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103-589: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien ( / ˈ r uː l ˈ t ɒ l k iː n / , 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist . He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College , both at the University of Oxford . He then moved within

206-491: A 1972 letter, he deplored having become a cult figure , but admitted that "even the nose of a very modest idol ... cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!" Fan attention became so intense that Tolkien had to take his phone number out of the public directory, and eventually he and Edith moved to Bournemouth , which was then a seaside resort patronized by the British upper middle class. Tolkien's status as

309-511: A balcony overlooking the pavement. There they would sit and throw sugarlumps into the hats of passers-by, moving to the next table when the sugar bowl was empty. ... With two people of their personalities and in their position, romance was bound to flourish. Both were orphans in need of affection, and they found that they could give it to each other. During the summer of 1909, they decided that they were in love." His guardian, Father Morgan, considered it "altogether unfortunate" that his surrogate son

412-432: A best-selling author gave them easy entry into polite society, but Tolkien deeply missed the company of his fellow Inklings . Edith, however, was overjoyed to step into the role of a society hostess, which had been the reason that Tolkien selected Bournemouth in the first place. The genuine and deep affection between Ronald and Edith was demonstrated by their care about the other's health, in details like wrapping presents, in

515-422: A code of dots by which Edith could track his movements. He left Étaples on 27 June 1916 and joined his battalion at Rubempré , near Amiens . He found himself commanding enlisted men who were drawn mainly from the mining, milling, and weaving towns of Lancashire. According to John Garth , he "felt an affinity for these working class men", but military protocol prohibited friendships with " other ranks ". Instead, he

618-592: A man with no job, little money, and no prospects except the likelihood of being killed in the Great War. In August 1914, Britain entered the First World War . Tolkien's relatives were shocked when he elected not to volunteer immediately for the British Army . In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled: "In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in for

721-515: A most striking way, entering the room silently, fixing the audience with a look, and suddenly declaiming in Old English the opening lines of the poem, starting "with a great cry of Hwæt ! " It was a dramatic impersonation of an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall, and it made the students realize that Beowulf was not just a set text but "a powerful piece of dramatic poetry". Decades later, W. H. Auden wrote to his former professor, thanking him for

824-568: A mythology for England " led him to construct not only stories but a fully-formed world, Middle-earth , with invented languages , peoples , cultures, and history . Among his many influences were his own Roman Catholic faith, medieval languages and literature, including Norse mythology . He is best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), and The Silmarillion (1977), all set in Middle-earth. The story revolves around

927-433: A mythology for England, a project he would abandon without ever completing. Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps. It was at this time that Edith bore their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. In a 1941 letter, Tolkien described his son John as "(conceived and carried during the starvation-year of 1917 and the great U-boat campaign ) round about

1030-501: A nit-picking classicist" and only the "technical research into languages and families". In The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis , the main character, Elwin Ransom, is a philologist – as was Lewis' close friend J. R. R. Tolkien . Dr. Edward Morbius, one of the main characters in the science fiction film Forbidden Planet , is a philologist. Philip, the main character of Christopher Hampton 's 'bourgeois comedy' The Philanthropist ,

1133-571: A poem named "Imram" at the same time, and it was the only element published in his lifetime. Virginia Luling writes of The Notion Club Papers that "Tolkien had reason to abandon it: the existing chapters are unsuccessful, though with gleams." Flieger comments that had either The Lost Road or The Notion Club Papers been finished, we would have had a dream of time-travel through actual history and recorded myth which would have functioned as both introduction and epilogue to Tolkien's own invented mythology. The result would have been time-travel not on

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1236-575: A post as reader in English language at the University of Leeds , becoming the youngest member of the academic staff there. While at Leeds, he produced A Middle English Vocabulary and a definitive edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with E. V. Gordon ; both became academic standard works for several decades. He also translated Sir Gawain , Pearl , and Sir Orfeo , but the translations would not be published until 1975. In 1924, he

1339-473: A reconstructed text accompanied by a " critical apparatus ", i.e., footnotes that listed the various manuscript variants available, enabling scholars to gain insight into the entire manuscript tradition and argue about the variants. A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship, date, and provenance of text to place such text in a historical context. As these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there

1442-531: A script used in the ancient Aegean, was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick , who demonstrated that it recorded an early form of Greek, now known as Mycenaean Greek . Linear A , the writing system that records the still-unknown language of the Minoans , resists deciphering, despite many attempts. Work continues on scripts such as the Maya , with great progress since the initial breakthroughs of

