Timeline for Tolkien and archaic English
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.stackexchange.com/
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| Jul 5, 2015 at 10:31 | vote | accept | clem steredenn | ||
| Jul 3, 2015 at 23:22 | history | edited | tchrist♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 3, 2015 at 16:15 | comment | added | clem steredenn | I really appreciate your edit, which, as far as I can judge, really improve your answer. | |
| Jul 3, 2015 at 15:58 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @bilbo_pingouin ‘Typical’ use is bogus not real, and it abounds in trash fantasy. Tolkien is atypical insofar as his use of such is authentic not bogus. | |
| Jul 3, 2015 at 15:53 | history | edited | tchrist♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 3, 2015 at 15:35 | comment | added | clem steredenn | I would tend to agree with @JanusBahsJacquet. There seems to be a kind of misunderstanding between what I meant to write and what you seem to have understood. I, of course, do not doubt that Tolkien had a full control about whether or not he such or such types of expressions. And no, I do not think it all archaic. I was just under the impression that he used an atypical amount of (even then) outdated expression (deliberately) and thus was wondering whether that impression was true or not. | |
| Jul 3, 2015 at 15:32 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | Oh, 1914 not 1814! That’s different. Me, I hold in especial contempt all the pseudo-archaic crap perpetrated by dumb hacks who’ve no earthly idea how English was actually spoken even two centuries ago—let alone four or eight—and whose nonsense completely destroys any possible suspension of disbelief. Those books I consign to the fire with extreme prejudice. Say what you will, but Tolkien never committed that atrocity: his use is always legitimate and to me at least believable. As for Rowling, I don’t believe she was employing the auctorial conceit of the “found manuscript out of antiquity”. | |
| Jul 3, 2015 at 15:07 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | (Note: I didn’t mean “at a time that, when he started writing the stories, was already nearly a century ago”, but “nearly a century ago now, at the time when he started writing the stories”. I was referring only to 1914, not 1814. Also note that I don’t think Tolkien is more archaising than many other fantasy stories or fairytale-like tales—but comparing his writing style to your average 1914 version of Harry Potter, whatever that may have been, it should be clear that Tolkien’s is the more archaising.) | |
| Jul 3, 2015 at 15:07 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | I’d say an 1814 reader would probably find his writing style non-archaising; but a 1914 reader would, I would venture, find it old-fashioned in general, and a 1955 reader even more so. His frequent use of words like thence and wrought (in the sense of ‘worked’), for (eschewing almost entirely because), inversion (where no inversion would be used now), present subjunctive, old-fashioned topographic terms, etc.—all those reflect the standards of English at least a century or so before he wrote the books. | |
| Jul 3, 2015 at 15:04 | history | edited | tchrist♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 3, 2015 at 14:58 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @JanusBahsJacquet I accept your general point and appreciate your nuance of layering used for quoted speech. But do you honestly believe some hypothetical 1814 reader would find “both syntax and vocabulary outdated”? That seems strongly worded. I question whether Tolkien’s 20th-century-isms would have even been accessible to that reader of lo these two centuries now past. The rare exception used for effect as “foreign” words are never syntax, only nouns like mathom and dimmerlaik. Those cannot be what you mean, though, so I wonder where you are coming from. Some examples, please? | |
| Jul 3, 2015 at 14:48 | history | edited | Janus Bahs Jacquet | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 3, 2015 at 14:40 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | “Tolkien was a master of this, and if you think it all archaic, you haven’t been reading closely enough” — Even so, it cannot be denied that even in descriptive paragraphs and other non-speech parts of the works, Tolkien’s writing style is deliberately and more or less constantly archaising, and he uses both syntax and vocabulary that were outdated even a century ago when he began to write the stories. I would say that his deliberate use of register and etymology in quoted speech is a layer on top of his consistent use of archaising language in general. | |
| Jul 3, 2015 at 14:33 | history | edited | tchrist♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 3, 2015 at 14:28 | history | answered | tchrist♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |