**Quick Administrative note**
I am changing my planned order of the series as we are getting into summer. Next week is part II and the week after I will address Galadriel and that will will finish us up with wyrd and the Eldar. That leaves the Edain of the First Age and Aragorn to cover but I must take a break after Galadriel and start up again in August. There are three reasons for this:
- Firstly, my essay on the Edain and their ‘Noldorization/Romanization’ in Tolkien and the Classical World is still under contract, which stipulates that I can’t upload my essay or portions of it to personal sites for six months after publication and the book was finally published in February.
- Secondly, my Latin course will be ending in mid-June, so I need a bit more time preparing for the end of the semester and I will be taking a month-long intensive Latin at the next level in July. So, I won’t be around too much.
- Lastly, in August we’re driving to the Austrian Alps, half-way between Salzburg and the Italian border for a two-week vacation (including vacay from web-surfing: my promise to my family) — the first since Corona and the first in which the dissertation-monkey is off my back. We found an idyllic guest-house on a lake that also allows for dogs for socially distanced hiking and outdoor fun.
The hills are alive with … ticks! So — FSME vaccinations for everyone! Wheeeee!
So I won’t be back until late August (Just in time for another intensive language course in September, if there’s not enough people for level IV Latin, then it’s Levels I & II Koine Greek). I will pop in on the comments when Dr. Lori’s Silmarillion reading group starts.
Okaaaay….
I. Introduction
(The full essay is available for free in the journal Mythlore: The 'Wyrdwrīteras' of Elvish History: Northern Courage, Historical Bias, and Literary Artifact as Illustrative Narrative)
Wyrdwrītere means ‘historian’ or ‘chronicler’ in Old English, literally a writer of wyrd (a Germanic concept of fate inextricably tied to the Germanic warrior ethos). In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium, the history of the Eldar is quite literarily wyrd invoked by Fëanor and pronounced by the Herald of Manwë as the Doom of Mandos. It is quite fitting, therefore, that the writing of wyrd would find a place within Tolkien’s Legendarium and indeed be essential to it.
Furthermore, historians or chroniclers are narrators: narrators of temporal facts put into the context of a story which we can understand. The narrator, or narrators, of the history of the Elves, from the Quenta Silmarillion to the end of the Third Age, are no different. They are the wyrdwrīteras of Arda; the chroniclers of Elvish history. Their history is chronicled as a compilation of stories, either by one or many narrators, but the stories are united by the common theme of the theory of Northern courage—the Germanic warrior ethos, inescapable doom of the long defeat, and a common elegiac tone of what was is now lost. Cristine Barkley directs our attention to an omniscient narrator, a wyrdwrītere who writes in “broader […] purpose or theme. But he’s still controlling to what the reader will be exposed” (258)—or the audience in Middle-earth for that matter. The question, which we will deal with in this discussion, then becomes:
for what purpose does the wyrdwrītere control that to which the reader will be exposed?
This discussion does not explore who wrote or chronicled the history, but rather the how and why. To examine the broader purpose or theme this discussion, for the most part, approaches the history of the Elves as a metanarrative (Genette 84-95) as written by the unnamed intradiegetic narrators—the wyrdwrīteras. That is, it looks at the text as one that is written in Middle-earth for an audience in Middle-earth. At this narratological level, it becomes clearer that the history of the Elves is one that is both morally ideological and politically ideological as the wyrdwrīteras exposit the theme of Northern courage in their tales.
The narrative technique used by the Eldar may be associated with the medieval (and classical) tradition of the exemplum (Davenport 11) in which the examples used in this discussion—the deaths of Fëanor and Fingolfin—reenact the “actual, historical embodiment of communal value” (Scanlon 34). This enactment, whether in medieval literature or Tolkien’s fiction, can be ideological or historical but its moral (sententia) “effects the value’s reemergence with the obligatory force of moral law,” and therefore the exemplum may be considered a narrative enactment of cultural authority (ibid.). The political rhetoric and sententiae of the Noldorin wyrdwrīteras embedded in the text show how The Silmarillion (and by extension the Elvish history continuing into The Lord of the Rings) develop a sense of depth and authenticity that we find in primary world histories and the medieval exemplum.
While Tolkien is quick to reject allegory, he is not beyond a didactic use of story as moral exposition. Tolkien makes clear “there is indeed no better medium for moral teaching than the good fairy-story” (“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” [“Gawain”] 73), and this discussion argues that Tolkien does just that with his academic views on the theory of Northern courage through his unnamed wyrdwrīteras within his secondary world. The Legendarium’s text(s) of Elvish history enact the moral rather than the moral simply glossing the narrative. In doing so it establishes a form of authority which beckons the (secondary-world) audience to heed its lessons and act accordingly (Scanlon 33). The Silmarillion’s ‘exempla,’ like the primary world’s classical tradition, refers to the deeds of famous rulers and heroes of Arda and provides “an illustration of the social norm to be taught, of a certain social action to be shunned” (Kemmler 62-63) from the cultural authority of the text(s) and its narrators and the code of Northern courage in both its positive and negative aspects.
Like Beorthnoth in the Battle of Maldon, Fëanor dramatizes and shows us the vices of Northern courage (ad malum exemplum), while the Fingolfians on the other hand, show us the virtuous elements of Northern courage (ad bono exemplum). That is, “the heroism of obedience and love, not pride or willfulness, that is the most heroic and the most moving” (“Homecoming” 148), such as the death of Finrod Felagund, who sacrificed himself (and by extension of cause and effect, his kingdom) in the dungeons of Sauron (The Silmarillion [Silm] 204). Finrod did this not only because of the oath to Barahir and his kin, but also out of love for Beren.
Lastly, concerning Tolkien’s skillful use of wyrd as a guiding force of the Elvish narratives, Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien knew the etymology of both wyrd (from OE weorþan ‘to become’) and fate (Latin fari ‘to speak,’ that is “‘that which has been spoken,’ sc. by the gods”).
Both are rather different in that wyrd also “means ‘what has become, what’s over’, so among other things, ‘history’— a historian is a wyrdwrītere, a writer down of wyrd. Wyrd can be an oppressive force, then, for no one can change the past; but it is perhaps not as oppressive as ‘fate’ or even ‘fortune’, which extend into the future” (Author 145). Tolkien’s Elvish narrators are chronicling past events of courage and tragedy within their history: they are the wyrdwrīteras of Elvish history in Middle-earth.
II. The History of the Elves as a Literary Work and a Work of Secondary-world History
With one foot in the primary world and one foot in the secondary world, we may treat the history of the Elves as a “fictional historiography,” which is a literary artifact not only concerned with actual events and the “beauty of the story” (Cristofari 176) but also, I suggest, as Volksgeschichte or Origo Gentis of the Eldar with a particular point of view and agenda. Indeed, as Gergely Nagy points out, “these are not simply stories but history” (247). As such, they have a, or many, undramatized narrator(s) within the secondary world. Firstly, as a literary artifact of secondary world history, the text has a secondary world narrator and a secondary world audience:
[…] an audience that exists in the narrator’s world, that regards the characters and events as real rather than invented, and that accepts the basic facts of the storyworld regardless of whether they conform to those of the actual world […]. (Phelan and Rabinowitz 6)
The secondary world audience not only accepts the facts, but in the Legendarium’s case, many witnessed and participated in those facts. Galadriel, for one, travelled to Middle-earth with the Flight of the Noldor, Elrond was quite literally born out of a great tale, Beren and Lúthien are real for Aragorn—not just in the lay he sings but as his ancestors. On the intradiegetic level of the textual world, “the lore of the Elder Days contextualizes the whole story and the allusions for the characters themselves, for whom the Silmarillion tradition is accessible, quite regardless of the reader in the primary world” (Nagy 243).
