A Last Tribute to Tolkien

I found the following in the MED as I was translating for my final:

baratur (n.) Also bar(r)etour, bariter.

1. One who incites to, or engages in, contention or riot; malefactor, brawler, wrangler;
2. Fighter, warrior, champion;
3. Deceiver, cheat;
4. As surname,

Well, well, well, the Tolkien references never cease, do they? "Baratur" sounds awfully familiar, like "Barad-Dur," the Dark Tower of Sauron. Definition one here fits Sauron well, with respect to the cosmogony of Middle Earth. Definition matches the description of Sauron seen on film in the opening scenes of The Fellowship of the Ring (which I recognize is not the book, but the coincidence here elevates the quality of the film a bit, I'd say). Definitions three and four work together, as he is at least once referred to as "Sauron the Deceiver."

On an oblique course, we need to revive this word. It's still useful, I'd say, and the students over in SIS could put it to good use on some of the people the discuss.

A Question of Motive

Yesterday we were talking about Arthur’s motivations for acting the way he does in Mort d’ Arthur. While the other characters are equipped with motivation, Arthur seems bizarrely passive. Why does he ignore the signs of affair? Why does he go along with the trap of Lancelot and Guinevere? Why does he immediately set upon burning Guinevere? Arthur’s actions, including that of the ensuing war, make sense from a legal perspective, so it could be speculated that he is doing everything in the name of justice. However, the text itself does not provide a reason, and does not dwell on personal internal conflicts, which makes him appear as if he were an automaton of justice.

The story that I have heard before about the fall of Camelot take on a different perspective and highlight Arthur’s emotions regarding what he should do. In the version that I knew, Arthur is still bent on complete justice, but he is given visible reasons. He ignores the signs because he puts country before himself and to make a fuss would lead to the death sentences of Lancelot and Guinevere. He goes along with the trap because any claim as big as treason should be investigated. He is set on burning Guinevere because it is required by the law. But the story I’ve known is that Arthur has always loved Guinevere, and he has been hoping that Lancelot would come rescue her, as he knows he would. When Lancelot rescues her, he has mixed feelings of happiness, jealousy, and apprehension. He is happy because his love gets to live. He is jealous because he does not have her love. He is apprehensive because now the war is unavoidable, and has to fight the two people that he loves.

My question is regarding the time period when Arthur’s character sketch came into being. Malory’s version of the story is already more story-oriented than Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account. The psychoanalytic approach to Arthur seems to fit onto this spectrum that ranges from a removed, public account, to an intimate, private story. I wonder why this story in particular seems to have experienced a general shift toward the intimate, private story.

Two Foxes, Three Farmers, One Moral, and (maybe) No Context

Henryson's fables have brought to mind two popular texts that draw on the fabular tradition. First, there is Roald Dahl's excellent book (you could easily do it in an afternoon over the holidays) Fantastic Mr. Fox. In this tale an iteration of Renard must defend his family and a host of other burrowing creatures from three vengeful farmers. With the help of rabbits, beavers, and other digging creatures, Mr. Fox manages to burrow from one farm to the next, stealing choice morsels on his way.

It is highly entertaining, and philologically interesting. For instance, the names of the farmers are laden with significance. Boggis, a chicken farmer, is the biggest and fattest of the farmers; coincidentally, his name is simply "boggish" minus the "h", which means "baggy". Bean is a tall, thin apple farmer, constantly swigging from a jug of cider (he basically lives on fermented juice). MED definition two for "bean" reads "the weight of a bean; something of little value." Bean, being barely there, weighs about what his namesake indicates. Bunce is a short, hot-tempered farmer, not unlike Yosemite Sam. What's interesting about Bunce is that his name means "bonus" (get it: small "bonus"? As in, "small surplus"?), but it can also mean "buns", as in "bread", like the food that Mr. Fox and company are stealing from him. So Roald Dahl has his hand on the pulse of the fabular tradition.

Nickel Creek recorded a song, "The Fox", on their first album, Nickel Creek, which became for them a staple for every show because of its popularity. The storyline basically goes that a fox goes out on the town, steals the grey goose from the farmer's pen, and carries it home to his family who feast on it gleefully. The end. It's a delightful little song with a catchy tune, which explains its popularity.

The down-side to these texts is simply their lack of complexity. Henryson's fables, especially his assignment of animal essences, are much more subtle than their modern counterparts. The moral of both of these texts is very simple: "Farmers are not foxes, and should not try to outfox foxes." I wonder if this lack of profundity indicates a general lack of context for fables in our current milieu, with a concomitant inability to decipher the symbolism. It seems reasonable that in a postmodern age, especially in an urban context, we are detached from the behaviors of the animal kingdom (squirrels and rats might be the exceptions). Did modernity signal the demise of the fable?

"The Taill of the Paddok and the Mous" and "Journey to the West"

There is an interesting parallel between Henryson's fable of the "The Paddok and the Mous" to one of the adventures in a Chinese classic titled Journey to the West. In that section, the main characters are the four monks in search of the Holy Scripture of Buddha. There is one master monk, and the other three have been some sort of supernatural creatures prone to mischief, and have been tamed to protect the master monk on this quest. Two of the supernatural creatures are animalistic (a monkey and a pig).

On the way to the holy land, these four get a ride down Heaven River on the back of a giant white turtle. Their trip there is smooth. As payment, the turtle asks the monk to ask Buddha the secret to losing his shell, so he could be human. If I remember correctly, the monks forget to ask Buddha this question. On the way back, the white turtle comes to bear them back. When they are on his back, it is revealed that they have forgotten to ask for him, so the turtle gets angry and shakes them off. Luckily, they survived, but the rolls of scripture were drenched, and the time that it takes to dry them leads them into more trouble.

