he objected to critics who mined Beowulf for miscellaneous information, historical as well as philological, and did not study it for itself, as a work of literature. In a draft letter to a Mr Thompson on 14 January 1956 he described himself as ‘a philologist by nature and trade (yet one always primarily interested in the aesthetic rather than the functional aspects of language)’ (Letters, p. 231).
But he was also interested in Philology for the light it could shed on the darker, forgotten corners of history and the peoples who had spoken earlier forms of languages, and whose stories and legends had been mainly lost. He gave lectures on subjects such as ‘Legends of the Goths’ and ‘The Historical and Legendary Traditions in Beowulf and Other Old English Poems’. In a letter written to his son *Christopher after hearing him lecture on ‘Barbarians and Citizens’, Tolkien said that he had
suddenly realized that I am a pure philologist. I like history, and am moved by it, but its finest moments for me are those in which it throws light on words and names! Several people (and I agree) spoke to me of the art with which you made the beady-eyed Attila on his couch almost vividly present. Yet oddly, I find the thing that really thrills my nerves is the one you mentioned casually: atta, attila [diminutive of Gothic atta ‘father’]. Without those syllables the whole great drama both of history and legend loses savour for me – or would. [21 February 1958, Letters, p. 264]
Tolkien also had an associated interest in place-names. He joined the English Place-Name Society (*Societies and clubs) at its inception on 27 April 1923 and remained a member until his death. *The Name ‘Nodens’, which he wrote as an appendix to the Report of the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire (1932), discusses not only philological aspects of the word but also history, legend, and mythology. The story *Farmer Giles of Ham, purporting to explain the names of some of the places near Oxford that Tolkien and his family used to visit, not only provides an ‘historical’ source for Thame and Worminghall but also explains why those names are not pronounced as written.
Tolkien’s grandson, Michael George, commented in a lecture given to the University of St Andrews Science Fiction and Fantasy Society on 2 May 1989 that for Tolkien ‘words were a commodity to be used with care and reverence …. He was for me a philologist not just in the technical sense but in the almost physical sense of feeling that words have a special kind of animation to be pondered and savoured and to be probed’. Michael George remembers
family occasions, usually meals with cross-currents of conversation … he seemed to have the art of carrying on several dialogues at once, including a kind of sotto voce monologue or soliloquy if something linguistic needed calculating …. Consciously or unconsciously he quickly assumed in my imagination the role of an ultimate authority on such matters as the origins of names and the vagaries of words in their use and abuse. He loved to explode or expose common assumptions: he did this so enthusiastically and rapidly and overwhelmingly that one was compelled to listen and agree.
But he also respected words that were perplexing and he rather delighted in their elusiveness …. I think his disciplined, academic training gave him a great advantage (as well as adding to his frustrated impatience) in making people face up to the loose way they used words and phrases. [‘Lecture on J.R.R. Tolkien Given to the University of St. Andrews Science Fiction and Fantasy Society on 2nd May, 1989’]
In a discussion of Tolkien’s medieval scholarship, Michael D.C. Drout argued that
there is a decreased confidence in philology and an increased confidence in the significance and authority of manuscripts that now, with hindsight, seems to be composed partly of legitimate doubts and partly of cant. I think that there is no doubt that medievalists today know much less philology than did Tolkien and his contemporaries, and they have more access to manuscripts via inexpensive air travel, electronic reproductions, and microfilms; thus it is certainly possible to read the development of the criticism as a way of shifting the debate onto grounds in which the newer generation of scholars is more comfortable. Large, theoretical objections to philology (scribes are more accurate, manuscript-readings are sacrosanct, emendations are suspect) have gone hand in hand with a diminution in the ability to do philology. [‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), p. 124]
For a general discussion of Philology and the division in English studies, see T.A. Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth, especially the chapter ‘Lit. and Lang.’ Both that book and Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2000) are useful references for studying the influence of Tolkien’s philological interests on his literary works. The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner (2006), and ‘The Word as Leaf: Perspectives on Tolkien as Lexicographer and Philologist’ by Gilliver, Weiner, and Marshall, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration, ed. Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger (2008), are also essential readings on Tolkien and Philology.
Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien. Collection of paintings, drawings, and designs by Tolkien, with foreword and notes by *Christopher Tolkien, first published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin, London, and in the United States by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, both in November 1979. See further, Descriptive Bibliography Ei2.
The images first appeared in a series of Tolkien calendars issued by Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) from 1973 to 1979, excepting 1975. A revised edition was published in 1992. The book was allowed to go out of print after the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (1995) by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, in which most (but not all) of the images in Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien were also reproduced, with greater definition.
A list of Tolkien’s published art is included in the second volume of the Reader’s Guide. See also *Art.
Pity and mercy. In The Lord of the Rings the pity of Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam, each of whom spares Gollum’s life, is clearly shown as having led to the ultimate success of the *quest. In the account of Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum under the Misty Mountains it is said that, as Bilbo fled from Gollum, who suspected that Bilbo had found his ring, the Ring slipped on Bilbo’s finger, making him invisible, and that Bilbo followed Gollum until they came to an opening that led to the lower gates: ‘There Gollum crouched at bay, smelling and listening; and Bilbo was tempted to slay him with his sword. But pity stayed him, and though he kept the ring, in which his only hope lay, he would not use it to help him kill the wretched creature at a disadvantage. In the end, gathering his courage, he leaped over Gollum in the dark, and fled away …’ (Prologue). In Book I, Chapter 2, when Frodo learns that through Gollum Sauron has probably discovered the whereabouts of the Ring, he cries: ‘What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had the chance!’ To which Gandalf replies: ‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.’
There are several points to be made about these passages. One is the use of ‘pity’ in the conventional phrase ‘what a pity’, often used to indicate regret or disappointment about comparatively minor events or mishaps; but this is not the focus of the present article. That usage is clearly different from the ‘pity’ shown by Bilbo, which falls within the second definition of the word in the *Oxford English Dictionary (OED): ‘a feeling or emotion of tenderness aroused by the suffering, distress or misfortune of another, and prompting a desire for its relief; compassion; sympathy’. The first definition in the OED, ‘the quality of being pitiful; the disposition to mercy or compassion; clemency, mercy, mildness, tenderness’, is noted as obsolete, or merged into the second. The definitions of pitiful include an obsolete use, ‘characterized by piety, pious’, and among modern usages
