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I've started The Nature of Middle-earth and gotten through Part I, sections I-V, which includes many of the early bits that were released and caused such a stir: the length of Elven pregnancies and the convenient fact that Elven men are significantly older when they are "ready for marriage" (read: done tomcatting around) than Elven women, who are conveniently young and nubile when the grizzled olds are ready to settle down with them. (And also the reason why there are no Elf-women in the histories, which I didn't hear much yelling about but I'm sure it was there, just being conducted out of my admittedly small-these-days earshot.)
First and foremost: I think Tolkien would have been mortified that we are reading this and discussing it with such seriousness. (Which does not mean I won't discuss it with seriousness because Tolkien is long beyond being able to care, having been dead longer than I've been alive.) It seems really obvious to me as the kind of noodling around we writers do when trying to figure out how things work in our respective legendaria. I get squirmy even thinking about that stuff published. I say this not to discourage discussing NoMe (clearly) but to clarify my own understanding of the material in it as perhaps even less intended for public consumption than the drafts in the HoMe. As both a fan author and a scholar, I consider everything in the NoMe in that context, i.e., it is unlikely to convince me that my understanding of the legendarium requires a radical upheaval.
Time. Oh, time. Time and timelines. Perhaps one of the biggest banes of my existence as a Tolkien fan because they always feel like such a hot mess to me and so often mutually contradictory, and the NoMe material doesn't help.
It just doesn't add up. To me. But I fully acknowledge that I struggle with this material so maybe I'm missing something and would not be hurt/upset to hear from someone that, yes, it actually does make perfect sense.
How I've always handled the differences between the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Sun in my stories is to assume the two as functionally the same. In other words, a Year of the Tree as experienced by an Elf living in Valinor felt exactly the same as a Year of the Sun to an Elf living in Beleriand. This has something to do (in my mind) with the very special nature of the Light of the Two Trees. It slows time, sort of like approaching a black hole. This [conveniently] means that I can treat the timelines for YT in Aman and the timelines for YS in Middle-earth exactly the same.
At first, I felt gratified when I read, "In Middle-earth, one loä [Year of the Sun] aged an Elf as much as a year of the Trees, but these were in fact 10 times as long" (p. 5). That seemed to be pointing in the direction I've been heading for seventeen years now when making sense of the timelines. Then, on the very next page, it gets worse: a Year of the Trees equals 144 Years of the Sun (loär). JEEzum!
None of it hangs together. Later in the text, Tolkien states that Elves are most active until about age 60, at which point the feä begins to take over until, "by the age of 90-96 one of the Quendi had reached a stage similar to that of a vigorous and hale Mortal of high age and wisdom" (p. 19). Yet by the Noldorin arrival in Middle-earth, the main players--Fëanor and Fingolfin and the various grandchildren of Finwë--are all well past their prime and yet commit some of the deeds of greatest renown in the legendarium.
Tolkien, too, sees that his new ideas don't necessarily hang with the older material. In the much-talked-about material on pregnancy, he say, "This will not fit the narrative in the Silmarillion. What of Maeglin?" (p. 24). Again, the disconnect speaks to me of how draftlike of drafts these texts were. They're still at the phase, much like picking apart a knot, where the more picking one does the more hopelessly tangled the knot becomes.
Rarities and Exceptions. I got a good chuckle out of Tolkien's musings on twins, which he declares as "very rare" and then proceeds to name all the sets of twins in The Silmarillion (p. 22). Because twins are not rare. In the very next paragraph, he reminds us that we only see the "chief actors" in the history and their descendants, yet among those chief actors, we have four sets of twins. (He neglects to mention Elrond and Elros.) To be fair, he does hint that some of that might have to do with those later sets being half-Elven. Still.
It's a reminder of how contradictory the legendarium is, in this case literally within the same sentence. Imagine some canatic sees only the phrase "twins were very rare" and knows nothing else of the various sets of twins and proceeds to jump all over a fanwork that includes a set of Elven twins when even a teensy step backward shows that not only are their lots of twins, but there are lots of important twins in the story. As a writer myself (of original as well as fanfic), it is never hard for me to understand that putting something down doesn't elevate it to fact (much less the more nebulous "truth"). The word canon is misleadingly firm. We have a clearly stated fact, that is, till we step back to observe the many, many exceptions.
