In Which She Gives Up and Posts Something. Anything.

[ealgylden]

I have this... thing... that I've been trying to write. Just some ideas on Rohan in the movie version of The Two Towers (well, mostly the movie, anyway), nothing too fancy or insightful. But it just. won't. cooperate. Stupid, evil writer's block- there are sections that are working well, and other sections that sound good in my brain but refuse to get themselves on a page, and a whole lot of missing connective tissue. Hence the title of this post- I need to get something down, in the hope that it kicks the rest free (I've always liked that sort of nineteenth-century descriptive chapter titling, too- those "In which a rabbit attacks the curate's ankle, and a picnic is ruined by a handkerchief"-type titles).

I'll be throwing around some Old English words (and quotes, later on), but thanks to the limits of my computer knowledge, I'm pretending that I've never heard of accent marks or special characters (all eths and thorns have become "th", which always annoys me but what can you do). Also, this first section (and perhaps the next one) is playing largely off the book version of LotR, but once I get into the characters, I'll be using mostly the movie versions. I'll mention it if I switch back and forth, though.

The trigger for this whole endeavor was a conversation with a friend about the "Viking-ness" of the Rohirrim. Friend is a medievalist like myself, but her area of specialization is thirteenth-century southern France, so Vikings are a fair bit out of her realm. Not so for me, and my first instinct was to agree with her. Then I started thinking about it and decided that, no, the Rohirrim weren't very Viking at all. Then I changed my mind back to the "yea" side. Sort of. But I'll get into that.

A Word about Language

Like I said back in my manifesto about why I treat the books and the movies as equally valid, I’ve always found it rather endearing that Tolkien couldn’t quite bring himself to admit that the Middle Earth he created wasn’t, in fact, real. He loved his countries and peoples and languages so much, and to say “Yes, I made it up, aren’t I clever?” was to deny them life. So he protected his creation with authorial conceits and rhetoric, historical references and metaphysical entanglements. Elves are analogous to Man’s purity before the Fall (a concept which the devout Catholic in Tolkien took seriously). Gondor, like late Merovingian Francia, is ruled by Stewards in the name of a (for all intents and purposes) non-existent king. The text itself is a "translation" of the Red Book, Bilbo and Frodo’s records of the events in which they participated. Such devices are tongue-in-cheek, yet... not quite. It wasn’t so much that Tolkien believed in elves and hobbits and magic rings, as that he couldn’t quite bring himself to admit that he didn’t believe, because the idea was so attractive.

So, supposedly, the characters and nations of LotR have been translated for us, recast in terms that have meaning to our educated minds. But Tolkien cautions us not to forget that it is, in fact, a translation. In a footnote in Appendix F (section II, "On Translation"), he warns that although Old English (or Anglo-Saxon- which term you prefer has more to do with where and when you were educated than anything else) is used to represent the language of Rohan, "this linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons or mode of warfare, except in a general way due to their circumstances..."

Hm. So he says. Well, since he started with language, let's do the same. In general, there’s a lot of Old English scattered around in the books; if you know OE and have an eye for linguistic choices, then the use of words like "flet" (OE "floor") and "orc" (from OE orcneas, "evil spirit, monster") stands out. People and places, too- Beorn, the mysterious shape-changing founder of the Beornings, shares his name with an OE word for "man" or "warrior" (a word which originally meant "bear," fittingly enough). Orthanc is both the intricately constructed home of the industrially-minded Saruman and an OE word meaning "ingenuity, skill." This isn't surprising considering Tolkien's own training and teaching interests; writers, like everybody else, use what they know.

These word choices remain scattered until the action moves to Rohan, at which point they become a flood. A quick glance through the Rohan section of TTT shows that the majority of the names provided are either OE nouns or are derived from such, from Theoden King (from theoden, "chief, lord, king") down to Peter Jackson’s creation Haleth, son of Hama (from haeleth, "hero, warrior"- and though this particular Haleth may be a Jacksonian addition, the name is attested in the books, as one of the sons of Helm Hammerhand). Theoden’s loyal servants are Hama (prob. from ham, "home") and Gamling (from gamol, "old"), his sword is Herugrim, or "Fierce" (literally "sword-grim" or heorugrim), and his home is Meduseld (literally, "meadhall"). The word "eoh", or horse, is seen in combination all through Rohan’s names: Eowyn (eoh and wyn,"joy"), Eomer (eoh and maere, "famous, glorious"), Eothain (eoh and thegn, "follower, retainer, warrior"), etc. The OE influence also traces back through the kings and heroes of Rohirric legend, Eorl ("noble, warrior"), Freawine ("friend and lord"), Deor ("bold, fierce"), Folcred ("the people’s benefit") and the rest.

