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Splintered light: Logos and language in Tolkien's world

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The original 1983 edition, long hard to find, was one of the first books to discuss The Silmarillion in detail, and one of the most insightful: it showed Tolkien applying to his mythology Owen Barfield's principles of the deep relationship between language and the nature of reality, and using fragmented light as a metaphorical depiction of fragmented language. The revised edition is not a quick touch-up, but a massively extended rewrite that delves into much more detail and takes into account much that had not been published in 1983. Even the remainder of the old book has been re-written to improve clarity and flow. Along with Flieger's second Tolkien study, A Question of Time, which does for time and dreams what this one does for language and light, Splintered Light resumes its place as one of the half-dozen essential critical monographs on Tolkien. Her third study, Interrupted Music: Tolkien and the Making of a Mythology, is due from Kent State in the spring of 2005, and I'll await it eagerly.

J.R.R. Tolkien claimed that he transcribed, not created, the tales of Middle Earth. He also said that Middle Earth is not pure fantasy in time or space, but depicts our earth and its inhabitants in some remote time. When I was sixteen and had read Tolkien for the first time, I didn't know this. I only knew that I wanted middle earth - its air, its mountains and magic - to be real. I tried once, with my best friend, to pretend we were running from Black Riders as we headed out on an errand one day. I only tried this once, because the pretense failed completely.

Many years later I read Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. Then I read his Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning. Soon after, I reread Tolkien, and read The Letters of Tolkien. It was then that I entered middle earth. It was real, and has been ever since. I suspected that Barfield had something to do with my entrance into middle earth. Now I find that another has made a similar connection: Verlyn Flieger. She argues for and documents the connection as she sees it in Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World. She confirms that Tolkien knew what he was up to writing the middle earth history - in particular the accounts gathered in The Silmarillion - and knew it was not sheer fantasy.

Flieger argues that these accounts were profoundly influenced by the work of Owen Barfield - in particular his Poetic Diction. Her linguistic claim, that the languages of middle earth develop just as Barfield says our languages did and do, is an ingenious hypothesis, and she demonstrates this. Arguably, on only literary/critical grounds. Conclusively, with biographical notes and her discussions of Tolkien's essays "On Fairy-Stories" and "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." It is with those that she demonstrates convincingly the connection between Barfield and Tolkien.

That connection is nowhere more beautifully and surely captured than in a biographical note: "C.S. Lewis's comment that Tolkien `had been inside langugae' was thus no figure of speech, but the literal truth. He had been inside the word, had experienced its power and seen with its perception. Others who knew Tolkien came to much the same conclusion. Simonne d'Ardenne, one of Tolkien's Oxford students and herself a philologist, found antoher way to put it...Mlle. d'Ardenne recalled saying to him once, apropos his work: `You broke the veil, didn't you, and passed through?' and she adds that he `readily admitted' having done so." [p. 9]

Logos - as living Word, in which one may get, may live and move and have one's being - connects Tolkien with Barfield as nothing else will. That, though, means one might need to read Barfield too. Flieger brings Tolkien's Silmarillion to life; she brings Tolkien to life; she points one to both Tolkien's and Barfield's philological and philosophical thought and work. Most of all, she gets one as near to being `inside language' - inside Logos - as one has reason to hope, at least by individual effort alone. In that regard, Splintered Light is worth far more than its price just for the above quoted passage alone. - Danny Smitherman (djsmitherman@msn.com)

This book will change your perspective not only on The Lord of the Rings, but on life in general. I know it has done mine. The idea of language developing from mythology, and not the other way round as has been the common conception, was a new one to me when I read this book. Though I had always held the belief that God, myth, and language are interconnected ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God") I had never fully grasped the impact and full meaning of that until I read this book.Owen Barfield's theories, whilst interesting, were always just slightly abstruse for me: Verlyn Flieger has done me - and the rest of the literary world - a great service in setting forth and clarifying such excellent reasoning.