Narrators and Historiography. Of course, one of my chief interests in the new text is what is said of the narrators/historiography and whether/how the narrators are presented. I found this paragraph very interesting:
Maturity. Oh me. The stuff on ages of maturation bugs me on so many levels.
First: "the Eldar grew to maturity less quickly than did the Avari" (p. 22). The rather racist assumptions of the Avari found in Laws and Customs among the Eldar--those which draw very much on the stereotype of the "savage"--can be justified as the perspective of the narrator, who is very explicitly identified as Ælfwine, i.e., someone without firsthand knowledge of any Avari who is repeating what he is told by a bunch of [potentially racist/ethnocentric] Eldar about Avari. But this ... is Tolkien writing as Tolkien, not through a narrator, which is pretty rare in and of itself.
What he seems to be doing here is rooting into biology/"nature" the idea that the Avari were less intellectually sophisticated than their Eldarin brethren. Elves who need longer to mature are seen as more advanced, i.e., his specific note that Fëanor required a full year in the womb rather than the usual approximate nine months. I suspect I'm putting too much a modern spin on it here (I don't know), but it also reminds me uncomfortably of the tendency to assume that children of color reach maturity faster than White children (and can, thus, be held accountable to adult standards of behavior where White children are pardoned with such phrases as "boys being boys"), as well as the tendency to assume that kids in "other countries" reach maturity faster than kids in the Western world (so child marriage, for example, can be excused as "just their culture" and thus untouchable rather than the abuse and rape of mostly young girls).
The concept of "maturity" is thorny with respect to gender as well. On page 29, Tolkien talks about when marriage and childbearing take place. The optimal age for men is age 48; for women, it is age 20.
ARRRRGH. This is one of those times when I feel like the texts very much reflect--and show the limitations of--Tolkien's male perspective. Of course the notion that grizzled old dudes tomcatting after nubile [virginal] PYTs is somehow rooted in "nature," not an aspect of culture that is itself warped and dismissive of the value of women by catapulting them from childhood to procreativity (whence they are drained and slip toward senescence). (See above about the correlation that seems to exist between later maturity and greater intellectual/creative achievement.) I know people will point out Victorian culture--hell, 1950s culture, since this was written c. 1959--but I have zero fucks to give about that. As a woman and a feminist, it creeps me the hell out, and I'm sorry it was written--however informally--into the "canon." Blech.
Withdrawal [not as a contraceptive method]. While we're on the subject of sexism, there is the issue of "quiescence or withdrawal" of Elven women before and after childbirth, which since their schedule is on the bonkers 144 YS = 1 YT discussed above gives us this tidbit:
On the one hand, this offers an explanation for the lack of women in the legendarium, where a flat-earth mythology demands awkward rewrites involving domes and magical Trees and one year = 144 but having only 18% of named characters as women goes unaddressed (credit to the LotR Project for that data). Well I guess we have an explanation (and therefore recognition of how off this particular aspect of the legendarium is?)
There's also the hint at the "Mannish" narrator again.
But. BUT. The explanation itself is so dreadfully sexist that I can't even. Once again, the exclusion of women from the political sphere is credited to "nature" rather than culture and gender roles. It's the Middle-earth version of excluding women on the base of "hysteria" and emotionality and PMS and the maternal instinct even as men are the ones starting wars that kill millions and shooting up concerts and schools and nightclubs and still get to be the "rational" and "logical" sex who by default is assumed to be competent to be in charge.
ARRRGH2.
Pregnancy. I'm not even saying anything on this. It's evidence, to me, of how the ideas being played with here about time are fundamentally broken when applied in context.
ELF SEX.
WOW. Chew on that, fanfic writers!
I assume this means that Elf-men don't take half a lifetime to be able to reliably find the clitoris, or maybe this is again the male perspective and Elf-women actually get headaches at the same rate as Mortal women.
This also seems to be a very clever way for Tolkien to ensure that his Catholic ideal that sex only happens for procreation is reflected in Elven behavior (especially given some of the skeevy >.> stuff in Appendix 1 about Elves as "unfallen" humans, see p.p. 407-9). They stop having sex at a point because it's so damn good that they just can't stand it, you guys.
