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Anna Smol

~ Department of English, Mount Saint Vincent University

Anna Smol

Tag Archives: Sellic Spell

Eala! Unlock your word hoards!

30 Wednesday Sep 2015

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

adaptation, alliterative poetry, Beowulf, Eala, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Jane Chance, Modern Poets on Viking Poetry, Sellic Spell, Tolkien's poetry, Tom Shippey, Word Hoard Press

I’ve just heard about a new project, the journal Eala, which will publish compositions in Old English and other medieval Germanic languages. The founding editor and editor-in-chief of Word Hoard Press, Richard Littauer, plans to publish the journal online and include original compositions in Old English, Old Norse, and the like, as well as translations.

I can’t help thinking that Tolkien would be pleased to see this kind of venture, as he was a proponent of writing in the alliterative verse styles of Old English and Old Norse, either in the original languages or in modern English. As readers of his recently published Beowulf know, Tolkien was adept at composing in Old English – see his prose story “Sellic Spell” in that volume as an example. Tom Shippey has written about the difficulties of counting just how many poems and fragments Tolkien wrote in alliterative meter in both modern and Old English; in his essay “Tolkien as a Writer of Alliterative Poetry” in the book Tolkien’s Poetry, Shippey counts 22 compositions in modern English alliterative meter plus “The Homecoming”; another nine complete poems and five fragments in Old English, and that’s not including modern English poems imitating Old Norse alliterative style. In other words, Tolkien wrote a lot of alliterative verse.

Although Tolkien did write in other verse forms besides alliterative meter, he believed that alliterative verse was a natural form for English speakers and advocated its use – but who was listening? Lately, though, I’ve seen signs of interest in bringing medieval poetry more in contact with modern writers. Jane Chance, for example, is hosting an “Original Medievalistic Poetry Reading and Open Mic” at next year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I’ll have to check it out next May in the hopes of hearing some alliterative compositions. And here’s another sign of interest from a couple of years ago: Modern Poets on Viking Poetry: A Cultural Translation Project resulted in the publication of poems in modern English, which can be downloaded here.

These last two are projects that highlight the influence of medieval poetry on modern writers, but to write “correct” alliterative verse in a medieval language like Old English is another matter entirely. I’m looking forward to seeing what shows up in Eala.

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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

≈ 3 Comments

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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!

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Tolkien and medievalism sessions, K’zoo 2015

29 Sunday Jun 2014

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

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International Congress on Medieval Studies, International Society for the Study of Medievalism, Kalamazoo, Sellic Spell, Tales after Tolkien, Tolkien at Kalamazoo group

The International Congress on Medieval Studies has released a preview of the sessions that have been approved for the 2015 conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. You can find the full information for each call for papers on the Congress sessions page. While there are hundreds of sessions on medieval topics, I have listed the ones that deal with Tolkien specifically and with medievalisms more generally. The deadline for submissions is in September, but many sessions are filled well before that date, so if you’re interested in submitting a proposal, the sooner the better.

First, the sessions specifically dealing with Tolkien:

  • The Tolkien at Kalamazoo group, organized by Brad Eden, has had three sessions approved:
    1. Tolkien’s Beowulf
    2. Tolkien and Medieval Victorianism
    3. Tolkien as Linguist and Medievalist
  • Brad is also the organizer of a readers’ theater performance of Tolkien’s Beowulf and “Sellic Spell” and  the continuing series of “Maidens of Middle-earth: Turin’s Women.”
  • “Tolkien as Translator and Translated” is a special session organized by Judy Ann Ford.
  • Doug Anderson is the organizer of a roundtable discussion on “Christopher Tolkien as Medieval Scholar.”

Other sessions that deal with medievalisms:

  • The International Society for the Study of Medievalism will be sponsoring three sessions:
    1. Metaphysical Medievalisms
    2. Political Medievalisms
    3. Medievalism: Critical Mediations (A Roundtable)
  • The Tales after Tolkien Society is organizing two sessions:
    1.  From Frodo to Fidelma: Medievalisms in Popular Genres (A Roundtable)
    2.  Martin and More: Genre Medievalisms.
  • postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies is offering “Quantum Medievalisms” (A Roundtable).
  • Alexandra Garner is organizing a special session: “Modernizing the Medieval for a New Generation: Medievalism in Young Adult and Children’s Literature.”
  • C. S. Lewis Society, Purdue University and the Center for the Study of C. S. Lewis and Friends, Taylor University has two sessions:
    1. Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: Sources, Influences, Revisions, Scholarship
    2. Phantom Limb: The Presence of the Problem of Pain in the Works of C. S. Lewis
  • Medieval Electronic Multimedia Organization (MEMO): .
    1. Playing Medieval (A Festive Video Game Workshop and Poster Session)
    2. The Neomedieval Image (paper session)
  • a special session / poetry reading, “Medieval Poetry / Modern Poets” organized by Gerard P. NeCastro.
  • And finally, although this special session has nothing to do with Tolkien, I wanted to mention the workshop that will be conducted by well-known Tolkienist and astronomy professor Kristine Larsen: “A hands-on introduction to astrolabes.”

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What a day for Tolkien news!

19 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by Anna Smol in Medievalisms, Old English, Publications, Tolkien

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Beowulf, Christopher Tolkien, JTR: Journal of Tolkien Research, Sellic Spell

Tolkien's BeowulfThis morning, in the midst of grading and preparing class notes and answering student emails, I happened to glance at my twitter feed to find that the long-awaited Beowulf translation by Tolkien is about to be published on May 22! Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary is another in a series of publications by the author’s son, Christopher Tolkien, who has also recently edited his father’s The Children of Húrin (2007), The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (2009), and The Fall of Arthur (2013).

This latest book will also include the story “Sellic Spell” (which is Old English for “marvellous story”). Here is what Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond have to say about that story in their J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide:

In the early 1940s Tolkien wrote a story, Sellic Spell (unpublished), as an attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk- or fairy-tale element in Beowulf…. He felt, however, that in many points it was not possible to do so with certainty, and in some points the tale was not quite the same. The ‘principal object’ of Sellic Spell,Tolkien wrote in a late note, was ‘to exhibit the difference of style, tone and atmosphere if the particular heroic or historical is cut out’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford). In 1945 Tolkien’s friend Gwyn Jones, Professor of English at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, saw Sellic Spell and remarked that it should be prescribed for all university students of Beowulf.

It certainly sounds like something that I would prescribe for my university students, but any more posthumous publications and I will need several more weeks in the semester to cover everything that I would like!

Brief notices about the book have appeared in The Guardian, The Telegraph, and elsewhere, and John Garth reports that he will have a preview feature in the Guardian Review this Saturday.

But that wasn’t all the Tolkien news of the day.

After I had Journal of Tolkien Research logofinished teaching my evening class, I came home to find an announcement for a new, peer-reviewed, open access journal, The Journal of Tolkien Research, to be edited by Brad Eden at Valparaiso University, with Douglas A. Anderson as the book reviews editor. The aims and scope of the journal are as follows:

The Journal of Tolkien Research (JTR) has the goal of providing high-quality research and scholarship based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) and on transformative and derivative texts based on his work to a wide and diverse audience. This journal will focus on multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches to Tolkien studies, including gaming, media and literary adaptations, fan productions, and audience reception.

A unique feature of this journal is its aim to include not only studies of Tolkien’s texts but also of fan productions and other adaptations, and audience reception — a broad scope that has the potential to bring in scholars from diverse fields and extend our ideas about the reach and impact of Tolkien’s work. The fact that the journal is completely free and open access means that the articles that will be published there will have the potential to find a wide readership. I’m looking forward to the first issue!

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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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