NuLibrary - OOC and Discussion

A place to store the history of the Plaza and gather information and quotes about Tolkien's books
High Lord of Imladris
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Quotes have been updated to the end of January - I'm taking a wee break as I've been at my computer all day and I need to go do SOME work on the house for now. I'll see if I can get February cleared later tonight. Looks like LOTR is going to have it's third split in posts soon!

High Lord of Imladris
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And we're all caught up once more. Sorry that took so long @Nessa Saelind Loved that you had to make sure coffee was well represented :winkkiss:

Khazad Elder
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@Revered Grandmother So are we back to C's? I will be saving the quotes elsewhere also from now on.
The world was fair in Durin's Day

High Lord of Imladris
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I think we might have some of them I have to admit the amount of editing that's going to be required to bring them back has me hesitating

Part of me redoing the letters made it so I could ctrl f the start of the section super fast and now I can't I would say give me a couple weeks to sort out just what the damage is... As we have the LOTR quote bank in pdf so I'm going to have to through the B's and C's and all the other letters where they could be put manually

High Lord of Imladris
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@Afird Splitax so everything is recoverable from the new archives that Narv just put up so if you want to peak in that archive where you left off quote wise I was caught up

Khazad Elder
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@Revered Grandmother -Thanks, I will check it out!
The world was fair in Durin's Day

High Lord of Imladris
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@Drifa Thanks for the new batch of quotes looked through the C based ones and those were all in there already so I've added the ones for D and we're ready for more quotes whenever you grab more for LOTR!

Khazad Elder
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Hey Grandma! There are a few C's that I added besides the ones from the Archives. Did you see those?
The world was fair in Durin's Day

High Lord of Imladris
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I'll double check - I did check about 6 of them and those were all in... but will go and confirm the are all in. Thanks for the heads up I likely wouldn't have taken another look other wise.

High Lord of Imladris
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@Drifa Found the few that weren't in there and have put them in. Thanks again.

Ent Ancient
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hey @I Said What I Said! I know I mentioned this briefly before a while ago, but I just remembered again the other day. I have a selection of miscellaneous quotes I have in a bunch of different docs that I saved primarily for RP purposes. I'm not sure what "category" I would assign them all. Do you mind picking a category or two yourself if I gather them up and share them for the quote bank?

High Lord of Imladris
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@Lailsheenbo Yeah feel free to toss them up as long as we have the references for them I'll put them where they seem to fit best (and if they are outside of the Hobbit and the LOTR it will give me a good reason to get those threads started as I have banners etc for all of them prepped.

Ent Ancient
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:thumbs: sounds good! Not trying to fob off work onto you, I'll try to categorize but if you think of something better, please change it.

High Lord of Imladris
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@Lailsheenbo No I don't mind categorizing at all it's pretty easy to do for the most part but if you think of something go for it!

New Soul
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@I Said What I Said - just had a thought, as I'm probably going to reread The Silmarillion in parallel with The Nature of Middle Earth if I find some interesting quotes for you from the new book alongside the Silm would it be OK to post it somewhere? I'll probably type them up in a document somewhere for future reference, just wanted to know if you'd want them?
She/her.
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High Lord of Imladris
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@Nessa Saelind Absolutely! The Quote submissions is where you'd stick em! both books go in the same place for submissions I sort them into their eventual threads since it's all editing... There is going to be a thread for it as well.

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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Hi @Fuin Elda, is this the right thread to ask questions about the quotebanks? Assuming yes (and apologies if no), I was wondering about The Hobbit quotes: is there any separate bank for the 1st edition text? What I could see, all quotations were from later editions. Thanks!
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

High Lord of Imladris
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If you have first edition PLEASE send them in I will put them in in the same place with an annotation it's first edition as they are occasionally different.
Sereg a Dîn

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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Sometimes very different! Most excellent. I have come to the conclusion that the gulf between myself and most people here is because nobody reads the first edition Hobbit.
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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And where do i post the Hobbit quotes?
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

High Lord of Imladris
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You seem to have found the submission thread perfectly! I love the quotes so far!
Sereg a Dîn

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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:) Much more to come - but i have been hit by a flood of work, so service may be slow for a little while...
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Khazad Elder
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Chrysophylax Dives wrote: Thu Apr 21, 2022 8:20 am Others said: "These parts are none too well known, and are too near the mountains. Policemen never come so far, and the map-makers have not reached this country yet. They have seldom even heard of the king round here, and the less inquisitive you are as you go along, the less trouble you are likely to find."

The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin. 1937 (2016 facsimile), p. 43.
Policemen sound rather odd. :smile:
The world was fair in Durin's Day

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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Drifa wrote: Thu Apr 21, 2022 10:06 am Policemen sound rather odd. :smile:
Aye, and also the 'tinkers' in the quote two above. When you separate the 1st edition from Middle-earth as we know it, you begin to understand that this adventure is not exactly in Middle-earth, or at least it is as much in our world as Middle-earth. But the bit of 'our world' is late Victorian, and the trolls come into view - at least in my eyes - as half-Dickensian London underground villains and half Gilbert and Sullivan Metropolitan police. Bilbo gets 'copped' as he tries to pick a pocket :)
Last edited by Chrysophylax Dives on Fri Apr 22, 2022 4:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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The incident with the 'Good morning!', the queer sign, and the 13 vagabond dwarves steps - albeit with fairy-tale characters - out of Henry Mayhew's Life and Labour of the London Poor (1840s) and the sensationalist literature that it spawned.

