John Rateliff's early manuscript

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Karma; cause - effect; Lore-eggs, nulibrary posting.

Admins, you can move this thread where you wish :) Or delete :(

The value of Rateliff's transcriptions of the early manuscript of The Hobbit is not at first sight obvious. Rateliff gives us some dates, which is helpful for situating composition in the wider world (but dates may be contested). What he really gives us of value, I suggest, is phases of composition, so that we see the pauses in writing, the revision of the Mirkwood story after one such pause, and - most crucially - that turning-point of the Cup-stealing.

In a word, Rateliff's transcription shows us an author with a plan that begins with 'An Unexpected Party' and concludes with the hobbit emerging from the hole of the dragon with a stolen cup. Only at this point, in the plot notes that Rateliff provides, do we see that Tolkien does not know what to do. He considers Bilbo creeping back and knifing Smaug - Bilbo Baggins the Dragon-slayer: he really does not know what to do once the hobbit has stolen the cup! All the story with Bard, the thrush, and the Arkenstone was what he now dreamed up - but none of it was of concern in the first, main stage of composition, which was concerned to set up the hobbit as a nameless thief akin to he who steps into the Old English story of Beowulf.

Few see what Rateliff's transcription shows, however, because most are blindsided by proper names. In the beginning, in the story that Tolkien first wrote down and Rateliff transcribes into print, the chief dwarf is named Gandalf, while the wizard is named Bladorthin! Few can step beyond this initial affront to everything that they hold to be the case - readers drop like stunned flies, senses reeling and minds revolting.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: I have never heard of this John Rateliff or read any of his critical works. From what you write it, a true Tolkien fan wouldn't much like it what Rateliff writes, I feel. There are surely far more interesting analists of Tolkien's works out there, which are bringing value to his work in understanding it. Understanding lore is in general quite fun to me, if there is also a positive and respective note in the works that are written. Then is reading also enjoyable.

[Eldy Dunami]

John D. Rateliff is a top-tier Tolkien scholar who, besides editing The History of The Hobbit (the equivalent of HoMe for TH, and the subject of this thread), has written a number of excellent journal articles and essays in Tolkien studies, many but not all of them about the relationship between The Hobbit and the rest of the Middle-earth corpus. In particular, he's responsible for combating the idea that Tolkien didn't intend for The Hobbit to be part of his mythology when he first wrote it and only tossed in established names haphazardly (an idea Tolkien himself is partly responsible for promoting it), though the nature of that relationship changed substantially during the writing of LOTR, as Chrys can describe better than I.

ETA: I don't mean to step on @Chrysophylax Dives' toes as our resident defender of The Hobbit's autonomy as a story with worth besides being the prelude to The Lord of the Rings, and I recognize he knows a lot more about this subject than I do. I just wanted to reply to shade being thrown at a major figure in the field, seemingly (to me) out of nowhere.

[Romeran]

@Chrysophylax Dives I've moved this thread into the base lore forum.

A place to store the history of the Plaza and gather information and quotes about Tolkien's books

Since the topic isn't a history of the plaza or quotes about Tolkien's book it doesn't really fit in the NuLibrary.

Also as far as I can tell the naming was from Tolkien himself not Rateliff who was doing the transcribing, so I agree there's no need to say that Tolkien fans wouldn't like what he writes.

I'm curious as to the primary topic/question though @Chrysophylax Dives are you using these early transcriptions as evidence of The Hobbit's independence as a story from The Lord of the Rings or is there a more subtle point here that I am missing?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Huh? I guess I've got too used to writing posts that nobody reads and so have got even more careless in my expression. I posted this in the first instance because of @Fuin Elda's comment on a nulibrary thread that the first edition sounds like the story Tolkien told his children - meaning, I take it, it feels more spontaneous than the second. Rateliff's transcription underlines the fact that the first edition is far from a first draft of the story.

The second motivation for posting was my continuing reflections on the significance of the early drafts of the stories. I don't think that in general Tolkien fans know what to do with them. As with the early drafts of the LOTR, what we learn is first and foremost how the story was composed in discrete phases. As such, Rateliff illuminates the kind of aesthetic reaction given somewhere else (i think on a thread lost in the last server crash) by @Troelsfo that The Hobbit only gets good from Lake Town. I have no desire to criticize the aesthetic opinion here, but the point is that Rateliff's drafts establish that the story from the Unexpected Party to Bilbo's first meeting with Smaug is one phase, and what comes next is another, and that after Tolkien had composed his spontaneous sentence (the one that starts the story) what took him a few years was working out this first phase - when he composed the first chapter a few years later he clearly had in mind pretty much everything that would happen up to that first encounter with the dragon, and once he got there he did not know what to do. My interest in the story is with this initial plan and I find it instructive to see that many other people do not like just that bit that I find most fascinating.

I apologize if I appeared to suggest that Rateliff changed the names of the characters! I was, as @Romeran suggests, talking about Tolkien - for a long period of writing the story Tolkien names the chief dwarf Gandalf!

As to @Eldy Dunami's post - I quite agree that Rateliff is a top scholar. I do think he misses quite a lot about The Hobbit though, and actually this whole discussion about whether The Hobbit was imagined from the outset as part of Middle-earth is generally misconceived. The misconception arises from two sources. (1) There is a general wrong view that Middle-earth is another world, whereas, from the very first Silmarillion stories on Tolkien was writing stories about our world a very long time ago. (2) The Hobbit was composed before 'The Fall of Numenor'. Hence, all that you find in the early drafts and first edition of The Hobbit is a story that is told from the point of view of our world but steps into and through elements of the imagined stories. Actually, my guess is that, seeing that the result was a bit unsatisfactory, prompted Tolkien to compose 'The Fall of Numenor' a few years after completing The Hobbit, thereby establishing a formal division between Myth and History. (The Hobbit, with Elrond and the Necromancer was obviously thereby cast into the days of Myth, and the single most significant line in the early drafts of LOTR is the moment that Weathertop is pointed out as a place relating to the Last Alliance of Elves and Men in the past - thereby catapulting the story into History. That this occurs after the Bombadil part of the story has been composed is worth noting.)

By the by, I find it depressing to see how little activity there is in Lore when i take a break. I had hoped that we had turned a corner but it seems not.

[Saranna]

'I find it depressing to see how little activity there is in Lore when I take a break. I had hoped that we had turned a corner but it seems not.' POSTED ABOVE BY @Chrysophylax Dives

I also find there seems to be less activity in Lore than the old Plaza showed, but there may be many reasons for that. There are fewer of us I am sure. Some of us are significantly older than we were (me for example) and all have been affected by the Covid disaster, the exhaustion and isolation it brought. Some (me for example) have primary-world challenges and problems taking up their time and energy. I wish I could play a fuller part but hopefully my tide will turn.

I feel the quality of discussion and posts is still pretty darn good, given all of the above :)

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Saranna: I have noticed it too, and I have no idea why really. But if you seek a (slow) discussion partner with something? I am not a great lorist though, and just got a bit in understanding with reading texts and reflecting them. And not all is evenly interesting. In case of being old.... I am nearby your age when you came on the Plaza. That eager eightandtwenty years old girl I am not longer. I have given my response above to this subject.