Fall of Arthur

[Morgan]

You who subscribe to the MythSoc list will already know about this:



Information has leaked from Amazon.fr that we will probably see a publication of Tolkien's Fall of Arthur in May 2013, published by HarperCollins. This is indeed exciting news! (Actually, there are still some who finds this more interesting than a certain film coming out this December! )
http://www.amazon.fr/Fall-Arthur-Deluxe-Edi-Hb/dp/0007489897/ref=sr_1_6?s=english-books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342094217&sr=1-6

[Troelsfo]

Unless there's an emoticon for just plain "happy" I guess this will have to do . . . :-)

[geordie]

Super!

[wiebkes]

I agree with geordie

[Galin]

I agree with Morgan, Troelsfo, geordie, and wiebkes And halfir too, wherever he is beyond the Circles.

[Dorwiniondil]

I think Amazon may have jumped the gun on this announcement. - it isn't yet on the HarperCollins site. Still, as far as I know, it is ready for publication: an alliterative poem, incomplete, and edited by ... guess who.

[Almarëa Mordollwen]

Yes!!

[Morgan]

My guess is that Hostetter will be the editor. Or was it a hint that you will be the editor, Dorwiniondil (I don't know your real name, but I've understood from posts here that you are a published author)?

[Dorwiniondil]

<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">Someone far more illustrious than I, or even than Carl.
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">BTW, my published books are in fields far removed from Tolkien studies. Try feminist history, for starters. Edited by: Dorwiniondil

[scribe]

This is exciting news!

[geordie]

More illustrious, you say? Gosh - I wonder who it can be?!

[Dorwiniondil]

[wiebkes]

Dorwiniondil &amp; geordie do you have to make this more exiting than Christmas, birthdays and easter at once? Did not Morgan_TG made it exiting enough?


But then, since I left my country of origin not only is my birthday often divided in two, but some of my birthday presents even arrive a week before the actual date (and greeting cards do so as well) and I have shown (until now at least) that I can manage to wait until the actual day without any problems

[Dorwiniondil]

Oh what the heck. The editor is Christopher (afaik).

[geordie]

&gt;&gt;gasp!&lt;&lt;

[Lord of the Rings]

I'm looking forwards to the official announcement, especially re release dates - this is very exciting news!

[Aigronding Mordagnir]

Fantastic ! I'll keep an eye on this thread. And post the link to this thread on the Plaza's Facebook page.

[Dorwiniondil]

<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">There's quite a bit of discussion of this on FB already, mainly (I think) on the Christopher Tolkien group.
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">In fact there are a couple of very brief extracts in Carpenter's biography. First, Mordred's lust for Guinever (sic):
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">His bed was barren; there black phantoms
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">of desire unsated and savage fury
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">in his brain had brooded till bleak morning.
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">And about Guinever :
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE"> .... lady ruthless
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">fair as fay-woman and fell-minded,
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">in the world walking for the woe of men
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">- which is reminiscent of the traditional Welsh rhyme:
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">Gwenhwyfar ferch Ogrfan gawr
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">ddrwg yn fechan, waeth yn fawr.
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">(Guinever daughter of Ogvran the Giant, bad when little, worse when big).
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">Edited by: Dorwiniondil

[Aigronding Mordagnir]

Thanks for sharing those extracts, Dorwiniondil ! I haven't joined the Christopher Tolkien group yet (I should have searched years ago for such); I'll do so now *G*.

[Galin]

'Oh what the heck. The editor is Christopher (afaik).'Hmm, well there are lots of people named Christopher...why have you left us in the dark

[Dorwiniondil]

Columbus? Marlowe?/ Foyle???

In fact I was wrong about FB: the real fratching is going on not in the CRT group but in response to a post by Pieter Collier.

[Morgan]

Yes, I've read Collier's thread now. My guess about Hostetter as being editor (or involved in some matter) was wrong!



Edit: here's a link to Collier's FB page. It appear like it can be accessed by us who aren't members of that website:
https://www.facebook.com/pieter.coll...51096244088792








Edited by: Morgan

[Galin]

By the way... in the recentinterview with Christopher... Robin (?)... did he mention anything aboutthis?I readthis translation but wasn't sure it was complete (this interview did happen, correct?)http://sedulia.blogs.com/sedulias_translations/2012/07/was-first-felt.html

[Morgan]

Nope, no mention about this work in that interview.

[Dorwiniondil]

Yes, this is a pretty fair translation of the piece in Le Monde, as updated online (for example, the print version has Frodo inheriting the Ring after the death of Bilbo. Ooops!!). The interview I believe really did happen. It looks authentic to me.

[Galin]

Thanks Morgan and Dorwiniondil

[IthilienLady]

GASP

Just fell out of my chair--literally.Thanks for posting!

[Hithleen Eltoran]

Brilliant news!

