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Archive-name: tolkien/faq/part1
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Posting Frequency: 28 days
Last Updated: 1994/03/28
The Tolkien Frequently Asked Questions List (FAQ), is the first of
two informational files on J.R.R. Tolkien and his writings, the other
being the Less Frequently Asked Questions List (LessFAQ). The division
of questions follows several general criteria. The FAQ leans towards
questions of interest to people who have read only _The Lord of the
Rings_ and _The Hobbit_, together with most questions on Tolkien himself
and on topics which seem fundamental to his worldview (his linguistic
games in particular). The LessFAQ contains questions of a more obscure
nature, most questions arising from posthumous works, and in general
aspects of the nature and history of Middle-earth which are important
but tangential to _The Lord of the Rings_. There is also an element of
personal arbitrariness. All available sources have been used for both
lists. Criticisms, corrections, and suggestions are of course welcome.
William D.B. Loos
loos@hudce.harvard.edu
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TOLKIEN FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS LIST
Questions numbered thusly: 1) are in their final form.
Questions numbered thusly: 1] remain unrevised.
Sections/questions marked: * have been revised since the last
release.
** are new since the last release.
Table of Contents
I. Changes Since the Last Release (*)
II. Acknowledgements
III. Note on References and Conversion Table
IV. Commonly Used Abbreviations
V. Frequently Asked Questions
A) Tolkien And His Work
1) Who was J.R.R. Tolkien anyway?
2) Were the languages presented in _The Lord of the Rings_ real
languages?
3) What does it mean when people (or Tolkien himself) speak of him
as having been the "editor" of _The Lord of the Rings_ ?
4) How thoroughly realized was Tolkien's fiction that he was the
"translator" of _The Lord of the Rings_ ?
5) Why is Tolkien's work, _The Lord of the Rings_ in particular,
so difficult to translate (into other languages of our world)?
6) Did the events in _The Lord of the Rings_ take place on another
planet or what?
7) Was the northwest of Middle-earth, where the story takes place,
meant to actually be Europe?
8) Was the Shire meant to be England?
9) What were the changes made to _The Hobbit_ after _The Lord of
the Rings_ was written, and what motivated them?
B) Hobbits
1) Were Hobbits a sub-group of Humans?
2) Did Hobbits have pointed ears?
3) When was Bilbo and Frodo's Birthday? To what date on our own
calendar does it correspond?
4) Was Gollum a hobbit?
C) Elves
1) Did Elves have pointed ears?
D) Dwarves
1) Did Dwarf women have beards?
E) Istari (Wizards)
1] Who were the Istari (Wizards)?
2] Of the Five Wizards, only three came into the story. Was
anything known about the other two?
3] What happened to Radagast?
F) Enemies
1] What was the relationship between Orcs and Goblins?
G) Miscellaneous
1] Who or what was Tom Bombadil?
2) What became of the Entwives?
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CHANGES SINCE THE LAST RELEASE
There have been no changes since the release of 1996/07/08.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The following individuals made suggestions and contributions to these
FAQ lists:
Wayne.G.Hammond@williams.edu (Wayne Hammond Jr)
Aelfwine@erols.com (Carl F. Hostetter)
paul@ERC.MsState.Edu (Paul Adams)
wft@math.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Taylor)
cpresson@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson)
simen.gaure@usit.uio.no (Simen Gaure)
abalje47@uther.Calvin.EDU (Alan Baljeu)
sahdra@ecf.toronto.edu (SAHDRA KULDIP)
sherman@sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu (Bill Sherman)
markg@mistral.rice.edu (Mark Gordon)
hunt@oils.ozy.dec.com (Peter Hunt)
rrosen@cesl.rutgers.edu (Robert Rosenbaum)
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NOTE ON REFERENCES
There is a certain amount of cross-referencing among the questions
on both the FAQ and the LessFAQ lists. Any questions so referred to are
specified by the list, section, and question number. Thus, the first
question in the Hobbit section of the FAQ, "Were Hobbits a sub-group of
Humans?" would be referenced as (FAQ, Hobbits, 1). Note that the
section "Tolkien And His Work" is referred to merely as "Tolkien" and
the section "General History of Middle-earth" is referred to merely as
"General". E.g. the question "Who was J.R.R. Tolkien anyway?" is (FAQ,
Tolkien, 1) and the question "What exactly happened at the end of the
First Age?" is (LessFAQ, General, 1).