1545-418: A series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion . These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , form a connected body of tales, poems , fictional histories, invented languages , and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda and, within it, Middle-earth . Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to

1648-727: A strong connection to Pembroke College, Oxford . Stanley Unwin , Tolkien's publisher, was a nephew of Fisher Unwin, the founding member of The Johnson Club. The Notion Club Papers may be seen as an attempt to re-write the incomplete The Lost Road (written around 1936-1937), being another attempt to tie the Númenórean legend in with a more modern tale through time travel . It follows the then-popular theory of J. W. Dunne , who had suggested in his 1927 An Experiment with Time that dreams could combine memories of both past and future events, and that time could flow differently for observers in different dimensions. The modern name "Alwin",

1751-648: A translation of the Book of Jonah . Edith died on 29 November 1971, at the age of 82. Ronald returned to Oxford, where Merton College gave him convenient rooms near the High Street. He missed Edith, but enjoyed being back in the city. Tolkien was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1972 New Year Honours and received the insignia of the Order at Buckingham Palace on 28 March 1972. In

1854-483: A way to his great gifts as he did to Hilary and myself, giving us a mother who killed herself with labour and trouble to ensure us keeping the faith." Before her death, Mabel Tolkien had assigned the guardianship of her sons to her close friend, Father Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory , who was assigned to bring them up as good Catholics. In a 1965 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled

1957-555: A young man with too much imagination and little physical courage." Instead, Tolkien, "endured the obloquy ", and entered a programme by which he delayed enlistment until completing his degree. By the time he passed his finals in July 1915, Tolkien recalled that the hints were "becoming outspoken from relatives". He was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers on 15 July 1915. He trained with

2060-769: Is a cultured gentleman, but his prospects are poor in the extreme, and when he will be in a position to marry I cannot imagine. Had he adopted a profession it would have been different." Following their engagement, Edith reluctantly announced that she was converting to Catholicism at Tolkien's insistence. Jessop, "like many others of his age and class ... strongly anti-Catholic ", was infuriated, and he ordered Edith to find other lodgings. Edith Bratt and Ronald Tolkien were formally engaged at Birmingham in January 1913, and married at St Mary Immaculate Catholic Church at Warwick , on 22 March 1916. In his 1941 letter to Michael, Tolkien expressed admiration for his wife's willingness to marry

2163-588: Is a professor of philology in an English university town . Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld , the main character in Alexander McCall Smith 's 1997 comic novel Portuguese Irregular Verbs is a philologist, educated at Cambridge. The main character in the Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012, Footnote , is a Hebrew philologist, and a significant part of the film deals with his work. The main character of

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2266-527: Is derived from the Greek φιλολογία ( philología ), from the terms φίλος ( phílos ) 'love, affection, loved, beloved, dear, friend' and λόγος ( lógos ) 'word, articulation, reason', describing a love of learning, of literature, as well as of argument and reasoning, reflecting the range of activities included under the notion of λόγος . The term changed little with the Latin philologia , and later entered

2369-582: Is described in The Silmarillion , as part of an invented mythology for England . Tolkien's biographer John Garth adds that The Notion Club Papers character Lowdham's middle name, Arundel, is both an English place-name and an echo of the legendarium's Éarendel (an ancestor of Elendil ). Both stories however break off before much time-travelling takes place. Tolkien finally managed to incorporate literary explorations of time in The Lord of

2472-516: Is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics . When text has a significant political or religious influence (such as the reconstruction of Biblical texts), scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions. Some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology, especially in historical linguistics, where it is important to study the actual recorded materials. The movement known as new philology has rejected textual criticism because it injects editorial interpretations into

2575-417: Is treated amongst other scholars, as noted by both the philologists R.D Fulk and Leonard Neidorf who have been quoted saying "This field "philology's commitment to falsification renders it "at odds with what many literary scholars believe because the purpose of philology is to narrow the range of possible interpretations rather than to treat all reasonable ones as equal". This use of falsification can be seen in

2678-484: The Battle of Cambrai , when the end of the war seemed as far off as it does now". Tolkien was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 6 January 1918. When he was stationed at Kingston upon Hull , he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos , and Edith began to dance for him in a clearing among the flowering hemlock. After his wife's death in 1971, Tolkien remembered: I never called Edith Luthien —but she

2781-485: The Clent , Lickey and Malvern Hills , which would later inspire scenes in his books, along with nearby towns and villages such as Bromsgrove , Alcester , and Alvechurch and places such as his aunt Jane's farm Bag End, the name of which he used in his fiction. Mabel Tolkien taught her two children at home. Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil. She taught him a great deal of botany and awakened in him