>.>
First and foremost: I think Tolkien would have been mortified that we are reading this and discussing it with such seriousness. (Which does not mean I won't discuss it with seriousness because Tolkien is long beyond being able to care, having been dead longer than I've been alive.) It seems really obvious to me as the kind of noodling around we writers do when trying to figure out how things work in our respective legendaria. I get squirmy even thinking about that stuff published. I say this not to discourage discussing NoMe (clearly) but to clarify my own understanding of the material in it as perhaps even less intended for public consumption than the drafts in the HoMe. As both a fan author and a scholar, I consider everything in the NoMe in that context, i.e., it is unlikely to convince me that my understanding of the legendarium requires a radical upheaval.
Time. Oh, time. Time and timelines. Perhaps one of the biggest banes of my existence as a Tolkien fan because they always feel like such a hot mess to me and so often mutually contradictory, and the NoMe material doesn't help.
It just doesn't add up. To me. But I fully acknowledge that I struggle with this material so maybe I'm missing something and would not be hurt/upset to hear from someone that, yes, it actually does make perfect sense.
How I've always handled the differences between the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Sun in my stories is to assume the two as functionally the same. In other words, a Year of the Tree as experienced by an Elf living in Valinor felt exactly the same as a Year of the Sun to an Elf living in Beleriand. This has something to do (in my mind) with the very special nature of the Light of the Two Trees. It slows time, sort of like approaching a black hole. This [conveniently] means that I can treat the timelines for YT in Aman and the timelines for YS in Middle-earth exactly the same.
At first, I felt gratified when I read, "In Middle-earth, one loä [Year of the Sun] aged an Elf as much as a year of the Trees, but these were in fact 10 times as long" (p. 5). That seemed to be pointing in the direction I've been heading for seventeen years now when making sense of the timelines. Then, on the very next page, it gets worse: a Year of the Trees equals 144 Years of the Sun (loär). JEEzum!
None of it hangs together. Later in the text, Tolkien states that Elves are most active until about age 60, at which point the feä begins to take over until, "by the age of 90-96 one of the Quendi had reached a stage similar to that of a vigorous and hale Mortal of high age and wisdom" (p. 19). Yet by the Noldorin arrival in Middle-earth, the main players--Fëanor and Fingolfin and the various grandchildren of Finwë--are all well past their prime and yet commit some of the deeds of greatest renown in the legendarium.
Tolkien, too, sees that his new ideas don't necessarily hang with the older material. In the much-talked-about material on pregnancy, he say, "This will not fit the narrative in the Silmarillion. What of Maeglin?" (p. 24). Again, the disconnect speaks to me of how draftlike of drafts these texts were. They're still at the phase, much like picking apart a knot, where the more picking one does the more hopelessly tangled the knot becomes.
Rarities and Exceptions. I got a good chuckle out of Tolkien's musings on twins, which he declares as "very rare" and then proceeds to name all the sets of twins in The Silmarillion (p. 22). Because twins are not rare. In the very next paragraph, he reminds us that we only see the "chief actors" in the history and their descendants, yet among those chief actors, we have four sets of twins. (He neglects to mention Elrond and Elros.) To be fair, he does hint that some of that might have to do with those later sets being half-Elven. Still.
It's a reminder of how contradictory the legendarium is, in this case literally within the same sentence. Imagine some canatic sees only the phrase "twins were very rare" and knows nothing else of the various sets of twins and proceeds to jump all over a fanwork that includes a set of Elven twins when even a teensy step backward shows that not only are their lots of twins, but there are lots of important twins in the story. As a writer myself (of original as well as fanfic), it is never hard for me to understand that putting something down doesn't elevate it to fact (much less the more nebulous "truth"). The word canon is misleadingly firm. We have a clearly stated fact, that is, till we step back to observe the many, many exceptions.
