Simon J. Cook's Blog, page 9
April 3, 2018
Aborigine
In the house of Tom Bomadil, Frodo the hobbit asks his host: Who are you, master? In the first draft of the story, penned in the autumn of 1938, the reply is: I am an Aborigine (Shadow 117, 121). As a general principle in these pages, I read The Lord of the Rings as a commentary on The Hobbit, the earlier […]
Nodens
Nodens is a name. The name Nodens is recorded on three inscriptions in Britain, one of them a curse, all found at the ruins of his ancient temple in Lydney Park, situated in the Forest of Dean on the Welsh side of the border made by the Avon Valley and the River Severn. The inscriptions use the Latin […]
The Nameless
Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?
December 31, 2017
intimations of immortality
Tolkien’s most famous contribution to scholarship is his idea that the Anglo Saxon poet who composed Beowulf was a Christian who passed over the old pagan gods yet retained the monsters of the ancient mythology. deorc déaþscua, duguþe ond geogoþe, seomade ond syrede; sinnihte héold mistige móras; men ne cunnon, hwyder helrúnan […]
December 6, 2017
A Queer Sign
A queer sign scratched on the round door of a hobbit, knocked off the next day. It says burglar. A sign that names what came to the mind of Smaug when he awoke to a slight breeze, a strange smell, and a missing cup. A sign that also names the mind of the elves when the dwarves […]
October 31, 2017
Imagining The Lord of the Rings
Return of the Shadow is an edition of the early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, written between December 1937 and late 1939 and almost entirely devoted to the journey from Bag End to Rivendell (the last chapters take us on to Moria). I’ve been studying this volume since last Christmas and have never faced a […]
August 13, 2017
The Return of the Shadow
The Return of the Shadow (RS) is the first volume of Tolkien’s early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, from the very first draft of ‘A Long-expected Party,’ penned in the week before Christmas 1937, through to the Mines of Moria, where Tolkien left off writing for a while at the end of 1939. The drafts […]
February 17, 2017
The View from the Tower
In my last post I suggested a connection between the reading of modern literature and an Elvish vision that discerns the hearts and minds of others. While this might seem an outlandish claim, I think a related connection emerges into view if we approach Tolkien’s thought from a quite different perspective, namely the allegory of the tower […]
February 15, 2017
What is to be done?
The following post is a draft, a work in progress. I’d be very grateful for comments as I try to get clear on these ideas… In a recent interview, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder was asked about Steve Banon’s assertion that the media is the opposition to the Trump presidency. His reply: When you say that […]
