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Just Whose Middle-earth Is It, Anyway?

© Michael Martinez

Issue 28 of Other Hands arrived today and I eagerly opened it because I'd been looking forward to some articles I had heard were coming. Jeff Erwin wrote about the Tatyarin Avari (those Elves from the second clan who did not go to Aman with their kindred, the Noldor). Thomas Morwisnky composed a history for Mount Gundabad. And David Salo provided a history of the Nandor, those Elves who turned away from the Great Journey in the Vales of Anduin. From them came the Green-elves of Ossiriand and (in part, at least) the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood and Lorien. But Salo also provided an extremely lengthy, detailed grammar and dictionary for Silvan Elvish. The dictionary includes an English index to the Elvish words. Salo's work is extraordinary (and prefaced by a clear note disclaiming any direct derivation from the works of J.R.R. Tolkien). But he is not the first linguist to advance extensions to Tolkien's Elven languages. Anthony Appelyard proposed some extensions to Quenya several years ago. Salo and Appleyard are both knowledgeable enough about language and Tolkien's languages in particular that their efforts receive serious attention from other Tolkien researchers. Tolkien linguistic research has long been available on the World Wide Web. It's a challenging field of study for most people, but seems to be growing in popularity. The study of Tolkien's history has given rise to a yet broader, if less fully developed, field of study. There are too many Tolkien and Middle-earth Web sites too adequately discuss them all here, but many Webmasters enjoy recapitulating the broader history of Middle-earth as a way of introducing people who may not have read the books to Tolkien's imaginary secondary world. A few of us go an extra step and actually strive to document the pseudo-history as much as possible. My own collection of essays, Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, Revised Edition has been available for several years and I am proud to say it has been used as a research source by students around the world, ranging from high school (or secondary school) students to Ph.D. candidates. And Parma Endorion represents only the tip of the iceberg for my own research. I hope one day to publish an extremely detailed study of the pseudo-history of Middle-earth. Although many great works of literature give rise to serious fields of scholarship, what is unusual about Tolkien's works is that they have given rise to three areas of scholarship: the literary field, which has languished in recent years, except for Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle-earth series; the linguistic field, which has always seemed the province of a select few to most fans; and the historical field. Tolkien historians have a wealth of information to sift through and study, and the field probably won't slow down for years to come. There is simply so much that Tolkien wrote about Middle-earth, comprehending it all is an incredible task. I'm not sure anyone will learn it all in one lifetime.

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