Narrators and Historiography. Of course, one of my chief interests in the new text is what is said of the narrators/historiography and whether/how the narrators are presented. I found this paragraph very interesting:
It must be remember, however, in considering the records and legends of the past, that these (especially those made by or handed down through Men) often only mention or name persons who play a recorded part in the events, or were the direct ancestors of such chief actors. It cannot therefore be concluded from silence alone, whether in narrative or in genealogy, that any given person had no children, or no more than are named. (p. 22)
- This text is c. 1959, which puts it close to the composition of the texts collected in Myths Transformed that allege a "Mannish" narrator and a desire to change from the Elven to Mortal mode of transmission. I've written before about why I don't think these intentions were carried out and The Silmarillion reflects an Elven narrator, but this is certainly another suggestion that this change was on Tolkien's mind.
- This speaks specifically of children but certainly seems to support Dwim and Elleth's concept of the "textual ghost."
- WOW does this have the potential to expand the family tree! Especially the idea of "more [children] than are named." I wonder if Tolkien was thinking of his statement that single children were rare among Elves and threw this out as a corrective because there are quite a lot of single children (just like the quite a lot of twins above).
Maturity. Oh me. The stuff on ages of maturation bugs me on so many levels.
First: "the Eldar grew to maturity less quickly than did the Avari" (p. 22). The rather racist assumptions of the Avari found in Laws and Customs among the Eldar--those which draw very much on the stereotype of the "savage"--can be justified as the perspective of the narrator, who is very explicitly identified as Ælfwine, i.e., someone without firsthand knowledge of any Avari who is repeating what he is told by a bunch of [potentially racist/ethnocentric] Eldar about Avari. But this ... is Tolkien writing as Tolkien, not through a narrator, which is pretty rare in and of itself.
What he seems to be doing here is rooting into biology/"nature" the idea that the Avari were less intellectually sophisticated than their Eldarin brethren. Elves who need longer to mature are seen as more advanced, i.e., his specific note that Fëanor required a full year in the womb rather than the usual approximate nine months. I suspect I'm putting too much a modern spin on it here (I don't know), but it also reminds me uncomfortably of the tendency to assume that children of color reach maturity faster than White children (and can, thus, be held accountable to adult standards of behavior where White children are pardoned with such phrases as "boys being boys"), as well as the tendency to assume that kids in "other countries" reach maturity faster than kids in the Western world (so child marriage, for example, can be excused as "just their culture" and thus untouchable rather than the abuse and rape of mostly young girls).
The concept of "maturity" is thorny with respect to gender as well. On page 29, Tolkien talks about when marriage and childbearing take place. The optimal age for men is age 48; for women, it is age 20.
ARRRRGH. This is one of those times when I feel like the texts very much reflect--and show the limitations of--Tolkien's male perspective. Of course the notion that grizzled old dudes tomcatting after nubile [virginal] PYTs is somehow rooted in "nature," not an aspect of culture that is itself warped and dismissive of the value of women by catapulting them from childhood to procreativity (whence they are drained and slip toward senescence). (See above about the correlation that seems to exist between later maturity and greater intellectual/creative achievement.) I know people will point out Victorian culture--hell, 1950s culture, since this was written c. 1959--but I have zero fucks to give about that. As a woman and a feminist, it creeps me the hell out, and I'm sorry it was written--however informally--into the "canon." Blech.
Withdrawal [not as a contraceptive method]. While we're on the subject of sexism, there is the issue of "quiescence or withdrawal" of Elven women before and after childbirth, which since their schedule is on the bonkers 144 YS = 1 YT discussed above gives us this tidbit:
For the same cause, Men who had dealings with the Eldar often saw far less of the Elf-women, and might even be unaware that some Elven-king or lord had a wife. For the withdrawal and quiescence of the wife might occupy the whole time of his sojourn among the Eldar, or indeed much of his whole mortal life-time ... [it] would in mortal terms endure for about 36 to 48 years. (p. 24)
On the one hand, this offers an explanation for the lack of women in the legendarium, where a flat-earth mythology demands awkward rewrites involving domes and magical Trees and one year = 144 but having only 18% of named characters as women goes unaddressed (credit to the LotR Project for that data). Well I guess we have an explanation (and therefore recognition of how off this particular aspect of the legendarium is?)
There's also the hint at the "Mannish" narrator again.
