Talks on Tolkien: Dimitra Fimi on Folklore and “Sellic Spell”

02 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Anna Smol in Medieval, Medievalisms, Old English, Publications, Talks on Tolkien, Tolkien

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adaptation, Anglo-Saxon Aloud, animated Beowulf 1998, BBC iWonder guide, Beowulf, Beowulf Launch Party, British Library digitised manuscripts, Dimitra Fimi, folklore research, Folkore Society, Middle-earth Network, Mythopoeic Scholarship Award, Mythopoeic Society, Sellic Spell, The Lay of Beowulf, Tolkien Society, Why do the Elves in The Hobbit sound Welsh?

My weekly “Talks on Tolkien” series continues with a video presentation by Dimitra Fimi. Dr. Fimi was part of the Beowulf Launch Party organized by the Tolkien Society and Middle-earth Network last spring, when Tolkien’s Beowulf and other related texts were first published. Dr. Fimi’s talk is a little different from my previous video selections in that she is not reading a paper to a live audience at a conference. The Launch Party was an online event featuring several commentators throughout the day who were giving their first impressions of the Beowulf publication. If you’re interested, the other recordings from that day are also worth a look.

One reason I chose this talk was to highlight the fact that the publication of Tolkien’s Beowulf includes more than just his translation of and commentary on the poem — intriguing as that is to Old English and Tolkien scholars. Dr. Fimi’s presentation focuses on one of the texts included with Tolkien’s Beowulf translation: a folktale called “Sellic Spell” (which can be translated as “wondrous tale”) that Tolkien wrote in both modern English and in Old English. The other text that’s included in the volume is a poem, or two versions of a poem, titled “The Lay of Beowulf” which is written in rhyming stanzaic form, very different from the original Old English alliterative meter.

The publication of these texts has given us not only Tolkien’s translation of the Old English poem Beowulf (an interesting research topic in its own right), but also adaptations of the Beowulf story in different genres — ripe material for analysis! Further, I believe that Tolkien’s rendition of “Sellic Spell” in Old English warrants study of his ability to think and write in Old English. In the following video, Fimi outlines another approach to the story through the lens of folklore research.

Dimitra Fimi is the author of Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, published in 2008, which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies and was shortlisted for the Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Award. She is a Lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Recently, she filmed two short videos for a BBC iWonder guide on Why do the Elves in The Hobbit sound Welsh? You can find out more about her videos and interviews on her website’s Media page, or follow her blog or her Twitter account: @Dr_Dimitra_Fimi.

To read “Sellic Spell” or “The Lay of Beowulf” you’ll have to buy Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. But if you’re interested in the original poem itself, you can listen to a few lines of it on Michael Drout’s Anglo-Saxon Aloud website. The poem exists in a single manuscript called Cotton Vitellius A. XV, held in the British Library. You can find information about the manuscript in the British Library’s Online Gallery, and you can also leaf through the digitised manuscript (go to f.132r to see the beginning of Beowulf).

Adaptations of Beowulf have proliferated since the late nineteenth century in books for children and adults, and more recently as films. Some of you may know the 2005 Beowulf and Grendel movie, or more likely, the 2007 Robert Zemeckis version featuring Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s Mother. I especially enjoy the 1998 animated version made for TV featuring Derek Jacobi and Joseph Fiennes, which you can view below. It’s just one among many examples of Beowulf adaptations — and now we have more of Tolkien’s work that can be examined as part of this rich store of material.

If you have any favorite Beowulf adaptations, or if you want to say something about “Sellic Spell,” let us know in the comments!

Talks on Tolkien: John Garth and Tolkien’s Great War

20 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by Anna Smol in Talks on Tolkien, Tolkien

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Centenary Talk Highlights, Elliander Pictures, John Garth, Middle-earth turns 100, Mythopoeic Scholarship Award, Tolkien and the Great War, Tolkien at Exeter College, Tolkien Society, World War I

This week’s “Talk on Tolkien” features the historical, biographical, and literary research of John Garth, who continues to dig into Tolkien’s early years, the beginnings of his mythology, and his experiences in the First World War. Garth’s book, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, published in 2003, won the Mythopoeic Award for Inklings Scholarship and has been translated into five languages so far. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the experiences of Tolkien and his friends in the war and for tracing the early stages of Tolkien’s writings.

Recently, Garth has published more new research in his booklet Tolkien at Exeter College: How an Oxford Undergraduate Created Middle-earth, which presents a vivid picture of Tolkien’s friendships and activities while a student at Oxford. You can find more of Garth’s research in other publications, but one good place for keeping up with his work is his blog, which features reviews and news of his ongoing research.

Although I don’t have a video recording of a complete talk by John Garth, the following presents some intriguing highlights from his presentation at the Tolkien Society‘s Oxonmoot in September 2014. In this video, Garth talks about Tolkien’s early writings, “The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star” and his “Story of Kullervo.” Some additional details can be found in Garth’s blog post, “Middle-earth turns 100.”

If you want to hear a complete talk by John Garth, and you are lucky enough to be within reach, he will be speaking at the Hudson Library and Historical Society in Hudson, Ohio on March 3 and at Sam Houston State University in Texas on March 25.

In the video clip above, John Garth sets Tolkien’s early writings against a backdrop of war. You can also hear him speaking more about this subject in the following documentary, “Tolkien’s Great War,” (Elliander Pictures), which provides an excellent account of Tolkien’s early life, his friendships at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, the way in which he and his friends faced the Great War, as well as some observations about how Tolkien’s war experiences influenced his writing. This beautifully filmed documentary provides a glimpse into the kind of research that informs John Garth’s various publications.

