Stori3D Past
Member
So close! Listening to Episode 110 now!
There is a discussion of what "venerable" means, and a lot of great thoughts -- revolving around age, honour, dignity, being worthy.
It's that last definition that struck me. And this seems a good place to bring up something I notice repeatedly. When the class discussion gets stuck on a word that Tolkien uses, trying to understand it, very often it's a word or idea that has deep roots back to Old English. I would suggest that's no accident! So many O.E. words have multiple meanings, and when used in passages they tend to retain the breadth of their meanings more fully. (Compare to modern English where we often try to make our words coalesce to one specific meaning, unless we're consciously making a pun or play on words.)
So when Tolkien writes "venerable," an Old English writer would likely use a word like "ƿeorþig" -- worthy. "ƿeorþ" did a LOT of heavy lifting in O.E. It could mean honor, dignity, worth, value, nobility, fitness, high rank, ability, dearness. Kind of a perfect Tolkien word.
If you look again at "venerable," all those descriptors work. And I would argue that in order to really understand "venerable" the way Tolkien uses it, you need all, or most, of those descriptors working together. Dain is "venerable" because he is honorable, dignified, worthy, valued, noble, a fit ruler, able, dear. I think a love for the Old English word, ƿeorþig, may have influenced Tolkien's choice of a modern word, venerable, for this case.
In short, I think Tolkien may be drawing from his deep immersion in Old English in even more ways than are first thought.
So, Question for Narnion: In the context of Exploring LOTR, is this something that will help us understand a Tolkienian use of a difficult word as it comes up? Could we hypothesize that sometimes Tolkien chooses a word in terms of how an Old English sentence might be constructed? Maybe yet another way in which Tolkien the Anglo-Saxon scholar courses through Tolkien the novelist?
There is a discussion of what "venerable" means, and a lot of great thoughts -- revolving around age, honour, dignity, being worthy.
It's that last definition that struck me. And this seems a good place to bring up something I notice repeatedly. When the class discussion gets stuck on a word that Tolkien uses, trying to understand it, very often it's a word or idea that has deep roots back to Old English. I would suggest that's no accident! So many O.E. words have multiple meanings, and when used in passages they tend to retain the breadth of their meanings more fully. (Compare to modern English where we often try to make our words coalesce to one specific meaning, unless we're consciously making a pun or play on words.)
So when Tolkien writes "venerable," an Old English writer would likely use a word like "ƿeorþig" -- worthy. "ƿeorþ" did a LOT of heavy lifting in O.E. It could mean honor, dignity, worth, value, nobility, fitness, high rank, ability, dearness. Kind of a perfect Tolkien word.
If you look again at "venerable," all those descriptors work. And I would argue that in order to really understand "venerable" the way Tolkien uses it, you need all, or most, of those descriptors working together. Dain is "venerable" because he is honorable, dignified, worthy, valued, noble, a fit ruler, able, dear. I think a love for the Old English word, ƿeorþig, may have influenced Tolkien's choice of a modern word, venerable, for this case.
In short, I think Tolkien may be drawing from his deep immersion in Old English in even more ways than are first thought.
So, Question for Narnion: In the context of Exploring LOTR, is this something that will help us understand a Tolkienian use of a difficult word as it comes up? Could we hypothesize that sometimes Tolkien chooses a word in terms of how an Old English sentence might be constructed? Maybe yet another way in which Tolkien the Anglo-Saxon scholar courses through Tolkien the novelist?
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