I'm sorry to hear that there's some contingent of viewers that aren't taking these commentaries for what they are and have decided to be rude or hostile instead. For whatever it's worth to you, Dr. Crawford, I appreciate your insight very much!
As for the parallels to addiction that you found, Tolkien said it himself: His stories aren't allegorical, but they are applicable. Regardless of what Tolkien intended or not, an applicable reading of the Ring, and especially in the way the Hobbits are affected by it, as addiction, is entirely valid and, in my opinion, entirely appropriate.
Having served in war I think Tolkien appreciated the fact that where and under what conditions a person sleeps can tell much more of a story than may be realized by those who take their rest for granted. That one seemingly trivial tidbit of information provides an awful lot of context about the characters and their status in life. Like the rest of his work, it's not over-explained, allowing the reader's imagination to color the text without conscious consideration.
I was in the Navy for several years; it's surprising how important sleep becomes in your life when you're not getting enough, or not getting it consistently, and you still need to carry on working.
Our culture's relationship to art is pretty messed up. For me, the more I love a work, the more its strengths AND its flaws become apparent to me. And that's not a negative thing. In fact I see it as a sign of deep love and affection. But it seems like most people feel like, if they love a work they must imagine it is completely flawless and any talk of imperfection is a betrayal. That kind of "fandom" is totally alien to me and it doesn't SEEM to bring those people any joy. In fact they seem overwhelmingly joyless about the things they love. Just seems an awful way to go through life.
This is a Silmarillion reference, but the story of the object of jealousy being thrown into the sea sounds a great deal like what Maglor does with one of the Silmarils. A jewel over which wars have been fought, and he throws it into the sea as well. Your phrasing of “something thrown away in jealousy rather than kept in jealousy” rang with that particular story. Knowing Tolkien, he could have drawn from that story more than once in different ways, and blended it with other notable gold/treasure found or lost in water.
I love how you throw me pearls. Robinson Jeffers had never reached my attention before but scouring my shelves I found three of his poems in my 3 shelves of poetry anthologies. All were excellent, The Purse-Seine is truly outstanding. What breadth and clarity, what imagery and beautiful phrasing. Thank you.
Tolkien’s “sleep hygiene” probably comes from his experiences in war. That’s how I take it based on some dialogue in Return of the King involving Pippin. He is (like most Hobbits) focused on food and rest, and the human soldiers take it to mean that Pip is a veteran. An experienced fighter knows that sleep and food are of unparalleled importance.
I wouldn't read the published Silmarillion before LotR, it's not the intended reading order and takes away a lot of the wonder and mystery of reading LotR first. The Appendices at the end of LotR give a lot of important background and are a kind of introduction to the Silmarillion. And if you read LotR first, re-reading it after the Silmarillion is quite different. Reading the Silmarillion first would be chronological in-universe and it has a lot of "lore" (as the term is used now). But I feel like the point of reading Tolkien is the journey, not the study. And the published Silmarillion is ultimately duct-taped together by Tolkien's son based on various notes and works of his father. Christopher Tolkien did a great job with what he had, but you notice. The Hobbit is the best book to start out with in my opinion, but it's such a short and easy read that it fits after LotR, too. The Hobbit has quite a bit of Nordic influence with the dwarves, the dragon and more - so it might be a good fit for this series. I apologize if any of my comments were annoying or pedantic. They were made to inform and give context, not complain in a "this should have been in the video" way. I do like to see a journey into the unknown from a scholar that brings as much unique perspective as you do.
I didn't read it until after LOTR and I personally preferred that, as LOTR was a magical mystery tour of Middle Earth with tantalising hints of deeper history etc.
