Posted: June 14, 1999 at 00:20:05: by Michael Martinez
: "So even as he wrote the book, Tolkien was thinking in terms of
: how the peoples SHOULD have spoken and not just in terms of how
: an English-language reader would receive the dialogues.": No he wasn't. He was playing a game of secondary creation, one
: which he couldn't carry out to the fullest. Tolkien states
: quite clearly in the prologue to the Lord of the Rings what his
: intention was: to write a really long, gripping tale. No more.
: The history, the depth, the meticulous detail: all that is
: part of Tolkien's brilliance in making the secondary creation
: believable. But in the end, it's ancillary to the story and
: the language, which is where the real beauty of the Lord of the
: Rings is found--not in discussing what kind of armor the
: Rohirrim wore. The section in THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH to which I refer is too lengthy for me to cite here at present (I have to post an online essay elsewhere that hasn't even been written yet). But Tolkien most definitely was thinking about the "native" linguistic aspects of Middle-earth while writing the book. It would require a great deal of citation to show this, but it is demonstrable. I suppose I might have time later in the week to make an effort in this direction. I'll see.
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