But. BUT. The explanation itself is so dreadfully sexist that I can't even. Once again, the exclusion of women from the political sphere is credited to "nature" rather than culture and gender roles. It's the Middle-earth version of excluding women on the base of "hysteria" and emotionality and PMS and the maternal instinct even as men are the ones starting wars that kill millions and shooting up concerts and schools and nightclubs and still get to be the "rational" and "logical" sex who by default is assumed to be competent to be in charge.
ARRRGH2.
Pregnancy. I'm not even saying anything on this. It's evidence, to me, of how the ideas being played with here about time are fundamentally broken when applied in context.
ELF SEX.
But the act of procreation ... is longer and of more intense delight in Elves than in Men: too intense to be long endured. (p. 27.
WOW. Chew on that, fanfic writers!
I assume this means that Elf-men don't take half a lifetime to be able to reliably find the clitoris, or maybe this is again the male perspective and Elf-women actually get headaches at the same rate as Mortal women.
This also seems to be a very clever way for Tolkien to ensure that his Catholic ideal that sex only happens for procreation is reflected in Elven behavior (especially given some of the skeevy >.> stuff in Appendix 1 about Elves as "unfallen" humans, see p.p. 407-9). They stop having sex at a point because it's so damn good that they just can't stand it, you guys.
>.>
Tags:
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-05 09:40 pm (UTC)The only bit I've seen that I've been interested in is the narrator/more children snippet. My reaction to that is more or less summed up as: all the OFCs. And to wish it would have been around in fandom twenty years ago so there might have been less vitriol.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-05 09:45 pm (UTC)And to wish it would have been around in fandom twenty years ago so there might have been less vitriol.
Ooooh, good point! Though I think they would have talked themselves around that; there was some hardcore internalized misogyny behind the anti-Mary Sue/anti-OFC phenomenon, methinks.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-05 10:51 pm (UTC)Oh, there definitely was (and is). Though whenever the topic of Mary Sues/OFCs come up, I always see it with a ton of push-back.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-05 09:49 pm (UTC)Something I've always loved about the Professor is he worked a bit like we do --- write it, revise it, change it, oops, fit it into that other timeline, change her hair colour, ooooh, what if those two got together and had a baby? um, can't be bothered to flesh this out, just put round numbers on the timeline and let's move on.... I watch people discuss NoMe almost as though it is Wisdom passed from beyond the veil and I am bemused.
Sure I'm curious, mainly about Númenor, but not at the absurd price it would cost me thanks to our exchange rate, and I'm pretty sure I can live without it. Anyone who has ever tried to make sense of all the Galadriel mythos should know to just cherry pick what makes sense or most appeals and move on. This is more of the same, only worse because he was playing with numbers and doing a lot of unrelated to anything stuff and I am sure there is a reason Christopher never touched any of it (common sense?)
And in no universe where I write will Gil-galad ever have silver hair.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-05 11:58 pm (UTC)Expense has prevented me from buying it also. Although by U.S. book prices the Kindle version is quite affordable for a book I will likely to keep as a source for research. I am financially devastated at the moment by my recent move. I will buy it eventually.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 11:50 pm (UTC)Because I hang out with people who are, by and large, Tolkien fans and fiction writers (or at least creative types), I forget that most Tolkien fans aren't actually fiction writers, so our process* is to them what designing a satellite would be to me.
*Even if, amusingly, we would see ourselves as having vastly different processes, I think we do connect on some level with what Tolkien is doing here.
exchange rate
If I can get "a copy" to you, let me know. I hate that so much of the world is shut out due to exchange rates. (And I do not use the h-word lightly!)
I am sure there is a reason Christopher never touched any of it
What is interesting to me is that all of it so far is written from Tolkien's PoV. He doesn't filter it through a narrator. It's just noodlings about how different things work ... it's interesting (to me) but of a very different nature than most of the HoMe texts, which were usually presented as in-universe texts. There's also a lot of math/numbers, which I like (and even the timeline stuff is starting to make some kind of weird sense), but which is not palatable to lots of readers.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-13 02:42 am (UTC)One of the most iniquitous things, as far as I'm concerned, is the postage -- Amazon is quoting around $19 for postage and import fees, which is almost the same price as the book. That was such a kind offer thank you very much, but that amount feels indecently expensive.