But wait! Old English?

So one part of my mind was keeping a tally of the OE words used in Rohan while another part was singing "la la la the Rohirrim are Vikings la la la," when suddenly a third part (multitasking or insanity? What do you, the viewers at home, think?) piped up with a few concerns that brought the whole thing screeching to a halt. "Old English? But the Vikings spoke Old Norse" (frustratingly similar to the hapless student who first begins to study them at the same time, trust me, but a different language nonetheless), "But the historical Vikings have only a few points of intersection with the Rohirrim, and a close cultural comparison doesn't hold up very well," "OE is a stand-in for the language of Rohan. You've worked with enough translations to be able to see past that aspect. What else are you hearing in the text?"

That was the key question. What was I hearing in the text and seeing on screen that made the comparison feel right? So I took a step back, let the point-for-point comparisons blur into a general outline, and saw it.

Beowulf

I love Beowulf. It isn’t just one of my favorite works of literature, it’s one of my favorite things. Right up there with pad thai, Jean Arthur’s voice, and the Berkshires in October. Remember the bit in the movie version of Fellowship of the Ring, where Gandalf is reading Isildur's account of his claiming of the Ring, and Ian McKellan says "It is precious to me" in that wonderful, meaningful way? Beowulf is precious to me. So my first thought was "wishful thinking"... until I remembered that Tolkien also loved Beowulf. Indeed, though he published very little in the way of scholarship during his academic career (and probably wouldn't have survived in the modern "publish or perish" academic world), one of the topics he did write about was this very epic. I very much doubt I'm imagining the connection (although I'll probably stretch it farther than I'm meant to. Well, that's the fun part).

Beowulf is a story of Viking heroes and kings as seen though the eyes of the Anglo-Saxons (set around 500 AD and written about 900 AD, the poem is apparently a product of the West Saxon cultural flowering under King Alfred. Which is a whole other topic, and has nothing to do with Rohan). The culture depicted in the poem is a mix of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon practices and philosophies, displaying characteristics of both while not truly depicting either. It's art, after all, not fact.

What it does reflect clearly is the heroic ethos of both its subjects and its intended audience, and it is this ethos and the structure in which it is presented (both the structure of the story as a work of fiction, and the structure of the society depicted within said work) that Tolkien (and Peter Jackson) used to illuminate the world of Rohan. The Rohirrim aren't Anglo-Saxons or Vikings, but they feel like Anglo-Saxons and Vikings (at least in their epic incarnations), thanks to the degree to which Tolkien utilized the language, meter and rhythm, philosophies and preoccupations of Beowulf and its fellow epic poems (works like The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Wife's Lament, Beowulf's cousins and surely lesser influences on Rohan). The Rohirrim and the characters of Beowulf share a mentalite. They are kin.



Next up- structure, Grendel, Grima and "Tolkien is a big ole thief". Tomorrow or the next day, assuming my recalcitrant brain wants to cooperate.

Comments

[ealgylden.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much! Now if I can just get the next part into order... And I have a confession to make- I've always found Chaucer to be a slog. It's interesting and funny and all, but that darn Middle English gets me every time. I love OE and have no problems reading it, but ME is just off enough to trip me up. Very frustrating.

[cruisedirector]

I'm just not much of a language person (vocabulary as opposed to meter and tone and voice and rhythm and nuance). Learned as much French as I needed for my degree but had no interest in studying advanced French grammar, and chickened out of Renaissance studies when I realized I needed not only Latin but Greek, Italian and more Old and Middle English than I ever wanted to learn, much as I'd love to read Dante untranslated. Chaucer makes me laugh enough that it's worth the struggle.