1 00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:01,740 Thank you very much for coming. 2 00:00:02,190 --> 00:00:09,450 It seems like a very appropriate day to be talking about Tolkien, because I'm sure you know, it's the 60th anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis. 3 00:00:10,050 --> 00:00:17,680 who will be making a sort of brief cameo later on in the lecture that, of course, though of course Lewis was not a philologist. 4 00:00:18,090 --> 00:00:21,610 And that is the focus of today. 5 00:00:21,790 --> 00:00:26,790 To think about Tolkien and how he became a philologist. 6 00:00:26,790 --> 00:00:37,870 And probably the starting point here is with the definition of what Philology is, and etymologically. 7 00:00:38,940 --> 00:00:47,040 It goes back to the Greek words of philo, that's the combining element meaning love and logos, word or speech. 8 00:00:47,220 --> 00:00:52,290 So you could define them etymologically as the love of words. 9 00:00:52,620 --> 00:00:58,200 So a lover of words. And that, is in one sense, absolutely true of Tolkien. 10 00:00:58,770 --> 00:01:02,480 But it has a more technical sense to, of course. 11 00:01:03,390 --> 00:01:05,400 If we look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. 12 00:01:05,850 --> 00:01:14,059 Then you see, the first definition is the love of learning and literature and literary or classical scholarship. 13 00:01:14,060 --> 00:01:17,240 But this is now chiefly an American use of the term. 14 00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:21,800 That's not the sense in which I'm using it here. 15 00:01:23,100 --> 00:01:26,430 There's a second definition which is now obsolete. 16 00:01:27,420 --> 00:01:34,560 Love of talk or argument. And then a third, a more technical sense, the branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, 17 00:01:34,920 --> 00:01:38,550 historical developments and relationships and languages, 18 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:48,120 language trends, the historical study of the phonology and morphology of languages, what we call historical linguistics. 19 00:01:48,950 --> 00:01:54,360 That's the way in which Tolkien understood the term as a kind of 19th century discipline. 20 00:01:55,020 --> 00:01:56,639 And that's what I'll be talking about today, 21 00:01:56,640 --> 00:02:07,980 is how do Tolkien get into philology and also how it invested itself in his academic work and his teaching and his scholarship. 22 00:02:12,330 --> 00:02:19,380 So the background, just very briefly and I'm sure you are aware of it and have already heard it at some point this term. 23 00:02:20,460 --> 00:02:25,920 I'm going to start with this post. This is also a useful way in thinking about how he as a philologist, 24 00:02:25,920 --> 00:02:32,970 because he makes a quite clear distinction between those first and third definitions of philology. 25 00:02:33,150 --> 00:02:36,510 I'm just saying here because he says, and that's in 1953, 26 00:02:36,660 --> 00:02:42,510 I've not been nourished by English literature in which I don't suppose I'm better than you for the 27 00:02:42,510 --> 00:02:47,520 simple reason that I've never had much better news to rest my heart or heart in bed together. 28 00:02:47,610 --> 00:02:52,680 I was brought up in the classics and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer. 29 00:02:52,920 --> 00:03:02,720 Also being a philologist and the last part of any aesthetic question then came from the form of words, and especially from the association. 30 00:03:02,730 --> 00:03:11,790 Words form with words. Since I am always best enjoy things in a foreign language, one so remote as to feel like such facts. 31 00:03:11,790 --> 00:03:15,360 And I think that those kind of nicely distinctions kind of major. 32 00:03:15,630 --> 00:03:22,860 I mean, he sort of does it in a way I suspect not take you seriously is complete dismissal of the English literature. 33 00:03:23,460 --> 00:03:32,520 You need to read only my recent book until he realised that, of course he was widely read in literature as well. 34 00:03:32,700 --> 00:03:41,070 But what we should emphasise here is that he's very interested in historical languages and in text recognition. 35 00:03:42,510 --> 00:03:47,730 DEADLINE was the other night like Anglo-Saxon, and you'll see others too. 36 00:03:48,180 --> 00:03:53,730 And there you can see his love of words coming out and full of words. 37 00:03:54,090 --> 00:03:57,810 The associations between virtual and words sense. 38 00:03:59,730 --> 00:04:04,200 So how did you get into this? How do you become the largest? 39 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:10,470 As you know, he was born in South Africa in 1892. 40 00:04:11,040 --> 00:04:19,800 He moved to South version Worcestershire in 1896, and then he attended King Edward School in Birmingham. 41 00:04:21,120 --> 00:04:24,630 And it was here that he first discovered his love of philology. 42 00:04:24,660 --> 00:04:37,680 So it goes way back to his school days, initially through Chambers Etymological dictionary work and published in 1903, 43 00:04:37,920 --> 00:04:42,540 and in which he won a surprise at school in 1984. 44 00:04:42,610 --> 00:04:47,370 He says it was the beginning of his interest in Germanic philology. 45 00:04:47,470 --> 00:04:54,420 That's the history of the German languages, and philology in general is an unfortunate, he says. 46 00:04:54,750 --> 00:04:59,340 The introduction, which gave him his first glimpse of love for people. 47 00:04:59,730 --> 00:05:07,380 So change became so well-worn intensive. It has become lost its merits so many times it fell out of the dictionary. 48 00:05:08,580 --> 00:05:12,870 So you might be thinking, Wow, this amazing introduction was made. 49 00:05:12,870 --> 00:05:20,909 This young boy read it so many times that he'd destroy it and that it sort of affected him in such a deep way. 50 00:05:20,910 --> 00:05:27,380 Well, we can reconstruct it, of course, by looking at another copy of the introduction and see what it included. 51 00:05:29,400 --> 00:05:33,190 Lots of family trees, historical languages. 52 00:05:33,210 --> 00:05:42,660 It's not an obvious kind of thing. Maybe I'll coin easily grant by this in the way that Tolkien was, but he certainly found it in trances. 