I'm now editing my posts because the book is upstairs but I am camped in the garden and too lazy to move, so no quote bank entries. Mayhew's observations on Patterer marks fed into a fantasy of the second half of the 19th century of Britain's underground world of vagabond nomads, who had spawned with the Gypsies and used a secret language to communicate, replete with hieroglyphic signs chalked on the doors of respectable folk. This fantasy was largely forgotten after World War I, and today is recalled primarily in British fantasy, its original quite forgotten. J.K. Rowling basically made her world by deeming the underground folk the wizards and the rest Muggles. But she was just stomping down the path that Tolkien points to in his first chapter, where the old man selling buttons at the door of the house in the countryside is given 'Good morning!' and then puts a secret mark on the door - so that next day 13 vagabond dwarves know that the host - who looks like a grocer - is the burglar.
Last edited by Chrysophylax Dives on Fri Apr 22, 2022 4:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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Lore is an egg-fest, so some gnomic rumblings on the 1937 story here.

From the first, the author has a plan: Take this hobbit from his hole in the ground to another hole, open a hidden door, and send him down the hole to burgle a cup from a dragon. The very idea of burglary is - the wizard's wildest arguments notwithstanding - preposterous (as later pointed out by Smaug). What concerns the dwarves, however, is the idea that *this* hobbit is a burglar, as he does not look like one. Wizard comes close to narrator, naming Bilbo the burglar while suggesting that the hobbit has hidden properties.

Misadventure with three trolls prepares us for the magic step in the dark awaiting at the roots of the Mountains. Observe how pockets are already in play - Bilbo fails to pick one here, but will later make use of his own in a tight spot; and pockets are compared with bags, which go over each of the dwarves (as if they are put in a pocket).

I went back to 'Roast Mutton' after reading of Gandalf's rescue of the Company from the goblins - the wizard puts out all the lights and 'appears' at first as only a disembodied voice. I have not put this in the quote bank yet, but I did go back and add the wizard's voice imitating one troll or another.

Moon-letters sound a bit like @Fuin Elda's breadcrumbs. :googly:
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

High Lord of Imladris
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Honestly I feel like 1st edition was less book and more Tolkien writing down an oral story he told to his kids based off a story that he heard a bit like a game of telephone where things get mixed up because of the steps removed from the source... LOTR comes across far more this is a translation of a story
Sereg a Dîn

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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That is because you are a Tolkien fanatic, @Fuin Elda. You cannot help it, nor can anyone on this site - and probably nor can anyone today, at least not without making a great effort to step outside of Middle-earth and read the story in and of itself (not that this is possible from my trail of quotations alone).

By the by, I resisted the urge to spam the breadcrumbs thread with fake egg-find announcements; i resisted in the end, but it was a close thing. You can blame @Winddancer and @Silky Gooseness all you wish - nor would you be wrong, they are guilty of the spam, not least because they should have chosen more interesting threads to hide the eggs!!! - but so are you!

:smooch:
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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On the story so far, do notice the sequence of doors:

Bag-end front door is of course a scene of action: a secret mark put on it and knocked off by the wizard, and its opening after each bell pull or - the final - knock.

Then the story with the trolls concludes with a trudge to a big stone door that not even the wizard's voice can open - till Bilbo produces a key he has found.

The doors of Rivendell are flung wide.

Then the hidden hidden-door of Goblin Front Porch: Crack, Snap!

And now we approach Gollum's doorless hole at the root of the mountain.

Then we will have another house without a door - with the eagles.

And then arrive at the house of Beorn, where an unexpected party of dwarves is once again managed by Gandalf, only with Bilbo this time sitting with the wizard watching how a door is opened!

-- The house of Beorn is in my opinion the turning-point in the hobbit's self-discovery: he is now ready to step through the hidden door and play the part of the nameless thief with the dragon. Before this act - the plan from the very beginning - we will have the hobbit show his quality by burgling 13 dwarves from under the noses of those masters of tricksiness, the elves, whose front gate is guarded by powerful magic, but within whose house Bilbo will make use of a trap-door.
Last edited by Chrysophylax Dives on Fri Apr 22, 2022 3:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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You are right in one way, @Fuin Elda. While the story is carefully mapped out on umpteen levels in advance - that is, before Tolkien writes even a second sentence (with the Map of Thror drawn and many sketches of the scenes of action knocked up), the individual scenes are in some way just the jamming or riffing or ad libbing plaza-storywriting of a professional etymologist. I mean that all that Tolkien does at each pause for action is re-imagine the scene out of a very few key words.

I mean many (not all) scenes will turn on the question (put by Thorin to Bilbo that first night): how do you propose to open the door?