[Saranna]

[Troelsfo]

In another forum someone asked what this Fall of Arthurwas, and while I realise that the people who have posted here all know at least as much as I do about the poem, I suppose that there might be readers who are not so familiar with the various writings aboutTolkien who might speculate what the fuss is about



The Fall of Arthuris a long (unfinished at 954 lines) alliterative poem that Tolkien composed in the thirties. Various drafts and outlines are also extant. As late as 1955 Tolkien wrote that he still hoped to one day complete the poem, but I know of no evidence that he ever returned to it after abandoning it in the mid-thirties.
What little we know about it derive mainly from J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biographyby Humphrey Carpenter (part 4 ch. VI ‘The Storyteller’, p. 224f in my 2002 HC paperback edition), who was given access to the poem and from the Reader's Guide(*Arthur and the Matter of Britainp. 56) — volume II of Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull's excellent J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide(Carpenter doesn't mention the length of the poem or the other associated texts). Carl Phelpstead in his book Tolkien and Walesexplains that‘The unfinished poem has never been published or made accessible to scholars’ and he continues to voice the opinion that, since the publication of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, this poem‘must now be the most eagerly awaited of unpublished writings by Tolkien.’ An opinion that I find myself agreeing to.
The metre of The Fall of Arthuris natively English. Carpenter cites R.W. Chambers saying that the poem shows ‘how the Beowulfmetre can be used in modern English’ and Hammond and Scull also says that the poem makes use of the Beowulfmetre, while Phelpstead writes that‘The poem's title and metrical form suggest that a model or inspiration must have been the fourteenth-century English Alliterative Morte Arthure: written in alliterative metre’ referring to the so-called alliterative revival of the fourteenth century. The metre of the alliterative revival was looser than the original Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse forms (these differences are also discussed in Carl Phelpstead's article‘Auden and the Inklings: An Alliterative Revival’ in Journal of English and Germanic Philologyvol. 103 no. 4, October 2004). I am not sure if Phelpstead believes to detect this looser use in the few lines of The Fall of Arthurthat are published in Carpenter's Biography(and quoted above by Dorwiniondil), though to my untrained eye the only hint would be that the caesura (the small pause mid-line between the two half-lines) is possibly not so marked in all of these lines as was usual in the earlier Anglo-Saxon poems (though I do believe that they are fully within the variation seen in the old poems, and we should remember that Carpenter chose these lines not for the metre, but for their content). In any case, I don't think that it is important at this point to attempt to distinguish the between the Anglo-Saxon alliterative metre and the metre of the fourteenth century alliterative revival, since both are natively English (which I think is the important part), but perhaps Lord of the Ringscan comment on that part.
Carpenter mainly discusses the narrative of the poem, telling us that Tolkien‘did not touch on the Grail’ — this should also remind us of Tolkien's own statements in the letter to Milton Waldman from 1951 (Lettersno. 131 p. 144) that one of the reasons why he was dissatisfied with the Arthurian world was that ‘it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.’
I suppose that it is reasonable, based on Carpenter's description and Tolkien's later statements about Arthur and the Matter of Britain, to speculate that there will in The Fall of Arthurbe fewer and less explicit references to Christianity.
Carpenter also notes that Tolkien's The Fall of Arthuris one of the few places where Tolkien‘deals explicitly with sexual passion’ (the reason for his quoting the first three of the lines) and also that Tolkien's portrayal of Guinever (Tolkien's spelling) differs from that of‘most Arthurian writers’ by making her a more active agent for woe (see the latter two and half lines quoted above). In some of these things, we may be seeing hints of Tolkien trying to address one of the other major points he lists against the Arthurian world in his letter to Waldman, that‘its ‘faerie’ is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive’— here we might see Tolkien trying to bring the faërie back to some basic emotions, lust, power etc.
Phelpstead mentions about the alliterative metre that it‘clearly appealed to Tolkien, and perhaps to his fourteenth-century predecessors, because it was a ‘native’ English metre, unlike stress-syllabic rhyming verse imported from France’ and though the small samples in Carpenter's book are not sufficient to say for certain, it seems unlikely based on the descriptions that The Fall of Arthurwould be following e.g. the fornyðirsl*gof the Sigurd and Gudrún lays or any of the other skaldic metres of the Eddaic poems. This lends some weight to Phelpstead's argument, and suggests to me that Tolkien, with The Fall of Arthurmight have been exploring a different route to his great vision of a‘mythology for England’ (to use Carpenter's phrase— though, wouldn't it be great to one day discover that Carpenter had indeed borrowed that phrase from some unpublished letter by Tolkien?).
This is of course getting highly speculative— we know very little about the details of the poem besides what is revealed by Carpenter: that the poem is ‘an individual rendering of the Morte d'Arthur, in which the king and Gawain go to war in 'Saxon lands' but are summoned home by news of Mordred's treachery’ a description to which Phelpstead draws some interesting parallels to the diverse traditions of the Arthurian legends.

