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Anna Smol

~ Department of English, Mount Saint Vincent University

Anna Smol

Tag Archives: Fall of Arthur

Tolkien at UVM conference April 10-12

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by Anna Smol in Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Old English, Tolkien

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Tags

alliterative poetry, Arthurian lit, Beowulf, Fall of Arthur, Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Medieval verse narratives, Tolkien at UVM

The 12th Annual Tolkien at University of Vermont conference is just days away.  The conference is free and open to the public. It starts with a Friday night Fireside reading at which participants can get up and read their favorite passages, and continues on Saturday with a day of conference presentations. On Sunday afternoon, the University Tolkien Club organizes a “Springle-Ring Shire Festival” with all kinds of fun activities.

This year’s conference theme is Medieval Verse Narratives, and the keynote speaker is Dr. Michael D.C. Drout, who will be speaking about “Scholarship as Art, Art as Scholarship: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf.”

The other presentations are:

Gerry Blair (Independent Scholar). “J.R.R. Tolkien, Performance Artist and Modern Medievalist.”

Jamie Williamson (University of Vermont). “Verses and Prose: Medieval Narrative, Nineteenth Century Medievalism, and Tolkien.”

Andrew Liptak (Independent Scholar/Norwich University). “Modern Fantasy’s Roots in Medieval Verse.”

Kristine Larsen (Central Connecticut State University). “Guinevere, Grimhild, and the Corrigan: Witches and Bitches in Tolkien’s Medieval Narrative Verse, or, Good Girls Don’t Use Magic (Except if You’re Galadriel, but Elf Magic is Diff erent, and Who Ever Said Galadriel was a Good Girl?)”

Andrew C. Peterson (Harvard). “A Brief Exploration of Tolkien’s Alliterative Verse and Echoes of The Fall of Arthur Heard in Middle-earth”

Christopher Vaccaro (University of Vermont). “’Dyrne langað’: Secret Longing in Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings.”

Anna Smol (Mount Saint Vincent University). “Poetic Time-Travel in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son”

Cheryl Hunter (Independent Scholar). “Beowulf and Thorin as Ancestral Heroes: Their Choices, and the Dragons They Face.”

and Undergraduate Voices

For more information and to view past programs, you can go to the conference website.

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Tolkien in Vermont 2015

23 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by Anna Smol in Calls for Papers, Conferences, Medievalisms, Tolkien

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Beowulf, Fall of Arthur, medieval verse narrative, Michael Drout, Pearl, Sigurd and Gudrun, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Tolkien in Vermont, Tolkien Studies

Tolkien in Vermont conferenceTolkien in Vermont is a conference that is now heading into its twelfth year. A call for papers has been posted recently by the organizer, Chris Vaccaro, who promises that details about the conference will appear soon on the Tolkien in Vermont website. The CFP is copied below, or you can find it here.

I’ve always found this conference to be a small and friendly gathering where you can meet and mingle with all of the participants — students, fans, independent scholars, faculty alike. This year’s keynote speaker, in keeping with the conference theme of medieval verse narratives, is Michael Drout.

**********

Call for papers:

April 10-11
Tolkien in Vermont conference
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT

The theme for this year is Medieval Verse Narratives. Papers on every subject will be considered; however, the following subjects will be prioritized: Beowulf, The Fall of Arthur, Sigurd and Gudrun, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Pearl, and Sir Orfeo.

Please submit an abstract or (preferably) a complete paper by Sunday, February 1st. Decisions will follow swiftly thereafter. Papers should be ten pages in length.

