Author: Joe Page 15 of 31

Site manager

Five Views of the Inklings

On November 27, 2018

Influence among artists is a complex and poorly-understood phenomenon. Diana Pavlac Glyer took an excellent shot at understanding influence among the Inklings in The Company They Keep. This post is a graphical expression of her work; no additional scholarship has been committed. I had grandiose plans for network analysis of the Inklings and their influence on each other, but I hit an insurmountable stumbling block: the Inklings didn’t write very much. It’s folly to apply big-data analytical techniques to a small set of things, so I’m just drawing pictures here.

As anyone would anticipate, C.S. Lewis is at the center of things, almost any way we choose to plot the graph. Here, the size of the dot indicates the number of connections to other people. There is one link per mention in TCTK, so when there are lots of mentions, the links look like a fat blob, not a line.

OB	Owen Barfield	JAWB	J.A.W. Bennett
DC	David Cecil	NC	Nevill Coghill
JDG	James Dundas-Grant	HD	H.V.D. Dyson
AF	Adam Fox	CH	Colin Hardie
RH	Robert E. Havard	CSL	C.S. Lewis
WL	Warren Lewis	GM	Gervase Mathew
RBM	R.B. McCallum	CES	C.E Stevens
CRT	Christopher Tolkien	JRRT	J.R.R. Tolkien
JW	John Wain	CW	Charles Williams
CLW	C.L. Wrenn	All	The ensemble

This is a complicated network, but it can be analyzed into components. DPG cites Karen Burke LeFevre’s book Invention as a Social Act, which identifies four different types of influence that authors (or any creators, actually) can have on one another: Resonator, Opponent, Editor, and Collaborator. To these four, DPG adds a writer-specific category: dedications.

Resonators are not just cheerleaders; they can bring out the best in an author by insisting they produce nothing less. C.S. Lewis was the champion resonator.

Resonators among the Inklings

Opponents are those who poke holes in the weak parts of a work before you finish it, so prospective publishers don’t do it. These are not so common among such supportive friends as the Inklings, so the network is much smaller. The line from HD to JRRT is a mathematical representation of the most famous quotation in all of Inklings scholarship.

Opponent relationships among the Inklings

Editors are editors. Again, C.S. Lewis is the nexus around which everyone else is arranged. Christopher Tolkien only has one line to his father, because DPG considers him more of a collaborator than an editor of the History of Middle-earth. “All” is there in the bottom-right corner because J.R.R. Tolkien gave credit to the whole group for helping edit The Lord of the Rings. It’s not clear whom exactly he meant, so I didn’t resolve it into individuals.

Editorial relationships among the Inklings

Collaborators are collaborators. This is a dense network because I drew a line between any two Inklings whose names appeared as authors on a single work. For example, Essays Presented to Charles Williams had five Inkling authors which yields ten lines. C.S. Lewis is not so central, because he’s only one of a group of equals in these cases. Here also is the dense blob of links between the Tolkiens, one line for each of the posthumous volumes of the Legendarium. Various Festschriften are most of the other lines in this graph, so ironically it is dominated by books that were written after the Inklings had dissolved.

Collaboration relationships among the Inklings

Dedications are another Lewicentric network. Each of the the three most-prolific authors dedicated a work to the Inklings as a group. Without the node labelled “All”, this graph would almost look like a chain, mathematically trivial.

Dedication relationships between Inklings

Conclusion

The Inklings were a large and not-well-defined group. Writers’ groups tend to be much smaller.

“Collaborative circles usually consist of three to five members; only rarely do they consist of more than seven or eight.”

Michael P Farrell, Collaborative Circles (cited in TCTK)

Despite its size and fluidity, the group we know as the Inklings was among the most influential writers’ groups of the twentieth century. The graphs above give a hint how this could be. Resolving the network into LeFevre’s various types of artistic influence shows that the Inklings can profitably be thought of as a superposition of normal-sized collaborations, one for each type of influence. The various graphs share C.S. Lewis as the most important member measured by degree centrality, and also by who furnished the meeting space. The other members of each sub-network vary according to type. Like a refracting crystal, the network representation of the Inklings presents a different shape according to the perspective from which we choose to look at it, but each shape shares the important features of the underlying form.