2884-621: The Government Code and Cypher School . He was informed in October that his services would not be required. In 1945, Tolkien moved to Merton College, Oxford , becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature , in which post he remained until his retirement in 1959. He served as an external examiner for University College, Galway (now NUI Galway), for many years. In 1954 Tolkien received an honorary degree from

2987-719: The Kleine Scheidegg to Grindelwald and on across the Grosse Scheidegg to Meiringen . They continued across the Grimsel Pass , through the upper Valais to Brig and on to the Aletsch glacier and Zermatt . In October of the same year, Tolkien began studying at Exeter College, Oxford . He initially read classics but changed his course in 1913 to English language and literature , graduating in 1915 with first-class honours . Among his tutors at Oxford

3090-661: The Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BC, continued by Greeks and Romans throughout the Roman and Byzantine Empire . It was eventually resumed by European scholars of the Renaissance , where it was soon joined by philologies of other European ( Romance , Germanic , Celtic ), Eurasian ( Slavic , etc.), Asian ( Arabic , Persian , Sanskrit , Chinese , etc.), and African ( Egyptian , Nubian , etc.) languages. Indo-European studies involve

3193-557: The Misty Mountains ("including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods") is directly based on his adventures as their party of 12 hiked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen and on to camp in the moraines beyond Mürren . Fifty-seven years later, Tolkien remembered his regret at leaving the view of the eternal snows of Jungfrau and Silberhorn , "the Silvertine ( Celebdil ) of my dreams". They went across

J. R. R. Tolkien - Misplaced Pages Continue

3296-588: The National University of Ireland (of which University College, Galway, was a constituent college). Tolkien completed The Lord of the Rings in 1948, close to a decade after the first sketches. The Tolkiens had four children: John Francis Reuel Tolkien (17 November 1917 – 22 January 2003), Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien (22 October 1920 – 27 February 1984), Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (21 November 1924 – 16 January 2020) and Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien (18 June 1929 – 28 February 2022). Tolkien

3399-645: The Old English name " Ælfwine ", and the Quenya name " Elendil " all mean "Elf-friend"; in The Lost Road , the story involves father-son characters named Edwin/Elwin, Eadwine/Aelfwine, Audoin/Alboin, Amandil/Elendil, all meaning "Bliss-friend/Elf-friend", as the pair travel successively further back in time all the way through history to Númenor, just as the protagonists of The Notion Club Papers do in their lucid dreams. This situates Númenor, whose downfall

3502-545: The "earliest example of one of his invented alphabets" appears. Short texts in this notebook are written in Esperanto. In 1911, while they were at King Edward's School, Tolkien and three friends, Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Bache Smith, and Christopher Wiseman, formed a semi-secret society they called the T.C.B.S. The initials stood for Tea Club and Barrovian Society, alluding to their fondness for drinking tea in Barrow's Stores near

3605-594: The "unforgettable experience" of hearing him recite Beowulf , and stating: "The voice was the voice of Gandalf ". In the run-up to the Second World War , Tolkien was earmarked as a codebreaker . In January 1939, he was asked to serve in the cryptographic department of the Foreign Office in the event of national emergency. Beginning on 27 March, he took an instructional course at the London HQ of

3708-517: The 'fighting line. ' " Many of his dearest school friends were killed in the war. Among their number were Rob Gilson of the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, who was killed on the first day of the Somme while leading his men in the assault on Beaumont Hamel . Fellow T.C.B.S. member Geoffrey Smith was killed during the battle, when a German artillery shell landed on a first-aid post. Tolkien's battalion

3811-439: The 13th (Reserve) Battalion on Cannock Chase , Rugeley Camp near to Rugeley , Staffordshire, for 11 months. In a letter to Edith, Tolkien complained: "Gentlemen are rare among the superiors, and even human beings rare indeed." Following their wedding, Lieutenant and Mrs. Tolkien took up lodgings near the training camp. On 2 June 1916, Tolkien received a telegram summoning him to Folkestone for posting to France. The Tolkiens spent

3914-844: The English language in the 16th century, from the Middle French philologie , in the sense of 'love of literature'. The adjective φιλόλογος ( philólogos ) meant 'fond of discussion or argument, talkative', in Hellenistic Greek , also implying an excessive (" sophistic ") preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, φιλόσοφος ( philósophos ). As an allegory of literary erudition, philologia appears in fifth-century postclassical literature ( Martianus Capella , De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ), an idea revived in Late Medieval literature ( Chaucer , Lydgate ). The meaning of "love of learning and literature"