Edited by: Troelsfo

[geordie]

Troelsfo - thank you so much for that. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here; but while reading your post, I was very much reminded of halfir's style - clear, succinct, informative, while at the same time, also thinking of others.

(I'm thinking of the opening sentence here; where you give thought to those of our readers who may not have heard of the poem).

It's good to see that such erudition, and consideration for others, are still to be found on these boards - and you are not the only one who exhibits these qualities here on the Plaza. A fact for which I am very thankful.



Edited by: geordie

[wiebkes]

Troelsfo thanks a lot for the information what the Fall of Arthur, I am one of those who had not heard about what that poem is about - by its name I have an idea but future will show to what degree I am right or not



And geordie I agree with you

[Troelsfo]

You . . . I . . . really . . .



I have no words of my own: the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.
Thank you, friends!

[Lord of the Rings]

What geordiesaid
As far as metre goes, I think you could scan all the lines quoted as perfectly good 'general Germanic metre' (i.e. the metre of Béowulf, which is very nearly the same as the fornyrðisl*g). The alliteration pattern is precisely as expected for the canonical traditional line, and there is no line that can't be rhythmically scanned as valid in the traditional metre.
The one really striking thing is the exceptionally frequent use of extra unstressed syllables. In in his brainhad brooded, there are two stressed bits (bolded), as is traditional, but three unstressed bits (underlined), where the 'normal' traditional line just has two. Traditional verse does have some rules that allow for extra sets of unstressed syllables, and any one of these lines will work under the traditional metre. But three of these five lines, 60% of our sample for this poem (though admittedly our sample size is too small to be really reliable), have an extra set of unstressed syllables.
We'll see how the numbers work for the poem as a whole, but the patterns of unstressed syllables do seem more reminiscent of Middle English (which is rather laxer in such matters), rather than the somewhat rarer metrical variants allowed in the traditional metre.

Edited by: Lord of the Rings

[Saranna]

Also what geordie said!

[Tumunzahar]

You who subscribe to the MythSoc list will already know about this:
Information has leaked from Amazon.fr that we will probably see a publication of Tolkien'sFall of Arthurin May 2013, published by HarperCollins. This is indeed exciting news! (Actually, there are still some who finds this more interesting than a certain film coming out this December!)
http://www.amazon.fr/Fall-Arthur-Deluxe-Edi-Hb/dp/0007489897/ref=sr_1_6?s=english-books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1342094217&amp;sr=1-6

Excelent news indeed.
As already pointed out by Troelsfo, for a comparison, maybe it would be useful to take a look into The Alliterative Mort Arthure, usualy described as an excellent candidate for providing a useful inspiration to Tolkien in this case.
<em style="font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; ">The Alliterative Morte Arthure[/i]: A Critical Edition
Cf: message of John D.Ratelilff<h3 ="r"="" style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; overflow: ; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; color: rgb34, 34, 34; font-family: arial, sans-serif; : rgb255, 255, 255; ">mythsoc : Message: Re: [mythsoc]<em style="font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; ">Tolkien[/i]&amp; the Matter of Britain</h3>
<h3 ="r"="" style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; overflow: ; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; color: rgb34, 34, 34; font-family: arial, sans-serif; : rgb255, 255, 255; ">
</h3>Here's a description of Mordred from the poem (Carpenter excerpt #1):
lady ruthless,fair as fay-womanand fell-minded,in the world walking for the woe of men.I think this last passage is particularly impressive. Unfortunately, the whole poem's less than a thousand lines (Wayne &amp; Christina's COMPANION &amp; GUIDE gives its total as 954 lines).As for more about the work, in the piece I gave at Kalamazoo the year before last I devoted several paragraphs (about 750 words) to a discussion of what we can tell about the poem from just the available bits. It's obvious, for example, that the 14th century ALLITERATIVE MORTE ARTHURE is among Tolkien's major sources for the poem.Hope this helps--John R.
















Edited by: Tumunzahar

[Morgan]

I was reading Tolkien Studies, Vol. IV (2004) today and noted the following passage from Dimitra Fimi's excellent essay "Tolkien’s '‘Celtic’ type of legends': Merging Traditions" (p. 60):
There are actually two very short fragments, of no more than fortyfive lines in total, from the unpublished “Fall of Arthur” available to the researcher within Tolkien’s manuscripts at the Bodleian (Tolkien A 30/1, Folios 90-91). Although they constitute too small a sample for any valuable judgment of the poem, and some of the lines are very difficult to decipher due to Tolkien’s notoriously difficult handwriting, it is significant that Christopher Tolkien’s note on the Folio refers to the poem as “Morte Arthure.” This title would not point to Malory’s poem but rather to the Middle-English text known as the Alliterative Morte Arthure. This is a late fourteenth-century Arthurian romance, which, together with thealmost contemporary <i style="color: rgb0, 0, 153; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">Stanzaic Morte Arthur[/i], forms the main English Arthurian tradition before Malory (Benson 2).
For those interested, Fimi discusses aspects of the unpublished "Fall of Arthur" also before and after the above quotation.