Tolkien’s Great War by Elliander Pictures <ellianderpictures.co.uk> on Vimeo.

You can find John Garth on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnGarthWriter; on Twitter: @JohnGarthWriter; or, as I mentioned above, on his website: http://www.johngarth.co.uk/ or blog: https://johngarth.wordpress.com/

Talks on Tolkien: Janet Brennan Croft talks about Tolkien’s views on war

15 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Anna Smol in Talks on Tolkien, Tolkien

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George R.R. Martin, Janet Brennan Croft, Mythlore, Mythopoeic Scholarship Award, Rolling Stone Interview, The Great War, Vietnam War, War and the Works of J.R.R.Tolkien, World War I, World War II

This week’s “Talk on Tolkien” video comes from Oklahoma State University, where Janet Brennan Croft gave a presentation last November about Tolkien’s life and how his war experiences are reflected in his fiction. Croft is the author of War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, which was published in 2004 and won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies in 2005. She is one of a number of critics, such as Tom Shippey and John Garth, who discuss ways in which Tolkien can be seen as a war writer.

Croft, who is a librarian at Rutgers University, is also the editor of the peer-reviewed journal Mythlore. You can find out more about her many books and articles by going to her Academia.edu page.

Croft’s talk covers aspects of Tolkien’s life including his experiences as a soldier in the First World War and as a parent with sons in the Second World War.

I thought it might be interesting to compare George R.R. Martin’s views on war and on Tolkien. The following is an excerpt from a Rolling Stone interview by Mikal Gilmore, published on April 23, 2014. You can read the full interview here.

In the interview, Martin talks about how his objection to the Vietnam War influenced his writing of characters. If Tolkien had been writing The Lord of the Rings throughout the Vietnam War, do you think his characters might have turned out differently? The peace movement was very visible in the 1960s, and Tolkien’s work was widely read by many who participated in the anti-war protests. Were you one of them? Any observations to make about that time and how Tolkien’s work was received? (Please keep in mind that all comments should be respectful towards different political views).

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From: George R.R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview

We talked earlier about your unwillingness to fight in Vietnam. The Ice and Fire books are shot through with the horrors of war. As Ygritte says to Jon Snow, “We’re just soldiers in their armies, and there’s plenty more to carry on if we go down.”
It’s true in virtually all wars through history. Shakespeare refers to it, in those great scenes in Henry V, where King Hal is walking among the men, before the Battle of Agincourt, and he hears the men complaining. “Well, I hope his cause is just, because a lot of us are going to die to make him king of France.” One of the central questions in the book is Varys’ riddle: The rich man, the priest and the king give an order to a common sellsword. Each one says kill the other two. So who has the power? Is it the priest, who supposedly speaks for God? The king, who has the power of state? The rich man, who has the gold? Of course, doesn’t the swordsman have the power? He’s the one with the sword – he could kill all three if he wanted. Or he could listen to anyone. But he’s just the average grunt. If he doesn’t do what they say, then they each call other swordsmen who will do what they say. But why does anybody do what they say? This is the fundamental mystery of power and leadership and war through all history. Going back to Vietnam, for me the cognitive dissonance came in when I realized that Ho Chi Minh actually wasn’t Sauron. Do you remember the poster during that time? WHAT IF THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME? That’s one of the fundamental questions here. Why did anybody go to Vietnam? Were the people who went more patriotic? Were they braver? Were they stupider? Why does anybody go? What’s all this based on? It’s all based on an illusion: You go because you’re afraid of what will happen if you don’t go, even if you don’t believe in it. But where do these systems of obedience come from? Why do we recognize power instead of individual autonomy? These questions are fascinating to me. It’s all this strange illusion, isn’t it?

You’re a congenial man, yet these books are incredibly violent. Does that ever feel at odds with these views about power and war?
The war that Tolkien wrote about was a war for the fate of civilization and the future of humanity, and that’s become the template. I’m not sure that it’s a good template, though. The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that. World War I is much more typical of the wars of history than World War II – the kind of war you look back afterward and say, “What the hell were we fighting for? Why did all these millions of people have to die? Was it really worth it to get rid of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that we wiped out an entire generation, and tore up half the continent? Was the War of 1812 worth fighting? The Spanish-American War? What the hell were these people fighting for?”

There’s only a few wars that are really worth what they cost. I was born three years after the end of World War II. You want to be the hero. You want to stand up, whether you’re Spider-Man fighting the Green Goblin, or the American saving the world from the Nazis. It’s sad to say, but I do think there are things worth fighting for. Men are still capable of great heroism. But I don’t necessarily think there are heroes. That’s something that’s very much in my books: I believe in great characters. We’re all capable of doing great things, and of doing bad things. We have the angels and the demons inside of us, and our lives are a succession of choices. Look at a figure like Woodrow Wilson, one of the most fascinating presidents in American history. He was despicable on racial issues. He was a Southern segregationist of the worst stripe, praising D.W. Griffith and The Birth of a Nation. He effectively was a Ku Klux Klan supporter. But in terms of foreign affairs, and the League of Nations, he had one of the great dreams of our time. The war to end all wars – we make fun of it now, but God, it was an idealistic dream. If he’d been able to achieve it, we’d be building statues of him a hundred feet high, and saying, “This was the greatest man in human history: This was the man who ended war.” He was a racist who tried to end war. Now, does one cancel out the other? Well, they don’t cancel out the other. You can’t make him a hero or a villain. He was both. And we’re all both.

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Next week, I hope to have more about Tolkien’s early writings, with a focus on his experiences in the Great War.