Into the Archive: A Sense of Tales Untold

 

A Sense of Tales Untold: Exploring the Edges of Tolkien’s Literary Canvas (2021; this edition June 25, 2024, Kent State University Press; 154 pages) by Peter Grybauskas

“A Sense of Tales Untold examines the margins of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work: the frames, edges, allusions, and borders between story and un-story and the spaces between vast ages and miniscule time periods. The untold tales that are simply implied or referenced in the text are essential to Tolkien’s achievement in world-building, Peter Grybauskas argues … “A story must be told or there’ll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving,” wrote Tolkien to his son during the composition of The Lord of the Rings, cutting straight to the heart of the tension between storytelling and world-building that animates his work. From the most straightforward form of an untold tale―an omission―to vast and tangled webs of allusions, Grybauskas highlights this tension. A Sense of Tales Untold engages with urgent questions about interpretation, adaptation, and authorial control, giving both general readers and specialists alike a fresh look at the source material of the ongoing “Tolkien phenomenon.” – Amazon.

Gybauskas is the editor of 2023’s edition of The Battle of Maldon: together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth by J. R. R. Tolkien. That certainly establishes his bona fides as a ‘leading Tolkien scholar’; he doesn’t seem to be one of those people who on a whim pick up a pen and whip out some sort of screed because Tolkien is popular and would give their work an immediate hook.

“[He] is an American, independent scholar of Medieval and fantasy literature and the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.

He teaches classes on Tolkien in the English department of University of Maryland, College Park, and had studied English literature with Verlyn Flieger.” – The One Wiki to Rule Them All ( https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page ).

I ordered this book on the 5^th of November and have been awaiting its arrival since the 15^th. I decided to go with the softcover edition for economy’s sake; I don’t have to have a hardcover unless it’s something by J. R. R. or Christopher himself. I was expecting it from the 15^th to the 25^th, but it finally came on the 29^th. It was in great, pristine condition, however, indeed shrink-wrapped in that tight fashion that makes you think you might damage the book just getting it out.

The cover is by Ted Naismith, showing Tuor (and Voronwe) spotting Turin from afar, going on his own journey. This is the closest the two cousins ever come to meeting. Perhaps a good example of a ‘might-have-been’, a tale untold because it never happened.

I’m only a little way into reading it but am already finding it informed, informing, and insightful, drawing together thoughts and implications that I’ve never heard before, but which ring true with the source material. I can see that this is another invaluable addition to Tolkien scholarship, and I can hardly wait to get it all under my belt. It is slim, but not slight. Of its 160 pages, 38 are notes, a list of works cited, and an index.

"And Your Eyes Fancied Barrow-Wights and Bogeys"

The Battle of Maldon (together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth) by J.R.R. Tolkien (Edited by Peter Grybauskas), 2023

This year is the 70^th anniversary of the publication of Tolkien’s work, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, in the academic journal Essays and Studies. It became more widely known, of course, when it was reprinted in The Tolkien Reader (1966), and that is where I first read it.

The Homecoming is a play, written in alliterative verse (where the lines do not rhyme but which stress a strong beat on alliterative words within the line), which Tolkien manages to make sound very natural indeed. It tells the story of the aftermath of the Battle of Maldon (991 AD), where Anglo-Saxon forces, led by the Duke ('Ealdorman') Beorhtnoth, met a band of marauding Vikings. When the Vikings (who were a smaller force than the defenders and penned onto a small island connected to the land by a narrow causeway) asked for leave to cross over unmolested so it would be a fairer fight, the Duke (very ‘chivalrously’, or proudly; anyway, in the event, unwisely) allows them to do so. The result is the defeat of the Anglo-Saxon’s army and the slaughter of the Duke and his household warriors.

The play deals, as I say, with the aftermath of this battle. Two servants are sent from the abbey of Ely with a cart to retrieve the Duke’s body under the cover of darkness. One is Torthelm, a youngish man, something of a poet, and still under the sway of the heroic conventions of the North. The other is Tidwald, an older, more realistic ‘carl’, careful to recall the other from ‘heathen’ ideas and with no romantic ideals about the carnage of war. As they search the battlefield for the Duke’s body, chase off human scavengers, and discuss the battle, their conversation acts as a dialectic about the old Northern ideals, their pros and cons, and their passing. The play ends with a Latin dirge, sung by the monks of the Abbey as the two draw near.

This is the first part of the book, and includes of course Tolkien’s introduction and essay, published in The Tolkien Reader. The second part is Tolkien’s own translation of the original The Battle of Maldon (an incomplete Anglo-Saxon work 325 lines long), published here for the first time, and the third part is Tolkien’s essay The Tradition of Versification in Old English, explaining, of course, Anglo-Saxon poetic form, with a special reference to Maldon.

These are followed by six ‘Appendices’; five of these are from notes and lectures by Tolkien that are connected to the play/poem (including earlier versions of his efforts with The Homecoming that Tolkien preserved). The sixth is by Grybauskas, pondering the connection of The Homecoming with the Legendarium of Middle-earth itself.

Each section is illustrated with a single ‘medallion’, done in the style of old English manuscripts, by Bill Sanderson.

I first read The Homecoming of Beorhtnot’s Beorthelm’s Son back when I was in middle school (in fact I have a vivid memory of reading it in Art class while waiting for the bell). I remember being impressed by the ancient words ringing up from the dim past, ‘held to be the finest expression of the northern heroic spirit’: “Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens!” Grim words but noble, and perhaps needed greatly again. But I had no idea back in the day that they would come back to me again in such an intensified form.