The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2. Christina Scull
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was indeed one of their aims – they wanted an attribute of divinity itself, eternity. They wanted to be as gods – knowing not good and evil only, but endlessness – for Tolkien has blended Plato’s legend of Atlantis with the Bible’s story of the Fall of Man, to produce a tale of great resonance. [pp. 66–7]
David Harvey in The Song of Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Themes, Symbols and Myths (1985) likewise relates the fall of the Númenóreans to ‘a Fall in the theological sense. The actions of Ar-Pharazôn are in direct opposition to a stated Ban imposed by superhuman powers and derived from the authority and decree of the One’ (p. 41).
In ‘Aspects of the Fall in The Silmarillion’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), Eric Schweicher points out that in Tolkien’s legendarium Man’s mortality is ‘neither a punishment nor a direct consequence of their [first] Fall. The condition of Man … was determined long before the world was created, in the Great Music of the Ainur …. Yet there is a fear of death on Middle-earth, which is paradoxical if one considers death as a gift.’ Therefore he suggests that ‘the Fall must have had an influence on the attitude of Man towards death, and there one must see Melkor’s influence, which lures Men into believing that what they had been given as a gift is but a bitter fruit’ (p. 169). Thus the desire of the Númenóreans for immortality, and Ar-Pharazôn’s attempt to gain it by conquest, are directly related to the first Fall.
Anne C. Petty, in Tolkien in the Land of the Heroes: Discovering the Human Spirit (2003), thinks that
the passage in the ‘Akallabêth’ that describes the coming of the first Númenóreans to their new land contains some of Tolkien’s most inspired saga-style language, conjuring images of dragon ships and seascapes straight out of such Old English poems as The Seafarer. He balances this vision of wonder with an equally stark vision of horror that concludes the account. This is something Tolkien does better than anyone: he presents the reader with a vision of incredible beauty, and then allows it to be ruined to equally incredible depths, making the end result all the more poignant and devastating. [p. 82]
Númenórean Linear Measures. Series of notes from various manuscripts, published as an appendix to *The Disaster of the Gladden Fields in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 285–7, under a collective title devised by *Christopher Tolkien. These concern the relationship of Númenórean measurements to British units (leagues, yards, feet), and the stature of Númenóreans (especially Elendil), the Eldar (especially Galadriel), the Rohirrim (with a note on Morwen, wife of Thengel), the Hobbits, and the Dúnedain.
Of … such titles are entered by the first significant word following ‘Of’
Ofer Widne Garsecg see Songs for the Philologists
Official Name List. List of names in early Elvish languages (*Languages, Invented) which appear in The Fall of Gondolin in *The Book of Lost Tales, published as part of ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), pp. 100–5, edited with commentary by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.
The work is arranged with Eldarissa (Qenya) names on the left and Noldorissa (Gnomish, later Sindarin) names on the right. A few names are translated into English. The names come from the original manuscript of The Fall of Gondolin as revised by Tolkien, but before *Edith Tolkien made a fair copy. This list was written in the same note-book as the *Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa; the *‘Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin’ was derived from the Official Name List. A short table of abbreviations indicates that Tolkien probably intended to list names from all of the ‘Lost Tales’.
Oilima Markirya see The Last Ark
The Old English Apollonius of Tyre. Edition of the Old English version of Apollonius (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 201) prepared by Peter Goolden, published by Oxford University Press in November 1958 with a brief prefatory note by Tolkien. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B24.
Goolden was admitted as a B.Litt. student in English at *Oxford in May 1950 and received his degree in 1953; his thesis, The Old English Version of the Story of Apollonius of Tyre, was supervised by *C.L. Wrenn. In 1954 Goolden submitted the work to Oxford University Press and was informed that although the Press would not publish it independently (it was not judged to be a mature work of learning), it might be suitable for publication in the series *Oxford English Monographs, of which Tolkien was then chief among three general editors (with *F.P. Wilson and *Helen Gardner). Tolkien received a copy of Goolden’s thesis in February 1954 but could not consider it until later in the year. It was approved for inclusion in the series, pending revision.
At the beginning of March 1956 Goolden lost the manuscript of his work in a fire and had to start revision again with a second copy of his thesis. He seems to have completed this in short order. Already on 14 May 1956 the Delegates of Oxford University Press approved the publication of his book, supported by Tolkien and Wrenn; but Tolkien took more than a year to look over and approve the manuscript, and the finished work was not sent to the printers until the end of August 1957.
Wrenn complained to Oxford University Press about Tolkien’s delay, which was the more unfortunate because a German work with the same text of Apollonius (ed. Josef Raith) had been published in 1956. In his prefatory note Tolkien wrote that ‘the [series] editors feel justified … in publishing Mr. Goolden’s work, since it is independent, and differs from Dr. Raith’s edition in treatment and in some points of opinion,’ and because it was specifically designed for English students and ‘provides a conflated text of the Latin source, notes, and glossary’ (p. iii).
In his preface Goolden thanks C.L. Wrenn as ‘the prime mover of the work’, and ‘Professor J.R.R. Tolkien who kindly suggested revisions in presentation and style’ (p. vi).
The Old English Exodus. Edition of the Old English poem Exodus, with a Modern English translation and commentary, assembled from Tolkien’s lecture notes and other papers by his former B.Litt. student *Joan Turville-Petre, published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford in 1982 (despite imprint and copyright dates of 1981).
The Old English Exodus is a free paraphrase of that portion of the Old Testament book (ch. 13–14) which deals with the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea and the destruction of Pharaoh’s host. A single instance of the work survives, in an eleventh-century manuscript, Junius 11 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (*Libraries and archives). It is considered one of the most difficult Old English texts to interpret, in part because it is incomplete, and it contains many words that are otherwise unrecorded.
Tolkien lectured on the Old English Exodus at *Oxford for many years, beginning in Michaelmas Term 1926. Joan Turville-Petre comments that his papers concerning the poem were ‘never intended as an edition, although the lecturer scrupulously drew up an edited text as the basis of his commentary. It is an interpretation of the poem, designed to reconstruct the original (as far as that is possible), and to place it in the context of Old English poetry’ (p. v). And yet, on 25 October 1932 Tolkien noted in a letter to R.W. Chapman at Oxford University Press that
both Elene [a poem by Cynewulf] and Exodus will remain set books in the English School. They both need editing. I have commentaries to both. I should like very much after Beowulf [i.e. after he completes his Modern English translation of *Beowulf] to tackle a proper edition of O.E. Exodus. The Routledge edn. of Ms. Junius 11 by Krapp [The Junius Manuscript, 1931] is thoroughly bad, and virtually negligible for our students, though admittedly better than nothing. Sedgefield is of course merely laughable (he does a large chunk of Exodus in his miserable Anglo-Saxon verse-book [An Anglo-Saxon Verse Book (1922)]). [Oxford University Press archives]
Tolkien’s surviving