4017-520: The German word tollkühn , meaning "foolhardy", and jokingly inserted himself as a "cameo" into The Notion Club Papers under the literally translated name Rashbold. However, Derdziński has demonstrated this to be a false etymology . While J. R. R. Tolkien was aware of his family's German origin, his knowledge of the family's history was limited because he was "early isolated from the family of his prematurely deceased father". John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

4120-487: The Medical Officer's ointment merely "a kind of hors d'oeuvre and the little beggars went at their feast with renewed vigour." On 27 October 1916, as his battalion attacked Regina Trench , Tolkien contracted trench fever , a disease carried by lice . He was invalided to England on 8 November 1916. According to his children John and Priscilla Tolkien , "In later years, he would occasionally talk of being at

4223-524: The Notion Club; these meetings are said to have occurred in the 1980s. The notes, written by one of the participants, include references to events that 'occurred' in the 1970s and 1980s. Green publishes a first edition containing excerpts from the documents. Two scholars read the first edition, ask to examine the documents, and then submit a full report. The "Notes to the Second Edition" mentions

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4326-576: The Rings , in the form of a visit to what seems to be the deep past in the Elvish land of Lothlorien , following a tradition that in Elfland , time is different; the stay lasts a month, but feels like only a few days. According to Christopher Tolkien , had his father continued The Notion Club Papers , he would have linked the real world of Alwin Lowdham with his eponymous ancestor Ælfwine of England ,

4429-538: The Romanists." After his mother's death, Tolkien grew up in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham and attended King Edward's School, Birmingham , and later St Philip's School . In 1903, he won a Foundation Scholarship and returned to King Edward's. While in his early teens, Tolkien had his first encounter with a constructed language , Animalic, an invention of his cousins, Mary and Marjorie Incledon . At that time, he

4532-471: The abandoned novel, and reproduces examples of pages hand-written by his father. The text comments on C. S. Lewis 's Space Trilogy . Lewis and Tolkien were close friends and members of the Inklings literary club. The two men had agreed to write space travel (Lewis) and time travel (Tolkien) novels, since they agreed there were too few stories in existence that they really liked. Tolkien's remarks on

4635-481: The agricultural counties". A weak and emaciated Tolkien spent the remainder of the war alternating between hospitals and garrison duties, being deemed medically unfit for general service. During his recovery in a cottage in Little Haywood , Staffordshire , he began to work on what he called The Book of Lost Tales , beginning with The Fall of Gondolin . Lost Tales represented Tolkien's attempt to create

4738-599: The ancient languages of the Near East progressed rapidly. In the mid-19th century, Henry Rawlinson and others deciphered the Behistun Inscription , which records the same text in Old Persian , Elamite , and Akkadian , using a variation of cuneiform for each language. The elucidation of cuneiform led to the decipherment of Sumerian . Hittite was deciphered in 1915 by Bedřich Hrozný . Linear B ,

4841-577: The author of Beowulf was addressing human destiny in general, not as limited by particular tribal politics, and therefore the monsters were essential to the poem. Where Beowulf does deal with specific tribal struggles, as at Finnsburg , Tolkien argued firmly against reading in fantastic elements. In the essay, Tolkien revealed how highly he regarded Beowulf : " Beowulf is among my most valued sources"; this influence may be seen throughout his Middle-earth legendarium . According to Humphrey Carpenter , Tolkien began his series of lectures on Beowulf in

4944-452: The club. Jane Stanford links The Notion Club Papers to John O'Connor Power 's 1899 The Johnson Club Papers ; the two books have a similar title page. The Johnson Club was a "Public House School" and met in taverns as the Inklings did. The purpose was "Fellowship and free Exchange of Mind". Both clubs presented papers "which were read before the members and discussed". The Johnson Club was named for Samuel Johnson , who like Tolkien, had

5047-485: The comparative philology of all Indo-European languages . Philology, with its focus on historical development ( diachronic analysis), is contrasted with linguistics due to Ferdinand de Saussure 's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis . While the contrast continued with the emergence of structuralism and the emphasis of Noam Chomsky on syntax , research in historical linguistics often relies on philological materials and findings. The term philology

