Tolkien as Translator

Catalog description

While many have enjoyed J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as an epic novel, few readers are aware of the fundamentally linguistic and anthropological nature of Tolkien’s writing. As Oxford Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien was intimately familiar with the Germanic languages, their history, and their epic literatures. Because of his background, he went far beyond the invention of a few strange-sounding names for the characters and places of his world, instead developing a detailed proto-language (Common Eldarin) and following its development into two distinct but related Elvish tongues, Quenya and Sindarin. He also invented Khuzdul (Dwarvish), the Black Speech, Adûnaic (Númenórean) and Sôval Phârë (The Common Speech). Importantly, he assumed a role of translator of The Lord of the Rings, employing English archaisms and dialects to reflect the varying speech styles of his characters, their relative social status, and their complex interrelationships. Old English, Old Norse, and Gothic were all employed to accurately reflect the degree of kinship characters, places and languages had to the ‘Common Speech’. In this course, we study the role of language in The Lord of the Rings, applying concepts and perspectives from linguistic anthropology to shed light on Tolkien’s methods and purpose as the ‘translator’ of Middle-earth. Students are introduced to Tolkien's invented languages (and their real-world inspirations) and two of his invented alphabets. An appreciation of the linguistic foundations of Middle-earth greatly increases one's understanding of Tolkien’s achievement, and provides insights into one linguist’s view of the intricate and interdependent relationships of language, culture, and society.