April 5-7, 2013
University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont
Once
again, Lihan reports on her favorite geeky weekend.
I do not have all the speakers' names recorded.
This
year, the conference was canceled when the university cut off its
funding. Then, at the last minute, the conference was
re-formed, without funding and without a keynote speaker.
This
year's theme was Hobbits.
Friday night
we had Open Mic Fireside Reading, complete with a video of
a burning fire. Everyone read favorite Tolkien passages out
loud.
Then
we watched “The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey.”
Saturday Lectures
Hobbit Society – Martha Monsonn
Tolkien
modeled some aspects of hobbit society on the Warwickshire villagers
of England of the late 19th century. The foods
mentioned in The Hobbit were all common in that time, though
most were invented earlier. But we should remember that not all
aspects of hobbit society are identical to 19th century
England.
In The
Treason of Isengard, Christopher Tolkien describes a “typical
hobbit of the Shire” – the prototype of Peregrin Took and
Fredegar Bolger -- as “cheerful, nonchalant, irrepressible,
commonsensical, limited, extremely fond of creature comforts.”
The
Prologue to Lord of the Rings tells us “The Shire at this
time had hardly any ‘government’. Families for the most part
managed their own affairs.” This is similar to early Germanic
culture.
We
know that the Shire had a money economy, since coins are mentioned
several times. We do not know whether those coins were minted
by hobbits, or whether they came in trade from other parts of
Middle-Earth.
Since
Dwarves prefer buying, rather than growing, their food supplies, it
is easy to imagine major trade between the Shire and Dwarves,
especially the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains.
Hobbit
families are “patrilineal.” That is, family names are
passed down in the male line. However, hobbit women exercise
nearly equal authority to hobbit men, within a family. The role
of head-of-family typically passed from the eldest male to his wife,
and then to their oldest son. In some cases, a daughter, or a
daughter's husband inherited the role of head-of-family.
We
have descriptions of hobbit birthday parties. We know almost
nothing about hobbit weddings – though surely a hobbit wedding must
include a large party. Apparently, hobbits have no organized
religion.
Anachronism in Farmer Giles of Ham
One of
the aspects of The Hobbit which the Tolkien children least
liked was “chummy” tone of some of the passages. In “Farmer
Giles of Ham,” Tolkien had the opportunity to write a lighthearted
story, without talking down to his audience
“Farmer
Giles of Ham” is one of Tolkien's few fantasy stories which is not
set in the “Middle-Earth” universe. The humans in Farmer
Giles in many ways resemble hobbits.
The
story is a carefully crafted mash-up of eras and genres, and full of
inside jokes. It starts by treating Geoffrey of
Monmouth's History
of the Kings of Britain, a
notoriously inaccurate document, as if it were serious history.
Knights from French courtly romances of the 12th
century and firearms from the 17th century coexist with
3rd century kings. The wimpy dragon, the inadvertent
hero who tames – rather than kills – the dragon, and the
bumbling – rather than scary – giant could not have appeared
earlier than the 19th century “literary” fairy tales,
which sometimes poked fun of their genre.
Tolkien
knew history, including linguistic and literary history, very well,
and would not have done this accidentally.
Farmer
Giles uses a blunderbuss. The first firearms in Europe appeared
in the 14th
century; blunderbusses in the 17th century. The
name “blunderbuss” comes from the Dutch, “donderbus,”
meaning “thunder gun.” There was a small version of a
blunderbuss appropriately called a “dragon.” The definition
given by “the four wise clerks of Oxenford”
is in fact a direct quote from the modern Oxford English
Dictionary.
"A
blunderbuss is a short gun with a large bore firing many balls or
slugs, and capable of doing execution within a limited range without
exact aim. (Now superseded in civilized countries by other
firearms.)"
Tolkien
himself wrote a few definitions for the Oxford English Dictionary,
and knew the editors – the “four wise
clerks.”
On
another level, Tolkien knew that anachronisms were themselves
“historical” -- that genuine old folk tales often acquired
anachronisms as they were passed on from century to century. Sir
Gawain, a 5th century knight of King Arthur, goes off to
the Holy Land to fight the Saracens. Christian priests wander
in the Mabinogion lands of the Welsh gods and goddesses.