5150-690: The contradictory evidence in dating the documents, and an alternative date is presented: they may have been written in the 1940s. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote several unfinished drafts of The Notion Club Papers in 1945. The 120-page fragment was published posthumously by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and by Houghton Mifflin in the US, within Sauron Defeated , the 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth , in 1992. The book includes in addition some 40 pages of Christopher Tolkien 's commentary and notes on

5253-423: The debate surrounding the etymology of the Old English character Unferth from the heroic epic poem Beowulf . James Turner further disagrees with how the use of the term is dismissed in the academic world, stating that due to its branding as a "simpleminded approach to their subject" the term has become unknown to college-educated students, furthering the stereotypes of "scrutiny of ancient Greek or Roman texts of

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5356-519: The end of the given story it becomes clear Lowdham himself is a reincarnation of sorts of Elendil , leader of the men who escaped the destruction of Númenor. Other members of the Club mention their vivid dreams of other times and places. The Notion Club Papers is elaborately constructed. The main story (the Notion Club, itself the frame of the Númenor story) is set within a frame story . Both are set in

5459-523: The enjoyment of the look and feel of plants. Young Tolkien liked to draw landscapes and trees, but his favourite lessons were those concerning languages, and his mother taught him the rudiments of Latin very early. Tolkien could read by the age of four and could write fluently soon afterwards. His mother allowed him to read many books. He disliked Treasure Island and " The Pied Piper " and thought Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

5562-601: The evening of his 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith, who was living with family friend C. H. Jessop at Cheltenham . He declared that he had never ceased to love her, and asked her to marry him. Edith replied that she had already accepted the proposal of George Field, the brother of one of her closest school friends. But Edith said she had agreed to marry Field only because she felt "on the shelf" and had begun to doubt that Tolkien still cared for her. She explained that, because of Tolkien's letter, everything had changed. On 8 January 1913, Tolkien travelled by train to Cheltenham and

5665-535: The famous decipherment and translation of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, some individuals attempted to decipher the writing systems of the Ancient Near East and Aegean . In the case of Old Persian and Mycenaean Greek , decipherment yielded older records of languages already known from slightly more recent traditions ( Middle Persian and Alphabetic Greek ). Work on

5768-482: The fictional compiler of The Book of Lost Tales , and with Atlantis. One of the members of the Notion Club, Michael George Ramer, combines lucid dreams with time-travel and experiences the tsunami that sank Númenor. He cannot tell if it is history, or fantasy, or something in between. Verlyn Flieger writes that the journeying about of the protagonist recalls the Celtic Imram voyages, noting that Tolkien wrote

5871-445: The front: of the horrors of the first German gas attack , of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment, of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot, through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men's equipment as well as his own to encourage them to keep going. ... Some remarkable relics survive from that time: a trench map he drew himself; pencil-written orders to carry bombs to

5974-472: The future, after the actual time of writing, 1945. Embedded within the story are Tolkien's versions of European legends: King Sheave , and The Death of St. Brendan , a three-page poem also titled ' Imram '. In the frame story, a Mr. Green finds documents in sacks of waste paper at Oxford in 2012. These documents, the Notion Club Papers of the title, are the incomplete notes of meetings of

6077-468: The generous way he gave up his life at Oxford so she could retire to Bournemouth, and in her pride in his becoming a famous author. They were tied together, too, by love for their children and grandchildren. In his retirement Tolkien was a consultant and translator for The Jerusalem Bible , published in 1966. He was initially assigned a larger portion to translate, but, due to other commitments, only managed to offer some criticisms of other contributors and

6180-454: The history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter W . In mid-1919, he began to tutor Oxford undergraduates privately, most importantly those of Lady Margaret Hall and St Hugh's College , given that the women's colleges were in great need of good teachers in their early years, and Tolkien as a married academic (then still not common) was considered suitable, as a bachelor don would not have been. In 1920, he took up

6283-492: The influence of the man whom he always called "Father Francis": "He was an upper-class Welsh-Spaniard Tory, and seemed to some just a pottering old gossip. He was—and he was not . I first learned charity and forgiveness from him; and in the light of it pierced even the 'liberal' darkness out of which I came, knowing more about ' Bloody Mary ' than the Mother of Jesus —who was never mentioned except as an object of wicked worship by

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6386-427: The larger part of these writings. While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the tremendous success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings ignited a profound interest in the fantasy genre and ultimately precipitated an avalanche of new fantasy books and authors. As a result, he has been popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature and is widely regarded as one of

