http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Titles/7 ... 0007489947
ToRN has also posted a picture of the cover, though I don't know where it is from:
The Fall of Arthur!
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Voronwë the Faithful
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The Fall of Arthur!
Harper Collins has announced that The Fall of Arthur, the long, alliterative poem based on Arthurian legends that has long been known of (short excerpts were published in Carpenter's biography of Tolkien), will be published in the UK on May 23, 2013. No word yet on a U.S. publication date.
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Titles/7 ... 0007489947
ToRN has also posted a picture of the cover, though I don't know where it is from:
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Titles/7 ... 0007489947
ToRN has also posted a picture of the cover, though I don't know where it is from:
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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N.E. Brigand
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Great news!
And a long time coming. There were three articles in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006) about Tolkien's major unpublished works. We got The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun in 2009. With 2013 we see The Fall of Arthur. Dare we hope to see Tolkien's Beowulf by 2017? (A mere 13 years after Michael Drout likely would have published it, had he not been undercut by internet innuendo?)
And a long time coming. There were three articles in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006) about Tolkien's major unpublished works. We got The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun in 2009. With 2013 we see The Fall of Arthur. Dare we hope to see Tolkien's Beowulf by 2017? (A mere 13 years after Michael Drout likely would have published it, had he not been undercut by internet innuendo?)
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Voronwë the Faithful
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There is no way that that work is going to remain unpublished forever. Mike Drout is the logical one to do so, and I can only hope that one way or the other, the situation resolves itself sufficiently to allow him to complete his work.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
Posted the following on TORC in October:
The following are what excerpts of the poem we have (from John D. Rateliff's blog)
The first lines
Arthur eastward in arms purposed
his war to wage on the wild marches,
over seas sailing to Saxon lands,
from the Roman realm ruin defending.
Thus the tides of time to turn backward
and the heathen to humble, his hope urged him,
that with harrying ships they should hunt no more
on the shining shores and shallow waters
of South Britain, booty seeking.
Excerpts published long ago in Humphrey Carpenter's Biography:
On Mordred's lust for Guinevere
His bed was barren; there black phantoms
of desire unsated and savage fury
in his brain had brooded till bleak morning.
On Guinevere
[. . .] lady ruthless,
fair as fay-woman and fell-minded,
in the world walking for the woe of men.
My own humble comments:
In Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Arthur, having conquered all the British isles and other assorted lands, goes abroad to conquer Rome because Rome demanded tribute. According to Geoffrey, the Britons conquered Rome in centuries past, and the Emperor Constantine was half-British through his mother St. Helena. So Arthur reasons that he has as much right to demand tribute from Rome!
This is later carried over to Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory. Difference is, in Geoffrey Arthur is sidetracked by Mordred's rebellion while in Malory Arthur does become Emperor of Rome. In Malory this happens long before the Quest of the Holy Grail and Lancelot's affair with Guinevere.
But in earlier writings such as Historia Brittonum by Nennius, so such overseas expedition happens. Arthur is said to defend (formerly Roman) Britain against the Saxon incursions, as does happen earlier in Geoffrey (Arthur's the champion of the Welsh, in short).
The new spin Tolkien added was to make the overseas expedition to Saxon lands, i.e. Germany. The Guardian article quotes John Garth, author of Tolkien and the Great War: "Tolkien depicts Arthur going off to fight the Saxons in Mirkwood – not the Mirkwood of Middle-earth, but the great German forests."
Lancelot and his affair with Guinevere is not to be found in Geoffrey since he first appears in later chivalric romances which Malory then used in turn. In Geoffrey, Guinevere marries Mordred in Arthur's absence.
Tolkien's description of Guinevere may seem harsh. Not for the post-Mists of Avalon generation, surely. But it follows the whole negative adultery tradition from Geoffrey onward (lat least) and possibly this Welsh verse:
Gwenhwyfar daughter of Ogfran the Giant
bad when little, worse when big.
Also there's this bit from a body of Welsh poetry called the Triads of the Island of Britain or the Welsh Triads, though the last part may be already be an interpolation influenced by later writers:
Three faithless Wives of the Island of Britain:
Essyllt Fair-Hair, Trystan's mistress,
and Penarwan, wife of Owain son of Urien
and Bun, wife of Fflamddwyn.