Given that _The Silmarillion_ wasn’t published until 30 or so years after TLotR was published, a _lot_ of us didn’t read _The Silmarillion_ until long after reading TLotR.
i love this series, it gives a new perspective on the books that i grew up reading, both the the terms that you got in retrospect (the lothlorien earth stuff) and all the archaic spelling that i simply filled in from the context withouth considering modern spelling (me not being a native english speaker but from trøndelag in norway) and regarding the red/westmarch book stuff, don't think about it in this first reading, you get so much more out of it the second and third reading where you can begin to recognize where tolkien began to work that into the plot and see the sligth difference in the "writing" of Bilbo and Frodo.
Good to hear you will be reading the Silmarillion - I'm sure you will find many references to the Edda's and other sources that Tolkien himself used as a model for his fanciful creations. Your previous videos have been well done and thank you for doing this 'review' series.
@0:23 ... received with mixed feedback. 🤔👍 That's better than getting flogged, then getting dragged around town by your ankles! ... I thought you did pretty well and as usual learned a lot from an academic and often archaic philosophical view. TBH this was a refreshing perspective and it would be nice to see you continue down this path with other Celtic/Norse fan-fiction texts as time permits. Thank you again for your many wonderful videos and your excellent books! 👍
I hope you continue this series even beyond The Silmarillion. I just finished Unfinished Tales for the second time, and I was struck by how much linguistic content there is in it. And you would probably find interesting things in The Book Of Lost Tales (parts 1&2). There is a framing narrative where the main character, named either Eriol or Aelfwine, is an Anglo-Saxon who travels to Tol Eressëa and hears the earliest versions of the stories found in The Silmarillion.
"I agree 100% as long as you're talking about those original movies." Well they're the only ones worth talking about! :D But seriously folks. When Lucas told his friend Star Wars was too personal to farm out to other writers, like he did with American Graffiti, and he was going to write the script himself, his friend said "George you don't know anything about writing. You're terrible at it. If you're serious about this, let's rent an office for a month and I'll drill you on writing screenplays." Well, first of all, he DID bring other writers on, same writers from American Graffiti he just didn't credit them (hence why some parts of Star Wars are breezy and fun, and other parts are weird and unnatural), but secondly, his friend was Francis Ford Coppola who had just become the only person to win the Oscar for Best Screenplay AGAINST HIMSELF. There was probably no one working in 1976 who knew more about writing movies than Coppola. I think every year that's gone by since that month they spent in an office on the lot drilling storytelling, Lucas has forgotten more and become a worse writer.
Pseudo off topic, apologies, but have you ever read the Saxon Saga novels by Bernard Cornwell? Historical Fiction centered around the Danish/Norwegian invasions of the British isles ~800ad, first book is titled Last Kingdom. They are excellent :) one of my fav book series
Oh i would love to see this continue with the Silmarillion after LOTR! Love the Silmarillion and I'm sure it would be super interesting to hear your take on it and the links to norse myth
as a sidenote, considering your expertise in norse language/things you should come to the norsk kornølfetivalen sometime. it's a festival for the traditional farmhouse brewing traditions in norway and sorounding regions that have been preserved for atleast almost a thousand years with a yeast that have been in use since atleast since the viking times. there's interesting talks (maybe you could hold one?) and you can taste over 50 different traditional farmhouse ale's. it would be interesting to see what you find about ale in the sources and how the traditional ale that i and others brew relate/differ to them
Your discussion of the right to criticize reminded me of a quote from the Irish writer, Brendan Behan: "Praising Sean O'Casey is like praising the Lakes of Killarney; it's impertinent." Slán
Actually if you look closely, the dialogue uses contractions until they leave the Shire - the language of the story actually shifts distinctly as they journey East, I think it's complete by the Council of Elrond. It begins in the casual colloquial language of The Hobbit and Tolkien has to transition the tone into his more archaic style of English we now associate with fantasy.
That nailed the state of entertainment today. Being talked down to and treated like a "cognitive challenged person" is more akin to an insult, compared to a good journey of discovery. 😀 Also, kudos for staying the course. Consistency is the opposite of chaos. Never was much into the arrows that goes in every direction.
