Splintered Light

Last updated

Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World
Splintered Light.jpg
Author Verlyn Flieger
Subject The Silmarillion
GenreLiterary criticism
Publisher Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publication date
1983
Media typePrint
Pages167
Followed by A Question of Time  

Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World is a 1983 book of literary criticism by the leading Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger, in which she argues that light is a central theme of Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology, in particular in The Silmarillion . It has been admired by other scholars to the extent that it has become a core element of Tolkien scholarship. [1] [2]

Contents

Context

J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author and philologist of ancient Germanic languages, specialising in Old English; he spent much of his career as a professor at the University of Oxford. [3] He is best known for his novels about his invented Middle-earth, The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , and The Silmarillion . A devout Roman Catholic, he described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work", rich in Christian symbolism. [4]

Verlyn Flieger worked for over 30 years as a Tolkien scholar, becoming accepted as one of the foremost authors in that field. Splintered Light was her first book, establishing a reputation that increased with her later monographs Interrupted Music and A Question of Time , and two edited collections of essays. [5]

Book

Verlyn Flieger argues in the book that a central symbol in The Silmarillion is light, diminishing from the first creation as it is progressively splintered. Early in the history of Arda, the world is lit by two great lamps created by Eru Iluvatar. These are destroyed, and replaced by the Two Trees of Valinor, and so on. Arda in the Ages of the Lamps.svg
Verlyn Flieger argues in the book that a central symbol in The Silmarillion is light, diminishing from the first creation as it is progressively splintered. Early in the history of Arda, the world is lit by two great lamps created by Eru Iluvatar. These are destroyed, and replaced by the Two Trees of Valinor, and so on.

Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World was published by Wm. B. Eerdmans in 1983. A revised edition was issued in 2002. The work is not illustrated.

The book begins with a chapter on J. R. R. Tolkien as "a man of antitheses", of faith and doubt. It then compares and contrasts two of Tolkien's best-known essays, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and "On Fairy Stories", the one essentially dark and fateful, the other bright, embracing the possibility of good fortune. The next pair of chapters examine the Inkling Owen Barfield's philosophy of mythology and Tolkien's view of fantasy as sub-creation, and then their view of language, with the idea that it was once whole, and is now fragmented.

Three chapters then examine the symbolism of light in Middle-earth as divine creation, showing with close analysis of the text of The Silmarillion that the created light is successively fragmented by interaction with the forces of darkness and the choices of the free peoples, Elves and Men. The story of The Lord of the Rings is covered in "One Fragment", in which, after the many disasters of The Silmarillion, the small remnant of the light survives to combat the remaining darkness.

A final chapter reviews the book's findings, noting two necessities, change and language, which is an agent of change.

Reception

Age Splintering of the Created Light [6] [7]
Years of the Lamps Two enormous lamps, Illuin and Ormal, atop tall pillars, give light to Middle-earth, but Melkor destroys them.
Years of the Trees The lamps are replaced by the Two Trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin, lighting the blessed realm of Valinor for the Elves, leaving Middle-earth in darkness.
Fëanor crafts 3 Silmarils with light of the two Trees.
Melkor and the giant spider Ungoliant kill the Two Trees; their light survives only in the Silmarils.
First Age There is war over the Silmarils.
One is buried in the Earth, one is lost in the Sea, one sails in the Sky as Eärendil's Star, carried in his ship Vingilot.
Third Age Galadriel collects light of Eärendil's Star reflected in her fountain mirror.
A little of that light is captured in the Phial of Galadriel.
The Hobbits Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee use the Phial to defeat the giant spider Shelob.

In A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien , the Tolkien scholar Bradford Lee Eden writes that Splintered Light was the first scholarly monograph on The Silmarillion. he describes it as "the most important and influential book on both language and music in Tolkien's works", discussing how music and light are interwoven as "central themes" throughout The Silmarillion , and viewing Tolkien as a "musician of words". [1]

