Friday, September 13, 2024

I am famous, again, apparently

The wikipedia page on "The Round World Dilemma" has a chart citing "Bratman's analysis, after Rilstone".



David Bratman apparently referenced my review of The Nature of Middle Earth in an academic paper (at Mythcon, I think).

I said:


There is no single, finished thing called Middle-earth to talk about the nature of; only three differently unfinished works in progress.

There is, if you will, Middle-earth I, the setting of the Book of Lost Tales, back when Beren was an Elf, Sauron was a cat and minstrels had names like Tinfang Warble.

There is Middle-earth II, the world of Lord of the Rings and the published Silmarillion, when Hobbits, Dwarves and the sunken island of Numenor had inveigled themselves into the long-standing Elf-mythology.

And there is the projected Middle-earth III which would have made the world of Lord of the Rings more consistent with real-world geography, real-world astronomy and real-world theology. It would have ret-conned out the flat-earth, the sky done, and the literal sun-chariot, and made Eru and Morgoth theologically consistent analogues for the Catholic God and the Catholic Satan.

Maybe Numenor-Atlantis never sunk beneath the waves, muses Tolkien at one point. Maybe it just had all the magic sucked out of it and turned into America.

Mr Bratman says:

Critic Andrew Rilstone, an intelligent Tolkienist though not a scholar, has postulated “three differently unfinished works in progress.” First, the purely mythological Elder Days, the “setting of the Book of Lost Tales, back when Beren was an Elf, Sauron was a cat and minstrels had names like Tinfang Warble.” Then, the mixed mythological-historical one we’re most familiar with, “the world of Lord of the Rings and the published Silmarillion, when Hobbits, Dwarves and the sunken island of Númenor had inveigled themselves into the longstanding Elf-mythology.” The stylistic difference between these two stages is primarily a growth in majesty 6 and seriousness: Tevildo and Tinfang disappear; the fey Tinwelent becomes the towering Thingol. And then the only partially sketched third purely historical and scientific work, “which would have made the world of Lord of the Rings more consistent with real-world geography, real-world astronomy and real-world theology. It would have ret-conned out the flat-earth, the sky dome, and the literal sun-chariot, and made Eru and Morgoth theologically consistent analogues for the Catholic God and the Catholic Satan.” Rilstone’s division makes sense to me, but though specific aspects of this have been discussed in formal scholarship, so far as I know, no scholar has really investigated the overall pattern of these alterations of the fundamentals of the legendarium over time.  

Not sure if it is actually the cleverest insight I have ever had, but nice to know someone is paying attention.

Not a scholar, indeed.

3 comments:

  1. If I may ...

    What I have proved in my side-career as an academic palaeontology is that a scholar is merely someone who publishes scholarly works.

    So if you were to publish your three-worlds insight in a scholarly venue, you would be a scholar.

    I recommend it.

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  2. If my current project to write about Lewis's Abolition of Man becomes as complicated as I think it may have to, I would be tempted to see if a grown up academic publisher would be interested in it. But I keep discovering things I don't know enough about. (One probably can't talk about the Waterfall Story without knowing what Coleridge meant by The Sublime, about which whole books have been written....)

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  3. Yes, that is probably the most distinctive characteristic of scholarly work: that it keep unveiling rabbit-holes that you're pretty much obliged to go down.

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