J. R. R. Tolkien: Difference between revisions

[[File:JRRTolkien.jpg|frame| He's a smiling Oxford don [[Good Smoking, Evil Smoking|with a pipe]]. How can you ''not'' like and trust him?]]

 

{{quote|''"How, given little over half a century of work, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people?"''|'''The Guardian''', concerning ''[[The Silmarillion]]''}}

 

 

Tolkien was a [[Cunning Linguist|polyglot]] who spoke well over a dozen languages and had some comprehension of up to forty. He even [[Con Lang|made up a few of his own.]] Let's just say there aren't many authors who kept interfering with the foreign translations of their books to (correctly, see for instance the article on translator [[Åke Ohlmarks]]) point out how the translators aren't translating things properly into ''their native languages''...

* ''The Adventures of Tom Bombadil'' (collection of "in-universe" poetry, 1962)

* ''[[The Silmarillion]]'' (1977)

* ''[[The History of Middle Earth]]'' (12 volumes, 1983--96)

* ''The History of The Hobbit'' (2007)

 

 

Think you'd like to have a legacy like this guy's? Start [[So You Want To/Be the Next JRR Tolkien|here]]!

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* [[All There in the Manual|All There In The Appendices And Posthumously Published Work]]

** The Appendices made up nearly half of ''The Return of the King''.

* [[Bring News Back]]: As described in the extended account of the disaster of Gladden Fields.

* [[But Now I Must Go]]

* [[Changing of the Guard]]: Between ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''

* [[Cold-Blooded Torture]]: Both Sauron and Morgoth are fond of it.

* [[Cryptic Background Reference]]

* [[Cue the Sun]]

* [[Dear Negative Reader]]: In his introduction to the second edition of ''The Lord of the Rings'':

{{quote|“Some who have read the book, [[Take That, Critics!|or at any rate have reviewed it]], have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”}}

* [[Mithril]]: the original

* [[Mordor]]

* [[Mysterious Backer]]: Eru and the Valar in all of his works.

* [[Mythopoeia]]

* [[No One Gets Left Behind]]

* [[No Man of Woman Born]]: ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' is co-[[Trope Namer]] with [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]].

** Doubters are referred, for a start, to the story of Feanor, the greatest creative genius in the history of the Elves, whose stubbornness and selfishness led to the millenia-long exile of almost his ''entire branch'' of the High-elven people, the Noldor, from the Blessed Lands, to civil war in those same Blessed Lands between two of the three tribes of the High-elves, to the destruction of the Elven kingdoms of Beleriand and of Beleriand itself, and to the deaths of himself and almost all his sons.

** They do, however, appear to be this in ''The Lord of the Rings'', since it isn't concentrating on Elvish history, and so most of their bigger mistakes are found elsewhere. Now, since it's the most popular and well-known of Tolkien's works, this means it's easy for people to get the wrong impression. This being said, Galadriel is shown to be just flawed as susceptible to the One Ring's power as anyone, although she is one of the handful who resist its power.

{{quote|"I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by ''arisch''. I am not of ''Aryan'' extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of ''Jewish'' origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have ''no'' ancestors of that gifted people."}}

** Tolkien sent his publisher two versions of this letter -- this one, and a stronger version -- and let the publisher choose which letter to send. Since the "mild" version is the one which remained in Tolkien's file, it may be presumed that the "wild" version was used.

* [[Tender Tears]]: Tolkien is rare amongst Western artists for creating consistently sensitive and soft-hearted men who do not see crying as shameful or dishonorable.

* [[Thunderbolt Iron]]

* [[Tragic Hero]]

* [[Translation Convention]]: All of our real-world languages do not exist in Middle-earth, and so the common [[Translation Convention]] applies. When not convention-translated, names and speech make use of either Tolkien's constructed languages, or of a real-world language used as stand-in for a fictional one. The latter ones are not chosen randomly, but to represent the relation between the respective "proper" languages, or a certain image. Languages regularly replaced by stand-in languages in the text are: "Westron" a.k.a. the "Common Speech" is ''always'' rendered as English (as it is the Third-Age-novel's POV-character's language), the Rohirric language by Anglo-Saxon a.k.a. Old English (to appear vaguely familiar to the hobbits' Westron-English), and the language used by the Dwarves and the Men of Dale by Old Norse. Information on the "translation" and what these languages "really" look like, can be found [[All There in the Manual|in various appendices and additional texts]].

* [[Turn the Other Cheek]]

* [[Turtle Island]]: Fastitocalon

* [[Warrior Prince]]: By the bucketload.

* [[What Could Have Been]]

** For that matter, it's hard to keep from feeling wistful when reading the many fragments of unfinished stories and poems collected by his son Christopher in ''[[The History of Middle Earth]]''. There's even a whole volume of them entitled ''Unfinished Tales.''

* [[When Trees Attack]]: The Ents were created because Tolkien had seen a production of ''[[Macbeth]]'' as a child and was disappointed when it turned out that the forest itself didn't actually attack.

* [[World Shapes]]

* [[World Tree]]

* [[You Shall Not Pass]]: Gandalf's speech in the movie ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Fellowship of the Ring]]'', while a slightly paraphrased variation of the speech in the book, is the [[Trope Namer]].