tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post6537624403652099670..comments2023-11-07T06:20:12.181-08:00Comments on Tolkien: Medieval and Modern: On Fragments, Soup, and Rapunzel"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"http://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-14747243972587236802014-06-03T05:45:31.770-07:002014-06-03T05:45:31.770-07:00I totally agree that the “fragments and fossils” o...I totally agree that the “fragments and fossils” of Tolkien’s world do a great job of grounding his story in our primary reality. I think it’s fascinating how he is able to give both the fragment and the story itself history just from including a version of the fragment in the story- not only does Hey Diddle Diddle have it’s history realized, it is also a part of Middle-earth’s history. By adding these bits and pieces from our primary reality, Tolkien manages to give depth not only to his own stories but to these other stories as well. I think this technique is essential to Tolkien’s goal of writing a fundamentally British story- not only does the story act as Britain’s history, but it manages to fill in the blanks for these other British fragments as well. Tolkien manages to enrich British history through both his own creation and those of others. By enriching different British stories, including his own, he enriches the history and culture of Britain as a whole. The ‘soup’ itself seems to be the best way to do this- by allowing these stories to play off of one another, they are able to enrich one another as well, just like two flavors come together to make the other taste better. -S. RajanAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03413671373862946292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-13067928675744723902014-04-14T14:18:06.896-07:002014-04-14T14:18:06.896-07:00Thanks for the comment, Will.
I think your point ...Thanks for the comment, Will.<br /><br />I think your point is correct as far as it goes, but I think you’ve maybe got the fragments idea backwards. He’s not “solely” setting out to create a history for these bits of historical detritus (I'll call them fossils for reasons I'll explain later), but he is furnishing his historical world with the “etymologies” of these fossils. Moreover, in the discussions of “fragments” in his work, it’s generally referring to the texts he’s constructed to convey partial (i.e., fragmentary) histories of Middle Earth.<br /><br />But, you’re right about creativity—it’s well kept in mind that philological reconstruction is a creative act. It’s governed by rules, of course, and there’s a strong deductive element, but our *Proto-Indo-European is as much a work of inspiration and craft as it is science. I think what Tolkien did was in some ways creatively reconstruct—and <i>expand</i>—the fragments and fossils he used, while imagining a lost world with which they were consonant. This is very much what philologists, archaeologists, and historians have to do on a day-to-day basis, though without quite the freedom that the novelist has. I think Tolkien was engaged in a species of historical analysis—of a time and place that never were, but in his mind should have (and on some level must have been, in the sense he felt something ancient and mysterious underlying even the oldest of Old English texts).<br /><br />In this sense, you’re right, creating his “fragment” texts, as well as incorporating the “fossils” of things like “Hey Diddle Diddle” allowed Tolkien to creatively anchor his mythos both in time, in the former case, and history in the latter.<br /><br />Bill the Heliotrope"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"https://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.com