#tolkien and the great war

[arda-marred]

Is there truly no one else in the Tolkien fandom who is interested in Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth? I’ve been running this blog for over five years in the hope of connecting with others on this topic…with very limited success.

#tolkien #Tolkien and the Great War #John Garth #and no… not the movie nonsense #I mean the real deal #I’m just as interested in the genesis of his legendarium as I am in the legendarium itself #I think the war is a crucial part of the mythopoesis and wish more people knew about it

[autailome]

tolkien and the great war is a fantastic read so far and i never knew this about the origin of the two trees but it makes me really emotional that edith is really in the fabric of everything about the legendarium

#tolkien #tolkien studies #edith #edith tolkien #tolkien and the great war #e

[bibliophilecats]

Currently reading: Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth

#tolkien and the great war #john garth #currently reading #tbr #audiobook #jrr tolkien #john rr tolkien #lotr

[thebookwormunderground]

There are many grand and awe-inspiring sights [in war]. Guns firing at night are beautiful--if they were not so terrible. They have the grandeur of thunderstorms."

Rob Gilson, taken from John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth

#john garth #tolkien and the great war #JRR Tolkien #quote #ww1 #rob gilson #sing to me oh queue

[erynalasse]

I wonder when the Noldor looked around at their dwindling numbers and realized that they were dying faster than they could ever keep up with.

#tolkien #silmarillion #I actually have a lot of feelings about this #because the noldor that come over from Valinor are pretty much all you get for the first age’s long war #birth rates are also in the basement if they exist at all #elves don’t have children during war #even if the siege of Angband is peaceful enough to relax that custom #I still don’t think you would have many children #elves have known war before - we know they did before the great journey #but it’s also got to be sobering to realize that your casualty rates are literally unsustainable #(like so #the house of finwë probably isn’t a representative sample of casualty rates #but damn the big picture still can’t be good #we have one grandchild of finwë who survives to the second age out of fifteen and that’s a very very bad rate) #what does that DO to a people group #to go from immortal and undying #to accepting that your whole clan is getting whittled down chunk by chunk #when did they start realizing that even if they beat Morgoth #they wouldn’t recognize the survivors

[silvantransthranduiltrash]

A the start of the journey:

Gimli: your father locked up my father and his group in the dungeon for no reason! He would have kept them there for years if it wasn’t for bilbo!

Legolas: trust me, gimli. If my father truly had wanted to keep your father and his locked up, they would have disappeared into the deepest, darkest corners of the T&I unite and never seen the light of day again.

#lord of the rings #silmarillion #lotr #the hobbit #lotr elves #thranduil #legolas #mirkwood #greenwood the great #silvans #incorrect tolkien quotes #incorrect lotr quotes #silm incorrect quotes #lbh the silvans didn’t even try #it was a courtesy attempt #they wanted to know why the dwarves were there of all places #but they weren’t that pressed #otherwise there would have been way more gaurds #or at least even 1 gaurd #r u really telling me that the elves who’ve been at war the longest don’t have solid ways of detaining and gaining information from enemies?

[silvergifting]

you can all say what you want about shadow of mordor and shadow of war, but at least they had the courage to make annatar and celebrimbor's character designs appealing, unlike the cowards at am*zon. like, yeah, give celebrimbor a fancy little circlet and lovely hair jewelry!! give annatar the sculpted cheekbones and long, flowing locks that are befitting of a shampoo commercial...

don't make them old white men who wouldn't look out of place in every generic 'historical' film of the last decade; give them some style! make them recognizable and interesting to look at! and also make celebrimbor a twink, please and thank you!

#we'll ignore shelob for now #the games are not great for lore but they're kind of. fun. #and it's funny to watch talion get the Inside Info on tyelpe and annatar's relationship drama. like. my man is suffering #life.txt #lotr #tolkien #shadow of mordor #shadow of war #anti rop #celebrimbor #annatar #sauron #anyways #only real mutuals remember the shitposting from like 6 years ago about celebrimbor's voice lololololol

[outlawssweetheart]

The elves of Mirkwood are basically seen as the White Trash™ Hillbillies of the elf community, and that is precisely why they are my favorites.

#And because Thranduil and Legolas are my favorite Tolkien characters now. #Followed by Arwen. #I mostly only care about the elves is what I'm saying. #(I don't care for the Lothlorien elves however.) #Thranduil getting offended when other elves call them rednecks like: *gasps* "I where CHANEL!'' #Other elves: ''Yeah and the Clampetts could afford Chanel too.'' #*another war breaks out* #They're my Sawyers of Middle Earth. 🫶🏽😘 #mirkwood #mirkwood elves #greenwood the great #eryn galen #the hobbit #txt

[shrikeseams]

I just. The heart, the core, of the feanor-finwe-fingolfin situation is that finwe was willing and able to make feanor and miriel pay the bill for fingolfin's existence. and that is not fingolfin's fault, but only an idiot would expect feanor to 1) get along with a perpetual reminder of his grief and 2) ever be able to actually trust finwe not to make feanor pay the price again somehow, if the opportunity arose.