6489-748: The lines at Bouzincourt , he participated in the assaults on the Schwaben Redoubt and the Leipzig salient . Tolkien's time in combat was a terrible stress for Edith, who feared that every knock on the door might carry news of her husband's death. Edith could track her husband's movements on a map of the Western Front . The Reverend Mervyn S. Evers, Anglican chaplain to the Lancashire Fusiliers, recorded that Tolkien and his fellow officers were eaten by "hordes of lice" which found

6592-478: The meetings of an Oxford arts discussion group, the Notion Club. During these meetings, Alwin Arundel Lowdham discusses his lucid dreams about Númenor , a lost civilisation connected with Atlantis and with Tolkien's Middle-earth . Through these dreams, he "discovers" much about the Númenor story and the languages of Middle-earth (notably Quenya , Sindarin , and Adûnaic ). While not finished, at

6695-569: The most influential authors of all time. Tolkien was English, and thought of himself as such. His immediate paternal ancestors were middle-class craftsmen who made and sold clocks, watches and pianos in London and Birmingham . The Tolkien family originated in the East Prussian town of Kreuzburg near Königsberg , which had been founded during the medieval German eastward expansion , where his earliest-known paternal ancestor, Michel Tolkien,

6798-402: The name " Nodens ", following Sir Mortimer Wheeler 's unearthing of a Roman Asclepeion at Lydney Park , Gloucestershire, in 1928. In the 1920s, Tolkien undertook a translation of Beowulf , which he finished in 1926, but did not publish. It was later edited by his son Christopher and published in 2014. Ten years after finishing his translation, Tolkien gave a highly acclaimed lecture on

6901-588: The night before his departure in a room at the Plough & Harrow Hotel in Edgbaston , Birmingham. He later wrote: "Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then ... it was like a death." On 5 June 1916, Tolkien boarded a troop transport for an overnight voyage to Calais . Like other soldiers arriving for the first time, he was sent to the British Expeditionary Force 's base depot at Étaples . On 7 June, he

7004-515: The original principles of textual criticism have been improved and applied to other widely distributed texts such as the Bible . Scholars have tried to reconstruct the original readings of the Bible from the manuscript variants. This method was applied to classical studies and medieval texts as a way to reconstruct the author's original work. The method produced so-called "critical editions", which provided

7107-524: The origins of older texts. Philology also includes the study of texts and their history. It includes elements of textual criticism , trying to reconstruct an author's original text based on variant copies of manuscripts. This branch of research arose among ancient scholars in the Greek-speaking world of the 4th century BC, who desired to establish a standard text of popular authors for both sound interpretation and secure transmission. Since that time,

7210-514: The pages hand-written by his father. J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, a philologist and a medievalist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages , especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of Beowulf , telling of a pagan world but with a Christian narrator, helped to shape his fictional world of Middle-earth . His intention to create what has been called "

7313-615: The phonetic approach championed by Yuri Knorozov and others in the 1950s. Since the late 20th century, the Maya code has been almost completely deciphered, and the Mayan languages are among the most documented and studied in Mesoamerica . The code is described as a logosyllabic style of writing. In English-speaking countries, usage of the term "philology" to describe work on languages and works of literature, which had become synonymous with

7416-632: The practices of German scholars, was abandoned as a consequence of anti-German feelings following World War I . Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, and journals. J. R. R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that "the philological instinct" was "universal as is the use of language". In British English usage, and British academia, philology remains largely synonymous with "historical linguistics", while in US English , and US academia,

7519-449: The relationship between languages. Similarities between Sanskrit and European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended. It is now named Proto-Indo-European . Philology's interest in ancient languages led to the study of what was, in the 18th century, "exotic" languages, for the light they could cast on problems in understanding and deciphering

7622-508: The results of human mental processes. This science compares the results of textual science with the results of experimental research of both psychology and artificial intelligence production systems. In the case of Bronze Age literature , philology includes the prior decipherment of the language under study. This has notably been the case with the Egyptian , Sumerian , Assyrian , Hittite , Ugaritic , and Luwian languages. Beginning with

7725-464: The same university to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College , and held these positions from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis , a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings . He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972. After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher published

7828-618: The same year Oxford University gave him an honorary Doctorate of Letters . He had the name Luthien [ sic ] engraved on Edith's tombstone at Wolvercote Cemetery , Oxford . When Tolkien died 21 months later on 2 September 1973 from a bleeding ulcer and chest infection, at the age of 81, he was buried in the same grave, with " Beren " added to his name. Tolkien's will was proven on 20 December 1973, with his estate valued at £190,577 (equivalent to £2,454,000 in 2023). Philologist Classical philology studies classical languages . Classical philology principally originated from