53 00:05:42,870 --> 00:05:50,490 You can see the development of what's called the Du Toit family, which is what we now call Germanic, and then various subdivisions of it. 54 00:05:52,200 --> 00:05:54,810 We've been known as a kind of Grimm's Law. 55 00:05:58,070 --> 00:06:11,059 This sort of explanation of changes in confidence shifts that happened in confidence in the generic language today explains why that is. 56 00:06:11,060 --> 00:06:18,680 What it sounds, for instance, becomes the first part that becomes farther in English. 57 00:06:19,190 --> 00:06:29,830 In other generic languages, it's also increased some examples of that that you can see concept for the founders although they falter and so. 58 00:06:30,970 --> 00:06:31,990 And then again, 59 00:06:31,990 --> 00:06:43,630 something that does immediately jump out to us that may well have been particularly attractive told me was essentially etymology of names and places. 60 00:06:44,230 --> 00:06:48,360 So actually, if you think about the sort of the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, 61 00:06:48,370 --> 00:06:53,270 quite a lot of this material looks similar and it's easy to see, I think, 62 00:06:53,290 --> 00:06:56,560 how this has had its effect on Tolkien looking back on his career, 63 00:06:56,770 --> 00:07:02,460 although it does perhaps seem slightly unusual for a schoolboy to be quite so taken with it. 64 00:07:03,660 --> 00:07:07,530 This is how he tells us he began his interests in philology. 65 00:07:08,220 --> 00:07:17,520 And then he won an exhibition to study the striking minorities at Exeter College here in Oxford, where he was recruited in 1911. 66 00:07:19,750 --> 00:07:31,090 But having set out to study the classical languages, he found them rather uninspiring as a copy of his introduction to Greek prose composition, 67 00:07:32,660 --> 00:07:41,770 which you can see put an inscription on from when he was a student at Exeter, Although it seems to have originated in his time at King Edward School. 68 00:07:42,910 --> 00:07:47,170 He's doing a little earlier race. This is not he's really engaging. 69 00:07:48,220 --> 00:07:56,650 It's not necessarily studying his Greek prose composition as much as he might be in his first year at Exeter. 70 00:07:57,430 --> 00:08:07,390 And in fact, he spends a lot of the time engaging in student crowds around the town and the police and the proctors altogether for about an hour. 71 00:08:07,660 --> 00:08:16,090 Geoffrey and I catch the bus and train up Konark making unearthly noises followed by a mad crowd of people across town, 72 00:08:16,090 --> 00:08:21,940 is chock full of interest before it should come off at the their I address a few stirring words, 73 00:08:21,940 --> 00:08:28,360 a huge laugh before sending and removing to the maximum number of seats for the masses memorial. 74 00:08:28,720 --> 00:08:30,820 Well, I address the crowd again. 75 00:08:32,200 --> 00:08:42,390 So he's doing what he's doodling and in his spare time he also starts work on advising on official languages and studying the Jamaican economy. 76 00:08:42,460 --> 00:08:51,550 So that beginning in the introduction to the changes at some of those occupations is starting to starting to manifest itself. 77 00:08:51,550 --> 00:08:56,740 It decides to study this, chiefly the Jamaican migration in more detail. 78 00:08:58,170 --> 00:09:06,540 He achieved the most second class degree in alterations the end of the first year exams and was in some danger of losing his scholarship. 79 00:09:07,410 --> 00:09:10,620 But it was long paper that had infused him. 80 00:09:11,770 --> 00:09:23,350 And that's because for his option, he took the paper in comparative philology where it came to be told by the extraordinary figure of Joseph Wright. 81 00:09:24,690 --> 00:09:31,970 Let me tell you a little bit more about Joseph, Right. He had been born in Yorkshire. 82 00:09:33,050 --> 00:09:36,440 And he began his career at the age of six as a donkey, 83 00:09:37,730 --> 00:09:46,100 which meant that his job was to carry the tools around on the back of a donkey in a quarry and then take them away in shock and to bring them back. 84 00:09:47,030 --> 00:09:53,450 And then he worked in a little mill. And at the age of 15, he was still illiterate. 85 00:09:54,410 --> 00:10:00,400 But at that point, he found himself talking to colleagues at lunch and feeling frustrated. 86 00:10:00,410 --> 00:10:03,410 And they talked about things they read in the newspapers that you couldn't read. 87 00:10:03,710 --> 00:10:08,510 So in 43, and then he decided he wanted a French. 88 00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:14,180 So he went to an office and learned French. And then he started teaching people French. 89 00:10:14,480 --> 00:10:17,750 He made good money and it's more in classes. 90 00:10:17,750 --> 00:10:24,260 And he continued to educate himself. And in fact, what we found was that he had an astonishing facility for learning languages. 91 00:10:25,250 --> 00:10:30,200 And then after a bit of time, teaching and earning money and saving it, 92 00:10:30,500 --> 00:10:40,010 he saved enough money to pay tuition at the University of London, which is a place that is the centre of philology. 93 00:10:40,070 --> 00:10:48,620 So it's really a German subject in the 19th century. And so he had just gotten his fees and his accommodation and most of his travel. 94 00:10:49,310 --> 00:10:53,389 So he splashed out about an hour and then he got out. 95 00:10:53,390 --> 00:10:59,300 He walked the remaining 250 miles to Hamburg, an extraordinary figure. 96 00:11:00,500 --> 00:11:05,780 And he said that return, please. And so he came back and some more money went back again. 97 00:11:06,290 --> 00:11:08,030 And this time he stayed for longer. 98 00:11:08,600 --> 00:11:18,110 And eventually he obtained a doctorate at the time or qualitative and quantitative changes in the DNA and found a system in Greek. 99 00:11:20,030 --> 00:11:23,649 So we've come a long way, really, in just a few years, someone. 100 00:11:23,650 --> 00:11:25,160 Someone who couldn't read or write. 101 00:11:26,780 --> 00:11:38,280 And then he came back at some time teaching around Oxford and became the deputy assistant to the Professor of Comparative philology. 102 00:11:38,300 --> 00:11:43,140 He was Max Miller. And then my mother retired. 103 00:11:43,220 --> 00:11:46,280 He became a professor. The impact of philology. 