• About

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Game of Thrones

Metatextual

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Narrative Methods

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beowulf, Game of Thrones, Great War, Great War Posters, Metatextual, Propaganda Posters, Samwise Gamgee, Story, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, trench warfare, Writing, WWI

Welcome, dear readers, as always—and don’t be weirded-out by the hyperliterary title.  We’ve been thinking about an odd moment in The Lord of the Rings, a moment when two of the main characters seem to possess the ability, at least for that moment, to step away from the story, and to see themselves as characters, which is one way in which metatextuality, meaning “outside the text”, works.  (For a useful definition, see this LINK.)

It’s a passage in The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”.  Sam and Frodo are pausing before Gollum leads them through a passageway which will bring them into Mordor.  They have a meal, then talk about where they’re about to go and Sam says:

“…And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started.  But I suppose it’s often that way.  The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo:  adventures, as I used to call them.  I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say.”

Because Tolkien was writing this after the Great War, we might imagine that, at one level, he’s reflecting upon the war fever which captured Great Britain in the early days of the conflict, with its recruiting posters and popular art depictions like these—

image1poster.jpgimage2poster.png

image3poster.jpg

image3a.jpgimage4acharge.jpg

and its masses of volunteers crowding recruitment offices.

image4recruit.jpg

This was all before the grim reality of trench warfare

image5trench.jpg

and casualties beyond anyone’s pre-war comprehension

image6casualties.jpg

dampened that early enthusiasm, leading to a realistic cynicism mostly quietly expressed,

image7sword.png

although soldiers could sometimes express their opinion of the war vocally—see this LINK for some of that vocalizing.

What Sam says next seems to agree with this:

“But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind.  Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it.”

So, “adventures” now, to Sam, are no longer “a kind of sport” which “wonderful folk” seek out, but rather something which just happens to people—in fact, people like Sam and Frodo.  And, just like Sam and Frodo, “…I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t.”

The consequences of rejecting those chances are obvious:  “And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.  We hear about those as just went on…”

And Sam’s sense of the consequences of “just going on” is very realistic:  “—and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end.  You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same—like old Mr. Bilbo.  But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in!”

So far, then, we might see this as the clear thinking of someone who believed in those 1914 posters and came to learn otherwise.  Sam continues, however, and here’s where that metatextuality comes in:

“I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?”

We know that Sam has long been fascinated by tales of elves and dragons.  As Gaffer Gamgee says:

“Crazy about stories of the old days, he is, and he listens to all of Mr. Bilbo’s tales.  Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters…”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

The Gaffer’s last remark suggests that not only has Sam heard tales, but he may even have read them.  We think that it should be no surprise, then, that, when put into a situation far beyond the usual, Sam might believe that it’s not just daily life, but, in fact, a “tale”.  And so he asks, “…what sort…?”

To which Frodo replies:

“I wonder…But I don’t know.  And that’s the way of a real tale.  Take any one that you’re fond of.  You may know, or guess, what kind of tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know.  And you don’t want them to.”

In Sam and Frodo’s case, they clearly don’t and can’t know, but, although they don’t know their fate (although we think that Frodo has an idea, saying “Our part will end later—or sooner.”), they both believe that they are in a tale, as Sam says:

“Still I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales.  We’re in one, of course; but I mean put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards.”

This is ironic, of course, as we know that this very story is drawn as Tolkien-as-editor says in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, from The Red Book of Westmarch (see “Note on the Shire Records”), a volume jointly written by Bilbo and Frodo and perhaps completed by Sam himself (see The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”).

There is also, to our minds, as we said, something odd about this view of themselves and their situation.  In general, characters in epic stories—just as Frodo says—are unaware that they are in them.  Achilles never turns to Patroclus in the Iliad and asks, “I wonder how this epic will end?” nor does Beowulf spend time discussing just what sort of tale he and Wiglaf have gotten themselves into.   (You can see a touch of metatextuality in the Game of Thrones series, however, when one of its evilest characters, Ramsay Bolton, can say, “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”)

Frodo takes the idea of their being characters one step farther when he then suggests indirectly that their story is actually in the hands of its readers:

“…We’re going on a bit too fast.  You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point:  ‘Shut the book now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.’ “

As in his earlier remark, that “Our part will end later—or sooner”, we see that Frodo imagines that they’re already in such a bad place that a young audience will want to stop the story.