Caveat: as DPG says, “The examples of encouragement conflict, editing, collaborating, and referencing described in this book are not intended to form a comprehensive or exhaustive list.” (TCTK, p.213) If she left it out, so did I. Apart from dedications, I have omitted the section about “referents”, where characters in one Inkling’s work are based on another Inkling. Referential relationships as DPG described them are so amorphous that indicating them with lines on a graph seemed incorrect.

Works Cited

Farrell, Michael P. Collaborative circles: Friendship dynamics and creative work. University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Glyer, Diana Pavlac. The Company They Keep: CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien as Writers in Community. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2007.
LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a social act. SIU Press, 1986.

Written by the Winners

By Joe

On November 12, 2018

In Vive la France

I feel sorry for the bottom lion.

Shakespeare’s play Henry V came up on the BBC’s In Our Time podcast, in celebration of their 20th anniversary. Pretty impressive for a podcast! As the panel discussed all the Plantagenets in their turn, it reminded me of an experience from long ago.

An impressive theatrical company was performing the play in Paris while I was living there. Le Monde published a long review in their entertainment section. 25 years later I’m unable to track it down on line, so I’m working from memory here.

The writer pointed out a thing I’d never heard in any English-language source. All the carousing that young Hal did with Falstaff and the gang in the “Henry IV” plays has an important role in Henry V: because he had spent all that time in bars, he spoke fluent English. His rousing speeches to the troops at Harfleur and on St. Crispin’s day are a huge deal because no previous king since 1066 could have given them. From William the Bastard on, the kings only spoke French. When history is written by the winners, valuable perspectives like this can easily get lost.

Disclaimer: Henry IV spoke English as his native language, according to the fountain of all knowledge, but this may not contradict the Le Monde reviewer. Henry grew up in aristocratic surroundings, and the gaps between classes in England were wide, and are still large today. Henry IV probably could not speak in an idiom that would sound congenial to the common soldiers, at least not well enough to pull off something like this:

Why covet the Silmarils?

By Joe

On November 2, 2018

In fantasy

Joan Bushwell, in an old piece called “The Tolkienian War on Science”.
(h/t Daniel Stride), explains Fëanor in a way that makes him (to me) almost sympathetic. I do have one big disagreement with the author, though. I’m on board when she calls Fëanor “the master smith/scientist/engineer”. But then she builds an analogy between Morgoth’s theft of the Silmarils and the current anxiety engineers have about intellectual property. No way. Fëanor is not upset about the theft of “intellectual property”. It’s clear that Fëanor gave away intellectual property freely – look at the alphabets for the best example. Silmarils are different. When Morgoth stole the Silmarils, Fëanor didn’t have them any more. In fact, he couldn’t even make new ones. They were like moon rocks or glacial core samples: literally irreplaceable, since we don’t fly to the Moon and the glaciers are melting.

“Intellectual property” is a bizarre legal fiction because it’s exactly the opposite of Silmarils. When (not “if”) intellectual property is stolen, the possessions of the developer are unchanged. The only thing the developer loses is the secrecy. The potential for profit.

Gandalf was fond of lecturing on topics like this, so pontification must not be too reprehensible. There are several reasons why people would want to own things and keep thieves away.

They need things to live their lives, e.g. a wheelchair or a craftsman‘s tools
A wish to preserve the things from harm
The pleasure of accumulating things
They want the status that possessions provide
To exploit them for advantage in battle or its modern equivalent, trade

JRRT approves of number 1: “Would you part an old man from his support?” (III,vi) JRRT approves of number 2: “It shall be set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house…”. (II, viii) [1]

Numbers 3 & 4 are deadly sins. I’m pretty sure Morgoth was working from one of these or the other.