The lore of the Elder Days is not only quite accessible, but was literally witnessed by many of the protagonists themselves. This discussion primarily concerns itself with the third, intradiegetic level of the text as a secondary world historical corpus of stories. The question of who the narrators are, or at least the narrators’ point of view, is answered by Tolkien, himself: “[T]he high Legends of the beginnings are supposed to look at things through Elvish minds” (Letters 145, #131). The high Legends attempt to “reconcile” creation myth, providential design, and the events of Elvish history (Freeh 65). Like primary world illustrative narratives, the narratives of the Elvish wyrdwrīteras so intertwine their rhetorical complexity and their historical specificity that it is nearly impossible to separate the two (Scanlon 7).
Nonetheless, because of the discontinuity of chronology and various styles and narrative modes, it is nearly impossible to read the Elvish history as the product of one historian (Cristofari 179).
Yet one may read Elvish history as a sort of Gesta Romanum, or perhaps a Gesta Noldorum; that is, a collection of tales of the distant past, from varied and wide-spread sources, in which the deeds of heroes and kings may be moralized (Davenport 59) within a thematic context. For Kemmler, the thematic context of illustrative narratives is determined by a set of particular norms and values. These norms and values (themes) may already be observed in a particular community—or they may be intended. Dennis Wilson Wise offers a counter-argument:
“I see The Silmarillion as a ‘completed and coherent entity,’ a single unified text in which all five stories are structurally linked and thematically interlocked, where all the seeming inconsistencies and strange silences are actually part of an intentional rhetorical strategy devised by a single, anonymous author of high moral seriousness” (Wise 101).
For the community of the Noldor, the norms and values fall within the framework of Tolkien’s theory of Northern courage. Indeed, the theory of Northern courage is enshrouded in a unified melancholic tone of loss and decay throughout the stories (Vanderbeke and Turner 15), which harmonizes with a theme of the defiant fatalism of the ‘long defeat.’
[…] the tone of the different narrations is far less diverse than their content. Whoever tells the tale is invariably enamored of names, be it places, persons or things, and the tone is always somber and slightly melancholic […] (Vanderbeke and Turner 14)
Regardless whether there is one or many narrators of the stories, they all possess a tone of elegiac pathos and simultaneously praise a theme of ethos in which “defeat is no refutation” (Shippey, Road 177).
Nevertheless, the Elvish histories and great tales are not without either political slant or moral focus.
Dennis Wilson Wise observes that the Elvish minds (or mind, singular, for Wise) in chronicling or narrating the Elvish history, maintain a moral focus throughout the story:
[…] the subtle warnings to the reader to avoid evil because evil will ultimately destroy itself; the affirmation that divine grace will intercede in history, though only after much sorrow; and that the single best way to handle one’s fate is through humility, submission to the higher powers, and—if necessary—self-sacrifice. Whether these particular virtues are salutary or the final word must depend on the individual reader. But what is certainly magnificent about The Silmarillion is the skill and craft utilized by the book’s writer to entreat—to guide, to seduce—the reader to that writer’s particular vision of the Good. (Wise 117)
The moral and political focus of our Elvish narrators presents an “elvish viewpoint of the world and its history, and the kindred of the elves it is essentially Noldorin but distinctly anti-Fëanorian” (Lewis 160). The anti-Fëanorian focus is not by any means an ideological power doctrine, but rather its ideological power is “constituted by its rhetorical specificity as narrative” (Scanlon 31). For example, when Fëanor refuses Yavanna as discussed above, the text tells us that “[…] yet had he said yea at the first, before the tidings came from Formenos, it may be that his deeds would have been other than they were. But now the doom of the Noldor drew near” (Silm 84). This is a rhetorical statement of judgement and speculation, not of historical fact: if only Fëanor had chosen differently, then doom would have been avoided. The blame is laid on Fëanor.
