(urth) Silmarillion

James Wynn crushtv at gmail.com
Wed Jul 7 13:41:27 PDT 2010


I'll put it this way. Tolkien was interested in languages. He invented 
his own language in his 20s which he called a "Fairy language". But a 
true language must occur over time. It has to change according to 
certain rules. So Tolkien wrote the Silmarillion as a world for his 
language to develop within.

In "Leaf by Niggle", Tolkien wrote a story about a guy who enjoyed 
drawing leaves and was very good at that. So he began drawing landscapes 
with distant mountains as a backdrop for his leaves. Eventually, 
everyone liked his his landscapes and were crazy about what was going on 
in those distant mountains. That's the story of the Silmarillion.

On 7/7/2010 3:36 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
> It was based upon his ideas regarding deep history.
>
> In other words.
>
>    
>> When I was but a young lad in college, I took a course with Prof. Hoyt
>> on the linguistics of Middle Earth, including an extensive survey of
>> Prof. Tolkien's own writings on the subject, his speeches, and his
>> views on language.  The scholarly consensus among such people as H.
>> Fauskanger (who runs the Ardalambion website) is that Tolkien's
>> literary works served as a backdrop for him to experiment with the
>> changing field of philology and its metamorphosis into modern
>> linguistics.
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 2:33 PM,<brunians at brunians.org>  wrote:
>>      
>>> Tolkien wrote books.
>>>
>>> He expected to make money selling them.
>>>
>>> He did make money selling them.
>>>
>>> His major income did indeed come from his professorship.
>>>
>>> You speak quite confidently as to Dr Tolkien's motivations.
>>>
>>> I wonder how intimately you knew him.
>>>
>>> .
>>>
>>>
>>>        
>>>> Tolkien made his living as a professor.  The "background" of the
>>>> Silmarillion was to give his world an impetus for his languages to
>>>> change, much as our own did, coupled with his desire to formulate a
>>>> modern mythology for Great Britain.  Ergo, Silmarillion and all of his
>>>> "notes" that have been posthumously edited and published by his son.
>>>>
>>>> LH
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 1:22 PM,<brunians at brunians.org>  wrote:
>>>>          
>>>>> The man wanted to get paid.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is not an hypothesis.
>>>>>
>>>>> .
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>            
>>>>>> On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes<danldo at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>              
>>>>>>> 2010/7/7 António Pedro Marques<entonio at gmail.com>:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>                
>>>>>>>>>> The Quenta Silmarillion is an unfinished book, but why is it
>>>>>>>>>>                      
>>>>>>> deeply
>>>>>>>                
>>>>>>>>>> flawed?
>>>>>>>>>>                      
>>>>>>>>> Try reading "Of Beleriand and its Realms" without falling asleep.
>>>>>>>>>                    
>>>>>>>> Is that a matter of not 'leav[ing] out the parts that people
>>>>>>>>                  
>>>>>>> skip'?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It's a matter of not doing a good job of integrating one's
>>>>>>> infodumps.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>                
>>>>>> Again, not a novel.  The infodumps were as much for the author's
>>>>>> working
>>>>>> out
>>>>>> of his creative impulse as anything else.  Personally, I'm fascinated
>>>>>> by
>>>>>> Tolkien's process, and while "Of Beleriand and its Realms" is a hard
>>>>>> slog,
>>>>>> I'm glad to have it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>              
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
>>>>>>>   _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>>                
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