In the Rocky Mountain Review, the scholar and fantasy author Brian Attebery notes that Flieger shows how Tolkien followed Owen Barfield's views on myth-making, including the idea of a gradual fall from grace over the course of history. In Attebery's view, Flieger successfully links Tolkien's Middle-earth writings to his scholarship, with a "well researched and sympathetic reading of The Silmarillion, a work whose importance she goes far towards demonstrating", [8] showing that even though it contains numerous short tales written decades apart, it is "a unified whole with a deeply felt meaning". [8] He writes that she is "less successful in tying his creations to [Tolkien's] biography". He argues that even if the reader accepts her thesis that the paired opposites in his Middle-earth writings – between light and dark, or between redemption and fall – derive from a temperament that oscillated "between hope and despair", that would not explain why those feelings resulted in fantasy "rather than ... metaphysical verse or realistic fiction"; and it wouldn't explain, either, why The Silmarillion is overwhelmingly dark, while The Lord of the Rings is largely optimistic. Attebery suggests that the reasons might be the works' different origins – in his view, Beowulf and Norse legend versus fairy tale. [8]

The scholar of English Janice Neuleib, reviewing the work in Christianity & Literature, writes that it both illuminates Tolkien's philosophy and analyses his "creative genius", [9] much of it in territory unexplored by other scholars. The forces of light and dark might, she writes, have been the subject of doubt to the man, but in his writing they are "equal forces held in tension by their opposition to and dependence upon one another ... at once literal, metaphoric, and symbolic". [9] She comments that where his celebrated essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" showed the certainty of fated disaster, his other famous essay "On Fairy Stories" considers eucatastrophe, the happy turn of fate in a story. In her view, "the tension of these two opposing forces produced the action of The Silmarillion." [9] However, the core of the book for Neuleib is in the 3 chapters on The Silmarillion itself, in which Flieger traces the progressive splintering of the light created by Eru Iluvatar through the music of the Valar and on down to the Elves, Men, and Hobbits who people Middle-earth. The Elves too are sundered into peoples with differing languages as they agree to approach the light of the Two Lamps or the Two Trees, or reject this. Their languages, too, represent the light, and the original and higher language, Quenya, is spoken only by the Elves who have seen the light of Valinor. The most prized artefacts of the Elves, the Silmarils, capture a little of the splintered light; their maker, Fëanor, is therefore for both Flieger and Tolkien the most significant of the Elves; and he is destroyed by his creation. [9]

The scholar of theology and literature Ralph C. Wood, reviewing another of Flieger's books for VII, writes that Splintered Light is "an indispensable work for any serious study of the great fantasist, especially of The Silmarillion". [10]

Flieger was nominated for the 1986 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Splintered Light. [11] The scholar of humanities Deidre Dawson comments that the book has become a core element of Tolkien scholarship. [2]

Related Research Articles

Eärendil the Mariner and his wife Elwing are characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. They are depicted in The Silmarillion as Half-elven, the children of Men and Elves. He is a great seafarer who, on his brow, carried the Morning Star, a jewel called a Silmaril, across the sky. The jewel had been saved by Elwing from the destruction of the Havens of Sirion. The Morning Star and the Silmarils are elements of the symbolism of light, for divine creativity, continually splintered as history progresses. Tolkien took Eärendil's name from the Old English name Earendel, found in the poem Crist I, which hailed him as "brightest of angels"; this was the beginning of Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology. Elwing is the granddaughter of Lúthien and Beren, and is descended from Melian the Maia, while Earendil is the son of Tuor and Idril. Through their progeny, Eärendil and Elwing became the ancestors of the Númenorean, and later Dúnedain, royal bloodline.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the Elves or Quendi are a sundered (divided) people. They awoke at Cuiviénen on the continent of Middle-earth, where they were divided into three tribes: Minyar, Tatyar and Nelyar. After some time, they were summoned by Oromë to live with the Valar in Valinor, on Aman. That summoning and the Great Journey that followed split the Elves into two main groups, which were never fully reunited.

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.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the Two Trees of Valinor are Telperion and Laurelin, the Silver Tree and the Gold Tree, which bring light to Valinor, a paradisiacal realm where angelic beings live. The Two Trees are of enormous stature, and exude dew that is a pure and magical light in liquid form. The craftsman Elf Fëanor makes the unrivalled jewels, the Silmarils, with their light. The Two Trees are destroyed by the evil beings Ungoliant and Melkor, but their last flower and fruit are made into the Moon and the Sun. Melkor, now known as Morgoth, steals the Silmarils, provoking the disastrous War of the Jewels. Descendants of Telperion survive, growing in Númenor and, after its destruction, in Gondor; in both cases the trees are symbolic of those kingdoms. For many years while Gondor has no King, the White Tree of Gondor stands dead in the citadel of Minas Tirith. When Aragorn restores the line of Kings to Gondor, he finds a sapling descended from Telperion and plants it in his citadel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien's legendarium</span> J. R. R. Tolkiens mythological writings

Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings, and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth. The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps, and inventing languages and names as a private project to create a mythology for England. The earliest story, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star", is from 1914; he revised and rewrote the legendarium stories for most of his adult life.

