, development and refining of a series of invented languages, some fully formed, some partially sketched out, and others only mentioned. Many of these languages would become inextricably intertwined with his invented secondary world and its attendant races, cultures and mythology. From his earliest contribution to the code-like Nevbosh in 1907, to the last philologically focused work he wrote in 1972 on the name of the Elf Glorfindel shortly before his death, Tolkien never stopped working on the development of what he would characterize as his ‘nexus of languages’ (Letters, p. 143). That Tolkien saw language invention and myth-making as coeval and co-dependent creative acts is evident from several of his letters. For example, he stated that The Lord of the Rings was ‘fundamentally linguistic in inspiration’ and, for him at least, ‘largely an essay in “linguistic” aesthetic’ (Letters, pp. 219–20, emphasis in the original). Moreover, he wrote to his son, Christopher, that The Lord of the Rings was an attempt to ‘create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real’ (ibid., p. 264). Finally, in a draft of a letter from 1967, Tolkien summed up his language invention:

      It must be emphasized that this process of invention was/is a private enterprise undertaken to give pleasure to myself by giving expression to my personal linguistic ‘aesthetic’ or taste and its fluctuations. (ibid., p. 380)

      Tolkien’s linguistic invention was, therefore, a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a ‘home’ and peoples to speak them (ibid., pp. 219, 264–5, 375). As other of Tolkien’s writings reveal, what is closer to the truth is that myth-making and linguistic invention began as separate strands of artistic expression in Tolkien’s youth, but very soon became indissolubly bound to, and inextricably dependent on, each other (see Letters, pp. 144, 345).

      In the 1930s, Tolkien composed two essays in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology: myth-making and language invention. In 1931, Tolkien delivered a paper for the Johnson Society, Pembroke College, Oxford, entitled ‘A Secret Vice’. He unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art which he had both himself encountered, and been involved with, since his earliest childhood: ‘the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement’ (see p. 11). He also proposed that: ‘the making of language and mythology are related functions’, in fact ‘coeval and congenital’ (see p. 24). Later that same decade, in March 1939, Tolkien was invited to present the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of Saint Andrews, and delivered a paper titled ‘On Fairy-stories’, in which – as Anderson and Flieger point out – ‘he declared his particular concept of what fantasy is and how it ought to work’ (TOFS, p. 9). Tolkien’s drafts for this lecture reiterate the centrality of myth and language in his legendarium: ‘Mythology is language and language is mythology. The mind, and the tongue, and the tale are coeval’ (ibid., p. 181).

      This interdependence of invented languages and mythological narrative permeates the entire legendarium Tolkien would work on for over sixty years. The History of Middle-earth series (1983–96) has afforded readers unprecedented access to Tolkien’s creative process, from the first versions of the legendarium and related languages in the 1910s and 1920s, to his latest writings of the 1960s and 1970s, which include complex considerations of the interconnection of language and myth such as the masterful ‘The Shibboleth of Fëanor’ (Peoples, pp. 331–66). In addition, specialist publications such as Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar have made available Tolkien’s linguistic documents that were beyond the scope of The History of Middle-earth series (see also ‘Coda’). These linguistic works often reveal glimpses of stories that were never developed in full, thus once again confirming the ‘coeval and congenital’ nature of language and myth in Tolkien’s legendarium.

      ‘A Secret Vice’

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