Edited by: Morgan

[Lord of the Rings]

The quote from Fimi in Morgan's post ends with a citation of one 'Benson'. This refers to a pretty useful book called King Arthur's Death: The Middle English Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Alliterative Morte Arthure, edited by Larry Benson. It takes the perhaps un-Tolkienian approach of choosing whatever manuscript reading or normalization convention looks most like modern English spelling. This makes it rather less useful for someone interested in, say, Middle English dialectology, but Benson's edition is veryeasy to read as literature, even without any training in Middle English. He helpfully glosses archaic words in the margin the first several times they appear. If anyone is looking for a readable edition of the poem, Benson's is a good one to turn to.



Here's one edition of Benson's book on Amazon:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arthurs-Death-Exeter-Mediaeval-Studies/dp/0859892670/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1343899068& amp;sr=1-1

[Troelsfo]

News on publication dates from HarperCollins:



http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Title...-9780007489947
May 1st 2013 in Australia, and May 23rd in the UK . . .

[Aigronding Mordagnir]

Awesome news !



Very interesting line here : "The Fall of Arthur <i style="color: rgb80, 80, 80; font-family: Georgia; ">recounts in verse the last campaign of King Arthur who, even as he stands at the threshold of Mirkwood..."[/i]<i style="color: rgb80, 80, 80; font-family: Georgia; ">
[/i]Mirkwood would have been one of the places of the ancient world from the time of Middle-earth that would have survived into our historic period ?



Edited by: The Eleventh Doctor

[Lord of the Rings]

Ah, great to hear! May 23 is going in my calendar now



That blurb has one really interesting bit:
The Fall of Arthur recounts in verse the last campaign of King Arthur who, even as he stands at the threshold of Mirkwoodis summoned back to Britain by news of the treachery of Mordred.
I'd (cautiously) guessed from Carpenter's comment about Arthur campaigning in 'Saxon lands' that The Fall of Arthurmight be somewhat 'historical' in mood - that is, have the atmosphere more of post-Roman Britain than late medieval romance - perhaps more Y Gododdin(not that that's really Arthurian in any strong sense - I mean tone and style, not content) than Morte Arthure. I'm not sure what to make of the very Germanic (un-British and un-romance) Mirkwood, which doesn't really seem to play into anyidea I might have had about how Tolkien approached this poem. Now I'm more curious than ever!
Though I suppose it does fit with the Germanic style alliterative metre.

[Lord of the Rings]

Simul with 11. (Or did you just use time travel to post first?)

[Aigronding Mordagnir]

Simul indeed. No, I had used the word 'time' again at the end of the sentence so I edited to type the word 'period' so I wouldn't be repetitive. No TARDIS used.

Edited by: The Eleventh Doctor

[Beren Laerdir]

i am looking forward to this; by complete coincidence, i am on a bit of an arthur binge at the moment anyway.

[geordie]

Mirkwood would have been one of the places of the ancient world from the time of Middle-earth that would have survived into our historic period ?

Yes, of course!

Somewhat more prosaically, Mirkwood is the name of an actual forest in central Europe; it features in an ancient poem called 'The Battle of the Goths and Huns'. Christopher Tolkien writes of this in his edition of 'The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise'.

[Troelsfo]

I believe to recall either Flieger or Hemmi (who both spoke on the Breton lays at the Return of the Ring) saying something about Brocéliande of Arthurian literature also at times being called Mirkwood, but I cannot find any confirmation of this on-line, so this post is more in the line of testing whether my memory serves me right . . .



In the early stages of Tolkien's legendarium he used Broseliand as the name for the region we now know as Beleriand, and Mirkwood in those days, Taur-na-Fuin(Forest of Deadly Nightshade), lies just north of Broceliand / Beleriand as a part of Morgoth's realms. I am not sure if any of this means anything with respect to either story (except in terms of source studies), but I think the connections between these two magical forests of medieval legend is a very interesting topic

[Troelsfo]

And some calming news for those having to rely on Houghton Mifflin —that publisher has acquired the rights to The Fall of Arthurthough a publication date is as yet unknown:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/bo...note.html?_r=0

[Lord of the Rings]

I've never heard of Mirkwood being used for Brocéliande, but it might well have been. There is, for instance, a fairly large corpus of Arthurian literature in Old Norse (the most complete surviving version of one particular tradition of Tristan and Iseultis the Norse Tristrams saga ok Ísǫndar), not to mention other Germanic traditions like Middle Dutch and Middle High German. The Norse would be the most likely to have extended this term to Arthuriana, since that's the tradition where the compound myrkviðrhad the most currency generally, but for all I know it might have been a continental usage.



The specific compound mirk-wooddoes not appear in Old English at all, and I'd be very surprised if it was ever used in Middle English either. It's certainly not found in the major alliterative poems about Arthurian legend (Sir Gawain and the Green Knightand The Alliterative Morte Arthure).