#tolkien #san shoots the breeze #finwe is not *malicious* but he is so deeply *selfish* that like. does it matter that he didn't intend to do harm??? #just not a dude to trust #...maybe that's the heart of the parent-child relationship for both feanor&finwe and fingolfin&finwe #it's love without trust #because finwe has proven that he cannot in fact be trusted #finwe started that game of tug-of-war but keeps pretending it sprung up for no reason #and it's just a direct and natural consequence of the choices he made of his own free will and with great enthusiasm

[noweakergirl]

It's me. It's your Sam. Don't you know your Sam?

#the great war edit part 1 #me? making lotr edit at midnight? during midnights era? absolutely #the lord of the rings #lotr #jrr tolkien #frodo baggins #samwise gamgee #the fellowship of the rings #the two towers #the return of the king #frodo and sam #sam and frodo #samfro #taylor swift #midnights #the great war #sam x frodo #frodo x sam #samfrodo #elijah wood #sean austin

[vakarians-babe]

i go insane every time i see people talk about tolkien, gender, and sexism from a 21st century lens when that's not just ahistorical but also fundamentally misunderstands the state of gender at the end of the great war in britain.

#sorry but seeing 'tolkien is a misogynist bc of eowyn putting down her sword' is literally not borne out by any in depth evaluation #of great war memoirs and novels and their interaction with gender.

[arda-marred]

According to letters and previously unpublished manuscripts, J.R.R. Tolkien began writing stories about Middle-earth as far back as 1917 when he was deployed in the First World War. During this time of time of senseless destruction and tragedy, Tolkien created a hero that embodied these fears; Turin Turambar, the self-proclaimed “Master of Doom.”  There is no shortage of heroes in Middle-earth; the diverse cast of characters is a primary reason readers are attracted to Tolkien’s books. From the highest order of Elves and Gods to the smallest Hobbit in the Shire, anyone can be a hero. Manwe, Gandalf, Beren and Luthien, Eowyn, Frodo, Sam, and so on. These heroes of Middle-earth are generally positive figures, they show compassion for others, take council in wisdom, and put the needs of the helpless ahead of themselves; standard qualities for an archetypal fantasy protagonist by today’s standards.  Turin is different. He is disturbed, melancholic, and vainglorious, though he is capable of compassion and accomplishes much in the name of good; of Turin’s many exploits, the most remarkable is single-handedly slaying Glaurung the dragon, a scene reminiscent of Sigurd and Fafnir from the “Volsunga Saga.” Despite all of Turin’s achievements though, despair follows. His sister Lalaith dies from plague as a child and Turin never recovers emotionally; Turin’s father Hurin is captured in battle, believed to be dead, tortured for decades, and cursed to watch his family suffer from afar through dark magic; Turin’s homeland is overtaken by bandits and subjected to thralldom; Turin is forced to abandon his pregnant mother at the age of nine and the two never meet again; he is exiled from his foster home after murdering an advisor to the king, refusing to return on the one condition that he ask for forgiveness; he kills his best friend Beleg after mistaking him for an orc in the dark; most disturbing of all, he discovers that his pregnant wife, is actually his long lost sister Nienor. Upon realizing their act of incest, Nienor casts herself into the ocean and Turin falls upon his sword, thus ending his miserable life.  Turin, a complicated anti-hero that isn’t quite sympathetic, but pitiable, is a jarring departure from the other heroes of Middle-earth. There is never a triumph for Turin; the weight of the world just keeps packing on. While Tolkien was certainly in the headspace to create such a character during the turmoil of World War One, the genesis of Turin and his family is derived from “The Kalevala,” a collection of ancient songs, poems, and folk stories from Finland. Turin’s life was inspired by the rune songs of Kullervo, a deeply troubled youth who experiences many hardships and goes through life inflicting disaster upon himself and his people; sometimes by accident, other times in a fit of rage. Kullervo is a national icon in Finland, not just for his appearance in “The Kalevala,” but as the subject for Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ first major symphony, “Kullervo. Op. 7.” Through this creation, Sibelius raised the international awareness of this tragic character, as well as the literary and cultural merit of “The Kalevala.”   Read more

#Tolkien #J.R.R. Tolkien #Turin Turambar #The Children of Hurin #The Silmarillion #Tolkien's Legendarium #Tolkien studies #Kullervo #Finnish mythology #The Kalevala #Finnish rune songs #The Tale of Kullervo #Tolkien's inspirations #Tolkien's influences #Tolkien and the Great War

[autailome]

TOLKIEN MOTOMAMI REAL?

