On the nature of philology

It's been 3 busy months since my last post. A-level German is darn challenging when you have barely used the language for 18 months. Studying runes on top of that has been both fun and exhausting! As I am now allowed a moment's peace, I thought I might revisit the Aenglisc Blog and discuss something I recently read about in a linguistics group on Facebook: Philology. 

Someone in the group asked the others what philology really means - whether it is a branch of linguistics or a quite different science. Though having thought of myself as a semi-amateur philologist ever since starting to learn Old English, I haven't given the term much thought before; I've always assumed that philology is a mixture of, among other things, linguistics, history and literature. I don't have a very reliable encyclopedia available, but Wikipedia seems to agree: "Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics."  

Philology is nowadays, perhaps, a slightly old-fashioned term - historical and comparative linguistics covers much of what it contains. "Philology" seems to translate as "love of words" (or possibly "reason") - well, that suits me. In this situation, I can't really help but to again refer to a man I extensively talked about in my last post; J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most famous philologists of the 20th century. He studied "comparative philology" as an undergraduate, being particularly interested in Celtic and Germanic languages. A specialist in comparative philology would most likely have to be acquainted with several languages. My runology teacher said in class this term that "there are so many rumours flying around about Tolkien, I'm not sure which ones to believe". Well, neither do I; the number of languages that Tolkien knew seems to fluctuate depending on who you ask. We know that he was skilled in Old and Middle English, Old Norse (or Old Icelandic), Latin, Greek, German and Welsh, and that he most likely had a working knowledge in Finnish, Gothic, French (which several sources claim he did not like; might the Normans have had something to do with it?), Dutch and the Scandinavian tongues. Some sources claim he was also proficient in Spanish, Italian, Russian and Old Slavonic, among others. 

Am I envious? A little, maybe, but I've come to realise it's hard to measure up to such a devoted man. And let's not forget the languages he created himelf - though that would throw us off-track from the subject at hand. 

The Beowulf essay I discussed in my last post is, I think, a good example of a philological study. Tolkien was, as far as I know, the first one to study Beowulf from a literary perspective and not a historical one (or "an historical one", as he often put it himself - possibly since the h is not as aspirated without stress). He talks about the dragon and what it embodies to the listeners, and the words and symbols associated with dragons in Anglo-Saxon Britain. Tolkien, however, would never want to be classed as a literary critic; oh no, that would not do at all! C.S. Lewis was a critic; part of the "literary" circle at Oxford. Tolkien was in favour of "language", and vehemently opposed to students reading modern literature on their courses. And by "modern literature", Tolkien referred to anything newer than the works of Geoffrey Chaucer... 

Let's also mention philology in its "classical" sense - for "classical philology" is the study of Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, and has been studied since centuries before the birth of Christ. It is often quite simply described as the study of Greek and Roman literature. Again, I believe Tolkien studied what was known as Classics at Oxford before switching to Germanic and Norse studies. A good choice, if you ask me. Then again, I never had the fortune of being offered Greek or Latin at school. I have considered taking a beginner's Latin course while writing my Bachelor's essay - it certainly helps you understand the romance languages. One thing at a time! I need to fit Icelandic into this, somewhere...

The Monsters and the Linguist

Happy Valentine's Day - and may the odds be ever in your favour! 

... I probably messed that up.

To the matter at hand: I recently acquired a volume called "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", including said lecture and other essays by professor Tolkien. As an (aspiring) fellow Anglo-Saxon enthusiast, I find his take on Beowulf very intriguing. Tolkien first gave this lecture in Oxford in 1936, just a year before The Hobbit was released. In his lecture, he opposes critics who claim that Beowulf should be used primarily as a source for Anglo-Saxon history and is not worth appreciation for its supernatural elements nor as a work of art. Tolkien says that "correct and sober taste may refuse to admit that there can be an interest for us - the proud we that includes all intelligent living people - in ogres and dragons; we then perceive its puzzlement in face of the odd fact that it has derived great pleasure from a poem that is actually about these unfashionable creatures." (Last emphasis is mine.) 

   I find it interesting that Tolkien, though himself a big admirer of dragons, admits that these creatures are indeed "unfashionable". I wasn't born until 57 years after this statement, but, for as long as I can remember, dragons have been very fashionable indeed. I think it's wrong to claim, as some do, that Tolkien did not "found modern Fantasy". He must certainly count as one of its greatest found fathers, as his impact on it has been so immense. With the release of The Hobbit in 1937, dragons and trolls were once again most fashionable. What I wonder is whether something happened in the time between the works of Carroll and Tolkien - what happened to the vorpal swords and Jabberwocks? Tolkien makes a reference to Carroll when speaking against critics (saying that "the jabberwocks of historical and antiquarian research burble in the tulgy wood of conjecture", and that "the range [of their eyes of flame] is short"), and in his essay On Faerie Stories, he states that for a story to be a genuine fairy-story it needs to be presented as "true". Being told within a "dream-frame", the Alice stories are, according to Tolkien, not genuine fairy-stories. 

Image source: http://www.google.se/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=ThHRYGe1G9riHM&tbnid=YbdaSZjcMIqSqM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhilobrow.com%2F2010%2F01%2F03%2Fhilo-hero-j-r-r-tolkien%2F&ei=PvD9UsaCPcaIzAPdhYGQDA&bvm=bv.61190604,d.bGE&psig=AFQjCNG89L1WioWhi7a2IuNUyFO4-7aZCw&ust=1392460150867072

So what was Tolkien trying to do? Bring fairies out of Carroll's dream-like settings and into our own world? Certainly not fairies as such, as he supposedly disliked both Shakespeare's and Spenser's take on the creatures and subsequent influence - his goal was to restore a dignified English mythology, and his elves have nothing in common with those in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He was not into allegory or romantic literature. He once said: "I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of the readers". What he wanted was for supernatural elements to be respected, and it is not strange at all that he preferred Norse sagas and Arthurian legend to The Faerie Queen. I think one of the most important things he says in his Beowulf lecture is that "the significance of a myth is not easily to be pinned on paper by analytical reasoning". He once wrote to his friend CS Lewis that he (Tolkien) was not born a critic, and he certainly would not have attempted to "dissect" and analyse the monsters in Beowulf himself. It is not allegory that makes them important, but the power and fascination that they hold over us mortals. I know I have Tolkien to thank for making trolls and dragons part of my childhood. He definitely brought them back into fashion, and they have remained popular ever since. 

I need to stop now, because I could go on forever and make an English Literature Master's thesis out of this, and I have much to do today. There is a lot of interesting reasoning in just this first Beowulf text. If you are a Tolkien and/or Anglo-Saxon enthusiast, you can find "The Monsters and the Critics: and Other Essays" by Tolkien for a very reasonable price.