104 00:11:47,510 --> 00:11:51,410 And there's a picture of him that seems to support the notion. 105 00:11:51,450 --> 00:11:56,840 And she always remains very much most attracted to his Yorkshire roots. 106 00:11:57,050 --> 00:12:02,450 In fact, one of his great projects, which he single handedly produced, was the English dialect issue, 107 00:12:03,380 --> 00:12:09,770 which he sort of inherited from water skiing and somehow managed it as it and not only to oversee the whole project, 108 00:12:09,770 --> 00:12:15,320 but using tea for its publication. You said determination pale in as the professor. 109 00:12:16,640 --> 00:12:23,690 This painting in the Tate is actually one of the spaces where your English Jews might see 110 00:12:23,720 --> 00:12:33,380 a small version of that which hangs in the English faculty and it's not very prominent. 111 00:12:34,190 --> 00:12:38,650 Probably should be more so since he's the very person who founded the Oxford. 112 00:12:38,660 --> 00:12:47,060 Is one just another one of these projects. And this is I think I don't have to be in the film talking documentary, if you've seen that. 113 00:12:49,480 --> 00:12:54,620 So yeah, he is an extraordinary man and he specialised in those dramatic changes. 114 00:12:55,150 --> 00:12:59,590 So this person that that's how he went to someone. 115 00:12:59,590 --> 00:13:10,149 He was really an old school philologist with the same interests in him and he'd written grammars of all the English, middle English, old, 116 00:13:10,150 --> 00:13:21,180 high German, intellectual and gothic, and in fact, Tolkien literally he encountered right before this because he had already occurred. 117 00:13:21,370 --> 00:13:26,830 He created a copy of Wright's Primer of the Alphabet language. 118 00:13:29,380 --> 00:13:34,570 In 1899. He got it when he was King Edward School. 119 00:13:35,530 --> 00:13:39,940 It was sold to him by one of his fellow students who bought it by accident. 120 00:13:41,410 --> 00:13:43,360 He decides he wants to become a missionary. 121 00:13:44,170 --> 00:13:51,380 And so when he saw this book, the translation of the New Testament into this unfamiliar language, you are really useful to me. 122 00:13:51,420 --> 00:13:55,930 And I was issued to sleep on that. 123 00:13:56,200 --> 00:14:01,840 And then he discovered that it was 1600 years ago. 124 00:14:02,020 --> 00:14:05,530 It was no use to him. So until he sold it, told him. 125 00:14:07,200 --> 00:14:13,410 And Tolkien says of this language, When you first heard and said, I was fascinated by golf itself, 126 00:14:14,220 --> 00:14:20,460 the use of language which reached the eminence of liturgical use but failed early in 127 00:14:20,580 --> 00:14:25,950 the tragic history of the Goths to become one of the liturgical languages of the West. 128 00:14:26,140 --> 00:14:32,240 So it's partly his history as well, and she's become a testament to that. 129 00:14:32,280 --> 00:14:45,019 And frankly, if he's. And he says that the concentration of the vocabulary and in a primary of language was enough just 130 00:14:45,020 --> 00:14:51,110 reading the a sensation at least as full of the light as first looking into Chapman's Homer. 131 00:14:52,380 --> 00:14:58,350 So it's all being really taken with the Gothic language and you do it through Rice primer. 132 00:15:01,800 --> 00:15:06,150 We got a sensible call. It looks like an associate of the. 133 00:15:06,760 --> 00:15:14,710 This is from cut and paste of the book of Tolkien having transcribed a piece of the. 134 00:15:15,040 --> 00:15:20,830 This is the the of the lost prayer in Gothic. 135 00:15:21,070 --> 00:15:26,480 She transcribed himself. You can see that. It's not just to find out about. 136 00:15:26,500 --> 00:15:34,900 It's a sort of version of the alphabet and his Tolkien having very carefully transcribed it himself. 137 00:15:35,110 --> 00:15:45,610 He probably got that from an original version in Francis, who's genius's edition of the New Testament, which was published in 1665. 138 00:15:45,640 --> 00:15:50,740 I suspect Francisco's genius is since the founding father actually made a lot of people that way. 139 00:15:51,070 --> 00:15:59,440 But I suspect another one of the potential heroes and if there's even this is a kind of parallel text, 140 00:15:59,470 --> 00:16:07,630 gothic and old English and sort of thing that, you know, they want to in Haiti. 141 00:16:07,650 --> 00:16:23,230 And I hope they. Said he was already transfixed by it and finally got it language. 142 00:16:24,100 --> 00:16:30,339 And there's a sort of letter that he wrote to his son Christopher, later on, 143 00:16:30,340 --> 00:16:38,470 having attended a lecture that he had given, where he talks a bit more about this, about the appeal of that. 144 00:16:40,180 --> 00:16:46,810 And he says that having heard good things about his lecture, he was he felt similarly said all the same, 145 00:16:47,260 --> 00:16:53,530 I suddenly realised that I'm a pure philologist, I like history news, but it's fine. 146 00:16:53,530 --> 00:16:57,640 His name is for me A Rose in which it throws light on words and names. 147 00:16:58,180 --> 00:17:05,530 Several people and I spoke state of the art, which may be the I'd Attila on his couch almost immediately present. 148 00:17:05,890 --> 00:17:10,660 Yeah. Only if I find the thing that thrills my nerves is the one you mentioned casually. 149 00:17:11,170 --> 00:17:22,780 But without those syllables, the whole great drama about history and imagining things to say about that is, yes, a good talk. 150 00:17:22,810 --> 00:17:35,950 But I really liked listening to that diminutive formal answer, which, of course is the word father I thought comes off. 151 00:17:36,010 --> 00:17:39,550 We just saw in the Gothic version of the Lord's Prayer. 152 00:17:40,540 --> 00:17:48,340 So I think you can shed some light on the way to talking to the names, to words and to the original languages. 153 00:17:49,480 --> 00:17:55,900 So his fascination with Gothic opened up Tolkien eyes to the world to generate fellowship. 154 00:17:57,040 --> 00:18:07,570 But it was also that which of course, led to his disastrous, total disastrous, his underwhelming performance in all the mods. 155 00:18:08,370 --> 00:18:12,190 It is something of a distraction he'd rather be doing. Okay. Basically. 156 00:18:14,490 --> 00:18:22,920 But as he noted later on in his life, it has another important role because it it's what made him take comparative pride. 