John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 193

Taum Santoski XIII

'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'

[page 3]

13. Poetry and Song are an echo of the Great Music; Fate is a theme of Eru woven into all beings; Vision is the gift of dreams and prophecy; Free Will is a theme of Eru.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984

Taum's Aphorisms, parts VII to XII

Here, again, are some comments and observations by me on Taum's piece I've dubbed 'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Tolkienian Fantasy'. As before these are just my interpretations.



(7) Here we get a sequence from pure myth (the creation story) to myth presented as history (Silm) to history with an element of myth (LotR) to scholarly comment (UT); the main thing is the pattern of withdrawal/diminishment.

(8) I have no idea what Taum is talking about here, nor if these four categories relate back to the four exemplar given in the previous paragraph.

(9) In the Beginning was The Word (Logos), so before the beginning must have come the pre-logos.

(10) This part I get, about the myth to history to myth at the end of history; I don't get what the philosophy and political structures at the end have to do with it.

(11) If there were three themes in the Protologos, should there be three competing Logi?

(12) It sounded as if myth leeches out of history progressively from the time of creation on. Perhaps the 'philosophy' of Pt 10 and Pt 12 is equivalent to the 'scholastic/academic media' of Pt 7?

This brings us to the midway point. I understand this second quarter even less than the first. We'll see how it goes with Pts 13 onward. --John R.



current reading: THE UNSPEAKABLE OATH, #19.

Farewell, FRODO FRANCHISE

So, Monday I found out the unwelcome news that Kristin Thompson's excellent Tolkien film blog, THE FRODO FRANCHISE, is shutting down, apparently effective immediately (or, rather, a couple of days ago):

http://www.kristinthompson.net/blog/

Apparently Kristin's plan all along was to write a follow-up book to THE FRODO FRANCHISE, one which I assume would have included the making of THE HOBBIT and the events of its release, impact, and aftermath. And the ongoing posts on THE FRODO FRANCHISE would presumably be incorporated into that book, or at least serve as part of the ongoing research into its creation.

That such a book will now never be written is a real loss to Tolkien Studies. Kristin's was the best of all the books that dealt with the movies,* and I'd have to say that hers is the best of the essays in the new PICTURING TOLKIEN that I've read so far.

The good news is that she's not disappearing: she'll be posting occasionally over at TheOneRing.Net and has two book projects in the works. The first she describes as "a book-length analysis on stylistic and narrative techniques in Tolkien's two hobbit novels"; this wd presumably be the same book mentioned to the endnotes of her PICTURING TOLKIEN piece, where it's described as "a book about The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings where I will discuss such points as who the protagonists of LOTR are" [page 43, Nt 10]. Being a great fan of her earlier book on the Wooster & Jeeves series, I'll be looking forward to this one.

The same applies to her other in-progress project, though that one's further afield: "a large book project on the statuary of the Amarna period" -- i.e., Egyptian art from the time of Akhenaten, the most famous piece of which is the bust of Nefertiti. Having a longstanding interest in ancient Egypt myself, I'll certainly be looking forward to this one as well, though it's outside my field of expertise.

And so passeth a Tolkien blog. It's not one that I checked daily -- more like a place I'd go once a month and read up on what'd happened lately -- but it was a reliable source of information about a specific field in Tolkien studies, one that's not my own main focus. It will be missed.

--John R.current reading: PICTURING TOLKIENcurrent audiobook: OCCULT AMERICA y Mitch Horowitz (just finished)



*of the ones I've seen, anyway -- a few are so prohibitively expensive that I haven't picked them up yet.

Another Lost Post

How strange. Friday I drafted, and late Sunday I posted, a piece about affinities between the Tea Party and recurrent intolerant/racist/nativist movements in American culture & politics: the Know-Nothings/American party (1850s), Bedford Forrest's Klan (1860s-70s), the mainstream Klan (1910s-20s), the modern Klan (1950s-60s), and now the Tea Party (2008ff), united by religious hatred (anti-Catholic in the earlier movements,* anti-Muslim today), nativism (hatred of foreigners, esp. immigrants), racism (originally anti-Irish, oddly enough; perpetually anti-Black, and now anti-Hispanic as well),** all wrapped up in a sort of uber-patriotism incongruously linked to heated denunciations of America and their fellow Americans, a self-professed veneration for the Founding Fathers combined with heaping scorn upon the institutions they set up, like the Supreme Court. I ended by linking to a story about a study from some sociologists claiming to have identified common traits among Tea Party adherents.