And one was more faithless than those three:
Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's wife, since she shamed a better man than any of the others.
The following are what excerpts of the poem we have (from John D. Rateliff's blog)
The first lines
Arthur eastward in arms purposed
his war to wage on the wild marches,
over seas sailing to Saxon lands,
from the Roman realm ruin defending.
Thus the tides of time to turn backward
and the heathen to humble, his hope urged him,
that with harrying ships they should hunt no more
on the shining shores and shallow waters
of South Britain, booty seeking.
Excerpts published long ago in Humphrey Carpenter's Biography:
On Mordred's lust for Guinevere
His bed was barren; there black phantoms
of desire unsated and savage fury
in his brain had brooded till bleak morning.
On Guinevere
[. . .] lady ruthless,
fair as fay-woman and fell-minded,
in the world walking for the woe of men.
My own humble comments:
In Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Arthur, having conquered all the British isles and other assorted lands, goes abroad to conquer Rome because Rome demanded tribute. According to Geoffrey, the Britons conquered Rome in centuries past, and the Emperor Constantine was half-British through his mother St. Helena. So Arthur reasons that he has as much right to demand tribute from Rome!
This is later carried over to Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory. Difference is, in Geoffrey Arthur is sidetracked by Mordred's rebellion while in Malory Arthur does become Emperor of Rome. In Malory this happens long before the Quest of the Holy Grail and Lancelot's affair with Guinevere.
But in earlier writings such as Historia Brittonum by Nennius, so such overseas expedition happens. Arthur is said to defend (formerly Roman) Britain against the Saxon incursions, as does happen earlier in Geoffrey (Arthur's the champion of the Welsh, in short).
The new spin Tolkien added was to make the overseas expedition to Saxon lands, i.e. Germany. The Guardian article quotes John Garth, author of Tolkien and the Great War: "Tolkien depicts Arthur going off to fight the Saxons in Mirkwood – not the Mirkwood of Middle-earth, but the great German forests."
Lancelot and his affair with Guinevere is not to be found in Geoffrey since he first appears in later chivalric romances which Malory then used in turn. In Geoffrey, Guinevere marries Mordred in Arthur's absence.
Tolkien's description of Guinevere may seem harsh. Not for the post-Mists of Avalon generation, surely. But it follows the whole negative adultery tradition from Geoffrey onward (lat least) and possibly this Welsh verse:
Gwenhwyfar daughter of Ogfran the Giant
bad when little, worse when big.
Also there's this bit from a body of Welsh poetry called the Triads of the Island of Britain or the Welsh Triads, though the last part may be already be an interpolation influenced by later writers:
Three faithless Wives of the Island of Britain:
Essyllt Fair-Hair, Trystan's mistress,
and Penarwan, wife of Owain son of Urien
and Bun, wife of Fflamddwyn.
And one was more faithless than those three:
Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's wife, since she shamed a better man than any of the others.
The first verses (or the whole poem rather) reminded me of this Arthurian poem, which prefaces the Arthurian novel Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff:
HIC JACET ARTHURUS REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS
by Francis Brett Young, written 1944
Arthur is gone... Tristram in Careol
Sleeps, with a broken sword - and Yseult sleeps
Beside him, where the Westering waters roll
Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps.
Lancelot is fallen... The ardent helms that shone
So knightly and the splintered lances rust
In the anonymous mould of Avalon:
Gawain and Gareth and Galahad - all are dust!
Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot
And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic
Lovers and their bright eyed ladies rot?
We cannot tell, for lost is Merlin's magic.
And Guinevere - Call her not back again
Lest she betray the loveliness time lent
A name that blends the rapture and the pain
Linked in the lonely nightingale's lament.
Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover
The bower of Astolat a smokey hut
Of mud and wattle - find the knightliest lover
A braggart, and his lilymaid a slut.
And all that coloured tale a tapestry
Woven by poets. As the spider's skeins
Are spun of its own substance, so have they
Embroidered empty legend - What remains?