[Lord of the Rings]

In Interrupted Music, Verlyn Flieger has a comment on Brocéliande and Mirwood:
Mirkwood may be Germanic in name, but it is unmistakably Celtic in character, drawn straight out of the darkly haunted woods of Celtic legend and Arthurian romance. Like Fangorn and Lórien it could pass in a pinch for the magical Breton forest of Broceliande, which, let us not forget, was the original form of the name that later became Beleriand. . .Interrupted Music, p. 39
Aside from Flieger's disagreement with Tolkien about the stereotypical associations of 'Celtic' and 'Germanic'*, she seems to be drawing a connection entirely on her own terms here. If she knew about any real-world use of Mirkwood for Brocéliande when she wrote this, I assume she would have mentioned it.
*(Should you wish to describe the riding to hunt of the Lord of the Underworld in 'Celtic' fashion (according to this view of the word), you would have to employ an Anglo-Saxon poet. -English and Welsh, MC p. 172)

[Troelsfo]

Thank you, LotR!

[Dorwiniondil]

Re Celtic and Germanic, in the passage immediately preceding LotR's quotation, Tolkien mocks the stereotype (promulgated by, if not originated by, Mommsen):
... the wild incalculable poetic Celt, full of vague and misty imaginations, and the Saxon, solid and practical when not under the influence of beer. Unlike most myths this myth seems to have no value at all.

[Dorwiniondil]

<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">Article in today's Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012...ur?INTCMP=SRCH
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">It includes quotations from C.R. Tolkien and J. Garth, among others - also the opening lines of the epic:
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">
<DIV marginheight="1" marginwidth="1" topmargin="1" leftmargin="1" ="WebWizRTE">Arthur eastward in arms purposed
his war to wage on the wild marches,
over seas sailing to Saxon lands,
from the Roman realm ruin defending.
Thus the tides of time to turn backward
and the heathen to humble, his hope urged him,
that with harrying ships they should hunt no more
on the shining shores and shallow waters
of South Britain, booty seeking.Edited by: Dorwiniondil

[geordie]

There's an interesting article in today's Guardian, which includes the first few lines of Tolkien's poem - Look here

"Arthur eastward in arms purposed his war to wage on the wild marches, over seas sailing to Saxon lands, from the Roman realm ruin defending. Thus the tides of time to turn backward and the heathen to humble, his hope urged him, that with harrying ships they should hunt no more on the shining shores and shallow waters of South Britain, booty seeking."

But I like Chris Smith's reaction -

For the book's editor at HarperCollins, Chris Smith, the news that Tolkien had finished work on The Fall of Arthur was an unexpected surprise.

Well, gosh - what other kind if surprise is there?

[geordie]

rats! A simul - haven't had one of those for ages.

[Lord of the Rings]

Exciting - and doubly delivered by two fine messengers!

I'm a little surprised the book is over 200 pages long (they say the story - I assume the page count includes plenty of commentary, but still). I'm cautiously hopeful that some of those pages might contain a few extra gems - perhaps a reprinting of Aotrou and Itroun, so that it's widely available at long last? I probably shouldn't get my hopes up on that - and anyway, justThe Fall of Arthurwill be quite amazing enough! But I do wonder . . .
Edit: Actually, on reflection this isn't that disproportionate. Sigurd and Gudrúnprinted something like 2100 lines of verse, which is roughly twice the amount of the 954 line Arthur. That book is 377 pages long. With roughly the same ratio (1 page per 6. 23 lines), we'd have a 153 page book in Arthur, all other things being equal. An extra 50 pages or so of commentary is hardly so much that we'd have to expect extra original material (especially if there are, unlike S&amp;G, draft materials for Arthurthat will be included).



Edited by: Lord of the Rings

[Troelsfo]

It has been reported (by Vivien Stocker of the French Tolkien Society, Tolkiendil, in the "Christopher Tolkien" Facebook group) that Christopher Tolkien has written "three essays about Arthurian legends" that are added to the book.

[Lord of the Rings]

Three essays is certainly enough to account for the book's length, then. Sounds interesting

[corlisswyn]

What would ya'alls recommend as preliminary reading into Arthurian legend before delving into Tolkien's version? While it seems there's a million and one Arthurian legend-related books, it looks like the earliest historical sources are Historica Brittoniumand Idylls of the King, from which Tolkien may have found source material?

[Lord of the Rings]

Dorwiniondil's probably the best one to talk about that, corlisswyn, but I can take a bit of a stab.