157 00:18:23,580 --> 00:18:29,100 And as he himself said, it guided me to sit at the feet of old Joe in person. 158 00:18:29,640 --> 00:18:33,600 He proved a great friend and advisor to his equal figure. 159 00:18:33,850 --> 00:18:39,170 It's all his life. And so he talks about how he rents their home, which is up and regrows. 160 00:18:40,230 --> 00:18:47,160 It's hardly not there. In fact, if you know, it is summertime, where this monstrous seventies farce, which is still called Factory, 161 00:18:47,160 --> 00:18:54,940 and it's where Wright built his big family home, which his wife described as a library with a few libraries. 162 00:18:57,420 --> 00:18:58,499 And when it was demolished, 163 00:18:58,500 --> 00:19:08,490 they built liquefaction factory in the village in Yorkshire that he even only wants to remain connected to an established base. 164 00:19:09,420 --> 00:19:19,050 They called it the PSA Society meetings, which is a pleasant Sunday afternoon society, very polite students, 165 00:19:19,320 --> 00:19:26,440 and they gave them Yorkshire teas with substantial fruitcakes and Wright would entertain them. 166 00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:40,530 And his favourite party trick we had, he had this terrier which he taught little snips every time he heard because they were one of the most smack 167 00:19:40,530 --> 00:19:49,680 bang exists here in the in the glossary to the primer smack of items of that fancy word for a fig tree. 168 00:19:50,530 --> 00:19:54,990 Somewhat random. So. 169 00:19:58,290 --> 00:20:06,300 So that's sort of how people think through the primer and then through right and self. 170 00:20:09,500 --> 00:20:22,610 A second linguistic discovery at this time while he was in college was his discovery in the library next to a copy of Kenny Elliot's finished Grammar, 171 00:20:23,270 --> 00:20:27,020 and that's probably still there in the library today. 172 00:20:27,740 --> 00:20:34,520 Annotated by Yes, she wrote in the library books, Knock it out for us. 173 00:20:34,920 --> 00:20:41,990 And he says in an of celebration, most important perhaps of the Gulf, was the discovery in his college library. 174 00:20:42,230 --> 00:20:45,980 When I was supposed to be reading on a most of the finished grammar. 175 00:20:46,580 --> 00:20:53,390 It was like discovering a complete wine cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine, the kind of flavour never tasted before. 176 00:20:53,480 --> 00:21:01,340 It quite intoxicated me and I gave up the events and unrecorded language in my own and my own 177 00:21:01,340 --> 00:21:10,010 language of serious events and activities became infinitely powerful and structure as it should. 178 00:21:10,460 --> 00:21:15,020 Are you referring to Hawking's annotations so that. 179 00:21:17,230 --> 00:21:20,800 He already discovered Finnish national epic, the Caribana, 180 00:21:21,100 --> 00:21:33,520 while he was a canvas and was particularly affected by the story of he died paper of assets at Oxford Corpus in 19 5014 and 2x2 1950. 181 00:21:33,910 --> 00:21:37,960 And it's not even published. It's a perversion of the story that says. 182 00:21:39,900 --> 00:21:45,650 It is only she is this tutor next to that who in his first year pointed out, 183 00:21:45,830 --> 00:21:55,580 given his love of the English languages and his parents lack of interest in it in classical languages, 184 00:21:55,970 --> 00:22:01,490 that he should instead switch to the final school in English language and literature. 185 00:22:02,930 --> 00:22:11,600 And this, of course, is very positive news for Tolkien, because the curriculum in those days is heavily focussed on old and philology. 186 00:22:13,230 --> 00:22:19,990 And it's those aspects of the course that he turns to and we can get an insight. 187 00:22:19,990 --> 00:22:27,030 It's kind of mysterious. And some of this his notes and essays still survive secrets. 188 00:22:27,030 --> 00:22:37,250 And this is an essay you wrote on the language of Chaucer focusing on phonology and accidents, particularly on the native element. 189 00:22:37,260 --> 00:22:41,420 And you can see some of the deadline that say, the 1530. 190 00:22:41,610 --> 00:22:44,820 You can see what the reading the long that so is. 191 00:22:45,270 --> 00:22:58,110 I mean, I'm not sure she's a native but I was plan to work out exactly what to say when I choose that particular issue because 192 00:22:58,110 --> 00:23:06,180 it has to be comment on the white dwarf right that is working out how you get middle English taught from all the way on. 193 00:23:14,350 --> 00:23:24,040 He excelled at the English course, winning the college's skeet prize, for which he got a copy of the presentation copy of the Masters. 194 00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:30,280 So he's on the same thrill in quite the same way. 195 00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:39,550 In fact, I know he didn't train them quite the same way because although he signed it, he never actually cut the pages, so he cannot read it. 196 00:23:40,990 --> 00:23:42,720 However, fortunately for him, 197 00:23:42,730 --> 00:23:55,750 there was also cash prize and what he did in fact was bought a copy of Maurice Chase's Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative. 198 00:23:57,380 --> 00:24:05,750 So here's another language that's really important. Social development is a philologist, Gothic, Finnish and Welsh as a boy of nine. 199 00:24:05,990 --> 00:24:10,660 He said that he was captivated by the Welsh names that were painted on a cold chain 200 00:24:10,670 --> 00:24:16,130 that passed through the rural parts of the West Midlands on their way to Birmingham. 201 00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:22,040 And he sort of was intrigued by these words that appeared on the trains. 202 00:24:23,100 --> 00:24:30,930 And its natural attraction to the Welsh language was further encouraged by James Wright, who put it in characteristically physical terms. 