This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak
That age had sapped and cankered at the root,
Resistant, from her topmost bough there broke
The miracle of one unwithering shoot
Which was the spirit of Britain - that certain men
Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood
Loved freedom better than their lives; and when
The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood
And charged into the storm's black heart, with sword
Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed
With a strange majesty that the heathen horde
Remembered when all were overwhelmed;
And made of them a legend, to their chief,
Arthur, Ambrosius - no man knows his name -
Granting a gallantry beyond belief,
And to his knights imperishable fame.
They were so few... We know not in what manner
Or where they fell - whether they went
Riding into the dark under Christ's banner
Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent.
But this we know; that when the Saxon rout
Swept over them, the sun no longer shone
On Britain, and the last lights flickered out;
And men in darkness muttered: Arthur is gone...
HIC JACET ARTHURUS REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS
by Francis Brett Young, written 1944
Arthur is gone... Tristram in Careol
Sleeps, with a broken sword - and Yseult sleeps
Beside him, where the Westering waters roll
Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps.
Lancelot is fallen... The ardent helms that shone
So knightly and the splintered lances rust
In the anonymous mould of Avalon:
Gawain and Gareth and Galahad - all are dust!
Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot
And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic
Lovers and their bright eyed ladies rot?
We cannot tell, for lost is Merlin's magic.
And Guinevere - Call her not back again
Lest she betray the loveliness time lent
A name that blends the rapture and the pain
Linked in the lonely nightingale's lament.
Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover
The bower of Astolat a smokey hut
Of mud and wattle - find the knightliest lover
A braggart, and his lilymaid a slut.
And all that coloured tale a tapestry
Woven by poets. As the spider's skeins
Are spun of its own substance, so have they
Embroidered empty legend - What remains?
This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak
That age had sapped and cankered at the root,
Resistant, from her topmost bough there broke
The miracle of one unwithering shoot
Which was the spirit of Britain - that certain men
Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood
Loved freedom better than their lives; and when
The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood
And charged into the storm's black heart, with sword
Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed
With a strange majesty that the heathen horde
Remembered when all were overwhelmed;
And made of them a legend, to their chief,
Arthur, Ambrosius - no man knows his name -
Granting a gallantry beyond belief,
And to his knights imperishable fame.
They were so few... We know not in what manner
Or where they fell - whether they went
Riding into the dark under Christ's banner
Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent.
But this we know; that when the Saxon rout
Swept over them, the sun no longer shone
On Britain, and the last lights flickered out;
And men in darkness muttered: Arthur is gone...
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Voronwë the Faithful
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Frontispiece?
Did anyone get the regular edition from Amazon US? Does your copy have a frontispiece of a manuscript page? Mine does not, but on p4, where the various copyright notices are it says:
"The facsimile manuscript page that appears as the frontispiece to this book is reproduced courtesy of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and is selected from their holdings labelled MS. Tolkien B 59/2 (I), fol. 109"
I expected to see a MS page as the frontispiece and so that's why I looked for it.
Did anyone who got the book get a MS page as a frontispiece?
"The facsimile manuscript page that appears as the frontispiece to this book is reproduced courtesy of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and is selected from their holdings labelled MS. Tolkien B 59/2 (I), fol. 109"
I expected to see a MS page as the frontispiece and so that's why I looked for it.
Did anyone who got the book get a MS page as a frontispiece?
Mine has a manuscript page...
Here are my thoughts moved from the list sticky:
"The Fall of Arthur" by J.R.R.Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien. Harper Collins, 2013.
I picked this up within a few days of its publication date, during Whitsuntide 2013. (As I noted on TORn around that time, it was a nice touch that the book was released in that particular week due to Whitsuntide's prominence in several of the traditional renderings of Arthurian Legends.) However, I didn't read The Fall of Arthur right away because I wanted to finish Chretien de Troyes, Malory, Monmouth and a version of The Romance of Tristan and Iseult "as retold by Joseph Bedier" (an excellent version first published in 1900, during Tolkien's youth). I had read other versions of Malory (Caxton/Vinaver) and Chretien, had previously abandoned Monmouth, and have a few other titles under my belt (Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Tolkien and Lewis' "friend" Roger Lancelyn Green's King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to name only two).
Basically, since learning almost a year ago that The Fall of Arthur was to be published, apart from The Bible and some work-related books on restorative justice, I've only been reading Arthur and related works. Tolkien's poem, though incomplete, is a beautiful addition to the existing body of Arthurian literature. Actually, in its final (present) form, being "unfinished" as it were, places it in good stead among most standard Arthur works with their missing pages, passages lost in translation and many themselves in various stages of completion.
By way of review, I don't think one can do better than this piece from the NY Times Sunday Review of Books, June 21 2013.
For my part:
At first blush, read silently, I found Tolkien's poem to be challenging, its form distracting. However when I read it again, this time aloud to my love, its brilliance was undeniable. Perhaps Tolkien intended his poem to be read aloud? If so, CT makes no mention of this.
The book, The Fall of Arthur in total, is engaging -- I thoroughly enjoyed Christopher's voice throughout. In troth, I would go so far as to say the book's value lays in Christopher's essays that attend his father's poem. For instance, his discussion of Tolkien's sources (the "alliterative Morte Arthure" and "stanzaic Morte Arthur", Monmouth, Chretien and Malory) is especially important in that he, successfully I believe, demonstrates how his father rationalized the oft glaring differences among the traditional/early renderings to create something new, perhaps truly English. It did appear that Christopher downplayed Chretien somewhat (perhaps in honour of his father's aim to make an English work); and he seems to have overlooked completely the aforementioned Tristan and Iseult: J.R.R. Tolkien's take on Lancelot and Guinevere is his own, blissfully so; yet in some ways it more closely resembles [the French] Tristan than the tales of Lancelot widely held to have been inspired by Tristan. (It may be that Tolkien is truer to source than even Chretien!) (UUT)
In fairness, nowhere does CT state that his father left a list of his sources for the poem. Rather, I suspect Christopher was reasoning from versions he himself was familiar. Regardless, his knowledge of the subject is exhaustive and he graciously and liberally reproduced long swaths of text from the versions he cited throughout his essays; he even went so far as to provide a running glossary along side the more challenging inclusions (i.e. passages of Old English and Middle English). CT's painstaking analysis of his father's notes, and draft pages not part of the finished piece, are wonderful additions to the text. I would have appreciated a bibliography -- at best a niggle in that CT did weave bibliographic information into the text as he went.
For those looking less for Arthur and more for Middle-earth, clearly The Fall of Arthur is a poem by J.R.R.Tolkien. Mirkwood is there, if only as a description of the land; but too there are vivid, Tolkien-esque descriptions of the land, not often a feature of Arthur legends. There is haunting allusion (e.g. rather than straight exposition) describing human relations and the hunted... in his poem Tolkien draws a dark veil over the unfolding tale, evoking a mood similar to the days before the Battle of Pelennor Fields... and as a special bonus CT included a dissertation on how his father may have imagined that the Isle of Avalon was in fact The Lonely Isle, the Tol Eressëa.
In short, I am extremely pleased with this Tolkien and his son Christopher's book.
Here are my thoughts moved from the list sticky:
"The Fall of Arthur" by J.R.R.Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien. Harper Collins, 2013.
I picked this up within a few days of its publication date, during Whitsuntide 2013. (As I noted on TORn around that time, it was a nice touch that the book was released in that particular week due to Whitsuntide's prominence in several of the traditional renderings of Arthurian Legends.) However, I didn't read The Fall of Arthur right away because I wanted to finish Chretien de Troyes, Malory, Monmouth and a version of The Romance of Tristan and Iseult "as retold by Joseph Bedier" (an excellent version first published in 1900, during Tolkien's youth). I had read other versions of Malory (Caxton/Vinaver) and Chretien, had previously abandoned Monmouth, and have a few other titles under my belt (Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Tolkien and Lewis' "friend" Roger Lancelyn Green's King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to name only two).
Basically, since learning almost a year ago that The Fall of Arthur was to be published, apart from The Bible and some work-related books on restorative justice, I've only been reading Arthur and related works. Tolkien's poem, though incomplete, is a beautiful addition to the existing body of Arthurian literature. Actually, in its final (present) form, being "unfinished" as it were, places it in good stead among most standard Arthur works with their missing pages, passages lost in translation and many themselves in various stages of completion.
By way of review, I don't think one can do better than this piece from the NY Times Sunday Review of Books, June 21 2013.
For my part:
At first blush, read silently, I found Tolkien's poem to be challenging, its form distracting. However when I read it again, this time aloud to my love, its brilliance was undeniable. Perhaps Tolkien intended his poem to be read aloud? If so, CT makes no mention of this.
The book, The Fall of Arthur in total, is engaging -- I thoroughly enjoyed Christopher's voice throughout. In troth, I would go so far as to say the book's value lays in Christopher's essays that attend his father's poem. For instance, his discussion of Tolkien's sources (the "alliterative Morte Arthure" and "stanzaic Morte Arthur", Monmouth, Chretien and Malory) is especially important in that he, successfully I believe, demonstrates how his father rationalized the oft glaring differences among the traditional/early renderings to create something new, perhaps truly English. It did appear that Christopher downplayed Chretien somewhat (perhaps in honour of his father's aim to make an English work); and he seems to have overlooked completely the aforementioned Tristan and Iseult: J.R.R. Tolkien's take on Lancelot and Guinevere is his own, blissfully so; yet in some ways it more closely resembles [the French] Tristan than the tales of Lancelot widely held to have been inspired by Tristan. (It may be that Tolkien is truer to source than even Chretien!) (UUT)
In fairness, nowhere does CT state that his father left a list of his sources for the poem. Rather, I suspect Christopher was reasoning from versions he himself was familiar. Regardless, his knowledge of the subject is exhaustive and he graciously and liberally reproduced long swaths of text from the versions he cited throughout his essays; he even went so far as to provide a running glossary along side the more challenging inclusions (i.e. passages of Old English and Middle English). CT's painstaking analysis of his father's notes, and draft pages not part of the finished piece, are wonderful additions to the text. I would have appreciated a bibliography -- at best a niggle in that CT did weave bibliographic information into the text as he went.
For those looking less for Arthur and more for Middle-earth, clearly The Fall of Arthur is a poem by J.R.R.Tolkien. Mirkwood is there, if only as a description of the land; but too there are vivid, Tolkien-esque descriptions of the land, not often a feature of Arthur legends. There is haunting allusion (e.g. rather than straight exposition) describing human relations and the hunted... in his poem Tolkien draws a dark veil over the unfolding tale, evoking a mood similar to the days before the Battle of Pelennor Fields... and as a special bonus CT included a dissertation on how his father may have imagined that the Isle of Avalon was in fact The Lonely Isle, the Tol Eressëa.
In short, I am extremely pleased with this Tolkien and his son Christopher's book.
Last edited by SirDennis on Tue Oct 15, 2013 3:53 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Voronwë the Faithful
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What surprised me most -- I know you are more familiar with this than many -- is the clarity and brilliance of Christopher Tolkien's voice. His essays easily are among the best I've read on the subject of Arthurian Legend, surpassing even several of the introductions and "notes on the text" that are published with the Arthur volumes I've encountered.
His father's poem, which he honours, is a medium... perhaps an open door to a wider audience. But truly, without the poem CT's essay comparing the handful of traditional Arthur texts could easily stand on its own in King Arthur studies. It deserves a place among the important contributions to the topic. Further, it is accessible, without a hint of condescension nor leaving that vague taste that something has been lost in presentation.
His father's poem, which he honours, is a medium... perhaps an open door to a wider audience. But truly, without the poem CT's essay comparing the handful of traditional Arthur texts could easily stand on its own in King Arthur studies. It deserves a place among the important contributions to the topic. Further, it is accessible, without a hint of condescension nor leaving that vague taste that something has been lost in presentation.
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Voronwë the Faithful
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Yes, Christopher's commentary is truly excellent. I thought he had had done the best work that I had seen from him with Sigurd & Gudrun, but this is even better.
Yes, that is an excellent description of his voice. By all accounts he is a very humble and modest man, but he is extraordinarily disciplined and efficient. My great regret is that I have gotten a reputation in some quarters (undeserved, I honestly believe) of being a Christopher-basher because I include some criticism of his work in my book. The truth couldn't be further from that.Further, it is accessible, without a hint of condescension nor leaving that vague taste that something has been lost in presentation.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."