The Historia Brittonumis indeed pretty early (it's pretty much the first 'historical' source to mention Arthur), but don't get your hopes up for an extend version of the Arthurian legend. It's a pretty short text overall, and the actual material dealing with Arthur basically amounts to three paragraphs. On the one hand, this makes it pretty easy to read, but it's definitely more of a brief (semi-)historical note than literature.
The Idylls of the Kingis not particularly early compared to a lot of Arthurian material, being a modern work from the later 19th century - but it's one of the earlier modernversions of Arthuriana, and is definitely a classic piece of literature.
I think I'm right in saying that the most classic version of Arthuriana is still Thomas Malory's late medievalLe Morte d'Arthur, which is originally Middle English but can be gotten in a variety of modernizations and translations. It is a little hefty, since it's a compilation of many of the associated adventures of the knights of the round table, the holy grail, and all that. It's the main source for both The Idylls of the Kingand for T.H. White's The Once and Future King(another modern classic).
Malory was writing at the end of a long medieval tradition which had been developing the Arthurian mythology in a huge range of chronicles and narrative poems, from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, to Chrétien de Troyes's highly regarded French romances, to important German poems like Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, to various Middle English works, to many, many others. (One Middle English work is known today as The Alliterative Morte Arthure; I think it was the only poem before Tolkien's to tell about Arthur's end using alliterative verse.) The field is vast and wide and deep - I doubt there are many people (if any at all) who've read even all the medieval works of Arthuriana.
If you want something that's both 'early Arthur' and literature, you might want to look at Culhwch and Olwenfrom the collection of medieval Welsh tales published as the Mabinogion. There are a lot of good translations of the Mabinogion, and most of them include this story. This story is pretty much separate from (and probably predates) the main tradition of Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages.
All that said, I have a feeling one of Christopher Tolkien's goals is going to be to make The Fall of Arthurstand on its own as much as possible.



Edited by: Lord of the Rings

[Dorwiniondil]

Pretty good stab, LotR!

Arthurian literature is such a varied and often confusingmix of traditions that I wouldn't really recommend any reading, especially because I suspect Tolkien is going to have his own take on this. For instance, I wonder whether there will be such relatively late characters as Merlin or Lancelot? Especially since he's apparently got Arthur chasing the Saxons back to their homeland, which you will not find in the Mabinogion or Chrétien or even Geoffrey.

But just for a general look at the evolved legends, I'd recommend LotR's advice

[corlisswyn]

I've been wanting to jump into arthurian legend for a while, but haven't yet and am relatively uninformed in the area other than basic knowledge. So perhaps Tolkien should be my first introduction into the world of Arthur?

[Dorwiniondil]

Hi corlisswyn!

I suspect that Tolkien's take on Arthur is going to be too individual to serve as an introduction to the corpus of Arthurian literature. For an easy start, I'd recommend White, especially The Ill-Made Knight - White's own version of Lancelot's story; White gives a significant twist to this by interpreting "ill-made" as meaning pretty ugly. However, if you're up for it, the best is Malory, a very well-crafed compendium of the major Arthurian tales current in the 15th century - long, and heavy going in parts, but also fascinating. Anyway, Roger Ascham, a contemporary, summed Le Morte Darthur up as "open manslaughter and bold bawdry", i.e. something that should appeal to 21st century taste.

But be warned: when you get into Arthuriana, it's such a tangled forest of tales and suppositions and factions that you may find it difficult to escape!

[Ankala Teaweed]

Excited! Thank you to Christopher Tolkien!

[Troelsfo]

LotR and Dorwiniondil, thank you— I think (that is, I hope) that I'm about the same level in Arthuriana as corlisswyn and I, too, appreciate the advice



I did wonder, though, about the status ofLaȝamon's Brut, which I understand (mainly from Carl Phelpstead's excellent Tolkien and Wales) contains quite a lot of Arthurian material?

Edited by: Troelsfo

[Lord of the Rings]

Laᵹamon's Brutis a verse version of the history of England, and does have a substantial treatment of Arthuriana - one of the 'various Middle English works' I mentioned. It's based on a Norman French poem called Roman de Brut, by the poet Wace. Wace was in turn, like virtually all high medieval Arthurian stories, based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. Both Wace and Laᵹamon do add some new Arthurian material not found in their sources.



Brutis in Middle English, and told in a type of alliterative verse - so there's another example, along with The Alliterative Morte Arthure, of Arthur's ending and 'death' being told in that style:
'I will go to Avalon, to the fairest of all maidens and to Argante their queen---a very beautiful elf. Then they will heal up all of my wounds with healing draughts.And afterwards I will come again to my kingdomand abide with the Britons in great joy.' After these words something came from the sea:it was a small boat approaching, carried by the waves,with two wondrously formed women in it. They took Arthur up and carried him to the boat,laid him softly down, and went sailing off.Then Merlin went and said<i style="color: rgb102, 0, 51; ">that there should be great sorrow[/i]<i style="color: rgb102, 0, 51; ">after Arthur had gone.[/i]The Britons believe even yet that he still livesand dwells in Avalon with the fairest of all elves---and the Britons still look for when Arthur should come back.--Brut, lines 14306-14321 (very rough translation)
An alliterating, Middle English poem about Arthur and mentioning Elves - Brutgets mention in works about Tolkien and Arthuriana for good reason! (I'm pretty sure Tom Shippey also has a few things to say about Tolkien and Laᵹamon.)
(On the name Brut, it was popular tradition that Britain was founded by Brutus of Troy, one of Aeneas's descendants. Hence why works about the history of Britain were named after this Brutus.)