203 00:24:31,470 --> 00:24:41,670 He said to him, Going to Celtic that I know is of course that influenced tongues, 204 00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:49,590 I think tongues in those races running at that point and where he imagined they're not. 205 00:24:49,650 --> 00:25:03,389 That's from the the lecture Tolkien them that English and Welsh and the O'Donnell Celtic match which he gave the University of Oxford in 1955, 206 00:25:03,390 --> 00:25:06,450 is actually the day after the publication of the Return of the King. 207 00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:12,900 It might contain things and he says it myself. 208 00:25:13,140 --> 00:25:20,250 I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as a matter of English philology, 209 00:25:20,460 --> 00:25:26,490 more than the practical linguists desire to acquire the knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience. 210 00:25:26,850 --> 00:25:33,120 More, even though the interest was that the literature older and newer that is preserved in it. 211 00:25:33,540 --> 00:25:38,610 These two things in importance. Welsh is the best soil. 212 00:25:38,670 --> 00:25:42,240 This island, the scene, the language of the man of Britain. 213 00:25:42,900 --> 00:25:49,720 Welsh is beautiful. An interesting insight into how our focus is. 214 00:25:49,730 --> 00:25:58,550 I'm just not used to something about the history and people have realised to this to 215 00:25:58,610 --> 00:26:07,970 Great Britain and please a that pleasure in welcoming the me from a particular language. 216 00:26:09,930 --> 00:26:16,890 He admits that it is difficult to quantify the concept of beauty in relation to language, and it's a subjective phenomenon. 217 00:26:17,700 --> 00:26:29,040 But he says that most people would surely admit that the word Salvador is a beautiful word, especially if you divorce it from its usual meaning. 218 00:26:29,140 --> 00:26:40,060 And. So for me, something like that said, it all sounds beautiful, more so than you'll see out at. 219 00:26:41,850 --> 00:26:52,050 And he said, Well, for me, the doors are extremely extraordinary, difficult to find the most single word from its context, 220 00:26:52,590 --> 00:27:02,310 its meaning and its usual sanity, just focusing on the fantastic qualities of grace, you get a pure aesthetic pleasure. 221 00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:06,330 Well, she's particularly important for in that regard. 222 00:27:07,950 --> 00:27:15,660 Okay, so at this point, of course, once he graduated from Oxford, Tolkien went off to the First World War. 223 00:27:16,740 --> 00:27:22,500 And so, I mean, sort of passé is not so relevant for his development as a philologist that he wasn't more 224 00:27:22,510 --> 00:27:29,540 about that because once we were talking the Great War and we'll hear the story again in 1919, 225 00:27:30,220 --> 00:27:39,540 we told him as a demobbed soldier came back to Oxford and he looks for gainful employment. 226 00:27:39,810 --> 00:27:44,490 What would you do as a philologist? It was a philologist. 227 00:27:46,380 --> 00:27:56,430 Well, people who made this contact and see if he's got any ideas and so he turns to the person who taught him Old Norse. 228 00:27:57,300 --> 00:28:05,460 That's the the the sort of origin of the Scandinavian, which is Old Norse. 229 00:28:06,180 --> 00:28:16,560 And this is a man called William Craigie, who was the holder of Rolling Stone and also a professor of linguistics and recollection. 230 00:28:16,860 --> 00:28:22,110 And also along with that, the third editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. 231 00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:35,320 And his response was to recommend as a worker assistance on DVD or what's called the new English Dictionary at that time. 232 00:28:37,220 --> 00:28:45,150 And he made this recommendation to his co-editor, Henry Bradley, who was at that point working his way through the letter W. 233 00:28:46,850 --> 00:28:55,690 And the reason he did not to take out you himself was because W is a word that is particularly prominent in terms of Germanic. 234 00:28:56,360 --> 00:29:08,420 Was there a large number of words w w e and so therefore tohe has a well trained Germanic philologist in particular value. 235 00:29:08,780 --> 00:29:10,430 So Bradley did not work. 236 00:29:16,210 --> 00:29:27,700 And so we get a sense of what he was doing by looking through some of the materials produced as part of the work on top of you by talking. 237 00:29:28,780 --> 00:29:37,419 He talks of those days of even of being based in the old Ashmolean building, as it's called. 238 00:29:37,420 --> 00:29:40,270 This is now the Museum of the History Science on Wall Street. 239 00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:52,390 And it is a good read that he wrote for Henry Brindley, who worked on the he he describes it as that great dusty workshop around the grounds, 240 00:29:52,730 --> 00:29:58,330 his unfortunately of his experience working every day and says that that's where he 241 00:29:58,330 --> 00:30:03,130 earned his first glimpse at the unique and dominant figure of Charles Talbot Onions. 242 00:30:03,670 --> 00:30:14,140 He was the fourth editor of Dark Surveying, a fledgling apprentice in the dictionary, and then fiddling with the Six Flags and all the rest. 243 00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:22,749 And one of those things was Tolkien worked on the sets of these little bits of paper on which 244 00:30:22,750 --> 00:30:30,309 all of the OED citations and definitions and a large number of these relates to those words, 245 00:30:30,310 --> 00:30:33,740 and a few others survived into all kinds of everyday. 246 00:30:34,220 --> 00:30:35,320 It's the first one. 247 00:30:35,980 --> 00:30:49,150 First word he was given to the lexicographer symbologist word panel, which is you could see in early history because he says number one, 248 00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:57,620 wagging, shaking head and face, that one in chief he used as a specialist, turning off, I suspect you, down to the one over waggle. 249 00:30:58,060 --> 00:31:02,670 As a starting point, it's not very interesting. And then it's all crossed out. 250 00:31:03,310 --> 00:31:09,510 And you could just see practising the act of waggling specifically in golf hasn't quite. 251 00:31:10,570 --> 00:31:21,940 Lexicographers are part of confession. Some of things are very briefly, but Tolkien was in the legal and those kinds of was probably all over. 252 00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:31,660 But there are some great Germanic roots that he did say, for instance, the World War II and the Golden Age, 253 00:31:32,170 --> 00:31:37,870 which is particularly interesting theologically because it shifts results all in a sense of being. 