Could you please do a review or comment on the books by Stephen Grundy? I suppose his book Rheingold would be a pretty good start. Thank you for your videos, which I really enjoy. Regards and best wishes to your fiancé from Germany. 🍻
There are still criticisms and translations and debates of something as celebrated and revered as Homer's works being written today, and nobody bats an eye. Maybe it's a symptom of our modern black-and-white social media-driven culture that makes any criticism of Tolkien so rancorous sometimes. (if you don't say it's perfect that must mean you hate it) As an aside btw, I am firmly convinced Tolkien will be in the same boat a few hundred years from now, assuming there are any literate people around to do so. And I imagine a lot of confusion arising from historians trying to glean a picture of mid-20th century life from his works too. At least Dr. Crawford has *some* common references with the Professor, and look how how confusing some things in the books are to him, or anybody else in the 21 century not from the 20th century English Midlands
I'm sorry to hear that there's some contingent of viewers that aren't taking these commentaries for what they are and have decided to be rude or hostile instead.
For whatever it's worth to you, Dr. Crawford, I appreciate your insight very much!
I would love to see the series continue with the rest of the books, and maybe even the hobbit.
As for the parallels to addiction that you found, Tolkien said it himself: His stories aren't allegorical, but they are applicable. Regardless of what Tolkien intended or not, an applicable reading of the Ring, and especially in the way the Hobbits are affected by it, as addiction, is entirely valid and, in my opinion, entirely appropriate.
Yeah Tolkien's distinction between allegory and application is a really useful concept, I'm surprised I'd never heard of it elsewhere.
I'll be with this series for as long as you're doing it.
Personally, I've loved your commentaries so far. You have a unique perspective and I hope to see you continue as you see fit
Having served in war I think Tolkien appreciated the fact that where and under what conditions a person sleeps can tell much more of a story than may be realized by those who take their rest for granted. That one seemingly trivial tidbit of information provides an awful lot of context about the characters and their status in life. Like the rest of his work, it's not over-explained, allowing the reader's imagination to color the text without conscious consideration.
I was in the Navy for several years; it's surprising how important sleep becomes in your life when you're not getting enough, or not getting it consistently, and you still need to carry on working.
Our culture's relationship to art is pretty messed up. For me, the more I love a work, the more its strengths AND its flaws become apparent to me. And that's not a negative thing. In fact I see it as a sign of deep love and affection.
But it seems like most people feel like, if they love a work they must imagine it is completely flawless and any talk of imperfection is a betrayal.
That kind of "fandom" is totally alien to me and it doesn't SEEM to bring those people any joy. In fact they seem overwhelmingly joyless about the things they love.
Just seems an awful way to go through life.
This is a Silmarillion reference, but the story of the object of jealousy being thrown into the sea sounds a great deal like what Maglor does with one of the Silmarils. A jewel over which wars have been fought, and he throws it into the sea as well. Your phrasing of “something thrown away in jealousy rather than kept in jealousy” rang with that particular story. Knowing Tolkien, he could have drawn from that story more than once in different ways, and blended it with other notable gold/treasure found or lost in water.
Looking forward to the Two Towers- thanks for this series- it's giving this Tolkien lover some new perspectives.
I love how you throw me pearls. Robinson Jeffers had never reached my attention before but scouring my shelves I found three of his poems in my 3 shelves of poetry anthologies. All were excellent, The Purse-Seine is truly outstanding. What breadth and clarity, what imagery and beautiful phrasing. Thank you.
Tolkien’s “sleep hygiene” probably comes from his experiences in war. That’s how I take it based on some dialogue in Return of the King involving Pippin. He is (like most Hobbits) focused on food and rest, and the human soldiers take it to mean that Pip is a veteran. An experienced fighter knows that sleep and food are of unparalleled importance.