This then leads us to a question as odd to us as their view of themselves as already-fictional characters in a tale:   if dad listens and agrees, closing the book, what will happen to Frodo and Sam then?

 

Thanks, as ever, for reading and

MTCIDC

CD

In Depth

15 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Chaucer, Christopher Tolkien, conlang, Danian, David J Peterson, Dothraki, Elvish, English, Game of Thrones, Hamlet, Ilkorin, James Joyce, Jane Austen, language, Noldorin, Pride and Prejudice, Qenya, Shakespeare, Star Wars, Telerin, The Art of Language Invention, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Ulysses

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In 1977, the more observant viewers and critics commented upon the look and feel of a new film.  Instead of a world in which everything appeared newly-produced and sparkling, this was one in which it was clear that people had lived for a long time and many different peoples, at that.

image1moseisley.png

Even their vehicles had a scratched and dusty look.

image2speeder.jpg

We had been told, of course, in the very opening sequence that this was an old place—

image3long.png

but actually seeing its used look was that much more convincing

image4crawler.jpg

as was seeing—and hearing—its peoples,

image5jawas.jpeg

who sometimes even required subtitles, as if the audience were watching a foreign film.

image6greedo.png

In time, as the success of this film produced not only more films, but mountains of other material, from novels to graphic novels to spin-off series to toys and t-shirts and kitchen ware,

image7mugs.jpg

a whole literature appeared about this world—or, we should say, worlds. Its geography and even its extremely-varied animal life.

image8atlas.jpg

image9fauna.jpg

And, along with all of the other material, information about its languages began to appear.

image10aura.png

What prompted this posting, however, was something odd about one of those languages, that spoken by a character in what would, in time, become the sixth in the series.

image11boushh.jpg

This was pointed out to us by David J. Peterson

image12peterson.jpg

in his 2015 book, The Art of Language Invention.

image13book.jpg

As a child, what had puzzled Peterson was that the character (who is subtitled), says only “Yate, yate, yoto, ei, yato, cha”—in total, only six different words, but they are translated as everything from “I have come for the bounty on this Wookiee” to “50,000, no less”.  (This is quoted and discussed on pages 3 to 5 of Peterson’s book—which is, by the way, one we would recommend, if you’re as interested in languages as we are.)

How could so few words mean so many different things?  As an adult, looking back, Peterson had his doubts and we would agree—especially when reading about the world in which Peterson lives, the world of “conlang”, which is short for “constructed languages”.  Peterson is the creator of Dothraki, the language of the nomadic Dothraki people,

image14dothraki.jpg

one of the numerous races which inhabit the landscape of George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones, first novels, then a huge, elaborate, and engrossing television series.

image15gamebooks.jpg

image16tv.jpeg

The difference between “yate”, etc and Dothraki is that those few words are there to suggest that someone is speaking in a language different from the language spoken by the majority of the characters—which is the method employed throughout not only this film, but its two immediate successors.

image17swset.jpg

What Peterson set out to do was to create the shape of an entire language (something he has done more than once).  Here’s a LINK to the Wiki site, which, as usual, leads to other sites, which lead to other sites, which lead… if you’d like to learn more.

As worn-looking buildings and vehicles, different peoples and flora and fauna, and at least the suggestion of other languages create a bigger, deeper picture of the setting of an adventure, so, too, does the suggestion of great age.  Over time, the huge pile of material for the film series we first mentioned showed, in detail, that what we were seeing was, in fact, only the latest phase in a whole galaxy of civilizations over many centuries—after all, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic”.

image18obiwan.jpg

Another way to suggest that great age is a much less dramatic one—perhaps even a nearly-invisible one–practiced by one of our favorite authors and the subject of innumerable postings, and here is one of his efforts.