254 00:31:38,410 --> 00:31:46,660 You can see here the gloomy black and then comes to me, Pale city, sunlight and so on. 255 00:31:46,900 --> 00:31:52,660 And so he really had himself good when it came to his words, trying to explain those kinds of changes. 256 00:31:52,810 --> 00:31:57,040 And you can see it's really quite long and detailed descriptions which all 257 00:31:57,040 --> 00:32:01,990 made it to this exact date in the speech from the current version of the OED. 258 00:32:02,530 --> 00:32:10,510 Many of these entries still under the ice from the first edition and have all his descriptions and assemblages still in them. 259 00:32:11,590 --> 00:32:18,910 So that's one. Another one would be the word walnut, which is another interesting example. 260 00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:27,910 If you read that you learn a lot about the origin of walnut and the fact that, you know, the English is only one example of this. 261 00:32:28,150 --> 00:32:34,390 The earliest known appearance of the word in any language must, however, come from the continent. 262 00:32:34,930 --> 00:32:39,730 But it's not clear whether it came very early in old English or was introduced relatively late. 263 00:32:40,780 --> 00:32:45,460 And etymological means and not the Romans says, oh, well, 264 00:32:45,950 --> 00:32:53,890 do well is the word for a foreign Is a foreign not I mean it comes from the Romans or is the native. 265 00:32:54,280 --> 00:33:03,300 This refers to the hazel. This is a classic example of the way that Tolkien uses a single word in its etymology, 266 00:33:03,460 --> 00:33:15,850 trying to understand it as being a context of the relationships between people, whether it was before they migrated or after and so on. 267 00:33:17,130 --> 00:33:26,250 And well of being far enough west the foreigner, which then becomes the word Welsh in modern English. 268 00:33:28,510 --> 00:33:32,680 Another other that he worked on some detail is the word walrus. 269 00:33:33,610 --> 00:33:44,200 And here we have a court case set looking at all of the different forms of that were trying to reconstruct the path by which the 270 00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:55,780 Old Norse word goes in order for Rosemount represented Dutch and and is borrowed into English uniform for us in the 17th century. 271 00:33:56,050 --> 00:34:00,490 There are six different drafts of the technology in the papers. 272 00:34:00,910 --> 00:34:04,750 So it's really teasing it out, trying to get it right and. 273 00:34:07,460 --> 00:34:19,710 Again, the very details and this is on the zoological incroyable interpretation of horse whale and popular or folk etymology. 274 00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:27,229 These obviously influence this story as well, which Tony rightly dismisses as also another slip. 275 00:34:27,230 --> 00:34:34,770 This my science on reverse. It's told me through a quotation from Beowulf for a completely different entry. 276 00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:45,090 This is passive entry rule, but on the back of this you can see a making notes on the exploitation of walrus. 277 00:34:45,390 --> 00:34:56,030 Again, still trying to get it right, still trying to explain these various different forms listed in that Rosemount resident father Russell. 278 00:34:56,430 --> 00:35:01,110 He's an old, old Northwest walrus. And then underneath it, some Russian words. 279 00:35:02,130 --> 00:35:06,570 He's trying to understand the origin of the English word Morse in relation to it. 280 00:35:06,900 --> 00:35:19,380 And then it wasn't that some Finnish words, these ones really society stupidity counts and underneath it stands count is the Finnish word. 281 00:35:20,370 --> 00:35:23,970 And then underneath it, but gothic word, sounds. 282 00:35:24,330 --> 00:35:27,610 And these both words mean beautiful. 283 00:35:27,660 --> 00:35:32,160 And in fact the Gothic word is the origin of the Finnish word. 284 00:35:32,980 --> 00:35:39,140 This is why I put it like that. It seems to go back to Germany. 285 00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:44,010 So it's going to be an asterisk to show that it's a reconstructed form. 286 00:35:47,340 --> 00:35:51,030 I think that's probably another reason why some he can finish such an interesting language. 287 00:35:51,150 --> 00:36:00,030 It has a number of borrowings from the earliest form of Germanic, which survives survived completely unchanged or largely unchanged. 288 00:36:00,450 --> 00:36:05,640 So you get some of these really interesting, very early survivals. 289 00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:17,700 Another example that is treating us looks identical to the reconstructed for treating us as asterisk forms, 290 00:36:17,700 --> 00:36:23,190 even if it is a strange Middle-Earth disastrous reality. 291 00:36:23,430 --> 00:36:29,180 And again, I think this is something that appeals to Tolkien, these things because it finished unchanged. 292 00:36:29,190 --> 00:36:33,150 And so he is still trying to work out the etymology of walrus. 293 00:36:33,330 --> 00:36:37,050 And it's not seems as if you got somewhat obsessed by walrus. 294 00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:44,910 There's actually a book in the Western Library that has offered 30 pages of notes just on the word walrus. 295 00:36:47,070 --> 00:36:52,530 So he spent a year working every day, and then he got his own ideas as well. 296 00:36:53,280 --> 00:37:01,110 When it was published, volume of the article which contains these these words edited by Henry Brundage. 297 00:37:01,260 --> 00:37:06,510 Well, we're talking like a mention there. You can see it as the logical facts or suggestions. 298 00:37:06,510 --> 00:37:15,060 Not getting the nomination is what we found with the Wolf of the week, Woolworths, Wal Mart walrus log and so on. 299 00:37:15,210 --> 00:37:22,680 But essentially because of the articles on the prefix wal and the subject is what was the origin and functions of the countries with a full list, 300 00:37:23,070 --> 00:37:27,299 Not hitherto. And so it is a notepad. 