his youth was later to become a central part of his writing, and it was
intimately bound up with his love for the memory of his mother." (Carpenter
32-3)
Tolkien in high school
"Headmaster Gilson also encouraged his pupils to make a detailed study of
classical linguistics. This was entirely in keeping with Tolkien's
inclinations; and, partly as a result in the general principles of
language" (Carpenter 34)
"It was one thing to know Latin, Greek, French, and German; it was another
to understand why they were what they were. Tolkien had started to look for
the bones, the elements that were common to them all: he had begun, in
fact, to study philology, the science of words." (Carpenter 34)
Tolkien studies all languages (Studies Chaucer, Beowulf, Old Norse, Gothic)
"He continued his search for the 'bones' behind all these languages,
rummaging in the school library and exploring the remoter shelves of
Cornish's bookshop down the road. Eventually he began to find - and to
scrape enough money to buy - German books on philology that were 'dry-as-
dust' but which could provide the answers to his questions. Philology: 'the
love of words'. For that was what motivated him. It was not an arid
interest in the scientific principles of language; it was a deep love for
the look and sound of words, springing from the days when his mother had
given him his first Latin lessons . . . And as a result of this love of
words, he had started to invent his own words" (Carpenter 35) Tolkien
begins to (at age 14) to create his own languages, namely 'Nevbosh', a
language filled with Gothic and Norse words.
1908 - Tolkien falls in love with Edith Bratt
1911 - Tolkien starts the Tea Club and goes to Switzerland
Tolkien in Oxford
In 1911 Tolkien entered Exeter College of Oxford. There he started writing
(poem 'Wood-sunshine'), modeled after several different authors.
"In 'Wood-sunshine' there is a distinct resemblance to an episode in the
first part of Thompson's 'Sister Songs' where the poet sees first a single
elf and then a swarm of woodland sprites in the glade; when he moves, they
vanish . . ." (Carpenter 48)
"Being taught by Joe Wright, Tolkien managed to find books of medieval
Welsh, and he began to read the language that had fascinated him since he
saw a few words of it on coal-trucks. He was not disappointed; indeed he
was confirmed in all his expectations of beauty. Beauty: that was what
pleased him in Welsh; the appearance and sound of the words almost
irrespective of their meaning. He once said: 'Most English-speaking people,
for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if
disassociated from its sense (and its spelling). More beautiful than, say
sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful'." (Carpenter 56-7)
Tolkien starts advanced languages (new): "He abandoned neo-Gothic and began
to create a private language that was heavily influenced by Finnish. This
was the language that would eventually emerge in his stories as 'Quenya' or
High-elven. That would not happen for many years; yet already a seed of
what was to come was germinating in his mind" (Carpenter 59)
1913 - Tolkien graduates from three-year program with second-class honors
and proceeds to study philology in graduate school.
At the same period Tolkien reads Cynewulf - "'I felt a curious thrill,' he
wrote long afterwards, 'as if something had stirred in me, half wakened
from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful
behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English'."
(Carpenter 64) Tolkien reads the Vцluspa - "The most remarkable of all
Germanic-mythological poems, it dates from the very end of Norse
heathendom, when Christianity was taking the place of the old gods; yet it
imparts a sense of living myth, a feeling of awe and mystery, in its
representation of a pagan cosmos. It had a profound appeal to Tolkien's
imagination" (Carpenter 65) Tolkien sees Edith again (he was previously
banned to see him by Father Francis, his guardian)
Tolkien reads Morris (NOTE: Mirkwood is the name of the great Necromancer's
forest in The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy) "Written partly in
prose and partly in verse, [Morris's book] centers on a House or family-
tribe that dwells by a great river in a clearing of the forest named
Mirkwood, a name taken from ancient Germanic geography and legend. Many
elements in the story seem to have impressed Tolkien. It's style is highly
idiosyncratic, heavily laden with archaisms and poetic inversions in an
attempt to recreate the aura of ancient legend. Clearly Tolkien took not of
this, and it would seem that he also appreciated another facet of the
writing: Morris' aptitude, despite the vagueness of time and place in which
the story is set, for describing with great precision the details of his
imagined landscape. Tolkien himself was to follow Morris' example in later
year." [Carpenter 70]
In the same year Tolkien visits Cornwall [NOTE: This is the location for
the Sea in The Hobbit and LOTR] " 'Nothing I could say . . . could describe
it to you. The sun beats down on you and a huge Atlantic swell smashes and
spouts over the snags and reefs. The sea has carved weird wind-holes and
spouts into the cliffs which blow with trumpety noises or spout foam like a
whale, and everywhere you see black and red rock and white foam against
violet and transparent seagreen.'." [Carpenter 70]
Tolkien begins to create works with Quentya (language of the high-elves):
"He had been working for some time at the language that was influenced by
Finish, and by 1915 he had developed it to a degree of some complexity. He
felt that it was 'a mad hobby', and he scarcely expected to find an
audience for it. But he sometimes wrote poems n it, and the more he worked
at it the more he felt that it needed a 'history' to support it. In other
words, you cannot have a language without a race of people to speak it. He
was perfecting the language; now he had to decide to whom it belonged."
[Carpenter 75]
Tolkien creates Valinor [Land of the Gods in the Silmarillion] "This, he
decided, was the language by the fairies or elves whom Earendel saw during
his strange voyage. He began work on a 'Lay of Earendel' that described the
mariner's journeying across the world before his ship became a star. The
Lay was to be divided into several poems, and the first of these, 'The
shores of Faery', tells of the mysterious land of Valinor, where Two Trees
grow, one bearing golden sun-apples and the other silver moon-apples."
[Carpenter 76]
1916 - Tolkien marries Edith, continues war, and gets to know soldiers
[Tolkien is an officer]. All of Tolkien's friends die [except C.S. Lewis]
Tolkien after World War II
Continuing the last wishes of the T.B.C.S (the society he had founded with
his friends at St. Edwards), Tolkien decides to create a whole society.
[Founding precepts of the LOTR] " 'I [Tolkien] had a mind to make a body of
more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic to the
level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact
with the earth, the lesser drawing splendor from the vast backcloths -
which I could dedicate simply: to England; to my country. It could possess
the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent
of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the
hither parts of Europe; not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and,
while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some
call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things),
it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind
of a land long steeped in poetry, I would draw some of the great tales in
fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The
cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other
minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama" [Carpenter 90]
[Researching, not inventing] "When he wrote The Silmarillion Tolkien
believed that in one sense he was writing the truth. He did not suppose
that precisely such peoples as he described, 'elves', 'dwarves', and
malevolent 'orcs', had walked the earth and done the deeds that he
recorded. But he did feel, or hope, that his stories were in some sense an
embodiment of a profound truth . . . Tolkien believed that he was doing
more than inventing a story. He wrote of the tales that make up the book:
'They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so
too the links grew . . . yet always I had the sense of recording what was
already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'." [Carpenter 91-2]
Influences from language: "As to the names of persons and places in 'The
Fall of Gondolin' and the other stories in The Silmarillion, they were
constructed from Tolkien's invented languages. Since the existence of these
languages was a raison d'кtre for the whole mythology, it is not surprising
that he devoted a good deal of attention to the business of making up names
from them"
Tolkien creates Sindarin, precursor to Quentya
[Development of 'what is real?'] "As the years went by he came more and
more to regard his own invented languages and stories as 'real' languages
and historical chronicles that needed to be elucidated. In other words,
when in this mood he did not say of an apparent contradiction in the
narrative or an unsatisfactory name: 'This is not as I wish it to be; I