<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.

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.

Morgoth Bauglir is a character, one of the godlike Valar and the primary antagonist of Tolkien's legendarium, the mythic epic published in parts as The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin.

The Silmarils are three fictional brilliant jewels in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, made by the Elf Fëanor, capturing the unmarred light of the Two Trees of Valinor. The Silmarils play a central role in Tolkien's book The Silmarillion, which tells of the creation of Eä and the beginning of Elves, Dwarves and Men.

<i>The Silmarillion</i> Collection of J. R. R. Tolkiens mythopoeic works

The Silmarillion is a book consisting of a collection of myths and stories in varying styles by the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. It was edited, partly written, and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, assisted by Guy Gavriel Kay, who became a fantasy author. It tells of Eä, a fictional universe that includes the Blessed Realm of Valinor, the ill-fated region of Beleriand, the island of Númenor, and the continent of Middle-earth, where Tolkien's most popular works—The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—are set. After the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien's publisher, Stanley Unwin, requested a sequel, and Tolkien offered a draft of the writings that would later become The Silmarillion. Unwin rejected this proposal, calling the draft obscure and "too Celtic", so Tolkien began working on a new story that eventually became The Lord of the Rings.

J. R. R. Tolkien built a process of decline and fall in Middle-earth into both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien's monsters are the evil beings, such as Orcs, Trolls, and giant spiders, who oppose and sometimes fight the protagonists in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Tolkien was an expert on Old English, especially Beowulf, and several of his monsters share aspects of the Beowulf monsters; his Trolls have been likened to Grendel, the Orcs' name harks back to the poem's orcneas, and the dragon Smaug has multiple attributes of the Beowulf dragon. The European medieval tradition of monsters makes them either humanoid but distorted, or like wild beasts, but very large and malevolent; Tolkien follows both traditions, with monsters like Orcs of the first kind and Wargs of the second. Some scholars add Tolkien's immensely powerful Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron to the list, as monstrous enemies in spirit as well as in body. Scholars have noted that the monsters' evil nature reflects Tolkien's Roman Catholicism, a religion which has a clear conception of good and evil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music of Middle-earth</span> Music in J. R. R. Tolkiens Middle-earth fiction

The music of Middle-earth consists of the music mentioned by J. R. R. Tolkien in his Middle-earth books, the music written by other artists to accompany performances of his work, whether individual songs or adaptations of his books for theatre, film, radio, and games, and music more generally inspired by his books.

The philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien set out to explore time travel and distortions in the passage of time in his fiction in a variety of ways. The passage of time in The Lord of the Rings is uneven, seeming to run at differing speeds in the realms of Men and of Elves. In this, Tolkien was following medieval tradition in which time proceeds differently in Elfland. The whole work, too, following the theory he spelt out in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", is meant to transport the reader into another time. He built a process of decline and fall in Middle-earth into the story, echoing the sense of impending destruction of Norse mythology. The Elves attempt to delay this decline as far as possible in their realms of Rivendell and Lothlórien, using their Rings of Power to slow the passage of time. Elvish time, in The Lord of the Rings as in the medieval Thomas the Rhymer and the Danish Elvehøj, presents apparent contradictions. Both the story itself and scholarly interpretations offer varying attempts to resolve these; time may be flowing faster or more slowly, or perceptions may differ.

J. R. R. Tolkien used frame stories throughout his Middle-earth writings, especially his legendarium, to make the works resemble a genuine mythology written and edited by many hands over a long period of time. He described in detail how his fictional characters wrote their books and transmitted them to others, and showed how later in-universe editors annotated the material.

<i>Tolkiens Art: A Mythology for England</i> 1979 book by Jane Chance

Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England' is a 1979 book of Tolkien scholarship by Jane Chance, writing then as Jane Chance Nitzsche. The book looks in turn at Tolkien's essays "On Fairy-Stories" and "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"; The Hobbit; the fairy-stories "Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith of Wootton Major"; the minor works "Lay of Autrou and Itroun", "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth", "Imram", and Farmer Giles of Ham; The Lord of the Rings; and very briefly in the concluding section, The Silmarillion. In 2001, a second edition extended all the chapters but still treated The Silmarillion, that Tolkien worked on throughout his life, as a sort of coda.