Sources for quotations have been provided in the form of volume
and page numbers; the specific editions utilized are listed in the next
paragraph. For those occasions when the proper edition is not available
(and the conversion table below is not applicable) the page numbers have
been roughly located according to chapter, sub-section, or appendix,
whichever is appropriate. For example, RK, 57-59 (V, 2) refers to
pages 57-59 of Return of the King and further locates the pages in
chapter 2 of Book V. PLEASE NOTE the distinction in the case of _Lord
of the Rings_ between *Volumes* and *Books*. LotR is comprised of three
Volumes (FR, TT, and RK) and of six Books (I - VI), which are the more
natural divisions of the story into six roughly equal parts. There are
two Books in each of the Volumes. Other sample references are below.
References to _The Hobbit_ are from the Ballantine paperback (the
pagination has been the same since the 60's. All other references are
to the HM hardcovers. Sample references follow:
Hobbit, 83 (Ch V) == Hobbit, chapter V
RK, 408 (App F, I, "Of Men", "Of Hobbits") ==
p 408 in Part I of Appendix F, the sections
entitled "Of Men" and "Of Hobbits"
Silm, 57 (Ch V) == Silmarillion, chapter V (BoLT and _The
Annotated Hobbit_ treated similarly)
UT, 351 (Three, IV, iii) == Unfinished Tales, Part Three,
Chapter IV, sub-section iii
(the Biography treated similarly)
Letters, 230 (#178) == letter number 178.
RtMe, 53-54 (3, "Creative anachronisms") ==
The Road to Middle-earth, in Chapter 3,
sub-section "Creative anachronisms"
CONVERSION TABLE
In _The Atlas of Middle-earth_, Karen Wynn Fonstad provided a
Houghton-Mifflin-to-Ballantine conversion table, which is reproduced
below. The "table" is actually a set of formulae by which HM page
numbers may be converted to Ballantine page numbers via arithmetic
involving some empirically determined constants. Since these are
discrete rather than continuous functions the results may be off by
a page or so.
[NOTE: in the Fall of 1993, Ballantine issued a new edition of the mass
market paperback of LotR in which the text has been re-set, thereby
changing the page on which any given quote is located. Thus, the
following table will no longer work with the latest printings, which may
be identified by the change in the color of the covers (the pictures are
unaltered): in the previous set of printings all the covers were black;
in the new set FR is green, TT is purple, and RK is red.]
HM Page Subtract Divide By Add
------------- -------- --------- -------
FR 10 to 423 9 .818 18
TT 15 to 352 14 .778 16
RK 19 to 311 18 .797 18
RK 313 to 416 312 .781 386
H 9 to 317 8 1.140 14
Silm 15 to 365 14 .773 2
Reference: Atlas, p. 191 (first edtion), p. 192 (revised edtion)
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COMMONLY USED ABBREVIATIONS
General:
JRRT J.R.R. Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
CT, CJRT Christopher Tolkien (son; editor of most posthumous
works)
A&U, AU George Allen & Unwin (original British publisher)
UH Unwin Hyman (new name for A&U c. 1987(?))