More generally, this echoing follows naturally as the elements of each scene involve 13 dwarves plus, and so each encounter is liable to be an Unexpected Party of one kind or another. Rivendell is one exception (Gandalf has told his friends; the party is expected), and Gollum another (he has only one guest, the hobbit), but the Trolls, the goblins, the eagles, Beorn, the elves of Mirkwood and the Lake-men all face unexpected parties. The author's challenge is to find a unique way in to each party and so tell it as a unique event (hiding its participation in a wider class).

(Maybe 'party' = the correct common name for a group of dwarves?)

More cunning is the interweaving of the theme of burglary into certain scenes, and the story of the burglar coming into his own - the making of a crime story (and a detective story).

And subtlest of all are the signs and marks: on the door of Bag-end, on the map, hidden on the map.

Is the magic ring a sign?

Nobody on this site can answer this question. Not because the question is difficult (the original story is very straightforward); nor because they are not acute readers (some of the most acute readers of Tolkien around are found here); but nobody here can read the magic ring of the original story, all your minds are eclipsed by the One Ring. I pity you all your misfortune; may you strive hard to see more clearly!

PS. If you are an expert egg-seeker, a burglar by another name, then Bilbo's dream of his own house as a guest in the home of the eagles is the place to hunt.
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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First installment, complete. We have arrived at 'Riddles in the Dark.' A good place to rest.

In advance of meeting the original, let it be said that the original does rather allow the remake - we have just concluded with the hobbit out cold after banging his head on hard rock, and the adventure on his own with Gollum has no witnesses; it is all rather dream-like and could be - and was - dreamed a completely other way; only, once that is done we are in a different story :(

The original 'dream' - the original riddle game - gives the only possible answer to the story we are actually in. J.R.R. Tolkien made of his own story a riddle when he facilitated the radical change of the second edition (facilitated by writing the new version and sending it to Stanley Unwin).
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Master Torturer
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I regret nothing..

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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LOL! :heart:
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Guardian of the Golden Wood
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The passport into the adventure given by the wizard to Bilbo Baggins:

= queer sign (scratched on) = secret mark (knocked off) the door by the wizard.

Analogous to the wardrobe of the Narnia stories; allowing adventure to step into and out of Bilbo's own front-door.

In story, the sign on the door is for the eyes of the dwarves; when they ring the bell the door will open to reveal the hobbit bobbing on the mat. Gandalf puts a mark that says that the face that opens the door is one of them, is in on the conspiracy, is wanting a job. The secret mark even serves as a nudge over the doorstep, overcoming dwarvish hesitation in face of a hobbit bobbing on the mat.

This queer trade sign (which the hobbit never sees) takes an almost dictionary definition as Burglar; or Burglar seeks work; a trade sign that is, quite properly, secret!

This kind of hidden sign is odd, but not unheard of. Where many vagrants walk chalk is likely to be employed and the world is mapped for those who will come by those who come before. Some such system of signs is found in North America in the dustbowl years. Victorians in Britain knew of several types of Patterer-mark, by which respectable houses were marked by country-tinkers.

What is preposterous is Gandalf's argument that the Map with the rune marking a hidden side-door indicates burglary. What is queer, or secret - to use the adjectives used of the sign/mark on the door is the very idea that a burglar has any sane role in a journey to a live Dragon.

What is the burglar of this expedition going to do? burgle the entire treasure of Thror? Smaug pops that one. What is the point behind this whole deal of burglary?

Only the author and the wizard can as yet read the queer sign scratched on the round door of the hobbit hole one Tuesday morning long ago.
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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Maybe it is a fault or limitation of the story that the hobbit never quite acts the burglar - though he comes close after the elves: with the Cup from Smaug and the Arkenstone under the eyes of Thorin. Bilbo says near the end that he never felt like a burglar, and I don't think the identification is ever made, though who would argue with the title, Bilbo Baggins Burglar of Legend?

Part of the problem, if it is a problem, is that Tolkien seems to have been playing a literary game to his own amusement, and from his point of view just so long as Bilbo Baggins stepped into the footsteps of the nameless thief in the Old English Beowulf, and stole a cup from under the nose of a sleeping dragon, that was good enough for him.

It is curious but not surprising that many diehard Tolkien fans who don't like The Hobbit say it only gets good around this bit of the story - post-Lake-town. This is indeed the point where Tolkien has met his own literary challenge, and drawn another nameless thief of a dragon, and now lets himself go just writing an epic story.

I can understand this; basically the whole literary contrivance between Bag-end and Beorn is of little or no interest to such readers; and they are legion.

But what particularly concerned Tolkien in the contrivance of his story, what he spent a few years thinking through and working out and drawing up, was the sequence of holes and tight spots whereby Bilbo Baggins stepped out of his hobbit hole and into his role as burglar.

Only, when you frame it so what comes into view is that Bilbo Baggins was not only slated to play the role of the burglar of the dragon, he was to be a nameless thief.

Where the sign on the door means burglar the sign pocketed in a deep, dark, tunnel, the tiny ring of cold metal, is a sign of the nameless.

Gollum
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

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