In Tolkien's legendarium, ancestry provides a guide to character. The apparently genteel Hobbits of the Baggins family turn out to be worthy protagonists of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is seen from his family tree to be both a Baggins and an adventurous Took. Similarly, Frodo Baggins has some relatively outlandish Brandybuck blood. Among the Elves of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion, the highest are the peaceful Vanyar, whose ancestors conformed most closely to the divine will, migrating to Aman and seeing the light of the Two Trees of Valinor; the lowest are the mutable Teleri; and in between are the conflicted Noldor. Scholars have analysed the impact of ancestry on Elves such as the creative but headstrong Fëanor, who makes the Silmarils. Among Men, Aragorn, hero of The Lord of the Rings, is shown by his descent from Kings, Elves, and an immortal Maia to be of royal blood, destined to be the true King who will restore his people. Scholars have commented that in this way, Tolkien was presenting a view of character from Norse mythology, and an Anglo-Saxon view of kingship, though others have called his implied views racist.

J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, embodied Christianity in his legendarium, including The Lord of the Rings. Light is a prominent motif in Christianity: it is the first thing created by God in the Book of Genesis, it symbolizes God's grace and blessings elsewhere in the Old Testament, and it is closely associated with both Jesus and humanity itself in the Gospel of John in the New Testament.

<i>A Question of Time</i> (book) Literary analysis

A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie is a 1997 book of literary analysis by Verlyn Flieger of J. R. R. Tolkien's explorations of the nature of time in his Middle-earth writings, interpreted in the light of J. W. Dunne's 1927 theory of time, and Dunne's view that dreams gave access to all dimensions of time. Tolkien read Dunne's book carefully and annotated his copy with his views of the theory. A Question of Time examines in particular Tolkien's two unfinished time-travel novels, The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers, and the time-travel aspects of The Lord of the Rings. These encompass Frodo's dreams and the land of the Elves, Lothlórien.

<i>Interrupted Music</i> Literary analysis

Interrupted Music is a 2005 book of literary analysis by Verlyn Flieger of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the mass of documents summarized in The Silmarillion. Despite its title, it is not about Tolkien's use of music; it explores how and why he set about creating a mythology for England, what models he used as a guide – especially Elias Lönnrot and Arthurian legend, and how he made the mythology resemble a real one. The book has been well received by scholars; they have stated that the chapter on how Tolkien made the legendarium seem like a genuine tradition the most important in the book.

References

  1. 1 2 Eden, Bradford Lee (2013). "Music". In Lee, Stuart D. (ed.). A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien . Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 504, 509. ISBN   978-1-119-65602-9.
  2. 1 2 Dawson, Deidre A. (January 2020). "[Review:] A Wilderness of Dragons: Essays in Honor of Verlyn Flieger". Journal of Tolkien Research . 11 (1). Gale   A647455098.
  3. Carpenter, Humphrey (1977). Tolkien: A Biography. New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 111, 200, 266. ISBN   978-0-04928-037-3.
  4. Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (2023) [1981]. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Harper Collins. #142 to Robert Murray, 2 December 1953. ISBN   978-0-35-865298-4.
  5. Fisher, Matthew A. (2020). "A Wilderness of Dragons: Essays in Honor of Verlyn Flieger ed. by John D. Rateliff". Tolkien Studies . 17 (1). Project Muse: 225–229. doi:10.1353/tks.2020.0013. ISSN   1547-3163. S2CID   226667872.
  6. Flieger 1983, pp. 6–61, 89–90, 144-145 and passim.
  7. Bassham, Gregory; Bronson, Eric (2013). The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All. Open Court. p. 35. ISBN   978-0-8126-9806-0.
  8. 1 2 3 Attebery, Brian (1985). "Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World by Verlyn Flieger". Rocky Mountain Review. 39 (1): 71–72. doi:10.1353/rmr.1985.0065. ISSN   1948-2833. S2CID   194247777.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Neuleib, Janice (1984). "Review: Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World". Christianity & Literature. 34 (1): 59–61. doi:10.1177/014833318403400114. ISSN   0148-3331.
  10. Wood, Ralph C. (1999). "Review: A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie by Verlyn Flieger". VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center . 16: 115–117. JSTOR   45296758.
  11. "Mythopoeic Awards 1986". SFADB . Retrieved 13 December 2021.

Bibliography