Finn and Hengest

Rating:
Summary: Like Middle-earth in the Second Age
Review: Alan Bliss's Introduction to Old English Metre first appeared in justified 12-pitch Courier back in '76 and remains the standard study on the subject. In Finn and Hengest, Bliss is somewhat more than an editor and Tolkien somewhat less than an author. According to Bliss's preface, his having given a paper on the implications of historical comparison between Beowulf and the Finnsburg fragment, he was advised that Tolkien had anticipated his conclusions decades before, and he then proceeded to get permission to edit Tolkien's lecture notes on the topic, which were in various states of development.

What results, though bound to be tough sledding for all but the very most scholarly of readers, is a window on a past that is far more remote from our contemporary situation than imperial Rome or 5th-century Athens, even though less distant in time: namely, the period immediately preceding the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. This was a time of blood feuds between pagan proto-Viking tribes in the wake of the Roman's empire's all-but-forgotten withdrawal from northern Europe, a time when noble ideals could result in bestial atrocities, from which in turn could result tragedies that Aeschylus might have telescoped for the dramatic stage.

Which is not to say that what emerges from a close reading is presented in this way. These are classroom lecture notes, which assume a working knowledge of Old English and a general knowledge of its surviving written records, literary and prosaic (not that this is a hard-and-fast distinction in the surviving Old English documents from our present-day perspective). Nevertheless, what emerges is none the less affecting for the lack of melodramatic treatment, which would only distort and misrepresent the actual lives that were lived and remembered more than a millennium and a half ago, in the northwest corner of the European mainland which now comprises Denmark, Holland, Belgium and parts of Germany and France; nor do the scholarly technicalities detract from realization of the fragility of our links with people whose struggle for gentility in the midst of savagery differed from our own not in kind but only as a matter of degree.

And yet, if we can find our way to a sense of familial kinship with these stiff-necked, fur-clad barbarians, how should we despair of understanding each other?

Rating:
Summary: Like Middle-earth in the Second Age
Review: Alan Bliss's Introduction to Old English Metre first appeared in justified 12-pitch Courier back in '76 and remains the standard study on the subject. In Finn and Hengest, Bliss is somewhat more than an editor and Tolkien somewhat less than an author. According to Bliss's preface, his having given a paper on the implications of historical comparison between Beowulf and the Finnsburg fragment, he was advised that Tolkien had anticipated his conclusions decades before, and he then proceeded to get permission to edit Tolkien's lecture notes on the topic, which were in various states of development.

What results, though bound to be tough sledding for all but the very most scholarly of readers, is a window on a past that is far more remote from our contemporary situation than imperial Rome or 5th-century Athens, even though less distant in time: namely, the period immediately preceding the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. This was a time of blood feuds between pagan proto-Viking tribes in the wake of the Roman's empire's all-but-forgotten withdrawal from northern Europe, a time when noble ideals could result in bestial atrocities, from which in turn could result tragedies that Aeschylus might have telescoped for the dramatic stage.

Which is not to say that what emerges from a close reading is presented in this way. These are classroom lecture notes, which assume a working knowledge of Old English and a general knowledge of its surviving written records, literary and prosaic (not that this is a hard-and-fast distinction in the surviving Old English documents from our present-day perspective). Nevertheless, what emerges is none the less affecting for the lack of melodramatic treatment, which would only distort and misrepresent the actual lives that were lived and remembered more than a millennium and a half ago, in the northwest corner of the European mainland which now comprises Denmark, Holland, Belgium and parts of Germany and France; nor do the scholarly technicalities detract from realization of the fragility of our links with people whose struggle for gentility in the midst of savagery differed from our own not in kind but only as a matter of degree.

And yet, if we can find our way to a sense of familial kinship with these stiff-necked, fur-clad barbarians, how should we despair of understanding each other?

Rating:
Summary: NOT a Novel!
Review: This is NOT an adventure story, like "Lord of the Rings" or "the Hobbit"; nor even a compendium of stories and myths, like "the Silmarillion." It is from Tolkien's main work of linguistic study in the Dark Ages, gleaning a bit of insight from a few scraps of language and a lot of guesswork. It is really only for those working in Old English, or the Anglo-Saxon culture, or closely related fields. It is probably very good in that context; I haven't the background to say; but it is nothing like Tolkien's popular works, and anyone looking for something of that sort should seek elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: NOT a Novel!
Review: This is NOT an adventure story, like "Lord of the Rings" or "the Hobbit"; nor even a compendium of stories and myths, like "the Silmarillion." It is from Tolkien's main work of linguistic study in the Dark Ages, gleaning a bit of insight from a few scraps of language and a lot of guesswork. It is really only for those working in Old English, or the Anglo-Saxon culture, or closely related fields. It is probably very good in that context; I haven't the background to say; but it is nothing like Tolkien's popular works, and anyone looking for something of that sort should seek elsewhere.