7931-521: The school and, secretly, in the school library. After leaving school, the members stayed in touch and, in December 1914, they held a council in London at Wiseman's home. For Tolkien, the result of this meeting was a strong dedication to writing poetry . In 1911, Tolkien went on a summer holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollected vividly in a 1968 letter, noting that Bilbo 's journey across

8034-405: The science fiction TV show Stargate SG-1 , Dr. Daniel Jackson , is mentioned as having a PhD in philology. The Notion Club Papers The Notion Club Papers is an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien , written in 1945 and published posthumously in Sauron Defeated , the 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth . It is a time travel story, written while The Lord of the Rings

8137-534: The story has gone crooked, & I am left, and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos . On 16 July 1919, Tolkien was taken off active service, at Fovant, on Salisbury Plain, with a temporary disability pension. On 3 November 1920, Tolkien was demobilized and left the army, retaining his rank of lieutenant. After the end of World War I in 1918, Tolkien's first civilian job was at the Oxford English Dictionary , where he worked mainly on

8240-419: The surname Tolkien or similar spelling, some of them members of the same family as J. R. R. Tolkien, live in northern Germany, but most of them are descendants of people who evacuated East Prussia in 1945, at the end of World War II . According to Ryszard Derdziński, the surname Tolkien is of Low Prussian origin and probably means "son/descendant of Tolk". Tolkien mistakenly believed his surname derived from

8343-404: The text and destroys the integrity of the individual manuscript, hence damaging the reliability of the data. Supporters of new philology insist on a strict "diplomatic" approach: a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found in the manuscript, without emendations. Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts. Cognitive philology considers these oral texts as

8446-442: The trilogy are similar in style to Lewis's commentary on Tolkien's poem The Lay of Leithian , in which he created a fictional history of scholarship of the poem and even referred to other manuscript traditions to recommend changes to the poem. Tolkien's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter , describes The Notion Club as a "thinly disguised" version of the Inklings, noting that the time travellers are two Oxford dons who are members of

8549-401: The wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition" remains more widespread. Based on the harsh critique of Friedrich Nietzsche, some US scholars since the 1980s have viewed philology as responsible for a narrowly scientistic study of language and literature. Disagreements in the modern day of this branch of study are followed with the likes of how the method

8652-621: The work, " Beowulf : The Monsters and the Critics ", which had a lasting influence on Beowulf research. Lewis E. Nicholson said that the article is "widely recognized as a turning point in Beowulfian criticism", noting that Tolkien established the primacy of the poetic nature of the work as opposed to its purely linguistic elements. At the time, the consensus of scholarship deprecated Beowulf for dealing with childish battles with monsters rather than realistic tribal warfare; Tolkien argued that

8755-529: Was Joseph Wright , whose Primer of the Gothic Language had inspired Tolkien as a schoolboy. At the age of 16, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt , who was three years his senior, when he and his brother Hilary moved into the boarding house where she lived in Duchess Road, Edgbaston . According to Humphrey Carpenter, "Edith and Ronald took to frequenting Birmingham teashops, especially one which had

8858-592: Was "amusing but disturbing". He liked stories about "Red Indians" (the term then used for Native Americans in adventure stories ) and works of fantasy by George MacDonald . In addition, the "Fairy Books" of Andrew Lang were particularly important to him and their influence is apparent in some of his later writings. Mabel Tolkien was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1900 despite vehement protests by her Baptist family, which stopped all financial assistance to her. In 1904, when J. R. R. Tolkien

8961-472: Was 12, his mother died of acute diabetes at Fern Cottage in Rednal , which she was renting. She was then about 34 years of age, about as old as a person with diabetes mellitus type 1 could survive without treatment— insulin would not be discovered until 1921, two decades later. Nine years after her death, Tolkien wrote, "My own dear mother was a martyr indeed, and it is not to everybody that God grants so easy

9064-544: Was J. R. R. Tolkien's second great-grandfather. In 1792, John Benjamin Tolkien and William Gravell took over the Erdley Norton manufacture in London, which from then on sold clocks and watches under the name Gravell & Tolkien. Daniel Gottlieb obtained British citizenship in 1794, but John Benjamin apparently never became a British citizen. Other German relatives joined the two brothers in London. Several people with