image19chart.jpg

What we’re seeing here is JRRT working out the history of sounds throughout a series of Elf languages, Qenya, Telerin, Noldorin, Ilkorin, and Danian, part of his immense and immensely-detailed work on the tongues of Middle-earth.   All languages change through time, of course—here’s a rough version of the succession of periods of English—

Old English (the opening lines of Beowulf, 700-1000AD,

image20beo.jpg

Middle English (the opening of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, c.1400AD),

image21chaucer.jpg

Early Modern English (the beginning of the first scene of Shakepeare’s Hamlet, 1603),

image22hamlet.jpg

early 19th-century English (the first lines of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, 1813),

image23pp.jpg

and early 20th-century English (the opening of James Joyce’s Ulysses, 1922).

image24ulysses.jpg

And Joyce even attempted to suggest the procession of those periods in Chapter 14 of Ulysses, “The Oxen of the Sun”, where the story is told through paragraphs which sound like earlier versions of the language gradually moving towards modern English.  (The novelist Nabokov, who played with language constantly, actually found this chapter boring, perhaps because it seemed to him like a one-off, not really in aid of the plot and its characters in general, but rather just a piece of private fun by and for the author?)

JRRT, however, goes one better.  Like other creators of big adventures, he used lots of means to deepen his story, from an extensive and detailed map

image25map.jpg

to describing the remains of earlier times still standing in the landscape of Middle-earth of the present,

image26argonath.jpg

to adding detailed historical appendices and chronologies (and his valiant son, Christopher, has added many volumes more),

image27ct.jpg

but using intricate sound changes and their logical development takes the idea of depth into new regions, especially because it would probably go unnoticed by most readers—there’s an awful lot of detail in those appendices—but whose meticulous creation is not in the least surprising for someone who once wrote, “The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.” (Letters, 219)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

ps

Ah yes—the nearly-inevitable post scriptum—if the normal world/s of the films we first mentioned are “scruffy-looking” (to quote a character about another character), we notice that the world of the villains—the soldiers of the Empire and their surroundings—are hard and clean and shiny—which makes us feel a little better when we wonder when we may last have shined our shoes.

image28deathstar.jpg

Winter is Coming

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Narnia, Narrative Methods, Villains

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

C.S. Lewis, Frozen, Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin, Hadrian's Wall, Hans Christian Andersen, Kay, Middle-earth, Mile castle, Puddleglum, Queen Elsa, Rammas Echor, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, The Lord of the Rings, The Night Watch, the Pevensies, The Snow Queen, The White Witch, Tolkien, Westeros, White Walkers, Winter is Coming

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as ever.

We were playing Sortes Tolkienses yesterday. That’s the game where we close our eyes, open The Lord of the Rings to any page, then put our finger on a line to see if we can write about it.

On page 1042 of our edition, our finger fell upon:

“…you may stay here till the Witch-king goes home. For in the summer his power wanes, but now his breath is deadly, and his cold arm is long.” (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A)

The Witch-king? Oh, we thought—that Witch-king.

angmar.jpg

He has a very long history in Middle-earth, being “probably (like the Lieutenant of Barad-dur) of Numenorean descent” (from Hammond and Scull, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, 20, Note 5) and, in the quoted context rules Angmar

arnorangmar.jpg

with a command to destroy the northern Numenorean kingdom of Arnor.

What caught our attention, however, was that idea of a “cold arm”. This might be metaphorical—except for that “in summer his power wanes”, suggesting that, if he can’t control the weather, he can at least use it to his advantage.  And this set us thinking about stories in which winter was either controlled by someone or was, itself, the antagonist.

First, there is Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen (1845).   Although this shares a title with a 2013 Disney film, there is really nothing else to link them. The Disney film has, of course, the Princess Elsa, whose enchanted hands can turn the world into winter (perhaps like the Witch-king?).