HC HarperCollins (purchased UH c. 1992; current British
publisher)
HM Houghton Mifflin (American publisher)
M-e Middle-earth
SA Second Age
TA Third Age
SR Shire Reckoning
Middle-earth Works:
H The Hobbit
LR, LotR The Lord of the Rings
FR, FotR The Fellowship of the Ring
TT, TTT The Two Towers
RK, RotK The Return of the King
TB, ATB The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
RGEO The Road Goes Ever On
Silm The Silmarillion
UT Unfinished Tales
Letters The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
HoMe History of Middle-earth
BLT,BoLT Book of Lost Tales
Lays The Lays of Beleriand
Treason The Treason of Isengard
Guide The Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings
(published in _A Tolkien Compass_)
Other Works:
FGH Farmer Giles of Ham
TL Tree and Leaf
OFS On Fairy-Stories
LbN Leaf by Niggle
HBBS The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm's Son
SWM Smith of Wootton Major
SGPO Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo
FCL The Father Christmas Letters
Reference Works:
Biography J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography; by Humphrey Carpenter
(published in the US as Tolkien: A Biography)
Inklings The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles
Williams, and Their Friends; by Humphrey Carpenter
RtMe The Road to Middle-earth; by T.A. Shippey
Scholar J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in
Memoriam; edited by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell
Atlas The Atlas of Middle-earth; by Karen Wynn Fonstad
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TOLKIEN AND HIS WORK
1) Who was J.R.R. Tolkien anyway?
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Englishman, scholar, and storyteller
was born of English parents at Bloemfontein, South Africa on Jan. 3,
1892 and died in England on Sept. 2, 1973. His entire childhood was
spent in England, to which the family returned permenantly in 1896
upon the death of his father. He received his education at King
Edward's School, St. Philip's Grammar School, and Oxford University.
After graduating in 1915 he joined the British army and saw action in
the Battle of the Somme. He was eventually discharged after spending
most of 1917 in the hospital suffering from "trench fever". [It was
during this time that he began The Book of Lost Tales.]
Tolkien was a scholar by profession. His academic positions were:
staff member of the New English Dictionary (1918-20); Reader, later
Professor of English Language at Leeds, 1920-25; Rawlinson and Bosworth
Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (1925-45); and Merton Professor of
English Language and Literature (1945-59). His principal professional
focus was the study of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and its relation to
linguistically similar languages (Old Norse, Old German, and Gothic),
with special emphasis on the dialects of Mercia, that part of England
in which he grew up and lived, but he was also interested in Middle
English, especially the dialect used in the _Ancrene Wisse_ (a twelfth
century manuscript probably composed in western England). Moreover,
Tolkien was an expert in the surviving literature written in these
languages. Indeed, his unusual ability to simultaneously read the
texts as linguistic sources and as literature gave him perspective
into both aspects; this was once described as "his unique insight at
once into the language of poetry and the poetry of language" (from
the Obituary; Scholar, p. 13).
From an early age he had been fascinated by language, particularly
the languages of Northern Europe, both ancient and modern. From this
affinity for language came not only his profession but also his private
hobby, the invention of languages. He was more generally drawn to the
entire "Northern tradition", which inspired him to wide reading of its
myths and epics and of those modern authors who were equally drawn to
it, such as William Morris and George MacDonald. His broad knowledge
inevitably led to the development of various opinions about Myth, its
relation to language, and the importance of Stories, interests which
were shared by his friend C.S. Lewis. All these various perspectives:
language, the heroic tradition, and Myth and Story (and a very real
and deeply-held belief in and devotion to Catholic Christianity) came
together with stunning effect in his stories: first the legends of the
Elder Days which served as background to his invented languages, and
later his most famous works, _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings_.
References: Biography; Letters; RtMe (esp. ch 1, on philology);
Inklings; Scholar.
Contributors: WDBL, Wayne Hammond Jr
----------
2) Were the languages presented in _The Lord of the Rings_ real
languages?
Most certainly they were, especially the Elven languages Sindarin
and Quenya. "[These were] no arbitrary gibberish but really possible
tongues with consistent roots, sound laws, and inflexions, into which
he poured all his imaginative and philological powers..." (Obituary,
in Scholar, p. 12). Furthermore, they were both derived from a
"proto-Elvish" language, again in a linguistically realistic manner.
