Eä Tolkien Society Meeting Notes for August 21st, 2021
Ea Tolkien Society Smial
Video of meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qWiPLDjSbM
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Information on how to join our meetings: http://www2.tolkienscholars.org/news/reminder-meet-september-18-2021
August 2021 Meeting of Ea Tolkien Society
1. Attended: Hawke, Chris, Sarah, Corey
2. Hawke read July Notes (Tolkienmoot Panel with Shawn Marchese)
3. Topics Covered Today:
* Amazon News: August 12th. Will film Season 2 in the United Kingdom, not
New Zealand. Season 1 streams September 2, 2022.
* Kullervo (Tolkien's source for Turin Turambar story) and the Finnish
influence on Elvish languages
* Other Tolkien's rewrites: a desire for a truly English mythology (Farmer
Giles of Ham vs. Golden Key by MacDonald)
* Tolkien's other references to the Kalevala
* Tolkien's uniqueness as a writer by being one of the first fantasy
writers to invent his languages for a fictional world.
especially Letter 163 of the Letters of JRR Tolkien
"He wanted to create something like those stories..." Sarah
"He blazed his own trail... he started with language first." Hawke
"The reason why he's so brilliant is because he was just a little off of
the rest of us, and could therefore be original." Corey
* Discussion on Japanese interest in Western mythology, similar to
imitation of technology and improvement, like the flintlock gun.
"That's what they had been doing for a thousand years." Chris
4. Letter 186
Discussion of how the Lord of the Rings is not about atomic power.
"If there is any contemporary reference in my story at all it is to what
seems to me the most widespread assumption of our time: that if a thing can
be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false." -JRRT
"I have told the whole tale more or less through 'hobbits'; and that is
because another main point in the story for me is the remark of Elrond in
Vol. I : 'Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the
world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great
are elsewhere.'" -JRRT
Applicability vs. allegory
5. Letter 187 re: Maps of Middle-earth and the grammar of languages.
"But the problems (delightful if I had time) which the extra volume will
set, will seem clear if I tell you that while many like you demand maps,
others wish for geological* indications rather than places; many want
Elvish grammars, phonologies, and specimens; some want metrics and prosodies — not only of the brief Elvish specimens, but of the 'translated' verses in less familiar modes, such as those written in the strictest form of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse (e.g. the fragment at the end of the Battle of the Pelennor, V vi 124). Musicians want tunes, and musical notation; archaeologists want ceramics and metallurgy. Botanists want a more accurate description of the mallorn, of elanor, niphredil, alfirin,
mallos, and symbelmynë; and historians want more details about the social and political structure of Gondor; general enquirers want information about the Wainriders, the Harad, Dwarvish origins, the Dead Men, the Beornings,
and the missing two wizards (out of five). It will be a big volume, even if I attend only to the things revealed to my limited understanding!" -JRRT
6. Next meeting will be September 18, 2021, from 1-3 pm.
We will read Letter 188 next, and celebrate Frodo and Bilbo's birthday a few days early!
Next meeting: 1-3 pm PST8/PDT7, September 18th, 2021