From: iamfenris@yahoo.com (fenris) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Smith of Wooton Major Date: 6 Apr 2003 19:48:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 22 Message-ID: <9495a1d5.0304061848.38f7cbb5@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.111.198.223 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1049683723 15738 127.0.0.1 (7 Apr 2003 02:48:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Apr 2003 02:48:43 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:115113 Hi, In my short stay here in rabt, it seems (as expected) the majority of discussions revolve around the 'trilogy'. It's been a while since I read 'Smith ..', but I remember a lot of stuff that seem to be precusors of themes seen in his Middle Earth works - elves coming over the sea, a faerie king and queen (Manwe and Varda?), the star on Smith's forehead being his passport into Faerie (the Silmaril for Earendil?) etc. Any thoughts? I don't even remember if Smith preceded the other works chronologically ... -Aravind PS From the unreleased scripts of the Matrix sequels... Agent Nokes: It seems that you've been living two lives. One life, you're John Q. Smith, blacksmith for a respectable family firm. You have a social security number, pay your taxes, and you... sing at your anvil. The other life is lived in Faeire, where you go by the elvish alias "Starbrow" and are guilty of virtually every crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. ###### From: mair_fheal@yahoo.com (coyotes morgan mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Smith of Wooton Major Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2003 20:10:56 -0700 Organization: eden huntersstrand Message-ID: References: <9495a1d5.0304061848.38f7cbb5@posting.google.com> X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 17 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!c46.ppp.tsoft.com!user Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:115108 In article <9495a1d5.0304061848.38f7cbb5@posting.google.com>, iamfenris@yahoo.com (fenris) wrote: > Hi, > > In my short stay here in rabt, it seems (as expected) the majority of > discussions revolve around the 'trilogy'. It's been a while since I > read 'Smith ..', but I remember a lot of stuff that seem to be > precusors of themes seen in his Middle Earth works - elves coming over > the sea, a faerie king and queen (Manwe and Varda?), the star on > Smith's forehead being his passport into Faerie (the Silmaril for > Earendil?) etc. Any thoughts? > I don't even remember if Smith preceded the other works > chronologically ... its a later work and sort of an autobiography of jrrt ###### From: iamfenris@yahoo.com (fenris) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Smith of Wooton Major Date: 7 Apr 2003 03:44:37 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 16 Message-ID: <9495a1d5.0304070244.2188ba09@posting.google.com> References: <9495a1d5.0304061848.38f7cbb5@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.111.188.4 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1049712277 30494 127.0.0.1 (7 Apr 2003 10:44:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Apr 2003 10:44:37 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:115111 > > Smith's forehead being his passport into Faerie (the Silmaril for > > Earendil?) etc. Any thoughts? > > I don't even remember if Smith preceded the other works > > chronologically ... > > its a later work > and sort of an autobiography of jrrt Autobiographical? I've read the biography (again, a while back) and don't seem to be able to correlate the two - 'Smith' on the one hand and the life of JRRT on the other ... could you elaborate? As in, could you pick out points of direct correspondence between the two? Like, is the star supposed to have passed to Christopher Tolkien or something like that? Or is it deeper than that? -Aravind ###### From: mair_fheal@yahoo.com (coyotes morgan mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Smith of Wooton Major Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 04:09:35 -0700 Organization: eden huntersstrand Message-ID: References: <9495a1d5.0304061848.38f7cbb5@posting.google.com> <9495a1d5.0304070244.2188ba09@posting.google.com> X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 24 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.news2me.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-06!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!c24.ppp.tsoft.com!user Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:115109 In article <9495a1d5.0304070244.2188ba09@posting.google.com>, iamfenris@yahoo.com (fenris) wrote: > > > Smith's forehead being his passport into Faerie (the Silmaril for > > > Earendil?) etc. Any thoughts? > > > I don't even remember if Smith preceded the other works > > > chronologically ... > > > > its a later work > > and sort of an autobiography of jrrt > > Autobiographical? I've read the biography (again, a while back) and > don't seem to be able to correlate the two - 'Smith' on the one hand > and the life of JRRT on the other ... could you elaborate? As in, > could you pick out points of direct correspondence between the two? > Like, is the star supposed to have passed to Christopher Tolkien or > something like that? Or is it deeper than that? jrrt is smith with visions of faerie in his youth but age and worldly concerns cuts you off and leaves only the memory but a new generation has a chance to experience what you did once ###### Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Smith of Wooton Major References: <9495a1d5.0304061848.38f7cbb5@posting.google.com> X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: sbjensen@midway.uchicago.edu (Steuard Jensen) Lines: 70 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.135.12.7 X-Trace: news.uchicago.edu 1049722438 128.135.12.7 (Mon, 07 Apr 2003 08:33:58 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 08:33:58 CDT Organization: The University of Chicago X-SessionID: a7fka-4238-W4-2714@news.uchicago.edu X-Hash-Info: post-filter,v:1.4 X-Hash: 302ecb27 55e30086 0d35ffed 20f236db a0bb4744 Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 13:33:58 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.uchicago.edu!