We are very excited to announce that Michael Drout (Professor, Wheaton College) will be this year’s keynote speaker!

contact email:  cvaccaro@uvm.edu

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Kalamazoo blogs and videos

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by Anna Smol in Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Tolkien

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

AHA Today, Art-Hist, Babel Working Group, DotPorterDigital, Fall of Arthur, Furta Sacra, Gower Project, Histories of Emotions, How Did We Get Into This Mess?, hrj livejournal, In the Middle, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MassMedieval, Material Collective, Medieval Ecocriticisms, medievalists.net, Modern Historian Canadian Medievalist, Parasynchronies, Tolkien Society, Using astrolabes

Kalamazoo campus swan pondIf you regret not being able to go to the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (or you just didn’t get to all the sessions you wanted, or you want to review the ones that you did attend), I’ve collected some blog posts and videos that might give you a taste of the kinds of topics that were discussed. This conference is huge, with over 500 sessions in all fields of medieval studies, so my list is not representative, but the following links will lead you to a few summaries of presentations and in some cases, even entire conference papers.

I’ll start with the Tolkien at Kalamazoo sessions. Although I sometimes write up summaries of Tolkien conference sessions for this blog, this year Andrew Higgins has done the work with an excellent “Kalamazoo 2014 Round-Up” for the Tolkien Society.

Kisha Tracy also commented on the Fall of Arthur session, as well as other Thursday presentations on the Mass Medieval blog.

Kalamazoo 2014Moving away from the Tolkien sessions, you can sample some of the following:

  •  Anticipations of the conference experience: “Kalamazoo Rendezvous” by Kisha Tracy on Mass Medieval.
  • A brief impression in “Kzoo2014, first thought” by Karl Steel. In the Middle blog.
  • J.P. Sexton and Kisha Tracy on Mass Medieval describe their experiences in various sessions on each day of the conference, including topics such as disability studies, Celtic studies, the Anglo-Scandinavian world, teaching history of the English language, and more. Days 1-2; Thursday; Friday and another Friday report; and Saturday.
  • David Perry provides the text of his talk “Going Public: A Medievalist on CNN.com” on his blog, How Did We Get Into This Mess? On Language, Power, and Privilege. He gave this presentation in a session on writing about the Middle Ages for multiple audiences.
  • “Kalamazoo 2014.” The Material Collective. Maggie Williams provides a summary of the Faking It roundtable.
  • “Kinship: The Material Collective at Kalamazoo.” Medieval Meets World. Anne Harris summarizes the Impossible Words session and a session on Materiality and Aesthetics.
  • J.J. Cohen in “The Kalamazoo Gyre” on the Impossible Words sessions, and some other highlights. In the Middle blog.
  • Dot Porter at Dot Porter Digital  has uploaded a video of her presentation: Disbinding Some Manuscripts, and Rebinding Some Others.

Kalamazoo spring 2014The Babel Working Group sponsored a session on punctuation, and some of the presentations are available in their entirety:

  • Corey Sparks: “‽: Interrobanging Chaucer.” Video.
  • Jonathan Hsy:  “&.”  Guest post on Mass Medieval.
  • Josh Eyler:  “, (A Breath).” Guest post on Mass Medieval.

Kzoo 2014Medievalists.net also published a few Kalamazoo features. First, two presentations on video:

  • David S. Bachrach. “Chivalry, Feudalism, and Source Criticism: The Writing of Medieval German Military History.”  Video.
  • Danielle Trynoski and Matthew Ziebarth. “Viking Winter Camps: Creating a Model Using Geospatial Statistical Analysis.”  Video.

And two reports:

  • “Did the Battle of Hyddgen even take place?” —  report on a paper by Michael Livingston.
  • “Emergency Baptisms in the Middle Ages” —  report on a paper by Thomas Izbicki.

And finally, a video with John France, Elizabeth Koza and Danielle Trynoski discussing personal highlights of the conference in “The Medievalverse Roundtable from Kalamazoo.”

Added May 22:

  • Thanks to Heidi Estes for this link to the Medieval Ecocriticisms blog, which promises to report on the presentations given in the What is Ecocriticism, Anyway? panel. The first of these, “Kalamazoo 2014: Tangled Banks and Vegetable Bodies” by Rob Barrett is now posted.
  • Heather Rose Jones has posted a series in which she was “Live-blogging Kalamazoo” including sessions on Dress and Textiles, Latin Homoerotics, Medieval Magic, Warrior Women in Medieval Eurasia, Merlin’s Colleagues, and more.

