Carl F. Hostetter

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Carl Franklin Hostetter is a Tolkien scholar and NASA computer scientist. He has edited and annotated many of J. R. R. Tolkien's linguistic writings, publishing them in Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon .

Contents

Career

NASA

Carl Hostetter joined NASA as a computer scientist at its Goddard Space Flight Center in 1985. [1] In the 1990s, he edited the proceedings of the Goddard Space Conference for some years.

Tolkien scholar

Hostetter is a Tolkien scholar and key figure in the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship. He has written numerous articles on the linguistics of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. [2] He ran the scholarly mailing list Lambengolmor from 2002 to its closure in 2020. [3] He is the editor of the Tolkien linguistics journals Vinyar Tengwar and Tengwestië. [4] By arrangement with Christopher Tolkien, he edited and published a large quantity of J. R. R. Tolkien's writings on his constructed languages in Vinyar Tengwar (in various issues between 1991 and 2007) and in Parma Eldalamberon issues 11 (1995) to 22 (2015). [5]

Reception

John S. Ryan, reviewing the 2000 collection Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth (edited by Hostetter and Verlyn Flieger) for VII, called it a "luminous companion" to the 12 volumes of Christopher Tolkien's The History of Middle-earth , and "clearly indispensable". [6] The book won the 2002 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies. [7]

The Tolkien scholar Douglas C. Kane, while welcoming the 2021 book The Nature of Middle-earth , writes that Hostetter "appears to overstep his role as editor" by presenting the materials according to his personal point of view. In particular, Kane states that Hostetter wrongly applies Tolkien's remark that The Lord of the Rings was fundamentally religious and Catholic to the whole of the legendarium. Kane calls this contrary to Christopher Tolkien's editorial practice, and "a blatant statement of intent". Kane quotes Verlyn Flieger's remark that Tolkien's work reflects the two sides of his nature; the work can be seen both "as Catholic [and] not Christian." [8]

Books

Middle-earth

Edited

Space science

Edited

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tengwar</span> Fictional script in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien

The Tengwar script is an artificial script, one of several scripts created by J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elvish languages of Middle-earth</span> Group of fictional languages in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien

The Elvish languages of Middle-earth, constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien, include Quenya and Sindarin. These were the various languages spoken by the Elves of Middle-earth as they developed as a society throughout the Ages. In his pursuit for realism and in his love of language, Tolkien was especially fascinated with the development and evolution of language through time. Tolkien created two almost fully developed languages and a dozen more in various beginning stages as he studied and reproduced the way that language adapts and morphs. A philologist by profession, he spent much time on his constructed languages. In the collection of letters he had written, posthumously published by his son, Christopher Tolkien, he stated that he began stories set within this secondary world, the realm of Middle-earth, not with the characters or narrative as one would assume, but with a created set of languages. The stories and characters serve as conduits to make those languages come to life. Inventing language was always a crucial piece to Tolkien's mythology and world building. As Tolkien stated:

The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.

The English philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien created several constructed languages, mostly related to his fictional world of Middle-earth. Inventing languages, something that he called glossopoeia, was a lifelong occupation for Tolkien, starting in his teens.

The Black Speech is one of the fictional languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien for his legendarium, where it was spoken in the evil realm of Mordor. In the fiction, Tolkien describes the language as created by Sauron as a constructed language to be the sole language of all the servants of Mordor.

The Lhammas, Noldorin for "account of tongues", is a work of fictional sociolinguistics, written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937, and published in the 1987 The Lost Road and Other Writings, volume five of The History of Middle-earth series.

Ælfwine the mariner is a fictional character found in various early versions of J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium. Tolkien envisaged Ælfwine as an Anglo-Saxon who visited and befriended the Elves and acted as the source of later mythology. Thus, in the frame story, Ælfwine is the stated author of the various translations in Old English that appear in the twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth edited by Christopher Tolkien.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the real-world history and notable fictional elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy universe. It covers materials created by Tolkien; the works on his unpublished manuscripts, by his son Christopher Tolkien; and films, games and other media created by other people.

The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship is a "Special Interest Group" of the Mythopoeic Society devoted to the study of J. R. R. Tolkien's constructed languages, headed by the computer scientist Carl F. Hostetter. It was founded by Jorge Quiñónez in 1988.