Though it is highly technical in some parts - most specifically in the chapters on the etymology, significance and meaning of names - it is as riveting as a first-rate mystery. I found myself unable to put it down. As all good books do, it definitely warrants a second, third, fourth, and fifth reading, and will not get old with repeated study. Hobbyist philologists (like me) and anyone interested in language, myth, religion, philosophy, or The Lord of the Rings (which adroitly combines all four) must read this book. It will change your life and your outlook on the world and our relation to it and its Maker.

This is another of Flieger's book that focuses on a specialized aspect of Middle-earth as the other book, A Question of Time, did. This one is more centered on The Silmarillion and on the idea of language. It speaks of Feanor's creation of the Silmarils and what happened because of that event and his inability to let go of his possession, as later Frodo will be unable to do, and of Beren and Thingol and much else in that immensely detailed tapestry of the early history of the Elves, Dwarves and Men.

It has also in the later chapters much of interest to say about Frodo and how he was "broken by a burden of fear and horror - broken down, and in the end made into something quite different," as the Professor wrote in one of his letters. "Filled with clear light" he was to become, though we see but the beginning of that transformation and can only guess that it continued after he went West. There is also an analysis of "The Sea-Bell" poem which is my favorite of mine due to its association with Frodo. Another very interesting book from Flieger and my favorite of hers. If you only read one of hers, read this one!

Finally a book that explains the differences among the Vanyar, Sindarin, and Noldorin elves; who the Calaquendi and Moriquendi were; why the story of Maeglin was important; in short, this book really put the Silmarillion into persepctive for me. As other reviewers have noted, Dr. Flieger explains not just Tolkien's literaure, but also Tolkien's philosophy. Anyone stumped by the Silmarillion should read this book. Anyone who loves Tolkien must read this book

Verlyn Flieger's "Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World"(1983) is an short and insightful commentary on the biographical and philosophic themes in the fiction of J.r.r. Tolkien. Flieger's comprehensive thesis is that the cosmogony, cosmology, and metaphysics of Middle-Earth are revealed in its emanationist creation in the Great Music of the Ainur imbued with the Secret Fire of Ilúvatar. Both the Great Music and the Secret Fire represent the illuminationist and emanationist potentiality of the Divine Logos, or God's plan, in the unfolding universal history of Tolkien's fiction. However Creation is marred by continual rebellions against the Divine Logos of Ilúvatar, from which thereafter arise all discord, strife, and evil in the Universe which nonetheless dramatically enriches Tolkien's setting and fiction. Flieger writes: "This extended image of light diminished from its primal brilliance, yet still faintly illuminating the world, is paralleled by Tolkien's presentation of the peoples of that world and their language. More and more, as the story progresses, we are shown through character, deed and word that elves and men are, in different ways, drawn to the light and yet separated from it. The work is permeated by an air of deepening sorrow, of loss and estrangement and ever-widening distance from the light and all that it means. Tolkien has invented a world and its people through which to explore the meaning and consequences of the Fall-- that long separation of mankind from the light of God."(p.58). Flieger discusses the historical and biographical importance of these themes to Tolkien, as a conservative Christian philologist, novelist, and WWI Veteran attempting to re-enchant the modern world: "For all the sub-creators who move through `The Silmarillion', who work with light and splinter and diffuse it, it is Beren who rescues the light from the darkness and brings it back into the world. Without him, although the light would still exist, no one would see it, no one would be guided by it. To indentify himself with Beren, Tolkien must have known that however flawed he was, however dark his vision of the world, he too had been allowed to bring a splinter of the light to Middle-Earth."(p.158). Flieger succeeds in exploring the thematic subtleties of Tolkien's cosmology and metaphysic with exceptional clarity and perspicuity. Yet this exploration of the recurrent themes in Tolkien's Mythopoeia invariably leads Flieger to often repeat himself. Many of the most memorable and essential themes of Tolkien's fiction are explored by Flieger with ease and insight, complimented with careful research. As "Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World" is fairly well-written, somewhat repetitive, and altogether illuminating and succinct, I would recommend it to Tolkien's readers who are interested in the essential philosophic themes of his fiction.

It is a joy to realize that words did not die with Tolkien - that meaning did not die with Barfield. They are very much alive, though not only in their works, but in "Splintered Light."