I wouldn't read the published Silmarillion before LotR, it's not the intended reading order and takes away a lot of the wonder and mystery of reading LotR first. The Appendices at the end of LotR give a lot of important background and are a kind of introduction to the Silmarillion. And if you read LotR first, re-reading it after the Silmarillion is quite different.
Reading the Silmarillion first would be chronological in-universe and it has a lot of "lore" (as the term is used now). But I feel like the point of reading Tolkien is the journey, not the study. And the published Silmarillion is ultimately duct-taped together by Tolkien's son based on various notes and works of his father. Christopher Tolkien did a great job with what he had, but you notice.
The Hobbit is the best book to start out with in my opinion, but it's such a short and easy read that it fits after LotR, too. The Hobbit has quite a bit of Nordic influence with the dwarves, the dragon and more - so it might be a good fit for this series.
I apologize if any of my comments were annoying or pedantic. They were made to inform and give context, not complain in a "this should have been in the video" way. I do like to see a journey into the unknown from a scholar that brings as much unique perspective as you do.
It's fine to not read the Silmarillion first. Most people don't, or didn't.
I didn't read it until after LOTR and I personally preferred that, as LOTR was a magical mystery tour of Middle Earth with tantalising hints of deeper history etc.
You shouldn't.
Given that _The Silmarillion_ wasn’t published until 30 or so years after TLotR was published, a _lot_ of us didn’t read _The Silmarillion_ until long after reading TLotR.
@@donsample1002 Sure, but the Sil was still published almost 50 years ago. Anyone just getting into it now has the option of what to read first.
i love this series, it gives a new perspective on the books that i grew up reading, both the the terms that you got in retrospect (the lothlorien earth stuff) and all the archaic spelling that i simply filled in from the context withouth considering modern spelling (me not being a native english speaker but from trøndelag in norway) and regarding the red/westmarch book stuff, don't think about it in this first reading, you get so much more out of it the second and third reading where you can begin to recognize where tolkien began to work that into the plot and see the sligth difference in the "writing" of Bilbo and Frodo.
Good to hear you will be reading the Silmarillion - I'm sure you will find many references to the Edda's and other sources that Tolkien himself used as a model for his fanciful creations. Your previous videos have been well done and thank you for doing this 'review' series.
@0:23 ... received with mixed feedback.
🤔👍 That's better than getting flogged, then getting dragged around town by your ankles!
...
I thought you did pretty well and as usual learned a lot from an academic and often archaic philosophical view.
TBH this was a refreshing perspective and it would be nice to see you continue down this path with other Celtic/Norse fan-fiction texts as time permits.
Thank you again for your many wonderful videos and your excellent books! 👍
I hope you continue this series even beyond The Silmarillion. I just finished Unfinished Tales for the second time, and I was struck by how much linguistic content there is in it. And you would probably find interesting things in The Book Of Lost Tales (parts 1&2). There is a framing narrative where the main character, named either Eriol or Aelfwine, is an Anglo-Saxon who travels to Tol Eressëa and hears the earliest versions of the stories found in The Silmarillion.
Jeffers’ Medea is one of the most haunting and poetic plays, it’s on UA-cam
Really enjoying these videos!
"I agree 100% as long as you're talking about those original movies."
Well they're the only ones worth talking about! :D
But seriously folks. When Lucas told his friend Star Wars was too personal to farm out to other writers, like he did with American Graffiti, and he was going to write the script himself, his friend said "George you don't know anything about writing. You're terrible at it. If you're serious about this, let's rent an office for a month and I'll drill you on writing screenplays."
Well, first of all, he DID bring other writers on, same writers from American Graffiti he just didn't credit them (hence why some parts of Star Wars are breezy and fun, and other parts are weird and unnatural), but secondly, his friend was Francis Ford Coppola who had just become the only person to win the Oscar for Best Screenplay AGAINST HIMSELF. There was probably no one working in 1976 who knew more about writing movies than Coppola.
I think every year that's gone by since that month they spent in an office on the lot drilling storytelling, Lucas has forgotten more and become a worse writer.