The paddock and the white turtle seem to be similar conduits in that, no matter the intention of the apparent friendliness, the motivation is always selfish. And it seems that in literature, when the protagonist fully trusts another with life or spiritual salvation, the trust seems to call for questioning. Is this a pessimistic view of the necessity of self-reliance?

Against Nature?

Looking at all the fables we’ve read so far, there seems to be some back and forth over the idea of going against nature. In different versions of The Cock and the Jasp, the cock is praised both for recognizing the value of the jasp, which doesn’t fit his nature as a bird (obviously) and for recognizing that it is not what he, as a bird, needs or should be looking for, which does fit his nature. The fact that this is the first fable in more than one collection and that this question is central to the fable’s moral, whichever way it comes down, definitely indicates that this was an important question to writers at the time. In that light, I found it really interesting that in the version of The Fox and the Wolf that we’re reading for Monday, the wolf describes himself as evil for biting thousands of sheep. Isn’t that what wolves do? How is that evil?

It seems like, in some fables, the animals are judged based on how well they live up to the expectations of that particular animal –i.e. the cock in some versions of the story, the wedder that gets killed for pretending to be a dog, and so on. In others, they are judged as people and given almost ridiculously human characteristics – I couldn’t get over the mouse in The Mouse and the Paddock having no horse to ride across the river (what a crazy image!) and asking for a priest while drowning in the river. This may be a discussion that took place in class on one of the days I was late – I know I missed some discussion of the difference between beast epic and Aesopian fables – but I wonder if this is a difference between the two types of fables (in beast epics, animals are judged as humans and Christians, and in Aesop’s fables, they are judged as animals) or if it is a little more complicated. I don’t know if I would call The Fox and the Wolf a beast epic, at least not completely, because the animals do display some animal-like characteristics and the wolf interacts with humans.

It may not be a significant difference – maybe just two different styles of fable-telling – but I couldn’t help noticing it in this case in particular. Poor wolf.

Henryson and Perrault

Henryson’s moralitas for his fables keep reminding my of Charles Perrault’s morals for his fairy tales, so I thought I’d share one. Perrault tells many of the more "traditional" versions of fairy tales (though what is a "traditional" fairy tale is another line of discussion all together). Like Henryson, Perrault also likes to write little morals at the end of most of his fairy tales. The following is the moral for Little Red Riding Hood. In Perrault’s version, there is no hunter-rescuer, and the grandmother and Little Red do not get rescued. The fairy tale ends with the wolf saying, “The better to eat you with!” And then “upon saying these words, the wicked wolf threw himself on Little Red Riding Hood and gobbled her up” (Perrault 13).

Moral
From this story one learns that children,
Especially young girls,
Pretty, well-bred, and genteel,
Are wrong to listen to just anyone,
And it’s not at all strange,
If a wolf ends up eating them.
I say a wolf, but not all wolves
Are exactly the same.
Some are perfectly charming,
Not loud, brutal, or angry,
But tame, pleasant, and gentle,
Following young ladies
Right into their homes, into their chambers,
But watch out if you haven’t learned that tame wolves
Are the most dangerous of all. (Perrault 13)

Henryson reminds me of Perrault because they both tend to write morals to express their own views of society. Perrault’s morals feel more didactic, more cut-and-dry, but both writers are pedagogical.


**Citations from:

Perrault, Charles. “Little Red Riding Hood.” The Classic Fairy Tales. Ed. Maria Tatar. New York: Norton, 1999. 11-13.

Peace and Hwæt

I'll admit it: I'm one of the people who put Dr. Quenthe up to having us read aloud in class. It's so choice. I think what made me do it, is the fact that quen the words are said aloud they cast a spell. Of course, quen we say them clumsily, the spell is broken. But the magic of hearing it quen it is well-read is well worth the effort. It is one thing to read a strange Anglo dialect on the page. But the fresh quite ("white") paper and modern Times New Roman font do not do it justice. Speak the language aloud, however, and all sorts of magic erupts. At least, in my mind it does.

Another point in favor of reading aloud is that often these older dialects look like nothing familiar on the page, but quen we pronounce them (or when Dr. Quenthe pronounces them correctly for us) we hear things we recognize, though we may not have seen them in the printed text. I've learned a lot about the connections between English and other languages from these sorts of phonic discoveries. (Quich is to say that "Hooked on Phonics worked for me.")

One of the most interesting points of our reading aloud together last week was the archaism of the "qu" sound in place of the "wh". Consider line 1050 in our text from last week, for example. (If you haven't noticed by now, I've been having some fun with it.) The connections between (or should I say, "betwene"?) English and Latin are fascinating as well (cf. Dr. Quenthe's comments on quid.)

All of this reminded me of a story, recounted in Humphrey Carpenter's biography, Tolkien (c'mon; you knew I couldn't leave him out of an entry). Tolkien

invariably brought the subject alive and showed that it mattered to him.
The most celebrated example of this, remembered by everyone was taught by
him, was the opening of his series of lectures on Beowulf. He
would come silently into the room, fix the audience with his gaze, and suddenly
begin to declaim in a resounding voice the opening lines of the poem in the
original Anglo-Saxon, commencing with a great cry of 'Hwæt!' (the first
word of this and several other Old English poems), which some undergraduates
took to be 'Quiet!' (Carpenter, 132-133).

Now, this story itself is a kind of apologia in favor of reading (or in Tolkien's brilliant case, reciting) a text aloud. Tolkien brought Beowulf to life:

It was not so much a recitation as a dramatic performance, an impersonation of
an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall, and it impressed generations of students
because it brought home to them that Beowulf was not just a set text to
be read for the purposes of an examination but a powerful piece of dramatic
poetry (Carpenter).

"Powerful poetry." So perhaps there is magic in the speaking of the spell after all.