9167-454: Was almost completely wiped out following his return to England. According to John Garth, Kitchener's Army , in which Tolkien served, at once marked existing social boundaries and counteracted the class system by throwing everyone into a desperate situation together. Tolkien was grateful, writing that it had taught him "a deep sympathy and feeling for the Tommy ; especially the plain soldier from

9270-640: Was being developed. The Notion Club is a fictionalization of Tolkien's own such club, the Inklings . Tolkien's mechanism for the exploration of time is through lucid dreams. These allow club members to experience events as far back as the destruction of the Atlantis -like island of Númenor , as narrated in The Silmarillion . The unfinished text of The Notion Club Papers runs for some 120 pages in Sauron Defeated , accompanied by 40 pages of Christopher Tolkien 's commentary and notes, with examples of

9373-457: Was born around 1620. Michel's son Christianus Tolkien (1663–1746) was a wealthy miller in Kreuzburg. His son, Christian Tolkien (1706–1791), moved from Kreuzburg to nearby Danzig , and his two sons Daniel Gottlieb Tolkien (1747–1813) and Johann (later known as John) Benjamin Tolkien (1752–1819) emigrated to London in the 1770s and became the ancestors of the English family; the younger brother

9476-442: Was born on 17 February 1894. As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a large baboon spider in the garden, an event some believe to have been later echoed in his stories, although he admitted no actual memory of the event as an adult. In an earlier incident from Tolkien's infancy, a young family servant took the baby to his homestead, returning him the next morning. When he was three, he went to England with his mother and brother on what

9579-808: Was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (later annexed by the British Empire ; now Free State Province in the Republic of South Africa), to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857–1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel , née  Suffield (1870–1904). The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien , who

9682-502: Was informed that he had been assigned as a signals officer to the 11th (Service) Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers. The battalion was part of the 74th Brigade , 25th Division . While waiting to be summoned to his unit, Tolkien sank into boredom. To pass the time, he composed a poem titled The Lonely Isle , which was inspired by his feelings during the sea crossing to Calais. To evade the British Army's postal censorship , he developed

9785-624: Was intended to be a lengthy family visit. His father, however, died in South Africa of rheumatic fever before he could join them. This left the family without an income, so Tolkien's mother took him to live with her parents in Kings Heath , Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved to Sarehole (now in Hall Green ), then a Worcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham. He enjoyed exploring Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog and

9888-486: Was met on the platform by Edith. The two took a walk into the countryside, sat under a railway viaduct, and talked. By the end of the day, Edith had agreed to accept Tolkien's proposal. She wrote to Field and returned her engagement ring. Field was "dreadfully upset at first", and the Field family was "insulted and angry". Upon learning of Edith's new plans, Jessop wrote to her guardian, "I have nothing to say against Tolkien, he

9991-413: Was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" ( historical linguistics ) in 19th-century usage of the term. Due to the rapid progress made in understanding sound laws and language change , the "golden age of philology" lasted throughout the 19th century, or "from Giacomo Leopardi and Friedrich Schlegel to Nietzsche ". The comparative linguistics branch of philology studies

10094-479: Was promoted from a readership at Leeds to a professorship . In October 1925, he returned to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon , with a fellowship at Pembroke College . During his time at Pembroke College, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings , while living at 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford . In 1932, he published a philological essay on

10197-467: Was required to "take charge of them, discipline them, train them, and probably censor their letters ... If possible, he was supposed to inspire their love and loyalty." Tolkien later lamented, "The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity." Tolkien arrived at the Somme in early July 1916. In between terms behind

10300-424: Was romantically involved with an older, Protestant woman; Tolkien wrote that the combined tensions contributed to his having "muffed [his] exams". Morgan prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with Edith until he was 21. Tolkien obeyed this prohibition to the letter, with one notable early exception, over which Father Morgan threatened to cut short his university career if he did not stop. On

10403-524: Was studying Latin and Anglo-Saxon. Their interest in Animalic soon died away, but Mary and others, including Tolkien himself, invented a new and more complex language called Nevbosh. The next constructed language he came to work with, Naffarin, would be his own creation. Tolkien learned Esperanto some time before 1909. Around 10 June 1909 he composed "The Book of the Foxrook", a sixteen-page notebook, where

10506-623: Was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion . It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing—and dance . But

10609-565: Was very devoted to his children and sent them illustrated letters from Father Christmas when they were young. During his life in retirement, from 1959 up to his death in 1973, Tolkien received steadily increasing public attention and literary fame. In 1961, his friend C. S. Lewis even nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature . The sales of his books were so profitable that he regretted that he had not chosen early retirement. In

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