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:115132 Quoth iamfenris@yahoo.com (fenris) in article <9495a1d5.0304061848.38f7cbb5@posting.google.com>: > In my short stay here in rabt, it seems (as expected) the majority > of discussions revolve around the 'trilogy'. Well, the trilogy and Middle-earth in general, I'd say. They're by far the best known of Tolkien's works, and the best developed. As has recently been discussed in another thread, our discussions here tend to focus on "story internal" issues (like the origins of Orcs) rather than "story external" issues (like Tolkien's views on government). I and many others find those "story internal" discussions to be fun, but I really would welcome a broader range of topics for variety (and to keep us thinking in new and different ways). All of this is a way of explaining that "Smith", being both shorter and less developed, gets neglected in our discussions due to lack of content overlap, too. Now, mind you, the world of "Smith" _is_ better developed than those of many stories its size, and in fact in Tolkien's unpublished papers there are further details about that world and how it works. I think that the story could stand to be explored a good bit more than it has been. :) > It's been a while since I read 'Smith ..', but I remember a lot of > stuff that seem to be precusors of themes seen in his Middle Earth > works - elves coming over the sea, a faerie king and queen (Manwe > and Varda?), the star on Smith's forehead being his passport into > Faerie (the Silmaril for Earendil?) etc. Any thoughts? There are certainly parallels; I hadn't actually thought of the star-on-brow idea as a parallel to Earendil before, though in retrospect it seems obvious. But to be clear, I'm reasonably confident that those parallels are the result of a shared writer rather than the result of a shared Secondary World. Some of the glimpses that Smith sees really do seem reminiscent of Middle-earth, but the details just don't match up well. I would say that's particularly true given the quotes from that unpublished material that I've read, which you can find in _A Question of Time_ by Verlyn Flieger. As I (vaguely) recall, Tolkien suggested that in Smith's world, there was an intriguing interdependence between Faerie and the human world. The humans got a sense of wonder from Faerie, and while I don't recall if it was said exactly what Faerie got from "us", keeping the bond alive was much of the reason for the King's sojourn in the human world. There's really no parallel to that in Middle-earth, as far as I can tell. Having said all that, I think that a discussion of "Smith" in its own right could be very interesting, whether from a story-internal or story-external perspective (the latter being what you were thinking of, I assume). I don't have time to really think about it at this instant, however ("Then why have you been blithering for so long?" you might well ask). :) I'll try to jump back into this thread a bit later. > I don't even remember if Smith preceded the other works > chronologically ... It was published in 1967, considerably after LotR (and around fifty years after the first Silmarillion work!). Thus, it had time to be well and thoroughly inspired by Tolkien's long thought on Middle-earth without being bound to it. I wonder if "Smith of Woten Major" grew to some degree out of Tolkien's pondering on how tales of Middle-earth could have been passed down to us in the modern era? He had considered transmission by lucky mariners of ancient England who reached Earessea (the Eriol/Aelfwine stories), transmission through copies the Red Book that were passed on to our time (as suggested in LotR), and transmission by dream vision (as in "The Lost Road" and "The Notion Club Papers"). "Smith" could be the result of similar contemplation. Any thoughts? Steuard Jensen ###### From: iamfenris@yahoo.com (fenris) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Smith of Wooton Major Date: 7 Apr 2003 19:04:31 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 40 Message-ID: <9495a1d5.0304071804.7abb0cb5@posting.google.com> References: <9495a1d5.0304061848.38f7cbb5@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.111.188.4 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1049767472 31398 127.0.0.1 (8 Apr 2003 02:04:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Apr 2003 02:04:32 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!headwall.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:115224 > I would say that's particularly true given the quotes from that > unpublished material that I've read, which you can find in _A Question Published-unpublished, eh? :) > of Time_ by Verlyn Flieger. As I (vaguely) recall, Tolkien suggested > that in Smith's world, there was an intriguing interdependence between > Faerie and the human world. The humans got a sense of wonder from > Faerie, and while I don't recall if it was said exactly what Faerie > got from "us", keeping the bond alive was much of the reason for the > King's sojourn in the human world. There's really no parallel to that > in Middle-earth, as far as I can tell. Hmmm ... the Valar were, in sense, bound to Ea. They were the Ainur who felt for the world, and wished to see it formed. In that sense, there was clearly a bond between them and all inhabitants of the world. Witenss the fact that Orome went to Middle Earth at intervals, even in the Darkness. Ulmo too, was loth to completely part from it. I'd say that without Elves/Humans, the Valar would have been at a loss - what is a king without subjects or a power without followers? > of, I assume). I don't have time to really think about it at this > instant, however ("Then why have you been blithering for so long?" you > might well ask). :) I'll try to jump back into this thread a bit > later. Too true, unfortunately! > without being bound to it. I wonder if "Smith of Woten Major" grew to > some degree out of Tolkien's pondering on how tales of Middle-earth > could have been passed down to us in the modern era? He had Might well be, considering that the creation of a myth was his prime motive. Even 'Farmer Giles', for all its comic relief, looks like an attempt at creating a legend. I don't know - maybe you could classify different levels of myth - the Silmarillion corresponding to the Eddas, the LoTR akin to Arthurian/Homeric legend while Smith and Giles are folk-tales ... -Aravind