A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages
Описание книги
First ever critical study of Tolkien’s little-known essay, which reveals how language invention shaped the creation of Middle-earth and beyond, to George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones.J.R.R. Tolkien’s linguistic invention was a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a home and peoples to speak them. As Tolkien puts it in ‘A Secret Vice’, ‘the making of language and mythology are related functions’’.In the 1930s, Tolkien composed and delivered two lectures, in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology. The second of these, the seminal Andrew Lang Lecture for 1938–9, ‘On Fairy-Stories’, which he delivered at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, is well known. But many years before, in 1931, Tolkien gave a talk to a literary society entitled ‘A Hobby for the Home’, where he unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art that he had both himself encountered and been involved with since his earliest childhood: ‘the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement’.This talk would be edited by Christopher Tolkien for inclusion as ‘A Secret Vice’ in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays and serves as the principal exposition of Tolkien’s art of inventing languages. This new critical edition, which includes previously unpublished notes and drafts by Tolkien connected with the essay, including his ‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’, goes some way towards re-opening the debate on the importance of linguistic invention in Tolkien’s mythology and the role of imaginary languages in fantasy literature.
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Andrew Higgins. A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages
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FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION. Myth-making and Language Invention
Theorizing Language Invention
The Languages of Middle-earth
‘A Secret Vice’ and its Immediate Context
‘A Secret Vice’ and the Larger Context
‘A Secret Vice’
NOTES
‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’
NOTES
The Manuscripts [BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 8:]
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 25:]
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 37:]
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 43:]
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 44 RECTO and 45 RECTO:]
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 44 VERSO:]37
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 45 VERSO:]38
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 46 RECTO:]
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIOS 48–9:]
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIOS 50–2 RECTO:]
[BODLEIAN TOLKIEN MS. 24 FOLIO 52 VERSO:]
NOTES
Coda: The Reception and Legacy of Tolkien’s Invented Languages. The Reception of Tolkien’s Invented Languages
Imaginary Languages for Fiction: Tolkien’s Legacy
Footnotes. Introduction
Part I: ‘A Secret Vice’
Coda: The Reception and Legacy of Tolkien’s Invented Languages
CHRONOLOGY
ABBREVIATIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
About the Authors
Works by J.R.R. Tolkien
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
Contents
COVER
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exists in a single manuscript without date or indication of the occasion of its delivery; but … the Esperanto Congress in Oxfordfn2, referred to at the beginning of the essay as having taken place ‘a year or more ago’, was held in July 1930. Thus the date can be fixed as 1931. (Monsters, p. 3)
The ‘Secret Vice’ papers include other indications of an early 1930s date. For example, in the same folder there is a standard printed postcard from the Curators of the Examination Schools at Oxford, relating to the use of lecture rooms and dated Saturday 7th June (MS Tolkien 24, folio 53v), which indicates that the year is 1930 (Trinity Term). Also included is a list of marks for students at the University of Reading (MS Tolkien 24, folio 47r), some of whom graduated in 1932 and 1933 (University of Reading, 1973; Tolkien served as an external examiner for the University of Reading). A more secure terminus ad quem can be found in the ‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’, in which Tolkien mentions Sir Richard Paget and his work on sound symbolism (see pp. 68, 83). Tolkien can only be referring to one of two of Paget’s books that explore this subject, and both were published in 1930: Human Speech: Some Observations, Experiments, and Conclusions as to the Nature, Origin, Purpose and Possible Improvement of Human Speech; or Babel, or The Past, Present, and Future of Human Speech.
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