Simon J. Cook's Blog, page 4

There and back again: a new adventure in video

It is time to take a step into the unknown. Rather than write up my ongoing Hobbit research as blog posts I’ve decided to take the plunge into video. Here is the first of what is intended as a series on The Hobbit. I made this with my children. As we are still learning how […]

Cooking

The present incarnation of this blog began by asking of the magic ring the question of Tom Bombadil. Now I have caught the answer. But I have to cook it.

Christmas Cooking

The present incarnation of this blog began by asking of the magic ring the question of Tom Bombadil. Now I know the answer. But I have to cook it before I can present it. So I’m leaving you with Van Morrison for a while. Play this song at my funeral.

take me back to those lands that i aint never seen

The Mark

This means succeeded; the robber partly led him, and was partly guided by him, right in front of Cassim’s house, the door of which the robber marked with a piece of chalk. ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.’ Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book (1889), p.246. The first written version of the story is Antoine Galland’s […]

a wilderness of dragons

John Rateliff is the editor of the early drafts of The Hobbit and so has passed beyond the realm of legend. He organized this volume in honour of Verlyn Flieger. His choice of title for this collective of essays is perfect. I am not sure that anyone else in the world knows as much about Tolkien’s thinking as […]

blindfolded guides

but when the robber gave him another piece of gold he began to think he might remember the turnings if blindfolded as before. This means succeeded; the robber partly led him, and was partly guided by him, right in front of Cassim’s house, the door of which the robber marked with a piece of chalk. […]

Ali Baba pause

Just a notice of a pause. I’m resolved to reply to halfir’s ‘Tom Bombadil: Peeling the Onion‘ by showing the path that leads from the (original) Bilbo Baggins to Tom Bombadil by way of the (original) magic ring. But in tracing this path I bumped against the Ali Baba story and its curious relationship to The […]

The Magic of a Proper Name

Arguing with the logicians who declare that proper names have no meaning, Jespersen (Philosopy of Grammar, 1924) challenges them to explain what happens when a proper name becomes a common name, that is, in their view: “a sequence of sounds with no meaning at all suddenly from non-connotative becomes connotative, and that this new full meaning is at […]

Theories of the mark

You are in a thread that began with a review of halfir’s legendary ‘Tom Bombadil: Peeling the Onion‘ and is now investigating J.R.R. Tolkien’s theory of meaning. Recent posts have established that the chalk mark made on the door of Ali Baba in 1001 Nights and the queer sign scratched by Gandalf on the door of […]