Number 5 isn’t morally nailed down outside of LotR, but Faramir was unambiguous: “If it were a thing that gave advantage in battle, I can well believe that Boromir, the proud and fearless, often rash, ever anxious for the victory of Minas Tirith (and his own glory therein), might desire such a thing and be allured by it.” (IV, v) Either way, it is the only one of the five that we know wasn’t motivating Fëanor.

Maybe the whole debate over Fëanor can be boiled down to an argument over which motivation he thought he was acting on.

[1] Yes, I could have chosen more weighty quotations, but Idiosophy is a hobbitish discipline. By the way, is anything else in Middle-earth “imperishable”?

Children and Unicorns

By Joe

On October 22, 2018

In Vive la France

The Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris is running a special exhibition on unicorns.

Nine creatures posing in front of obnoxious wallpaper

Barthélémy l’Anglais, Livre des propriétés des choses BNF Français 216 f. 285r

While I was there, a teacher was explaining to a group of 7- and 8-year-olds how unicorns were hunted: “A young woman, who’d never had a baby, and who was … very nice and very pure…” OK, she should have planned ahead about how to dodge a discussion of virginity here, but I thought it was a good save. Alas, she then continued, “… sits down in the forest, and the unicorn would come lay its head in her lap. Then the hunter would come out of hiding and grab it to take its horn.”

The children all looked at each other. The bravest one spoke up: “Well, she’s not very nice, then!” Euphemisms always get me into trouble, too.

The exhibit also amused the children with this sculpture, the attitude of which explains why unicorns don’t come around much anymore. I shall quit blaming the scientific revolution.

“Unicorn Droppings”, by Sophie Lecomte

Computational Structure of Songs

By Joe

On October 10, 2018

In squibs & crackers

It appears that the great computer scientist Donald Knuth was a pioneer in the discipline that would in a later century come to be known as Idiosophy. Alas, such was the benighted state of natural philosophy in that era that his seminal paper could only be published in the April issue of a learned journal.

WTF?

By Joe

On October 6, 2018

In trivial

I have just subscribed to the Oxford English Dictionary (at a special discount rate, thanks to Sparrow). To inaugurate the subscription, I just read the entire definition of “what”. It took me an hour and a quarter.

In the midst of this, I discovered that I was completely wrong about the origins of my wife’s favorite English phrase. “What the x“, for various values of x, traces back to… Geoffrey Chaucer?! It looks like he brought it over from the French “que diable…”. I find this strangely disappointing.

Addressing a crucial question of language

Then it occurred to me that there might be something of interest in the choices we make about he noun we put at the end of the phrase. The pox is gone now, since we don’t have to worry about it any more (for the time being). “Hell” was my father’s preferred locution. Google ngrams don’t reach back very far, but they show hell is still going strong. In fact, it really took off about the time I was born. “Devil” and “deuce” have been fading since the Great Depression; there appears to be a transfer of authority from the central executive to the collective, coincident with the spread of popular democracy in the English-speaking world, but other than that tenuous connection I’ve found nothing.

Google Ngrams for the leader board

Apropos of which, I must salute the OED for the utility and delicacy of their phrase, “in polite colloq. usage…”

The Anti-Gollum

By Joe

On September 30, 2018

In fantasy

Over at Earth and Oak, there’s an interesting discussion going on about how seeking after knowledge can destroy characters in Tolkien’s writing. The two that are held up for our inspection are Gollum and Saruman.

By chance, a wonderful contrast to Gollum just came across my twitter feed. The Japanese space agency has just landed a pair of rovers on an asteroid, and photos are coming in. Gollum was disappointed to learn that ‘all the “great secrets” under the mountain had turned out to be just empty night…” (LotR, I, ii). Hayabusa 2 took off into the empty night, knowing perfectly well that there were things there “which have not been discovered since the beginning.” (ibid.) Let’s go find out what they are.