The portrayals of Northern courage and its sister, wyrd, differ greatly when portraying the Fingolfians and Fëanorians. Our wyrdwrīteras’ moral focus and theme of Northern courage is one that is politically charged. Tolkien’s “Elvish minds” have an agenda, and parallel agendas may be analyzed within our own primary world histories. For example, Walter Goffart examines four authors that Tolkien should have been aware of if not read, who certainly wrote their histories with a political or ideological point of view. Goffart writes:
The Constantinopolitan perspective of Jordenes overshadows his Gothic theme. Gregory of Tours was primarily concerned with current events rather than with the Franks, and he was intent on portraying the depravity of all men rather than a subgroup among them. Bede was Northumbrian rather than English and cared more about the Christian face of his compatriots than about their ethnic peculiarities. Paul waited so long to write about his fellow Lombards, applying his pen to other subjects, that he left their history unfinished. (Goffart 6)
In our Elvish history, like Jordenes, the narrator/s’ Fingolfian perspective overshadows their theme of Northern courage and chronicling of events. The Fingolfian perspective, while simultaneously thematic, has “a propensity toward the evil example, toward narratives which demonstrate the efficacy of their sententiae by enacting violations of them” (Scanlon 81). What follows is a quick analysis which illustrates the propensity toward the evil example (ad exemplum malum).
III. Fëanor’s Battle with Morgoth verses Fingolfin’s Battle
Fëanor
Hayden White, in his essay “Historicism, History, and the Imagination,” provides a model for the rhetorical analysis of historical writing (107-110).9 As we have established within the secondary world of the text, The Silmarillion may be read as a history written by Elvish chroniclers for a secondary world audience and therefore an analysis treating the text as historical writing is appropriate. For White, there are two levels of historical discourse: the facts and the interpretation of those facts that tells a story. The discourse is the combination of both facts and interpretation, “which gives to it the aspect of a specific structure of meaning that permits us to identify it as a product of one kind of historical consciousness rather than another” (“Historicism” 107, emphasis in original). White, as an historian, is concerned with historical documents, and the tales of the Legendarium are just that. It is also suggested that the tales of the Legendarium are illustrative narratives. Scanlon identifies the same levels of discourse that White identifies but in different terms:
As narratologists have convincingly argued, it is precisely the gap
between dictum and factum which enables a narrative to produce
meaning. By emphasizing certain aspects of the factum and minimizing
or eliding others the dictum implicitly assigns the factum a specific
significance. Without this form of reference there can be no narrative.
(Scanlon 96)
Facts and interpretation, factum and dictum, are rhetorically manipulated to emphasize judgements of good and bad behavior and good and evil deeds. The judgement is more often than not in the eyes of the beholder, that is, of the narrator.
The passage of Fëanor’s death provides an illustrative example of Northern courage ad malum exemplum. Most of the information in these three paragraphs is scantily covered in the Later Quenta and Quenta Silmarillion. All the variations, however, do not invalidate the argument made here. In the published Silmarillion, Fëanor’s death is narrated as follows:
For Fëanor, in his wrath against the Enemy, would not halt, but pressed on behind the remnant of the Orcs, thinking to come to Morgoth himself; and he laughed aloud as he wielded his sword, rejoicing that he had dared the wrath of the Valar and the evils of the road, that he might see the hour of his vengeance. Nothing did he know of Angband or the great strength of defence that Morgoth had so swiftly prepared; but even had he known it would not have deterred him, for he was fey, consumed by the flame of his own wrath. Thus it was that he drew far ahead of the van of his host; and seeing this the servants of Morgoth turned to bay, and there issued from Angband Balrogs to aid them. There upon the confines of Dor Daedeloth, the land of Morgoth, Fëanor was surrounded, with few friends about him. Long he fought on, and undismayed, though he was wrapped in fire an wounded with many wounds; but at the last he was smitten to the ground by Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, whom Ecthelion after slew in Gondolin. There he would have perished, had not his sons in that moment come up with force to his aid; and the Balrogs left him, and departed to Angband. (Silm 120-121)
Following the rhetorical model, we want to state the factual information (factum)
of this passage, which is:
1) Fëanor does not halt his pursuit of the routing Orcs and leaves his vanguard behind.
2) The servants of Morgoth turn to meet Fëanor and Balrogs reinforce them from Angband.
3) Fëanor was surrounded by the enemy with a “few friends.”
4) He fought long, surrounded in flame, and fell.
5) His sons and the vanguard finally reach him while the Balrogs retreat back to Angband.
