Verlyn Flieger

I've read Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories" quite a few times now, but this is the first I've read this critical edition. The essay is always enjoyable, but of course I found even more value in the editorial commentary. The history of the different versions was well done, not nearly so dry as sometimes such descriptions tend to be.

I admit that I did not read through the two manuscript versions in detail, nor their commentary, which combined consists of about 1/3 of the book. Even so, I'm marking this one done, as for all practical purposes, I have read everything I intended to.… (more)

Anyone have a handbook for dealing with mad geniuses?

Verlyn Flieger is one of the most important J. R. R. Tolkien scholars out there; without question she knows more about his work than almost anyone alive. Certainly more than I do. This is a book that pokes into a lot of interesting and important nooks and crannies, and despite what follows, I would not hesitate to recommend it.

And yet, the book frequently drives me nuts with its combination of really clever ideas and blatant ignorance.

For instance: The essay "Tolkien and the Idea of the Book" claims that the whole idea of the Red Book of Westmarch -- the supposed source that underlay Tolkien's whole Middle-earth universe -- was inspired by the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript of Malory's Morte d'Arthur. The impression the essay gives is, "See! See! Once in a while a Really Important Manuscript is discovered. It must have inspired Tolkien."

Except -- Really Important Manuscripts turn up all the time. Let's take just the Greek Bible, and manuscripts discovered in the time Tolkien was alive. The Freer Gospel Codex, or Washington Manuscript (W) was bought in Egypt in 1906; the Freer Manuscript of Paul was acquired at the same time. The Chester Beatty Papyri (P45, P46, P47, of Gospels, Paul, and the Apocalypse; the earliest substantial manuscripts of the latter two) were bought in the 1930s. The Bodmer Papyri came a couple of decades later, after The Lord of the Rings came out, but they were revolutionary finds. Oh -- and how about the Dead Sea Scrolls?

For that matter, while Cotton Vitellius A XV (the Beowulf manuscript) and Cotton Nero A.x (the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight manuscript) had of course been in England for centuries before Tolkien's time, they had sat unnoticed for centuries before they were published. Yes, they were published before Tolkien was alive, but he knew all about the discoveries!

In my own life, the Penrose and Cambridge fragments of "The Gest of Robyn Hode" were published (they had been discovered in Tolkien's lifetime although not in mine); they showed that the "Lettersnijder" edition of the "Gest" (Advocates Library H.30.a) was reprinted, very badly, from Richard Pynson's edition found in the Penrose and Cambridge leaves. This revolutionized (or should have revolutionized, at least) our reading of the "Gest."

Tolkien himself, in working with Middle English manuscripts, discovered the so-called AB Language, a late Old English dialect survival in 1929 (see Tom Shippey's essay "Tolkien and the West Midlands").

In other words, Tolkien didn't need the Winchester Manuscript to know about the joys of manuscript discovery; he had done it himself.

Not quite as "Did you do any research?"-y, but still missing some pieces, is "The Green Knight, The Green Man, and Treebeard: Scholarship and Invention in Tolkien's Fiction." This gathers a good bit of scholarship about eotan/ents, and how the "Giant Treebeard" of Tolkien's early drafts eventually became the sentient shepherd of the trees -- but the essay ignores the English material, such as the ballad of "Hind Etin" (Child #41), which is about, obviously, an Ettin -- a troll. The word derives from the same roots as "ent" (and if Flieger knew her troll stories, and all the Germanic tales of two-headed trolls -- including Tolkien's beloved Red Fairy Book -- she would have known why, in The Hobbit, Tolkien remarks of Bert, William, and Tom, "Yes, I am afraid trolls do behave like that, even those with only one head each").

And as for green and the holly, if she had really looked at holly-and-ivy carols, and not just a single version of "The Holly and the Ivy," would have known that the holly was husband and the ivy the wife -- and that Edith Rickert printed six early holly-and-ivy pieces, including one where they vie for mastery -- just as the ents and entwives did:
Holvyr [holly] and Heyvy [ivy] mad a gret party,
Ho xuld [should] have the maystre [mastery]
In londes qwer [where] thei goo.
(from the Bodleian Library MS. Eng. poet e.1).

Flieger, in her look at the Green Knight, should surely also have looked at "The Carol of the Twelve Apostles," also known as "Green Grow the Rushes-O" -- a cumulative song. The second verse in some versions reads
I'll sing you two-o,
Green grow the rushes-o.
What is your two-o?
Two, two, the lily-white babes
Clothed all in green-o
One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so."

Green cloth and color were difficult to make in medieval times; there was no green dye, so you had to use a blue and a yellow (e.g. Woad and Weld -- google it). Green color is a very significant signal, with many folklore ties. For instance, the King of Faery, in Smith of Wooton Major, wears green when he meets Smith at the end of the story -- because green, according to Wimberly (in a book Tolkien knew well) was the color worn by fairies in the Child Ballads.

That's only two essays, and no doubt I've already bored you and demonstrated that I know too much folklore for my own good.... Few of the other essays set me off as much as those two. But a very large fraction of Flieger's work is spent digging into folklore (English, Welsh, Breton, Finnish -- she seems allergic to Scottish) -- and she consistently leaves out big parts of it. There is so much more that she's missing. There is good work here -- but it's just not finished. I suppose you could argue that that's Tolkien-esque, since he hardly ever finished anything. But at least Tolkien didn't publish until he had done all the work.… (more)