(I'm sorry I dropped off the planet there btw --- two close family members have Covid and are in hospital and Ray and I are in quarantine. This year has been worse than last year!)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 12:18 am (UTC)Your remarks are largely kicking in an open door for me. And a lot of them made me laugh! I always grumpily nourished the image of Tolkien on Elf sex as having a lot to do with his own married life. I imagine him stumbling home late from the Eagle and Child to find an exhausted Edith long asleep. What a sex life (for her)!
I am excited to read it. So many years later, I am still fascinated by his process and since I first started picking away at the volumes of HoMe have been acutely aware of "the disconnect . . . of how draftlike of drafts these texts were." That pretty much sums it up for me. I have been cherry-picking among the texts for all these years and enjoying it because although for me it can be horribly annoying in parts it is always so rich and fertile. Tolkien canon is as fluid as any draft could possibly be.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 02:50 pm (UTC)You and me both — I’m really looking forward to catching up on this particular volume; Anoriath and I have had way too many long discussions over all of these things and need new grist for thought — Melian and her embodiment are key to some things I’m working on. (I really want to write from Melian’s perspective, but I haven’t managed anything quite right for it yet.)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 03:43 pm (UTC)Melian is fascinating and her story contains lots of answered questions.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 04:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 11:57 pm (UTC)Did Tolkien just give us a woman choosing to prioritize something over children/family??
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 12:11 am (UTC)Thank you for sharing that. That’s very good to know.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 01:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 02:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 11:53 pm (UTC)ME TOO. I often do go there because ... eww. It's a bit weird. But I do often feel a bit voyeuristic reading those sections.
His fixation with sexual attraction having a clear terminus (after "the days of the children") is especially O.O to me.
I think you will love parts of it and want to scream into the pages like raging into a pillow at other parts. That's been my reaction so far. (I hit page 75 today.)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 12:12 am (UTC)Could be. OTOH, LACE seems to make Eldar sex lives a reification of Catholic ideals. No re-marriage; marriage performed by the participants (the Catholic sacrament of marriage is performed by the couple; the Church wants priests there to observe and regulate, but the priest doesn't perform the sacrament); sex only for potentially procreative purposes. Plus the "death before rape", maybe? Dunno if that's Catholic, except in making elven sex outside of marriage *impossible* even by force.
Sexual desire having a terminus I assume is a blend of authorial population control (can't have elves breeding like rabbits) and Catholic values. Though one could argue it would be theologically sound for elves to keep having sex while being open to the tiny chance that Eru would send them a late child.
Anyway I'd bet this is at least as likely as him writing about his own sex life.
OTOH again, the usual caveat that a lot of this stuff was 'noodling' or subject to revision; LACE seems inconsistent with Celegorm trying to abduct Luthien, and is still in the mode of elves being reborn rather than being re-embodied.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-20 05:24 pm (UTC)Likewise with the Melian stuff - he's trying to work out the ramifications of becoming incarnate for a being who was 'meant' to remain pure spirit. The cost of having a child in that situation is very steep, apparently, and so...there is a philosophical reason provided for her 'one and done' approach to childbearing. It might not sound like a Catholic dude in the 1950's came up with that justification, but he wanted to keep Lúthien one-of-a-kind, and this philosophical explanation fit. So, yes, Melian chooses her career as insightful queen and remaining 'herself' over having more children.
I have to assume that the contention that elves lose interest in sex is not speaking from his own experience of humans or his own marriage, but rather trying to work out the ramifications of having a body bound to earth for an extremely long time (as well as the population dynamics, when 'death from old age or sickness' is off the table). When he speaks of the hroa and the fea, he's trying to imagine a different body-spirit connection than humans would experience. And for the record, Catholic theology views married sex as having both a procreative and unitive purpose. It's not 'child-bearing only.' Sex with a spouse after the 'time of the children' is over would be perfectly acceptable, theologically speaking. The issue here is biology - there's not really a concept of an elf becoming infertile due to age, so...what stops them from having children throughout a millennium? He had to introduce some sort of 'window', but he couldn't age them out, and so...he was toying with other ideas as to why they stop.