#tolkien #tolkien and the great war #e

[anghraine]

I understand why people often say things along the lines of "academic folk who admire Tolkien do so for his ideas/themes and work with setting and ambition, not for the style or quality of his prose." But also ... lmao, speak for yourself. LOTR would be 1000x poorer without Tolkien's personal prose style as well as the (frequently complex) interplay between the language and style of epic poetry and emphatically novelistic prose.

I think Tolkien is (at least in English) a better prose writer than a poet, but his prose is also very poetic when it's not deliberately anti-poetic. A lot of the language just seems very beautiful and effective to me in a way that doesn't diminish verisimilitude or immersion or the ultimate purpose of the novel, and IMO that's something very few people are good at.

He's not alone in it by any means. But there's a committed, unembarrassed richness to his default style that I just don't encounter that often in English of that kind, and which I think is very impressive. It doesn't always work, but I think it usually does, and both can illuminate character in really intriguing ways (take a look at which characters can shift between these registers and which mostly don't or can't—it's interesting!) and can just linger with you as powerful, effective language.

#i have a friend who does not vibe with tolkien at /all/ but listens patiently to my screeds about the movies #bc of a common interest in adaptation and also nearly 25 years of friendship #and when i was ranting about the importance of faramir's meditations on war and the 'i do not love...' speech #my friend was suddenly like 'whoa that is... a great speech actually' #the simplicity of 'rohan had come at last' or 'and morgoth came' has its own power too—it's not always elaborate like faramir's #i'm not saying it's wildly experimental but lotr is much poorer w/o tolkien's quality of prose and i will fight on this #anghraine babbles #legendarium blogging #legendarium fanwank #jrr tolkien #anghraine rants #ivory tower blogging #ish!

[thebookwormunderground]

It has become unfashionable to give credit to Oxford and Cambridge, and to social elites in general; but it remains true that the Great War cut a deeper swathe through Tolkien's peers than among any other social group in Britain. Contemporaries spoke of the Lost Generation. 'By 1918,' Tolkien wrote half a century later in his preface to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, 'all but one of my close friends were dead.'"

John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth

#john garth #JRR Tolkien #tolkien and the great war #ww1 #quote #sing to me oh queue

[steve-needs-a-hug]

My World War I movie recommendations for Remembrance Day

1. Testament of Youth

Starring: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Colin Morgan

Don't be fooled by the cover - this is less of a romance film and more of a powerful treatise on the mental and emotional consequences of war. Heartbreaking, haunting, and beautiful, this film is based on the true life experiences of Vera Brittain, a university student who postponed her studies to volunteer as a nurse during WWI. She later became a renowned pacifist and feminist writer.

2. Goodbye Christopher Robin

Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly Macdonald

A sad and sweet story based on the life of A.A. Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh. Alan struggles with PTSD upon returning home from serving in the Great War, but eventually finds joy and happiness inventing stories with his imaginative young son. This film sticks out to me in the way it highlights the intergenerational pain of the two World Wars, fathers who fought in one having to watch their sons go fight another. It also sheds light on how the beloved character of Winnie the Pooh came to be.

3. Tolkien

Starring: Nicolas Hoult, Lily Collins, Patrick Gibson

Based on the life of (you guessed it) J.R.R. Tolkien, this film showcases the beauty of a writer's imagination and the dearness of close male friendship (hooray!). When Tolkien and his group of fellow creatives go off to war, they are affected by their experiences in ways they did not expect, and sadly not all of them make it back. This is not a war movie per se, but the war is certainly a pivotal part of the story and you can see how Tolkien's war experiences found their way into his writing.

4. War Horse

Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Thewlis

This is a story of a boy, Albert, and his horse, Joey, separated during events of the war. We follow Joey as he is used by the British Army and eventually reunites with Albert (yay!), though both Albert and Joey encounter many dangers and tragedies along the way. A poignant look at war, and a sentimental tale of a boy and his horse.

#world war 1 #the great war #remembrance day #lest we forget #testament of youth #vera brittain #alicia vikander #kit harington #taron egerton #colin morgan #goodbye christopher robin #domhnall gleeson #margot robbie #kelly macdonald #tolkien 2019 #nicolas hoult #lily collins #patrick gibson #war horse #tom hiddleston #benedict cumberbatch #david thewlis #emily watson #jeremy irvine #period dramas #war drama #war film #british period dramas #winnie the pooh #jrr tolkien