Added May 23:

  • Vincent Debiais, abstract/introduction to “Sonorous and Brilliant Emptiness: Visual Approaches to White, Empty, Silent in Medieval Art” on Art-Hist: Researches on Artistic Creation from Late Antiquity to Modern Times.
  • Yvonne Seale’s Storify of Beyond Medieval Women and Power and The Rules of Isabelle of France.
  • Yvonne Seale’s summaries of various sessions including Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age, Colette of Corbie, Advances in Medieval Archaeology, Beyond Medieval Women and Power, The Afterlives of Medieval Women, and the plenary on The Libel of the Lamb, on her blog, Furta Sacra.
  • Kisha Tracy’s Storify of The Digital Life of Twenty-First-Century Medievalists and The Relevance of the Middle Ages Today.

Added May 25:  Megan Arnott’s recap of various Anglo-Saxon and Norse sessions and one on Harry Potter on her blog, The Modern Historian, the Canadian Medievalist, and other such Oxymorons

Added May 27:  not exactly a blog post but a webpage for Kristine Larsen’s Intro. to the Astrolabe workshop (see below):  Using Astrolabes: Resources for Medievalists and the Astronomers Who Love Them.  The page includes a link to the workshop handout and promises more how-to guides and sample problems over the summer.

Added May 28:

  • Jonathan Hsy has posted two Storify links: #Kzoo2014 meta-twitter and SMFS Wikipedia Write-In, #Kzoo2014.
  • Rick Godden has added the text of his talk for the Disability Studies and Digital Humanities roundtable in “Humanities Accessed” as well as the conclusion to his paper “Prosthetic Neighbors: Enabling Community in the Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle.” in “Kalamazoo paper, in closing” on his blog, Parasynchronies.

Added May 29:  Jonathan Hsy’s look back on twitter use at Kzoo 2014, focusing on the usefulness and transformative value of twitter for medievalists (and all academics):  “#medievaltwitter revisited: #kzoo2014 (BuzzFeed-style wrap-up)” on In the Middle.

Added June 4:

  • Laura Saetveit Miles has posted her talk, “Once and Future Feminism” on In the Middle. Her talk was part of the “Writing the Middle Ages for Multiple Audiences” panel. (See the link above for David Perry’s paper from that session).
  • Post-Kalamazoo reflections in “On Stillness: #Kzoo2014” on EXM: a blog of theory in medieval and renaissance studies associated with Exemplaria. By Richard Godden.

Added June 6:

  • Mary C. Flannery reviews the sessions on medieval emotions in “Emotions Move, Emotions Matter” on Histories of Emotions: From Medieval Europe to Contemporary Australia.
  • “Digital Scholarship and Much More at K’zoo 2014” on the AHA Today: a blog of the American Historical Association.
  • Karl Steel’s paper “SATISFACTION: Interested; Omnipotent; Implacable” has been posted on In the Middle.

Added June 10:  A brief summary of the session on “Gower and Science at ICMS 2014″ on The Gower Project blog.

Any other links that can be added to this list?

Intro to the astrolabe, Kzoo 2014

Intro to the astrolabe, with astronomer Kristine Larsen teaching a packed audience.

Kzoo astrolabe

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Tolkien’s Guinever

30 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by Anna Smol in Medieval, Medievalisms, Publications, Research, Review, Tolkien

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alliterative poetry, Fall of Arthur

In my previously posted thoughts on Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur, I predicted that the character of Guinever would give rise to a lot more discussion, and we are seeing that debate occurring already on several sites.  Troels Forchhammer, who has listed a thorough collection of reviews on his blog Parma-kenta, has added his own thoughts on the poem in three installments. In one of these, “Philosophizing on Fall of Arthur” he comments on three issues that are garnering attention:  the connection of Fall of Arthur to Tolkien’s Silmarillion mythology; Tolkien’s view of the Arthurian source material; and the character of Guinever.