As for the more 'intense' experience of sex among elves - I could imagine that the idea there is a joining of spirits, so an extremely high level of intimacy in every act. Or it could just be ridiculously pleasurable because elves are more 'in tune' with their bodies, so they get it right for their partner, too. I think it interesting that he apparently came up with 'too intense' and 'lost interest' as possible explanations for the change in behavior.
The mismatched ages (of an older man and a younger woman) was not his own experience of marriage. His wife was older than him. And while I cannot speak to any fantasies he may have entertained, I imagine he was basing that on...something else. Sure does sound skeevy, but the point remains that these ideas are more likely to be philosophical and anthropological ponderings than an autobiographical understanding of marriage.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 02:35 am (UTC)I hope you are well.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 12:52 am (UTC)I hope you're doing well also and having as pleasant a start to the school year as can be expected!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 04:38 am (UTC)I've always liked the idea that all of this material is ultimately transmitted by Men, which allows every deviation from "canon" to be explained as, "well, they just didn't understand what they were seeing" (consider the mistakes of interpretation one makes when looking at a dramatically different culture, whether contemporary or historical ...). Sexist Men would naturally not actually be able to see or comprehend the roles of women in a non-sexist Elvish society, and might reasonably, for instance, see "quiescence of the wife" where Elves would see "busy with other things, somewhere else".
One can get a lot of fic mileage out of textual ghosts; most of my OCs are wives and mothers and daughters who had to exist, but aren't named or mentioned.
I admit that I'm not particularly concerned about Tolkien's personal views. He was born more than a hundred years ago, in a world that would be alien to any current generation anywhere. I don't expect people from foreign cultures to think like me, whether the distance is geographical, temporal or sub-cultural.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 01:01 am (UTC)I encountered a bit today where he blamed a timeline that wouldn't work with his new time scheme on "scribal error." Poor scribes! Taking the blame because he decided to change how the game is played in the fourth quarter! :D
But it is stuff like that that I love.
I've always liked the idea that all of this material is ultimately transmitted by Men, which allows every deviation from "canon" to be explained as, "well, they just didn't understand what they were seeing"
This is interesting because I like Pengolodh as a narrator for much of the same reason: he was holed up in Gondolin for much of the history he was writing about, so one can cast details aside on the basis that he had no clue what he was actually talking about. But this ...
might reasonably, for instance, see "quiescence of the wife" where Elves would see "busy with other things, somewhere else".
... I love, not just because of the explanation using an in-universe narrator but because it challenges that only political (and martial) acts have value. <3
I admit that I'm not particularly concerned about Tolkien's personal views.
I have mixed feelings here. 100% personally ... yep, I totally agree. The dude's been dead longer than I've been alive. He was born in the 19th century. If I were to achieve any sort of lasting fame for my own work, I would not want readers 150 years down the road to judge me entirely by the standards of their day.
On the other hand, his influence is such that those attitudes have spread beyond the merely personal. His work is in many cases the prototype for others who have followed, including some of his more troubling ideas/conventions. Which isn't his fault but does make me feel like I want to point out where those details are. I do think there's value in recognizing them if only so we can do better. (And I do think SFF, in general, is doing better ... but it also wasn't for quite some time.)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 05:05 am (UTC)IN my own version, most of the older Noldorin women stayed in Tirion, helped Finarfin run the place, and made up most of his army in the War of Wrath (and built weapons of mass destruction for him).
His work is in many cases the prototype for others who have followed,
Very true! The thing that always irritates me is the ongoing insistence in most fantasy fiction, which is as you say, a direct inheritance from him, on calling groups 'races', when clearly they mean species. For Tolkien it is understandable in terms of the vocabulary of his era, and within his conceptual framework, where all sapients are creations of a deity, either directly or indirectly, sibling Children (or, I suppose in the case of the Dwarves and possibly the Ents, Grandchildren) of God. For modern writers, no.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 04:59 am (UTC)Wow, this sounds skeevier than LACE. Are we sure it's actual Tolkien, not the Estate whipping something up for more money?
Tolkien Gateway has a timeline where 1 YT = 10 (9.5?) YS, which seems to work. But LACE's life cycle years make most sense as YS, though I guess "wedded after the fiftieth year" and one-year betrothal could go either way.