The works of J. R. R. Tolkien have generated a body of research covering many aspects of his fantasy writings. These encompass The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, along with his legendarium that remained unpublished until after his death, and his constructed languages, especially the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin. Scholars from different disciplines have examined the linguistic and literary origins of Middle-earth, and have explored many aspects of his writings from Christianity to feminism and race.

<i>Tolkiens Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth</i> 2000 collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter

Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth is a collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter on the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth, relating to J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction and compiled and edited by his son, Christopher. It was published by Greenwood Press in 2000. That series comprises a substantial part of "Tolkien's legendarium", the body of Tolkien's mythopoeic writing that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings and which Christopher Tolkien summarized in his construction of The Silmarillion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. R. R. Tolkien bibliography</span> Comprehensive list of books written by the author

This is a list of all the published works of the English writer and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien's works were published before and after his death.

Verlyn Flieger is an author, editor, and Professor Emerita in the Department of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, where she taught courses in comparative mythology, medieval literature, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. She is well known as a Tolkien scholar, especially for her books Splintered Light, A Question of Time, and Interrupted Music. She has won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award four times for her work on Tolkien's Middle-earth writings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quenya</span> Fictional language in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien

Quenya is a constructed language, one of those devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for the Elves in his Middle-earth fiction.

Sindarin is one of the constructed languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for use in his fantasy stories set in Arda, primarily in Middle-earth. Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the Elves.

Richard Plotz was the co-founder of the Tolkien Society of America, which in 1972 was merged with the Mythopoeic Society. Plotz is known for his interview with J. R. R. Tolkien in the late 1960s under the auspices of Seventeen Magazine, and for a 1967 letter from Tolkien delineating the declension of the noun in late Quenya. Plotz attended Harvard University as an undergraduate.

Arden Ray Smith is a member of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship and holds a Ph.D. in Germanic Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published numerous articles relating to the languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien. He was a columnist and editor of Vinyar Tengwar, for which he wrote the popular column "Transitions in Translations", in which odd elements in translations of J. R. R. Tolkien's work were described and commented upon.

Quenya is a constructed language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his fictional universe, Middle-earth.

<i>The Nature of Middle-earth</i> 2021 compilation of material by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Nature of Middle-earth is a 2021 book of previously unpublished materials on Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by the scholar Carl F. Hostetter. Some essays were previously published in the Elvish linguistics journal Vinyar Tengwar, where Hostetter is a long-time editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Loback</span> American artist and Tolkien scholar (1949-2015)

Tom Loback was an artist, known for his illustrations of characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's 1977 book The Silmarillion, his miniature figurines, and his public artworks in New York. He contributed also as a Tolkien scholar interested in Tolkien's constructed languages.

The Etymologies is J. R. R. Tolkien's etymological dictionary of his constructed Elvish languages, written during the 1930s. As a philologist, he was professionally interested in the structure of languages, the relationships between languages, and in particular the processes by which languages evolve. He applied this skill to the construction of the languages of Middle-earth, especially the Elvish languages. The Etymologies reflects this knowledge and enthusiasm: he constantly changed the etymological relationships of his "bases", the roots of his Elvish words. The list of words covers several of his minor languages as well as the two major ones, greatly extending the vocabularies known before it was published in The Lost Road and Other Writings in 1987.

References

  1. Flood, Alison (19 November 2020). "Unseen JRR Tolkien essays on Middle-earth coming in 2021". The Guardian . Retrieved 20 July 2022.
  2. Casagr, Cristina (16 July 2021). "From Linguistics to Metaphysics: interview with Carl F. Hostetter, editor of the new book by J.R.R. Tolkien". On fairy-stories. Retrieved 20 July 2022.
  3. "Lambengolmor". Tolkien list search. Retrieved 24 November 2022.
  4. "Tengwestië". Elvish Linguistic Fellowship . Retrieved 25 November 2022.
  5. Anderson, Douglas A., Carl F. Hostetter: A Checklist, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007)
  6. Ryan, John Sprott (2001). "Review of Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth by Verlyn Flieger, Carl F. Hostetter". VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center. 18: 109–111. JSTOR   45296793.}
  7. "Mythopoeic Awards - 2002". Mythopoeic Society. 29 July 2002. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  8. Kane, Douglas C. (2021). "The Nature of Middle-earth (2021) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Carl F. Hostetter". Journal of Tolkien Research . 13 (1). article 5.