301 00:37:27,300 --> 00:37:35,610 So what could you have done? But then you've got to meet for his first academic post as reader in English language, 302 00:37:35,790 --> 00:37:39,420 where he was tasked with reinvigorating the study of English philology. 303 00:37:39,630 --> 00:37:45,330 First of all, single handed. And then with his colleague and friend Eddie Gordon. 304 00:37:45,990 --> 00:37:51,690 And of course, famously they worked on that issue out in the green light thought, Right. 305 00:37:53,940 --> 00:38:06,509 They also founded the Leeds University Fighting Club, where they met hours and sort of hours and hours with students to read, sing, 306 00:38:06,510 --> 00:38:18,810 perform various poems, songs in Old Norse, in Old English, in Gothic, many of which were authored by Google and Tolkien themselves. 307 00:38:22,770 --> 00:38:34,170 Then, of course, in 1925, when Crazy Woman chief scientist Matt Williams resigned his professorship and moved to the University of Chicago. 308 00:38:34,870 --> 00:38:40,470 So he applied for the chair. And we have from his applications. 309 00:38:41,620 --> 00:38:50,780 And a reference to his successes in teaching theology at Leeds, he says, noting the loss of these students its connotations of terror. 310 00:38:51,140 --> 00:38:55,280 It is not a mystery. And he says the connections to the whole incident also. 311 00:38:55,280 --> 00:39:02,510 Chair I should make productive use of the opportunities which offers to research advance to the best of my ability. 312 00:39:02,780 --> 00:39:10,100 The growing neediness of linguistic and literary studies, which inevitably enemies beset by misunderstanding without lost faith, 313 00:39:10,430 --> 00:39:15,290 and to continue in a way that will first of all feel the encouragement of philological 314 00:39:15,290 --> 00:39:21,320 enthusiasm among the young is a mission statement on his return to Oxford, 315 00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:27,260 because it was essentially he made a short visit to an application process. 316 00:39:27,290 --> 00:39:34,040 The other person, this kind of citizen who had been is a less user of the students at Oxford. 317 00:39:34,070 --> 00:39:47,270 So it's a slightly awkward dynamic. And in fact, he was his person who he had worked together with in producing his first published work. 318 00:39:47,270 --> 00:39:54,919 So they published a book which was a glossary of his middle English anthology, 319 00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:59,540 quote, 14th century verse and process, a collection of middle English texts. 320 00:39:59,750 --> 00:40:06,270 And so he was recruited to write the glossary for a and he needs to be quite a slow glossary. 321 00:40:06,470 --> 00:40:10,520 So he, of course, characteristically couldn't leave it alone, coming back to it, 322 00:40:10,520 --> 00:40:16,190 constantly revising it, and eventually, as an actor publishes an apology manuscript. 323 00:40:17,060 --> 00:40:21,860 And ODP then produced the glossary separate page later. 324 00:40:22,220 --> 00:40:31,370 So here it is, a new linguistic category, but they are also designed to use seismic 14th century verse and phrase. 325 00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:37,040 And Tolkien did research. The 18th is a molehill glossary grade from Mountain. 326 00:40:37,550 --> 00:40:40,880 I accumulated domestic distractions. But you know what's important? 327 00:40:41,690 --> 00:40:50,640 But it's very thorough and comprehensive. So eventually the book was published with the glossary later on. 328 00:40:51,510 --> 00:41:04,830 And of course Tolkien got the job overseas and he took up the chair in 1925 and spent 20 years as the role of the impulsive professor. 329 00:41:05,070 --> 00:41:13,800 And then in 1945, he moved to Mercedes, become the chair of English language, where he studied science. 330 00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:25,920 In 1959, we got a sense of his philological contribution to the curriculum from the list of lectures that appeared under his name during that period. 331 00:41:25,950 --> 00:41:33,870 So for instance, this is along with a number of other pieces actually on the side, and most of them quite austere. 332 00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:45,210 One can't imagine them attracting a huge crowd. My first college roommate, because of the changes to my numerals problems along these lines. 333 00:41:47,820 --> 00:41:54,210 So the generic version is an eight week lecture course, Thursdays at ten Michaelmas, 1928. 334 00:41:54,570 --> 00:42:03,600 And because there was obviously plenty more where that came from, there's another series of eight lectures on the 27th 11 anniversary of 1929, 335 00:42:04,230 --> 00:42:11,690 followed by 16 lectures on accommodate constant changes, eight on numerals and eight on problems of English philology. 336 00:42:13,340 --> 00:42:16,730 And he uses that shirt extensively on Old Norse. 337 00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:26,540 And I like this comment as well, which seems to capture what it would be like being one of his lectures. 338 00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:33,130 He says, I would always rather try to bring the juice into the single sentence or explore the implications 339 00:42:33,310 --> 00:42:39,820 of one word rather than trying to some period in a lecture or talk about a paragraph. 340 00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:47,840 And that's what people say who writes about her and insists that she's really even 341 00:42:49,310 --> 00:42:54,560 spent an hour talking about one word is the guy in the Green Knight page of the paper. 342 00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:58,580 He may forget what it was or what life is all about. 343 00:42:58,730 --> 00:43:04,940 And so people were endlessly mystified by what was going on. On the model. 344 00:43:04,940 --> 00:43:11,240 It is Leeds Viking Covenant Racing people who read this action more positively. 345 00:43:11,930 --> 00:43:21,530 Robert Burchfield, who was a student at the scene, assesses movements to begin with and then started doing his doctorate, working with the community. 