Secondly, it is important to state what appears to be statement of fact but are
really statements of judgement or interpretations (dictum):
6) Fëanor “in his wrath” charged the Enemy “thinking to come upon Morgoth himself.”
7) “he laughed aloud as he wielded his sword, rejoicing that he had dared the wrath of the Valar and the evils of the road, that he might see the hour of his vengeance.”
8) He did not know of the strength of Morgoth’s defenses, but the narrator makes clear that it would not have mattered “for he was fey, consumed by the flame of his own wrath.”
9) “Long he fought on, and undismayed”
The first statement of judgement interprets Fëanor as ‘wrathful’ in thinking to reach Morgoth himself. In the ethos of Northern courage, this action is congruent with revenge, whether in revenge for the murder of his father Finwë or, like Weland/Völund’s motivation of possessiveness, for revenge of the rape of the Silmarils, or both. Or perhaps, simply looking at the ‘fact’ again, would it be plausible to interpret that fact as a simple battlefield challenge for single combat with Morgoth, like, for example, Hildebrand and Hadubrand?
The second statement of judgement again stresses vengeance and emphasizes the wild, ‘fey,’ almost berserker nature of Fëanor’s charge. It implies that Fëanor was out of control and manic by his laughter. Yet another interpretation is also plausible within the ethos of Northern courage, especially if we can imagine an account written by a Fëanorian chronicler.
Would it be plausible that Fëanor was acting out his death song, with fewer words the better—læjandi skalk deyja? (‘laughing shall I die.’ Cf. Shippey, Laughing pp. 86-91).
Consider, also, the Old English etymology of this particular word ‘fey’ (Clark-Hall, s.v. fǣge ‘fey,’ doomed (to death), fated, destined). Stanley remarks that […] wyrd occurs not infrequently in collocation with the poetic word fæge […]. In these contexts the meaning of the word is something like ‘final event, final fate, doom, death’.” (86). That Fëanor was fey may imply that this was his wyrd, his doom and may also support an alternative point of view, if we had the hypothetical Fëanorian narrator, that Fëanor chose how he would face his death, his wyrd, instead of a fatal mistake spurred on by a blind berserker rage.
Also consider the narrative of the Grey Annals: the sentence “Soon he stood alone; but long he fought on, and laughed of this event...”, could we perhaps speculate that Fëanor knew this was the hour of his death and that he chose its manner? That, like Ragnar Lothbrok, he died laughing?
After all, under the umbrella of Northern courage, a hero is not defined by his deeds but by his death; not by victory but by his demise (Haferland 208; Shippey, Laughing 37). This hypothetical interpretation seems to be as plausible as the interpretation of the next point (8) where it is stated that Fëanor did not know Morgoth’s defences:
The question is, how do we actually know what Fëanor himself was thinking at that moment?
The last point (9) once again emphasizes Fëanor’s out of control, manic rage: certainly, berserker-like rage is a trait of the heroes of Germanic heroic literature although in the context of the Eldar not a very flattering one. The last point (9) seems to, almost begrudgingly, recognize a valiant, undismayed, death. Fëanor dies a hero’s death, despite all of his perceived flaws, the one virtuous aspect that cannot be
denied him is his Northern courage; that he died well. Alex Lewis also notices the discrepancy in Fëanor’s death:
“Fëanor’s demise is given a caveat: he is extremely courageous: ‘Nothing did he know of Angband or the great strength of defense that Morgoth had swiftly prepared; but even had he known it would not have deterred him . . . ‘, but it adds: ‘for he was fey, consumed by the flame of his own wrath’ […]. This subtlety devalues Fëanor’s courage by insinuating that it was a fit of battle fever or berserker action. Fëanor fought with many Balrogs (unlike Ecthelion who fought only one) but this battle is dismissed in six lines […]. How skillfully the method of bias is woven into the story-line to make it seem closer to real history than to contrived events” (162).
Thus, Fëanor is written with a bias as the example with a propensity toward the negative. Fëanor is not who one acts like!
Next week we will continue with a detailed look at Fingolfin’s battle in comparison and Oaths, then it’s on to Galadriel
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