Syzygy: Being an Alignment of Astronomical Bodies – Kristine Larson
In
Lord of the Rings, Tolkien uses the phases of the moon to mark
the time of the protagonists' journey, and to compare the dates of
events taking place in different locations. Tolkien worked out
those moon phases carefully and accurately, based on an actually
calendar (for the year 1942, leaving out a lunar eclipse of that
year, and making adjustments for the dates in the Middle-Earth
calendar).
There
is some element of plausibility to “moon letters” as described in
The Hobbit – writing which can only be read by the light of
a certain phase of the moon. The polarization of moonlight
varies, depending on the phase of the moon.
The
moon phases in The Hobbit
are not so accurate. In the first edition, the moon's phase
when the Dwarves meet the trolls doesn't fit with the moon's phase
when Elrond reads the moon runes. Also, Bard sees the moon
rising in the east, only two days after Durin's Day (when the rising
moon would still be hidden by the rising sun). Tolkien's
attempts to revise the chronology only made matters worse. He
was, at the time, using 28 days as the length of the lunar cycle.
In The
Hobbit, the Dwarvish New Year starts on “the first day of the
last moon of Autumn.” This day is called “Durin's Day” if
the moon and sun are seen together, that is, if the tiny crescent of
a new moon no more that 24 hours old is observed. {The lecture
included a description of “solar,” “lunar,” and “soli-lunar”
calendar systems, which I won't repeat here. Modern people
remain interested in observing the first crescent of a new moon
because each month in the Islamic begins at the observed (rather than
merely calculated) appearing of the new moon.} The current
record for youngest new moon seen with the unaided human eye is 15.4
hours old. In order for the Dwarves to observe the new moon of
Durin's Day, they would need an unobstructed view of the western
horizon, with clear air. The distant Misty Mountains might
have, in fact, been in the way.
Are Dwarves Not Heroes?
The
speaker discussed, very rapidly, a number of journals and reports
summarizing Tolkien research.
Another
main point of this lecture was that any “fact” about Tolkien's
opinions or thought process needs to be considered in its context.
For example, Tolkien's scorn for Shakespeare is often quoted;
however, his comments were taken from a debate, in which he was
assigned to defend the anti-Shakespeare position. Likewise,
Tolkien's comment that there is no relation between the One
Ring and Wagner's Ring – beyond “both rings were round” – was
written in response to one ill-informed reviewer.
The
paper takes its title from the question of whether Tolkien's Dwarves
reflect an anti-Semitic attitude. Tolkien describes the
Dwarvish language as having elements borrowed from Semitic language
family (Hebrew, Arabic,and related languages). The Dwarves have
also suffered a diaspora, maintain their own secret language, and,
um, have notable beards – which may be taken as resemblances to
Jews, or perhaps to popular stereotypes of Jews. So, when the
narrator in The Hobbit says,
“There
it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea
of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad
lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and
Company, if you don’t expect too much.”
is
that a subtly anti-Semitic comment? On the other hand, both
Thorin Oakenshield, and Dáin (who killed the
father of Bolg) are portrayed as heroic. And Tolkien, snubbing
a German publishing house, spoke of Jews as “that
noble race.” So the case for antisemitism is not
strong. In all cases, it is important to keep track of when,
and in what context, Tolkien made various comments.
Physicality in The Hobbit
The
speaker makes a distinction between “high,” formal language,
which lends itself to describing noble, dignified behavior, as
opposed to “low,” coarse, earthy language, which lends itself to
describing undignified or comedic behavior. “High” language
typically uses simile; “low” language typically uses physical
description.
Tolkien
uses both forms in The Hobbit.
The trolls are described:
“they were fighting like dogs, and
calling one another all sorts of perfectly true and applicable names
in very loud voices. Soon they were locked in one another’s arms,
and rolling nearly into the fire kicking and thumping, while Tom
whacked at them both with a branch to bring them to their senses —”
In
constrast, Elrond's description take the form:
“He was as noble and as fair in face as
an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as
venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer.”
The
last 6 chapters of The Hobbit (from 14 on, starting with the
destruction of Lake Town) Tolkien admits were more strongly
influenced by the Silmarillion,
which he was writing at the same time. From the meeting with
Elrond, and especially in the last 6 chapters, the “high” style
predominates, there is less coarse comedy, and less physical
description. However, we do still see Bard emerging from the
lake with his hair dripping, and Bilbo suffering a head-cold in
Laketown.
Sunday
Springlering
Hobbit Festival
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