Troels Forchhammer excerpts a number of comments from reviewers pointing to Guinever’s negative characteristics; at one extreme is the view labelling Tolkien’s picture of Guinever as misogynist. Troels disagrees, and I think he’s right.

What makes the portrait of a character misogynist? I would say that a misogynist writer sees women in the light of the traditional virgin / whore stereotypes: women as completely virtuous and/or women as completely evil temptresses. Real people, of course, are a combination of good and evil tendencies in varying proportions.  In The Fall of Arthur, Guinever is, let’s face it, no angel, but she isn’t a stereotypical character either.  Just because Tolkien gave her flaws (some of which are inherited from the source material) doesn’t mean it’s a misogynist portrait. That would mean that no writer could ever admit a woman had faults without being labelled a misogynist! Equally problematic would be a writer who treated all women as being virtuous angels. Neither approach portrays women as real people, only as stereotypes at one or the other extreme end of the spectrum.

Tolkien’s Guinever, in my view, is a more complex character than just the evil seductress who destroys what men have created. Yes, she is greedy, stubborn, and selfish, but she’s also clever, fearful, sad. She is capable of arousing pity in the reader, even admiration — think of how she escapes Mordred’s lustful demands and removes herself from a precarious political and personal situation. Tolkien doesn’t spend a lot of lines on Guinever in the cantos that we have, but the lines he does give us suggest an interesting character who is not a simple stereotype.

It can be difficult making judgements about Tolkien’s work: on the one hand, you might feel inclined to defend Tolkien against all criticisms. On the other hand, you might fall into one of the old critical commonplaces that have been used to attack Tolkien: that he writes juvenile literature for boys, that he doesn’t write about women at all, that he writes misogynist portraits of female characters. I hope I haven’t fallen prey to the first temptation, but I do think a lot of work remains to be done in examining afresh Tolkien’s views and his characters.

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Fall of Arthur – more reviews

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by Anna Smol in Medieval, Medievalisms, Publications, Review, Tolkien

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

alliterative poetry, Fall of Arthur

I posted a list of reviews of Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur back in June, but I now have a few more to add.  Most recently, Kathy Cawsey has published “The Lord of the Round Table” in Open Letters Monthly. Below is my collated list of selected reviews in online publications and in a few blogs (including my own thoughts). Some are detailed reviews; some, brief comments; and a couple, controversial.

You’ll find some other reviews listed in Troels Forchhammer’s useful summaries of Tolkien-related material in his monthly Tolkien Transactions post on his blog, Parma-kenta. Look in his June, July and August posts for his listings of Fall of Arthur reviews.

David Bratman. “it’s just a flesh wound.” Kalimac’s Corner.

Kathy Cawsey. “The Lord of the Round Table.” Open Letters Monthly.

Bruce Charlton. “Review of The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien.” Tolkien’s The Notion Club Papers.

John Garth, “Tolkien’s Unfinished Epic: ‘The Fall of Arthur.’” The Daily Beast.

Elizabeth Hand.  “J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Fall of Arthur’ and the Path to Middle-Earth.”   Los Angeles Times.

Sørina Higgins. “King Arthur was an Elf!“ The Curator.

Andrew O’Hehir. “Legend Retold: ‘The Fall of Arthur’ by J.R.R. Tolkien.”  The New York Times: Sunday Book Review.

John Rateliff. “The Fall of Arthur.” Sacnoth’s Scriptorium.

Tom Shippey.  “Tolkien’s King Arthur.” The Times Literary Supplement.

Anna Smol. “‘Wild Blow the Winds of War’: Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur.” A Single Leaf.

Renee Vink. “Lancelot’s Death in Battle in The Fall of Arthur.”  Things that Ring in my Head.

Added October 28:

Alex Mueller. “Tolkien: The Fall of Arthur.”  Medievally Speaking.

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“Wild blow the winds of war”: Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by Anna Smol in Medieval, Medievalisms, Publications, Research, Review, Tolkien

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

alliterative poetry, Fall of Arthur, Kalamazoo

[Can there be spoilers in an Arthurian tale? I don’t know if my review would count as a spoiler, but if you’re worried about such things, you might want to proceed with caution.]