Pseudo off topic, apologies, but have you ever read the Saxon Saga novels by Bernard Cornwell? Historical Fiction centered around the Danish/Norwegian invasions of the British isles ~800ad, first book is titled Last Kingdom. They are excellent :) one of my fav book series
Oh i would love to see this continue with the Silmarillion after LOTR! Love the Silmarillion and I'm sure it would be super interesting to hear your take on it and the links to norse myth
as a sidenote, considering your expertise in norse language/things you should come to the norsk kornølfetivalen sometime. it's a festival for the traditional farmhouse brewing traditions in norway and sorounding regions that have been preserved for atleast almost a thousand years with a yeast that have been in use since atleast since the viking times. there's interesting talks (maybe you could hold one?) and you can taste over 50 different traditional farmhouse ale's. it would be interesting to see what you find about ale in the sources and how the traditional ale that i and others brew relate/differ to them
The story originally comes from The Red Book of Westmarch but dont forget that itself was translated for us by Elfwine/Eriol, the Anglo-Saxon.
Your discussion of the right to criticize reminded me of a quote from the Irish writer, Brendan Behan: "Praising Sean O'Casey is like praising the Lakes of Killarney; it's impertinent."
Slán
"Nuncle" puts me in mind of your video on Norwegian dialects: "An uncle"---"A nuncle"
All the best to you too.
Actually if you look closely, the dialogue uses contractions until they leave the Shire - the language of the story actually shifts distinctly as they journey East, I think it's complete by the Council of Elrond. It begins in the casual colloquial language of The Hobbit and Tolkien has to transition the tone into his more archaic style of English we now associate with fantasy.
I appreciate your genuine academic expertise. Looking forward to more! Also, Pwmiles is a great amateur voice worth listening to😊
Definitely leave the Appendices to last.
The more tolkien you cover the more I will watch
Tolkien master of High Fantasy! Reading the Lord of the Rings is just the beginning...
That nailed the state of entertainment today. Being talked down to and treated like a "cognitive challenged person" is more akin to an insult, compared to a good journey of discovery. 😀
Also, kudos for staying the course. Consistency is the opposite of chaos. Never was much into the arrows that goes in every direction.
the silmarillion is great, but its put together by his son, through writings he did not publish etc. just a heads up
Could you please do a review or comment on the books by Stephen Grundy? I suppose his book Rheingold would be a pretty good start.
Thank you for your videos, which I really enjoy.
Regards and best wishes to your fiancé from Germany. 🍻
Off topic but I had to ask, where did you get that shirt?
I got it for him from Pendleton this season!
Hey, my comment got a mention! I'm famous!
Isn't "Nuncle" a contraction of "Mine Uncle"?
15:42 - 15:46 ironically one of the dumbest things you've ever said
I have to say; when he says a quick word from his friends and partners, he is completely truthful. However there are never any words. He is a liar!
It might be better to make notes from the comments, rather than to pause to scroll through them.
what is FOTR?
Fellowship of the Ring.
@@torbenkristiansen2742 ty!
I was wondering as well. So thank you! 😊
There are still criticisms and translations and debates of something as celebrated and revered as Homer's works being written today, and nobody bats an eye. Maybe it's a symptom of our modern black-and-white social media-driven culture that makes any criticism of Tolkien so rancorous sometimes. (if you don't say it's perfect that must mean you hate it)
As an aside btw, I am firmly convinced Tolkien will be in the same boat a few hundred years from now, assuming there are any literate people around to do so. And I imagine a lot of confusion arising from historians trying to glean a picture of mid-20th century life from his works too. At least Dr. Crawford has *some* common references with the Professor, and look how how confusing some things in the books are to him, or anybody else in the 21 century not from the 20th century English Midlands
LOTR is the Odyssey, on horseback with the wife replaced by a ring. Hrolf Kraki is a greek tragedy based in Denmark.