But Monday, it had vanished from my list of posts. I didn't save a draft, so I really can't reconstruct the post now. I do still have a url for the piece I linked to, so here that is:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/study-tea-party-members-cultural-dispositions-authoritarianism-ontological-insecurity-libertarianism.php?ref=fpb



In any case, after I'd made the post, Janice sent me an interesting piece about the death of a remarkable man I'd never heard of: Stetson Kennedy, who apparently played a large role in the de-legitimatizing of the Klan in the 1940s (the 1920s Klan having widespread public acceptance, while the Klan of the '50s and '60s was a furtive, though still dangerous, remnant).*** Of his books, the "Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was" sounds like the most interesting (though I'm not clear if this is a separate book from "Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A." or merely variant titles for the same book). Luckily, Suzzallo-Allen seems to be well-stocked with his works, so I shd be able to find out soon for myself. In the meantime, here's the link to the story about his passing:

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/28/140017364/stetson-kennedy-the-man-who-unmasked-the-klan-dies?sc=emaf



--JDR----------------------

*according to family lore, the local Klan ran off my grandmother's fiancee because he was Catholic; this was in Kentucky back in the 1920s.

**as a sub-set, we cd probably add anti-German and anti-Japanese during the world wars, though that's a special case; if we go that route, might as well bring in anti-Asian (19th century West) and anti-Eastern Europe (the Palmer Raids era). And that doesn't even begin to get into anti-Native Americanism, which is pretty much the dark bedrock this country was built on (less 'how can we learn to live together' than 'let's kill them and take their stuff').

***I'm told Leonard Cline, who's mainly remembered as a horror/fantasy writer (THE DARK CHAMBER) did some prize-winning exposes of the Klan in the 1920s that started the process.

Taum Santoski XII

'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'

12. History falls from the Post-Logos, all the results of the creation. After the time of language making, when myth is no longer the sole source of explanation, when philosophy enters in, History occurs.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984

Taum Santoski XI

'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'

11. The Logos is the Exlamation and the Myth. In the act of creation the Logos is the sole source and by the Logos word and mind fuse only to split into degenerative and profane things.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984

Interview re. PICTURING TOLKIEN

So, today I came across the following recent interview of PICTURING TOLKIEN editors Jan Bogstad & Phil Kaveny by Kristin Thompson, herself a contributor to that collection (as am I), on Kristin's website. As fellow members of the University of Wisconsin Tolkien Society (the group that also produced Tolkien scholars Richard West, Matt Fisher, and David Salo), Kristin, Jan, & Phil all go way back. And as the author of the best book on the films, THE FRODO FRANCHISE, Kristin is well-positioned to ask good questions about what differentiates this collection from the others previously released about the films. Here's the piece:

http://www.kristinthompson.net/blog/2011/08/18/editors-discuss-picturing-tolkien-a-new-anthology-on-the-lotr-film-trilogy/

All I'd add is that, as a contributor and bystander to some of the events mentioned in the piece, I know who some of the people in their editorial war stories are, and admit to wholly unwarranted curiosity about the rest. I might add that in the Table of Contents she gives at the end, the author's name follows his or her essay, rather than proceeds it.

--John R., looking forward to the first reviews of the book.

Taum Santoski X

'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'

10. The Protologos is myth in its birth. And the revelation of Eru reveals the myth of Arda until the time of myth has passed and moved into history of which they have no part but to wait until the cycle brings mythology once more into Arda. This pulsing of myth to history to myth is equivalted to the generational action of philosophy and political structures.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984

Taum Santoski IX

'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'

9. In the mythos the Act is expressed by three forms related to language, the Logos. All activity before the pronounced Logos is contained within the Conception, the three themes of Iluvatar propounded to the Ainur, and their Music is the Initialization. This is the Protologos. By revelation Eru shows the Ainur the birth and growth of the Logos.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984

Taum Santoski VIII

'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'

8. The subcreation of Middle-earth is done upon a course of realization, by artifact, word, and story. These are reducable into four types: the Completed Act, the Potential Act, the Initialized Act and the Concetual Act, each identified by a particular.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984