346 00:43:21,890 --> 00:43:22,340 And he says, 347 00:43:22,340 --> 00:43:30,799 I was entranced by the arguments that he presented to logical building audiences about the dangers in examination schools the mobs may have, 348 00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:37,610 and that was already devoted to how machines that we're seeing driven away by the speed of history and the complexity of syntax. 349 00:43:37,940 --> 00:43:40,930 By the third, we can turn this small band of true from. 350 00:43:41,450 --> 00:43:49,490 I always want to say I should continue providing residues, referencing puckish fictional ingredients, literally and logically. 351 00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,990 And then one of W.H. Auden. 352 00:43:55,690 --> 00:44:02,480 And if you don't remember a single word you say. But at a certain point, he recited magnificently along. 353 00:44:03,940 --> 00:44:08,230 I was spellbound. This poetry I knew was going to be my dish. 354 00:44:11,660 --> 00:44:16,160 And as I said, you also at this on the model that the league is fighting for. 355 00:44:16,910 --> 00:44:31,280 I that could call top cold fighters a group of distinguished philologists in the university determined to promote this study of Old Norse. 356 00:44:31,490 --> 00:44:34,090 He held the important role in getting students together, 357 00:44:34,460 --> 00:44:40,220 faculty members who might be interested in learning the language and could promote it amongst their students. 358 00:44:40,610 --> 00:44:48,210 So this was made up of some of the most distinguished philologists and scholars in the university. 359 00:44:48,230 --> 00:44:56,690 You can see that also included C.S. Lewis, who by that age was early on in his time, 360 00:44:56,690 --> 00:45:02,570 but recently met Lois Collins, who was one of the editors of the day. 361 00:45:03,500 --> 00:45:07,520 Lewis for using them for the idea. 362 00:45:07,670 --> 00:45:11,810 He already loved the old songs, but it never had a chance to study the language. 363 00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:14,390 So he's extremely keen when he was given a chance. 364 00:45:14,610 --> 00:45:25,100 Also, he did, of course, in his diaries and very enthusiastic about it, and he says began working on it very clearly into the classical movement. 365 00:45:25,610 --> 00:45:31,940 Look at Morris's translation of Encyclopaedia on the Crib. 366 00:45:32,270 --> 00:45:33,259 This is quite difficult. 367 00:45:33,260 --> 00:45:41,200 And there is a story about one of the other members having to go into a meeting with Tolkien and having a copy of the other hand on the desk, 368 00:45:41,330 --> 00:45:58,550 reading from it and so on. And there's also a little educational device in which some of the cold ideas to come to an end published on 2830. 369 00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:05,380 And it tells you which session all the time is that you have to translate in advance. 370 00:46:06,870 --> 00:46:12,080 So you still promoting pedagogy and the teaching is encouraging and not. 371 00:46:15,090 --> 00:46:16,500 And then just finally. 372 00:46:19,050 --> 00:46:30,780 Thinking about sort of moving forward to towards the end of his life, by which time he is very well known and distinguished by a set of fantasy. 373 00:46:31,110 --> 00:46:39,810 And at this point, he received a letter from Robert Stone, who you just met, 374 00:46:40,350 --> 00:46:47,549 who seemed to be talking, went on to become editor of the supplement of the United States. 375 00:46:47,550 --> 00:46:55,410 And when we were looking back at that, the words that were not included in the OED and tried to include in supplementary version, 376 00:46:55,800 --> 00:47:00,510 he came to homeless and and of course, 377 00:47:00,510 --> 00:47:09,419 talking in order to give us give us an explanation of the origins of the word and Appendix F of Lord of the Rings, 378 00:47:09,420 --> 00:47:15,780 where he says the Hobbit was name usually applied to all mankind medical departments. 379 00:47:15,930 --> 00:47:20,640 No area of the origin of the word explainers forgotten. 380 00:47:21,090 --> 00:47:31,680 It seems, however, that being a first name given to an Office of High Schools and to be awarded for the word in Rome Roman holiday the whole. 381 00:47:32,490 --> 00:47:37,070 This is a kind of brilliant piece of work full of letters, 382 00:47:37,140 --> 00:47:44,550 I think I told you because he made the word of it up and has no written permission to hold me. 383 00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:46,860 That is a kind of plausible English. 384 00:47:46,860 --> 00:47:57,270 And given that the Roman is associated with old English, it's a plausible old English etymology, which does to you in old English. 385 00:47:57,600 --> 00:48:02,430 Hard indeed. Very steady in holdover. So to kind of make sense. 386 00:48:03,570 --> 00:48:12,660 But when he was asked in 1976, when he was asked in 1969 by Burchfield for a comment on where I came from, 387 00:48:13,230 --> 00:48:18,420 it took him about nine months to reply, know his usual form, he says. 388 00:48:18,420 --> 00:48:23,850 Unfortunately, as all lexicographers know, two things and that's even trouble. 389 00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:26,700 They always tend to be less simple than you thought. 390 00:48:27,060 --> 00:48:34,480 You were slightly receiving a long letter on related matters, which, even if it is in time, only a small part is useful. 391 00:48:34,490 --> 00:48:44,190 And it says for the moment, this is how lucky you are in having mastered the ethnology invented by J.R.R. Tolkien and investigated by the experts. 392 00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:51,540 I knew that the claim was not there, but I did not follow through into it until faced by the confusion of Hobbit in the supplement. 393 00:48:51,900 --> 00:48:58,000 And then he submits the following definition One of the imaginary people for the human race. 394 00:48:58,270 --> 00:49:05,060 They gave himself this name and hold that quote by himself the six and a half quite normal man. 395 00:49:05,490 --> 00:49:09,480 And that is indeed exactly what went in the supplement of the OED. 396 00:49:09,810 --> 00:49:19,010 And so he makes his way back into the everyday in that respect and that no matter which may or may not prove relevant or interesting, 397 00:49:19,020 --> 00:49:26,490 sadly, never actually appeared. Okay, so I've got a bit of time questions, which makes me think one has any.