Edited by: Lord of the Rings

[Troelsfo]

Got a bit confused by the different line numbering (this edition seems to be numbering each half-line separately, so that the passage you quote starts at line 28610):http://books.google.com/books?id=AIIlAAAAMAAJ&amp;pg=PA144#v=onepage(The three volumes of this edition are all linked to from the Wikipedia article on "Layamon's Brut")





What surprised me most was that I was actually able to make sense of it with the help of a mix of modern Danish, English and German (and an occasional look at the translation — perhaps once every two or three lines on average). I don't think that I shall be readingLaᵹamon in full before the release of Tolkien's Fall of Arthur, but it will be fun to be able to take a comparative look once the new book is here.

Edited by: Troelsfo

[Troelsfo]

John Rateliff has picked up on the news and comments here:http://sacnoths.blogspot.dk/2012/10/...of-arthur.html

[Lord of the Rings]

Rateliff calls this 'the most eagerly awaited of all unpublished works by JRRT' - I wonder about that! It's certainly high up there, but his translations of Beowulfare also strong contenders for that place of honour.
Apparently the information on the three essays comes from the HarperCollins announcement originally:
Now it has been edited for publication by Tolkien's son, Christopher, who contributes three illuminating essays that explore the literary world of King Arthur, reveal the deeper meaning of the verses and the painstaking work that his father applied to bring it to a finished form, and the intriguing links between The Fall of Arthur and his greatest creation, Middle-earth.-http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Title...-9780007489947
Also, nice cover


It's from HarperCollins own site, so I think it's safe to say it's authentic. (Here's a bigger version:http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hc...79908-FC50.jpg)





Edited by: Lord of the Rings

[Lord of the Rings]

Tom Shippey has a particularly nice essay called Historical Fiction and the Post-Imperial Arthurthat covers a lot of the approaches to Arthuriana in the 20th century - he doesn't mention Tolkien, but I think this piece serves pretty well for outlining the modern context in which Tolkien was approaching Arthurian ltierature. Shippey's essay is in the recent (published this past January) BlackwellCompanion to Arthurian Literature, which is really a book to look for in a library (the hardback is £128!).

[Troelsfo]

Incidentally, though I do realize that some fourteen lines are not much more to go by of a 1000-lines lay, I wondered if the addition of those nine initial lines enables us (that is, not myself, but some of our experts such as LotR or Olwë) to say something more about the scansion of the poem?



To my inexpert eyes it still seems that Tolkien's scansion would be legitimate in the Old English metres, though there might be one or two places (I'm thinking of lines 6 and 7) where extra syllables make the stress-distribution seem a little off (I think that the initial‘and’ of line 6 and ‘that’ of line 7 are both superfluous— it should be possible to delete both and retain the meaning, which, in my highly subjective and inexpert opinion, would add some more force to these lines).

[Lord of the Rings]

Lines 6 and 7 are perfectly metrical - line 7 does make use of a feature called 'anacrusis', which is perfectly fine for that verse type. In Old English poetry at least. This wouldn't be so good as Old Norse, in which the few putative examples of anacrusis are all debated. Basically, the 'that with' is an unstressed preface to the rest of the line, with 'harrying' picking up the first real stress. I think this both naturally reads and scans as good OE verse making.



The 'and' in verse 6 would probably be acceptable even in ON poetry, though shorter lines are always favoured in that tradition. Runs of unstressed syllables can often be of varying length without disrupting the metre; in this case a single 'the' is expanded to a double 'and the'.
I did take a look at the metres for all the verses released so far to satisfy me curiosity. I thought maybe Tolkien would have used something more like Middle English patterns, in keeping with Sir Gawain, Laᵹamon, or the Alliterative Morte Arthure. But he seems to have gone for old fashioned Old English patterns. When we have more of a corpus I'll be interested in seeing how this poem compares to S&amp;G in terms of overall style, and in terms of the few specific features that distinguish OE and ON verse craft.