[Sindarin was the "everyday" elvish language while Quenya was a kind
of "elf-latin"; therefore, most Elvish words in LotR were Sindarin.
Examples: most "non-English" (see FAQ, Tolkien, 4) place-names on the
map (e.g. Minas Tirith, Emyn Beriad) were Sindarin, as was the song
to Elbereth sung in Rivendell; Galadriel's lament was in Quenya.]
The language of the Rohirrim *was* a real language: Anglo-Saxon
(Old English), just as their culture (except for the horses) was that
of the Anglo-Saxons. (It was, however, not the "standard" West Saxon
Old English but rather the Mercian equivalent (RtMe, 94).) Most of
the other languages in LotR were much less fully developed: Entish,
Khudzul (Dwarvish) and the Black Speech (the language of Mordor, e.g.
the Ring inscription). Adunaic, the language of Numenor, developed in
1946 while he was finishing up LotR, was said to be his fifteenth
invented language.
References: Biography, 35-37 (II,3), 93-95 (III,1), 195 (V,2);
Letters, 175-176 (#144), 219 (footnote) (#165), 380 (#297);
RtMe, 93 (4, "The horses of the Mark");
Scholar, 12 (Obituary).
Contributor: WDBL
----------
3) What does it mean when people (or Tolkien himself) speak of him as
having been the "editor" of _The Lord of the Rings_ ?
The fiction Tolkien sought to maintain was that _The Lord of the
Rings_ (and _The Hobbit_ and the Silmarillion) were actually ancient
manuscripts (written by Frodo and Bilbo, respectively) of which he was
merely the editor and translator (a situation identical to much of his
scholarly work). He never stated this directly but it is implicit in
the way in which many sections of LoTR outside the story are written.
Thus, the Prologue is plainly written as though by a modern editor
describing an ancient time. Other examples are the introductory note
to the revised edition of _The Hobbit_, the Preface to _The Adventures
of Tom Bombadil_, and parts of the Appendices, especially the intro-
ductory note to Appendix A, Appendix D, and Appendix F. Most inter-
esting of all is the Note on the Shire Records, where Tolkien further
simulates a real situation by inventing a manuscript tradition (the
suggestion was that Frodo's original manuscript didn't survive but
that a series of copies had been made, one of which had come into
Tolkien's hands).
This entire notion was by no means a new idea: many authors have
pretended that their fantasies were "true" stories of some ancient
time. Few, however, have done so as thoroughly and successfully as
did Tolkien. The most effective component of his pretense was the
linguistic aspects of Middle-earth, for he was uniquely qualified to
pose as the "translator" of the manuscripts (see FAQ, Tolkien, 4).
References: introductory note to _The Hobbit_ (precedes Ch I);
FR, Prologue, Note on the Shire Records;
RK, Appendix A, Appendix D, Appendix F;
ATB, Preface.
Contributor: WDBL
----------
4) How thoroughly realized was Tolkien's fiction that he was the
"translator" of _The Lord of the Rings_ ?
Very thoroughly indeed. The scenario was that "of course" hobbits
couldn't have spoken English (the story took place far in the past --
see FAQ, Tolkien, 6); rather, they spoke their own language, called
Westron (but often referred to as the Common Speech). Tolkien "trans-
lated" this language into English, which included "rendering" all the
Common Speech place-names into the equivalent English place-names.
The object of the exercise was to produce the following effect: names
in the Common Speech (which were familiar to the hobbits) were
"rendered" into English (in which form they would be familiar to us,
the English-speaking readers); names in other languages (usually
Sindarin) were "left alone", and thus were equally unfamiliar to the
hobbits and to us. Since the story was told largely from the hobbits'
point of view, that we should share their linguistic experience is a
desirable result (especially for Tolkien, who was unusually sensitive
to such matters).