The surface of asteroid Ryugu. Source

I’ve joviated at length about how I disagree with JRRT about the morality of seeking knowledge. He seems to come down on it pretty hard in LotR, despite his interest in science in real life. [1] I think the resolution is one layer down: the problem is more about keeping things secret than about finding them out in the first place. C.S. Lewis was on about the same thing in That Hideous Strength, after all.

I feel confident that the team running the Minerva II1 rovers will not come to a bad end because they’re not trying to keep secrets. Publishing discoveries the moment they come in is a foolproof antidote for any of the moral hazards faced by scientists.

You can guess what Idiosophers think about current intellectual-property law.

[1] Now that I think of it, why is breaking white light into its component colors foolish when Saruman does it, but a thing of beauty and wonder when the Men of Gondor divert a waterfall at Henneth Annûn?

Beurre à Hobbit

By Joe

On September 28, 2018

In squibs & crackers

In this week’s Matter of Great Import, Tom notes that hobbits seem unimpressed by pats of butter but think slabs of butter are fine, and wonders how much it actually takes to satisfy a hobbit. The Tolkien Professor himself weighed in with a citation from The Hobbit.

@alas_not_me Re: your blog post — We also have Gandalf at Beorn’s house, who “had eaten two whole loaves (with masses of butter and honey and clotted cream).” So is a Mass larger than a Slab?

— Tolkien Professor (@tolkienprof) September 27, 2018

On a matter of this weight, I consulted with my mother-in-law. She grew up on a subsistence farm about the time JRRT started writing The Hobbit. (As I have remarked elsewhere, rural Virginia might be closer to the Shire than any other place you can visit now.) She says her mother’s round butter mold held a pound. After the butter sat out for a while with people cutting pieces off, the word “mass” is about the most specific shape-name you’d care to give it. We can assume Beorn had a rather larger mold.

A butter slab. Source.

A “slab”, though, is not a unit of measure – it’s how butter was presented commercially for sale. Human-sized slabs held a few pounds, from which pats were cut. Barliman, knowing how hobbits are, apparently just brought out the whole slab when they called for a meal.

A “pat” is one tsp to 1/2 tbsp, which is an amount that’s not even big enough to mark on the paper wrapping of modern sticks. Poor Pippin’s pathetic pat paints a picture of the penury of the Pelennor, opposed to plenty at the Prancing Pony.

In answer to the specific question, I’d have to say that the amount of butter a hobbit would deem adequate is non-linear. It appears to be a couple of pounds, regardless of how many hobbits are eating, plus another couple of pounds for the Wizard.

The Mighty

By Joe

On September 26, 2018

In Digital Humanities, fantasy

We are going through another peculiar convergence in the Tolkien Blogosphere, like the time we all decided to talk about smells. Though the concept is too subtle for me, it may be another example of co-inherence. This time, we’re all thinking about Éowyn and the Witch-King. Jerry started us off with a bedtime story for his daughter. Then Tom picked up on the “Houses of Lamentation” mystery.[1]

I’ve been working from the classic English-teacher’s advice to pick on something that seems odd in a text, follow it, and see where it goes. Here’s something that sounded odd to me:

But suddenly he too stumbled forward with a cry of bitter pain, and his stroke went wide, driving into the ground. Merry’s sword had stabbed him from behind, shearing through the black mantle, and passing up beneath the hauberk had pierced the sinew behind his mighty knee.

LotR, V, vi

Ask any aging athlete [2]: “mighty” is not the word for a knee. What could JRRT have meant by it? The dictionary says “mighty” has three definitions: being very strong, being very powerful, or being very large. None of them seems to fit. Come to think of it, Eärendil was “a mighty mariner”. I assume he was not extraordinarily large. I haven’t done much marining in my life, but I do know that the water is going to do as it wills, and the mariner just has to go along with it, so “strong” seems out of the question, too. He must have been powerful, therefore.