In a darkening world, tides are flowing fast and winds sweeping into the west while ghostly apparitions ride through the skies. Tolkien’s long-awaited poem, The Fall of Arthur, presents a world veering towards the end of an age – after Lancelot and Guinever’s affair, after the breaking of Round Table allegiances – as Arthur and his loyal Gawain journey to make war in a mission clearly doomed from the start, “a last assay / of pride and prowess” (I. 15-16).

As John Garth points out, the story alternates between big scenes and close-ups. We see large battle vistas – “In the foaming sea flashed a thousand / swift oars sweeping” (IV. 172-3) – as well as striking individual moments: Mordred rushing up the stairs to the queen’s bower and taking in the sight of her while she, proud and fearful, pretends not to see him; or the exiled Lancelot, looking out to sea and half hoping that Arthur will call for his aid – and half hoping that he won’t.

Do not look for romantic courtly love in this tempestuous world. The affair between Lancelot and Guinever is in the past, and their last parting, seen in flashback, is strained with pain, sorrow, anger, and regret as Lancelot restores the queen to Arthur in the hopes of regaining his honour and his king’s love, and Guinever departs “With searing words” (III. 102) leaving Lancelot feeling hopeless. Their alienation from each other is deftly suggested as each seems strangely altered to the other.

Meanwhile, Mordred is consumed with lust, not only for the queen but also for the chance to wrest power and glory for himself. Gawain, ever loyal to Arthur, is contrasted with the conflicted Lancelot who is much like the exile in the Old English poem “The Wanderer”: “On that knee no more, knight in fealty/ might he hilt handle,   nor his head there lay” (III. 116-17). And consider Guinever, rescued from burning at the stake, handed over to Arthur by her lover Lancelot, forgiven and restored as queen if only to avoid further national conflict, and in immediate peril of being seized by Mordred in his bid for power. In her we see a woman who is greedy for love and glory, dissatisfied with her present lot, and extremely clever in negotiating her precarious situation. There is much more that can and will be said about these characters by Tolkien readers and scholars.

Throughout, Tolkien’s descriptions evoke painterly images depicted with a few strokes of light and colour and shape. Take, for instance, this description of morning:  “Beams fell slanting  through the boughs of trees/ glancing and glimmering   in the grey forest;/ rain drops running   from rustling leaves/ like drops of glass   dripped and glistened” (IV. 21-24).  And here, a description of the seashore: “Fair wind came foaming  over flecked water,/ on gleaming shingle  green and silver/ the waves were washing  on walls of chalk” (IV. 47-49).

All of this comes to us in an alliterative poem composed in the meter of Old English verse (and similar to Old Norse and some later Middle English poetry). In my recent presentation in Kalamazoo, I spoke about “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” as an alliterative tour de force in which Tolkien demonstrates how alliterative meter can achieve various effects and styles in Modern English. When Tolkien writes a Modern English alliterative poem, he does not merely sprinkle into his lines a few alliterating words (that is, words beginning with the same sound) in order to gesture towards the older style. Instead, he carefully composes in the rhythmical verse types and alliterating patterns that were thought to constitute the choices of early medieval English poets. Like “The Homecoming,” the Fall of Arthur does not disappoint as a modern alliterative poem. (Curious fact:  both poems contain the words “Wild blow the winds of war in Britain” – I feel another conference paper coming on!).

An appendix in The Fall of Arthur includes an excerpt from one of Tolkien’s lectures on the features of Old English verse, such as inverted syntax and parallelisms, which can sometimes be difficult for readers who are unfamiliar with the style. For best effect, read the verse aloud (or listen to it with your inner ear) and let the natural rhythms of the words be your guide. This alliterative verse style does not require the same number of syllables per line, in the same rhythmical pattern line after line, as in later English verse. Tolkien does write long segments of enjambed lines, piled high with parallel phrases, but he also knows how to punctuate such sections with short, forceful statements: “Strong oaths they broke” (III.62). And while alliterative lines can often seem slow and convoluted, Tolkien also knows how to change the pace: “Beacons were blazing,  banners were lifted,/ shaft rang on shield,  and the shores echoed./ War was awakened  and woe in Britain” (IV. 161-3).