LACE had pregnancy at one year. It also didn't imply the old male/young female you describe -- and which seems to barely exist in the canon elves?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 01:11 am (UTC)Yes! Once upon a time, the term for the kind of person who would comment on a 100K novel to complain that Finwe's eyes were described as gray but should have been blue, often using overblown language like "completely thrown out of the story." (Which actually would have been pretty awesome if true and saved a lot of writers a headache.)
The timeline stuff ... I don't think it's whipped up. I've no doubt it's legit, being a logical extension of his thinking so far on the subject, as published in the HoMe. I've read now to page 75, and it's kind of fascinating to watch Tolkien trying to work it out on paper. He's now, by this point in the book, tried several schemes and is currently landed on a very complicated one that proposes various ratios of YT:YS based on when a character was born and where they are currently living because he has to retrofit his system to a very extensive legendarium that--as in the case of Maeglin that I quoted in my post--can't exactly be scrapped entirely or even heavily rewritten. (Maeglin must be born in Beleriand within a rather small window of time that does not work with the 144:1 YT:YS ratio he originally proposed; he would have been a tiny child when he was captured by Melkor and "betrayed" Gondolin.)
which seems to barely exist in the canon elves?
It's par for the course for Tolkien, like when he says in L&C that all Elves married unless they were subject to "strange fates" ... and then has the majority of his major Elven characters unmarried. (Though he explains that in the texts in these books various ways.)
In the sections I read today, he spends quite a bit of paper calculating out the ages of various Elves at marriage and when they had their kids, and the skeevy dramatic age differences weren't present (though the women tended to be younger than the men and, in one interesting passage, he pointed out that Maeglin's relative youth was a reason Idril wasn't interested in him and then calculated out how Tuor's age meant that she would be interested in him). So it seems like, so far, this is a one-off idea? We shall see what the rest of the book holds in store.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 06:17 am (UTC)As both a fan author and a scholar, I consider everything in the NoMe in that context, i.e., it is unlikely to convince me that my understanding of the legendarium requires a radical upheaval.
Yeah, that's pretty much where I've got to with it too. I am slightly baffled by people getting their knickers in a twist insisting this is now canon.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 01:14 am (UTC)I think a lot of fans see something written down and assume it's along the same order as, say, the "Knife in the Dark" chapter in LotR when really they are entirely different kinds of texts that require entirely different modes of reading and interpretation.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 08:10 am (UTC)That would be the NoME phase, I think, and, in some of these pieces, he seems to be trying to construct a consistent framework for elvish population growth and getting thoroughly entangled.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 11:30 am (UTC)I wish he'd spent a fraction of that effort on elven food supply. We know more about their sex lives than about how they fed themselves.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 11:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-06 01:30 pm (UTC)The only stuff I know of is On Lembas, and a couple of old verse lines about Nargothrond orchards.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 02:14 pm (UTC)[ETA: Oh, I see you've found that in the meantime already.]
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 05:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 01:18 am (UTC)I'd extend the same to Christopher, who had (and admits) an obsession with narrative consistency that also resulted in some questionable editorial choices. Apple, tree, I guess!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 03:50 am (UTC)But it republishes only *part* of the Reader's Companion version of "Hunt for the Ring", leaving out the more detailed analysis of the Witch-King. Aargh!
Hey, elven economy. Finally, elven food production! Not that it sheds much light on Rivendell or Lothlorien, or why no approach to either ever mentions farms or even orchards.
"But the Exiles were heavily ornamented with gold, of which the total that they brought must have amounted to a great weight." -- hey guys, *priorities*
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 02:55 pm (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-09 04:29 am (UTC)Yeah, but it's also Tolkien noodling around. He'd also entertained Noldor maturing slower than Sindar!
Then in Chapter 16, 1959, he basically goes "fuck all my math, it's cumbrous and improbable, elves mature in 24 sun-years, end of story". I'd doubt he would keep the 'racial' maturity differences then. Perhaps even more than HoME volumes, this book is "evolution of ideas"; it's a bit perilous to take out any snippet as 'real' before finishing.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-15 02:06 am (UTC)