In portraying the linguistic landscape of Middle-earth he carried
this procedure much further. The main example was his "substitution"
of Anglo-Saxon for Rohirric. The "rationale" was that the hobbits'
dialect of Westron was distantly related to Rohirric; therefore, when
hobbits heard Rohirric they recognized many words but the language
nevertheless remained just beyond understanding (RK, 65 (V,3)). Thus,
Tolkien attempted to further "duplicate" hobbit linguistic perceptions
by "substituting" that language of our world (Anglo-Saxon) which has
(more-or-less) the same relation to English that Rohirric had to the
hobbit version of Westron.
There were many other nuances in the intricate and subtle linguis-
tic web he devised (always, he carefully explained, in the interests
of "reproducing" the linguistic map of Middle-earth in a way that
could be easily assimilated by modern English-speaking readers). Thus:
a) Archaic English roots were used in those Common Speech place-
names which were given long before the time of the story (e.g.
Tindrock, Derndingle; see Guide).
b) Some of the Stoors (who later settled in Buckland and the Marish)
dwelt in Dunland at one time (Tale of Years, entries for TA 1150
and 1630 (RK, App B)); the men of Bree also came from that region
originally (RK, 408 (App F, I, "Of Men", "Of Hobbits")). "Since
the survival of traces of the older language of the Stoors and the
Bree-men resembled the survival of Celtic elements in England"
(RK, 414 (App F, II)), the place-names in Bree were Celtic in
origin (Bree, Archet, Chetwood) (see also Guide). Similarly, the
names of the Buckland hobbits were Welsh (e.g. Madoc, Berilac).
c) Among hobbits some of the older Fallohide families liked to give
themselves high-sounding names from the legendary past (an example
of hobbit humor). Tolkien "represented" such names by names of
Frankish or Gothic origin (Isengrim, Rudigar, Fredegar, Peregrin).
These matters and much else is explained in detail in Appendix F.
References: RK, Appendix F;
Guide;
Letters, 174-176 (#144), 380-381 (#297);
RtMe, 88-89 (4, "Stars, shadows, cellar-doors: patterns
of language and of history").
Contributor: WDBL
----------
5) Why is Tolkien's work, _The Lord of the Rings_ in particular, so
difficult to translate (into other languages of our world)?
Because his interest in, skill with, and love of language are man-
ifest at every level and indeed in almost every word of LotR, thereby
producing a result difficult if not impossible to duplicate.
The previous question describes how Common Speech names were
"rendered" into English. The Guide to the Names in _The Lord of the
Rings_, Tolkien's instructions for translators, does attempt to
address this. In it he goes down the list of names in the index and
specifies which should be translated (being Common Speech) and which
should be left alone. It would require skillful translation to get
even this far, but that would only be the beginning. Reproducing the
other linguistic intricacies described in the previous question would
be well-nigh impossible; for example, Rohirric would have to be
replaced with some ancient language whose relation to the language of
translation was the same as that of Anglo-Saxon to modern English.
On another level, there is the diction and style of everything
said and told. The language used has a strong archaic flavor; it is
not an exact recreation of how Anglo-Saxon or medieval people actually
spoke but rather is as close an approximation as he could achieve and
still remain intelligible to modern readers. This was not accidental
but rather was deliberately and carefully devised. (See Letters,
225-226 (#171)).
There were, moreover, variations in the style in which characters
of different backgrounds spoke the Common Speech ("represented" as
English) (e.g. at the Council of Elrond, FR, II, 2; see also RtMe
90-93). There were variations in the style of individual characters
at different times (RK, 412 (App F, II)). There was even an attempt
to indicate a distinction between familiar and deferential forms of
pronouns (which doesn't exist in modern English) by use of the archaic
words "thee" and "thou" (RK, 411 (App F, II); for an example, see the
scene with Aragorn and Eowyn at Dunharrow, RK, 57-59 (V, 2)).