Readers familiar with medieval literature will recognize the dangers of putting one’s faith in Fortune, who will turn her wheel when you least expect it, and they will know that the traditional medieval beasts of battle – eagle, raven, wolf – who circle the action from the very beginning only presage war and slaughter. How Tolkien’s content and style relate in more detail to the medieval texts that were his inspiration is a larger question. In the extensive commentary provided in this volume, Christopher Tolkien discusses the poem’s relation to the Arthurian tradition and to the Silmarillion material, as well as the evolution of the poem. There is much to digest here that will take more time.

What I can say for now is that the line “Here ends The Fall of Arthur in its latest form” came as a shock followed by an immediate wish, if only Tolkien would have given us more.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur.  Ed. Christopher Tolkien.  London: HarperCollins, 2013.

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Fall of Arthur reviews

10 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by Anna Smol in Medieval, Medievalisms, Publications, Review, Tolkien

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

alliterative poetry, Fall of Arthur

I’m gathering my own thoughts on the recently published Fall of Arthur poem by Tolkien; in the meantime, here are a few reviews.

John Garth, “Tolkien’s Unfinished Epic: ‘The Fall of Arthur.’” The Daily Beast.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/23/tolkien-s-unfinished-epic-the-fall-of-arthur.html

Elizabeth Hand.  “J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Fall of Arthur’ and the Path to Middle-Earth.”   Los Angeles Times.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-jrr-tolkien-fall-of-arthur-middle-earth20130526,0,7954386.story

Some brief comments also appear on a couple of blogs:

Bruce Charlton.  A brief review.
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.ca/2013/06/review-of-fall-of-arthur-by-jrr-tolkien.html

Sacnoth’s Scriptorium (John Rateliff)
http://sacnoths.blogspot.ca/2013/05/the-fall-of-arthur.html

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Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur publication confirmed

07 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by Anna Smol in Medieval, Medievalisms, Publications, Tolkien

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Fall of Arthur

A couple of months ago, I was speculating about clues that Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur would finally be published next spring and wondering what it would contain. Now, a notice has appeared on the HarperCollins site confirming that the editor will indeed be Christopher Tolkien and that the work will appear in May 2013.

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Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur

21 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by Anna Smol in Medieval, Medievalisms, Publications, Tolkien

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Fall of Arthur

Rippling through the Tolkien studies community this past week has been the announcement that Tolkien’s poem The Fall of Arthur might be published in May 2013. The news has been spreading ever since the announcement was first spotted on the Amazon site in France and reported on the Mythopoeic Society’s discussion list. The listing has now appeared on the American Amazon site, though I still can’t find the edition on the Canadian or British Amazon pages. The publisher, HarperCollins, has not posted any kind of announcement yet, as far as I know.

Amazon.com Fall of Arthur

What do we know about The Fall of Arthur?

Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien’s biographer, tells us that the poem is an alliterative rendering of “Morte d’Arthur” (171). Which Middle English text does he mean exactly?  The Alliterative Morte Arthure or the Stanzaic Morte Arthure?  (You’ll also find either title spelled “Morte Arthur” just to add to the confusion.) John Rateliff states that Tolkien’s poem has “clear affinities” with the Alliterative Morte Arthure. Verlyn Flieger mentions both poems as “probable…precursors” and makes the interesting observation that Tolkien titled his poem a “Fall” rather than a “Death/Morte” possibly in an effort to distinguish his work from the other earlier versions (34). Is Tolkien’s poem, then, a close translation of the Middle English Alliterative Morte Arthure, or is it a freer adaptation of the story drawing on various sources and/or his own invention?