This sounds like a job for a textual analysis. What does JRRT use the word to mean? I used an e-text of LotR and The Silmarillion to search for “mighty”, “mightier”, and “mightiest”, so see what it meant. The word was used 104 times in LotR and 135 in The Silmarillion (all the parts; not just the Quenta). The frequency of the various meanings are in Figure 1.

Fig 1. Meanings of the word Mighty. Arrows point from Silmarillion to LotR

The usage of the word is fairly consistent between the two books, with two exceptions. The first is in the sense of “powerful”, which shows a big drop from the Elder Days, and accounts for the total difference between the two books.

The second difference is in the use of “mighty” as an adverb, synonymous with “very”. Nobody in the Silmarillion talks like that. In LotR, most of the people who talk like that are hobbits. The complete list of people who say that is: Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Maggot, the Gaffer, Treebeard, and the talking fox. We can assume the fox learned to talk by listening to hobbits, but what’s Treebeard doing in there? It’s a mystery. (I turned that into a trivia question on Twitter. Congratulations to Emily Austin for solving the puzzle.)

Now, what are people talking about when they call something “mighty”? This shows a major theme of Tolkien’s Legendarium, and it’s in Figure 2.

comparing mighty things in LotR and Silmarillion

Figure 2. Things that are mighty. Arrows point from Silmarillion to LotR

The legendarium, in one sense, is about the twilight of the gods, the transfer of power to us little folk, and so it can be seen here. The Valar drop out of the picture completely. The Maiar are propped up only by Gandalf and Saruman. The Elves drop by 3/4. The word “mighty” becomes the province of Men, the things they construct, and the natural world. Notably, Men were mighty even in the Elder Days, second only to the Elves, and they increase their share in the Third Age. The Numenoreans are described as “mighty” more often than any other single entity, in both books.

The Enemy is mighty nine times in each book. The monsters that the Enemy created drop out almost entirely – only Old Man Willow is left, where dragons once walked that page of the dictionary.

So What?

All this has confirmed that Tolkien used the word “mighty” for a reason, but it doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding the Witch-King’s knee than I was before. Maybe it just looked big, compared to Merry. Maybe it’s there to make a good iambic trimeter to finish the paragraph. Eärendil is easier: he’s chosen the Elven kind, and he gets the adjective that the Elves get in the Elder days, and which goes with them when they leave the story.

Another thing to wonder about is the characters who are not mighty. Among the good guys, the Ents are not mighty, though trees often are. Among the bad guys, Ungoliant and Shelob are not mighty, whether due to sexism or arachnophobia is beyond me to say. And Bombadil is not mighty either, which is a triumph of style.

[1] It did not occur to me that I was joining a Tom-and-Jerry cartoon until just now.
[2] Also antique acrobats and ancient astronauts.

Too Short

By Joe

On September 21, 2018

In trivial

A brief list of things JRRT thought were too short:

The Lord of the Rings. Reporting the opinion of fans
Out of the Silent Planet, when he was trying to persuade a publisher to pick it up.
A letter to Christopher. Who hasn’t closed a letter this way?
“Farmer Giles of Ham”. I agree completely.
Hobbit legs. No argument here, unless I were contracting with one to dig a hole.
Time

That last one is by far the dominant use of the phrase in LotR. Everyone from Bilbo to Aragorn uses it. That’s consistent with a story about the end of the Third Age, just before all the faerie elements departed. It’s also how the phrase is used in “The Fall of Arthur”.

For verification, the phrase “too short” does not appear in The Silmarillion. Elves never think time is too short, unless a mortal is there to remind them. Smith of Wootton Major caught the attitude from them, so the phrase doesn’t appear in his story either.

Curiously, the phrase doesn’t seem to be in “Leaf by Niggle”. (I don’t have an electronic copy of that story so I can’t be sure.) Perhaps it’s because Niggle never knew how short his time was actually going to be.

A physicist loose among the liberal arts

Author: Joe Page 15 of 31

Conclusion

Works Cited

So What?