Edited by: Lord of the Rings

[Troelsfo]

Thank you, LotR



I should say that this explains both why it might seem to my ears a little off, though still legitimate OE alliteration. And the question you raise about the Middle English patterns (Phelpstead describes the Middle English alliterative revival as using looser metrical rules) is of course also what I am aiming at
Overall, Tolkien seems to have been the only of the Inkling-related alliterative revivalists who used the older style, with Lewis and Auden making alliterative poems that were, if anything, even looser than the during the Middle English alliterative revival. It is of course tempting to suggest that Tolkien was a better craftsman, at least in the OE &amp; ON Skaldic tradition, but such a conclusion might be going a bit too far

[Lord of the Rings]

Phelpstead describes the Middle English alliterative revival as using looser metrical rules



There's actually some interesting recent work on Middle English alliterative verse that's making a pretty good case that it's got its own quite coherent metrical rules - it's still 'looser' in that each line has more syllables, but the arrangement of syllables is maybe more regulated that previously thought. All this research long post-dates Tolkien, of course, but I think he'd have followed it with interest if he were still around.
And maybe be inspired to make some new poetry in that style. I think he had both a very good intellectual understanding of alliterative verse patterns, and a natural ear for the poetry in them - two things that help a lot in making good poetry in a rather technical medium. Auden was certainly a great poet, but he wasn't quite as invested in alliterative verse as Tolkien was.
In a bit of a tangent, one thing that's been bothering me lately is the question of why Tolkien never wrote any alliterative verse in Sindarin. He even named a Sindarin verse-mode in a way that implies it was alliterative:Minlamad thent/estent'first-echo (or first-sound) short/short', said to be 'not wholly unlike the verse known to Ælfwine' (HoMe XI, p. 311). I'm not sure if Tolkien meant that Sindarin Narnstyle resembled English verse particularly even among alliterative verses - Welsh poetry, for example, makes use of a group of stylistic principles called cynghanedd, which among other things includes alliterative patterns. Should Tolkien's comment be taken as implying that Sindarin Minlamadmetre was closer to OE than Welsh? Or was he just getting at the bare fact of alliteration using Ælfwine's Anglo-Saxon background as a natural point of reference?
We can only guess, since apparently he never decided to write even a snippet of this, or any other alliterative verse in Sindarin (or any of its various earlier incarnations as Goldogrin or Noldorin). I find this strange, in that most of the discernible inspirations for Sindarin (obvious Welsh, but also noticeably Old Norse, at least) have alliterative traditions, and he thought it was worth inventing the existence of such a metre for Sindarin (if not the metre itself).

[Briony_L]

I'm looking forward to this so much that I'm more excited about this than seeing the Hobbit films!!!
I've always loved reading the Arthurian legends and would like to read Tolkien's take on it all. SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!

[Troelsfo]

I think it is about time we resurrect this thread

Amazon is currently citing a delivery estimate for my copy of 29 May (next Wednesday) to 3 June (the following Monday), which is barely bearable

In the meanwhile The Tolkien Estate has kindly and enticingly put up some information taken from Christopher Tolkien's introduction: http://tolkienestate.com/the-fall-of-arthur/

And of course we have learned that the Bodleian (also today) opens an exhibition that will display, among other things, from the manuscript of The Fall of Arthur. I don't know if my family will allow me a trip to England this year, but I would sure love to see that!

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-o.../magical-books

http://www.culture24.org.uk/history%20%26%20heritage/literature%20%26%20music/art435250

[Troelsfo]

Reviews of The Fall of Arthur:

As I become aware of interesting reviews, I'll update this post (or start a new one depending on how far the thread has moved on).

John Garth: http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...of-arthur.html

Tish Wells: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/23/544...s-take-on.html

Elizabeth Hand: http://www.latimes.com/features/book...,7954386.story

John Rateliff: http://sacnoths.blogspot.co.uk/2013/...of-arthur.html

Ethan Gilsdorf: http://geekdad.com/2013/05/unpublish...r-is-released/

Felicity Capon: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...irst-time.html

Pre-reading commentary:

Alex Lewis and Ruth Lacon: http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...lation.php?553

Sørina Higgins: http://www.curatormagazine.com/sorin...rthur-adapted/

[Lord of the Rings]

I've got my copy, and have read the first canto and a bit. I'm a bit brain dead (it's the middle of a four day rowing regatta right now, so I'm kind of wiped), so I think I'll have to finish it tomorrow. Definitely very, very enjoyable so far, and lots to talk about already!

[Troelsfo]

I got the mail this afternoon that Amazon had dispatched my copy — now I eagerly await the hopefully speedy services of the German and Danish postal services: if only they were using the old quick message service

All that I have so far read about The Fall of Arthur looks promising, enticing and tantalizing, fuelling my impatience

[Beren Laerdir]

mines on the way too. looking forward to it :)

[Troelsfo]

Inspired by a post in the Tolkien Society Facebook group, and (much!) improved by comments there, I just thought I'd share this little prayer to my postman here as well

For staves starving   yet standing proud
awaiting in ardor   for Arthur's Fall
book of staves   boldly written.
My boon's bringer   I bid thee hasten
to hamfast's haven   with hero's telling
sooner than later   sating my hunger

[Lord of the Rings]

Very nice!

(Minor pedantry: the lines 'Arthur's Fall' and 'Boon's bringer' are each a syllable short (or rather, a metrical position short). Maybe 'In ardour waiting / for Arthur's Fall' and something like 'My boon's bringer / I bid thee hasten'?)

I hope your book comes soon