Finally, there was Tolkien's poetry, which was often far more
complicated than it appeared, and which in many cases is very probably
untranslatable. (The extreme case is Bilbo's Song of Earendil, FR,
246-249 (II,1); T.A. Shippey has identified five separate metrical
devices in this poem: RtMe, 145-146).
References: RK, Appendix F, 57-59 (V, 2);
FR, "The Council of Elrond" (II, 2), 246-249 (II,1);
Guide;
Letters, 225-226 (#171), 250-251 (#190) [on the Dutch
translation], 263 (#204) [on the Swedish translation];
RtMe, 90-93 (4, "'The Council of Elrond'"),
145-146 (6, "the elvish tradition").
Contributor: WDBL
----------
6) Did the events in _The Lord of the Rings_ take place on another
planet or what?
No. Tolkien's intention was that was that Middle-earth was our
own world, though his way of stating this idea was somewhat unusual:
he spoke of having created events which took place in an *imaginary
time* of a real place. He made this fully explicit only in Letters,
but there were two very strong indications in the published _Lord of
the Rings_, though both were outside the narrative.
The first was in the Prologue. It is there stated: "Those days,
the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all
lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then lived
were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the
North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea." (FR, 11). Since no
other reference is made to this matter either in the Prologue or in
the main narrative, it makes little impression on most readers, but
is clear enough once pointed out.
The second was in Appendix D, which presents lore on calendars in
Middle-earth. The discussion begins as follows:
The Calendar in the Shire differed in several features from ours.
The year no doubt was of the same length (*), for long ago as those
times are now reckoned in years and lives of men, they were not very
remote according to the memory of the Earth.
(*) 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds.
(RK, 385 (App D))
The quote is clear enough in and of itself, but that the year length
specified in the footnote is the precise length of our own year must
surely remove all doubt.
There follow excerpts from three letters wherein the matter is
further discussed.
'Middle-earth', by the way, is not a name of a never-never land
without relation to the world we live in .... And though I have not
attempted to relate the shape of the mountains and land-masses to
what geologists may say or surmise about the nearer past, imagina-
tively this 'history' is supposed to take place in a period of the
actual Old World of this planet.
Letters, 220 (#165)
I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary
world. ... The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which
we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials
of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of
N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little
glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.
Letters, 239 (#183)
... I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap(*) in time between
the Fall of Barad-dur and our Days is sufficient for 'literary cred-
ibility', even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised
of 'pre-history'.
I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary *time*, but kept my
feet on my own mother-earth for *place*. I prefer that to the con-
temporary mode of seeking remote globes in 'space'. However curious,
they are alien, and not lovable with the love of blood-kin. Middle-
earth is ... not my own invention. It is a modernization or
alteration ... of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the
_oikoumene_ : middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the
encircling Seas and (in the northern-imagination) between ice of the
North and the fire of the South. O. English _middan-geard_ ,
mediaeval E. _midden-erd_, _middle-erd_ . Many reviewers seem to
assume that Middle-earth is another planet!
Letters, 283 (#211)
The footnote in the first sentence of the last-quoted excerpt offers
a fascinating insight:
(*) I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years: that is we are now
at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the
same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think,
quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the
Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.
Letters, 283 (#211)
A final note is that not only is the place our own world but also the
people inhabiting it are ourselves, morally as well as physically:
... I have not made any of the peoples on the 'right' side, Hobbits,
Rohirrim, Men of Dale or of Gondor, any better than men have been or
are, or can be. Mine is not an 'imaginary' world, but an imaginary
historical moment on 'Middle-earth' -- which is our habitaion.
Letters, 244 (#183)
References: FR, 11 (Prologue);
RK, 385 (Appendix D);
Letters, 220 (#165), 239, 244 (#183), 283 (#211).
Contributors: WDBL, Carl F. Hostetter, Bill Taylor
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