As with other examples of Tolkien’s work, the poem is unfinished, abandoned in the mid 1930s according to Carpenter, though Tolkien still expressed a desire to complete the work many years later (171). Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond reveal that the poem is 954 lines long even in its unfinished state, and that outlines and drafts of further material survive (56). People have been speculating online about who the editor is going to be, and while I have no inside information at all, I’m guessing that this could be another in a series of editions published by Christopher Tolkien, who has previously edited his father’s unfinished texts by incorporating various drafts in editions like Children of Húrin and The Silmarillion. Tolkien’s publisher mentioned to John Rateliff as early as the 1980s that an edition was in the works; obviously, other work took precedence. I wonder if we’ll get an unfinished Fall of Arthur or whether the drafts and outlines are sufficient to enable an editor to produce a completed work?

Guinever as femme fatale?

Humphrey Carpenter gives us a glimpse of the poem in his biography of Tolkien, pointing out that the poem “is one of the few pieces of writing in which Tolkien deals explicitly with sexual passion, describing Mordred’s unsated lust for Guinever” (171). He offers two brief quotations:

His bed was barren; there black phantoms
of desire unsated and savage fury
in his brain had brooded till bleak morning. (qtd. in Carpenter 171)

Guinever (Tolkien’s spelling) is described as

   lady ruthless,
fair as fay-woman and fell-minded,
in the world walking for the woe of men. (qtd. in Carpenter 171)

Before we get too excited about seeing a fully developed illicit love affair in Tolkien’s work, I’ll mention Verlyn Flieger’s comment that the poem does not emphasize Guinever as much as war and the character Gawain (and there is no Grail quest)(34-35). In fact, Carpenter cites the favorable opinion of English professor R.W. Chambers: “great stuff – really heroic, quite apart from its value as showing how the Beowulf metre can be used in modern English” (171). It is possible that Carpenter has drawn a disproportionate amount of attention to the sexual passion in the story.

Some observations and questions

Although as a professional medievalist Tolkien translated and co-edited (with E.V. Gordon) the Middle English alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in his fiction he was not interested in playing explicitly with Arthurian characters and legends. The publication of The Fall of Arthur will give us a better idea of Tolkien’s view and treatment of Arthurian material. Will this new publication contribute to our understanding of Tolkien’s views of heroism vs. chivalry as expressed in the note on “Ofermod”  attached to his Homecoming of Beorhtnoth?

As Chambers points out, Tolkien experiments with using Old English metre in modern English. Tolkien wrote quite a few alliterative poems, including some in The Lord of the Rings, the long Lay of the Children of Húrin, and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, varying his models from the rather strict Beowulf metre to the looser alliterative lines of Middle English poetry. He also translated alliterative verse in his renderings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and his unpublished Beowulf.  Publication of The Fall of Arthur will contribute to this body of modern English alliterative verse by Tolkien. Will this poetic form find a wide audience among 21st-century readers?

And finally, the question of sexual passion. Readers of Tolkien’s fiction are more familiar with the Lúthien-Beren/Arwen-Aragorn type of romantic relationship, but Tolkien does write about problematic sexual relationships as well. Aldarion and Erendis in Unfinished Tales and Aredhel and Eöl in The Silmarillion provide examples of troubled marriages, while the Númenórean story mentions forced marriage / rape. Túrin’s unwitting incest is tragic, of course. It will be most interesting to see how Tolkien describes lust and adultery in this poem, possibly giving us another view of his handling of sexual relationships.

Let’s hope that more news about this publication emerges soon so that all of our questions can be answered. Is there anything else that we know about Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur?

References

Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print.

Flieger, Verlyn. “Arthurian Romance.” J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. Ed. Michael D.C. Drout. New York: Routledge, 2007. 34-35. Print.

Scull, Christina and Wayne Hammond.  “Arthur and the Matter of Britain.” The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide.  Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 56-60. Print.

“The Rumour.”  Sacnoth’s Scriptorium. 12 July 2012. Web. 13 July 2012.

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Dr. Anna Smol

This site includes my blog, "A Single Leaf," and webpages about my research and teaching in Tolkien studies, medievalism, Old English, and higher education pedagogy. Creative Commons License: <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.

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