The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ about a possible connection between Middle English aliri and the word aleary in a children’s rhyme.

      26 April 1931 Trinity Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: The Battle of Brunanburh on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 28 April; the Old English Exodus (continued) on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 30 April; and Old English Textual Criticism (continued) on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 30 April. See note. – C.L. Wrenn replaces Tolkien as the supervisor of E.V. Williams.

      29 April 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

      5 May 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. He again proposes that the Napier books, except the most valuable, be allowed to circulate. With the Committee’s agreement he is left to obtain the necessary permission from the Faculty Board.

      8 May 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

      15 May 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He proposes that C.L. Wrenn be appointed to the University Lectureship in English Language for a period of five years from the first day of Michaelmas Term 1931. David Nichol Smith and Tolkien present a draft reply to the General Board on the needs of the faculty, which the English Faculty Board approves. The report of the Committee on the Regulations is presented, but the Board decides to consider it at an adjourned meeting on 22 May. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien and C.T. Onions examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of *Alistair Campbell of Balliol College, The Production of Diphthongs by ‘Breaking’ in Old English from 700 to 900.

      16 May 1931 Tolkien reads a paper, Chaucer’s Use of Dialects (*Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale), to the Philological Society in Oxford.

      22 May 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. This deals with, among other matters, the constitution of the Board of Faculty of English Language and Literature, and a statement asking the Board its policy in regard to the Honour School of English. – Tolkien attends an adjourned meeting of the English Faculty Board at 3.00 p.m. The new regulations for the syllabus of the English School are amended and adopted to come into force with examinations in 1933. Among documents discussed is one which considers whether ‘English Literature from 1850 till Present Time’ should be an A Paper. Tolkien submits a typescript, based on a statement provided possibly by H.F.B. Brett-Smith and probably representing the views of several members of the faculty, which does not approve the compulsory inclusion of Literature after 1800 in the work of all candidates taking the Modern Literature Course III, and which recommends that the existing papers be retained. To this Tolkien adds a manuscript note: ‘Professor Tolkien would agree to the modification but considers it a matter primarily for the decision of those mainly concerned with the direction of the work in modern literature’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/3).

      5 June 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

      10 June 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

      11 June 1931 English Final Honour School Examinations begin.

      12 June 1931 Tolkien and C.T. Onions examine Alistair Campbell of Balliol College viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis, The Production of Diphthongs by ‘Breaking’ in Old English from 700 to 900, at 2.30 p.m. in the Examination Schools.

      15 June 1931 Tolkien and Onions sign their report (written by Tolkien) on their examination of Alistair Campbell.

      17 June 1931 Tolkien is listed in the Oxford University Gazette for 17 June as a member of the Committee for Comparative Philology, concerned with Section D (Germanic), and ‘will see Diploma Students by appointment and direct their work in the respective Sections offered by them’ (p. 680).

      19 June 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. – He also attends an English Faculty Board meeting, at which he is appointed to a committee to consider the memorandum of the General Board on the Final Pass School.

      20 June 1931 Trinity Full Term ends.

      24 June 1931 Encaenia.

      28 July 1931 Tolkien attends a meeting of the English Faculty Board at 12.15 p.m.

      ?Autumn 1931 Tolkien writes a paper, A Secret Vice, for delivery on 29 November. The ‘vice’ is the creation of languages for personal enjoyment. The paper includes examples of poetry in Elvish languages (with versions in English) related to the ‘Silmarillion’ mythology: Oilima Markirya (The Last Ark), Nieninque, and Earendel (*Earendel at the Helm) in Qenya, and a ‘fragment’ in Noldorin. Associated with this are word-lists in Qenya (*‘Qenya Word-Lists’).

      September 1931 Tolkien continues to write the Lay of Leithian, which may have reached line 3860 at the beginning of the previous October. He notes the following dates on the manuscript, all in Canto XIII: line 3881, 14 September; line 3887, 15 September; line 3962, 16 September; line 4029, 14 September (sic); line 4045, 16 September (sic); line 4085, 17 September. He will write no further dates in the manuscript, but will continue it to line 4223, Canto XIV. He apparently abandons the poem, leaving it unfinished, in September 1931. – Tolkien’s eldest son, John, begins to attend the Oratory School, a Catholic boarding school, once in Birmingham, now at Caversham, near Reading in Berkshire.

      19–20 September 1931 Tolkien dines with C.S. Lewis and their friend *H.V.D. ‘Hugo’ Dyson at Magdalen College, Oxford. After dinner they stroll along Addison’s Walk in the college grounds, discussing metaphor and myth. But they are ‘interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining. We all held our breath, the other two appreciating the ecstasy of such a thing almost as you would’ (C.S. Lewis, 18 October 1931, They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963), p. 421). They retire to Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen to talk further. They discuss Christianity, the difference between love and friendship, poetry, and books. Tolkien goes home at 3.00 a.m.; Lewis and Dyson talk a while longer. The evening is a seminal moment for Lewis, who had abandoned atheism for theism, and now will move from believing in God to accepting Christ.

      ?Late 1931–?1932 The Lay of Leithian having been abandoned, Tolkien returns briefly to the story of Túrin and begins a poem in rhyming couplets, entitled The Children of Húrin. This is based on the second version of the alliterative lay of the same title, but is abandoned in turn after only 170 lines. – Around this time Tolkien also writes two companion poems, Völsungakviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of the Völsungs’) and Guðrúnarkviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of Gudrún’), of 339 and 166 eight-line stanzas respectively. After the Second World War he will have an amanuensis typescript made of them; otherwise each survives only in a fair copy manuscript. On 29 March 1967 Tolkien will write to *W.H. Auden, who had sent him part of the Elder Edda translated into Modern English: ‘In return again I hope to send you … a thing I did many years ago when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry: an attempt to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza’ (Letters, p. 379). See note.

      4 October 1931 On the Feast of Saint Francis Tolkien attends the formal opening of the new Franciscan friary at Oxford, next to the parish church of Saints Edmund and Frideswide in the Iffley Road. The blessing is given by the Archbishop СКАЧАТЬ