{"id":14802,"date":"2020-11-30T18:33:09","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T23:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14802"},"modified":"2020-11-30T18:35:31","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T23:35:31","slug":"the-fall-of-arthur-by-j-r-r-tolkien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14802","title":{"rendered":"‘The Fall of Arthur,’ by J. R. R. Tolkien"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Not long ago<\/strong> I reviewed Beren and Luthien<\/a><\/em>, Christopher Tolkien\u2019s scholarly reconstruction of much-revised textual material left behind by his father, J. R. R. Tolkien. I judged the book a sort of a scholarly exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d have to say the same about The Fall of Arthur.<\/a><\/em> Tolkien, always a promoter of Anglo-Saxon literature, wanted to demonstrate what he could do with Anglo-Saxon-style verse (pretty much the same as Old Norse verse), by re-telling the story of King Arthur in that meter. There\u2019s a certain irony in that project, as the real King Arthur (if he ever existed) spent his life fighting the Anglo-Saxons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, to the extent that it was finished, the poem works extremely well. There\u2019s real vigor in alliterative verse, and the way it \u201csings\u201d is strongly reminiscent of passages in The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. One sees where Tolkien acquired his highly effective literary style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foes before them,\nflames behind them\never east and onward \neager rode they, \nand folk fled them  as the \nface of God,\ntill earth was empty, and \nno  eyes saw them, \nand no ears heard them in \nthe endless hills,\nsave bird and beast  bale-\nful haunting \nthe lonely lands\u2026.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The poem, unfortunately, was left as a fragment, breaking off before it\u2019s properly underway. Arthur is returning from his campaign in Europe, having been warned that Mordred has raised a rebellion in his absence. Much has been made of the fact that Lancelot, who betrayed the king with Guinevere, has not been summoned to help him. No doubt more would have been made of that, and this could have been a pretty rousing work of literature. But as it is, what we have is another interesting scholarly exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are notes at the end, and a couple essays by Christopher Tolkien. I should have read those, but wasn\u2019t aware of them until just now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not long ago I reviewed Beren and Luthien, Christopher Tolkien\u2019s scholarly reconstruction of much-revised textual material left behind by his father, J. R. R. Tolkien. I judged the book a sort of a scholarly exercise. I\u2019d have to say the same about The Fall of Arthur. Tolkien, always a promoter of Anglo-Saxon literature, wanted to … Continue reading ‘The Fall of Arthur,’ by J. R. R. Tolkien<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,15,1],"tags":[1345,3534],"class_list":["post-14802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-the-fall-of-arthur"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14802"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14805,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14802\/revisions\/14805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}