69147-Elsa-The-Snow-Queen.jpg

elsasicepalace.jpg

Andersen’s long fairy tale (in seven parts, or “stories”, historier, in Danish) is about the abduction of a boy and his rescue by his friend, a girl. The boy is being held by the Snow Queen, who lives in a far-off palace made of snow, the windows and doors of icy wind, lit by the Northern Lights.

snowqueen.JPEG

northern-lights-large.jpg

What particularly caught our attention here was the manner by which the boy, Kay, was stolen. He hitched his sled to the back of a sleigh, only to find that it was driven by the Snow Queen, who takes him under her robe.

lizbobzinsnowqueen.png

Liz Bobzin, “The Snow Queen and Kay”

This took us to the White Witch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the first of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books.

TheLionWitchWardrobe(1stEd).jpg

She picks up one of the Pevensie children, Edmund, in her sleigh and, while she doesn’t abduct him physically, she corrupts him by playing upon his greed and vanity.

bayneswhitewitch.jpg

This is an illustration of the Witch from the original 1950 book, and here are two later interpretations—the first is from the 1988 BBC production

whitewitchbbc1.jpg

the second from the 2005 film.

tildaswinton.jpg

(We like both versions—we don’t mind the Steiff Aslan in the BBC production

bbcaslan.jpg

502613_l__13430.1384493387.1280.1280.jpg

and who could ever be a better Puddleglum than Tom Baker, the fourth incarnation of Dr. Who, in the BBC The Silver Chair, 1990?

bakeraspuddleglum.jpg

We do worry a bit, however, about the changes made to the film versions of Prince Caspian, 2008, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 2010. They’re not so drastic as those we’ve come to expect from P. Jackson’s writers, but, especially in Prince Caspian, there is a tendency to change things for what appear to be marketing reasons…)

As in what appears to be the case of the Witch-king, the White Witch can control the weather and has imprisoned all of Narnia

baynesmapofnarnia.jpg

in snow and ice for a century—“always winter, never Christmas”.

The idea of a world of winter then brought us to George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, both the novels and the impressive (and addicting) television series. In the world of Thrones, the large island of Westeros—

Map_of_westeros.jpg

and the whole world, for that matter, has once suffered a winter which lasted for a generation and the fear of its return always casts a shadow over the present. During that time, the creatures known as the White Walkers appeared from the north, with armies of animated dead, and were only driven back at great cost. To prevent their return, the surviving humans built an immense wall, 700 feet high, 300 miles long, which effectively blocks entry to the lower two thirds of Westeros.

Thewallfromthenorth.jpg

The_Wall_from_the_south.jpg

In an earlier posting, we discussed the Rammas Echor, the outer boundary wall which protects the Pelennor and Minas Tirith, and what we believe to be a major influence upon Tolkien’s idea, Hadrian’s Wall, which divides England from the lands to the north.

Roman.Britain.roads.jpg

Unlike The Wall in Thrones, it is under a hundred miles long, was never more than 16 to 20 feet high, and was built of turf, timber, and stone, not solid ice. It was, however, a complex construction, with 17 forts behind it

romanfortress.jpg

and a smaller fort (now called a “mile castle”) at the end of each mile,

milecastle.jpg

with small towers set in between the mile castles.

turretonhadrianswall.jpg

It was garrisoned with thousands of soldiers over its years of occupation (begun 122AD, finally abandoned in the 5th century).

romangarrison.jpg

In Thrones, this job has been taken on by The Night Watch, a rather haphazard collection of volunteers and conscripts.

nightwatch.jpg

And, south of them, the lands of the Stark family, Wardens of the North, whose motto—a warning of the dreaded future—forms the title of this posting.

the_north_a_clash_of_kings.jpg

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

  • Ollamh

Categories

  • Artists and Illustrators
  • Economics in Middle-earth
  • Fairy Tales and Myths
  • Films and Music
  • Games
  • Heroes
  • Imaginary History
  • J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Language
  • Literary History
  • Maps
  • Medieval Russia
  • Military History
  • Military History of Middle-earth
  • Narnia
  • Narrative Methods
  • Poetry
  • Research
  • Star Wars
  • Terra Australis
  • The Rohirrim
  • Theatre and Performance
  • Tolkien
  • Uncategorized
  • Villains
  • Writing as Collaborators
Follow doubtfulsea on WordPress.com

Across the Doubtful Sea

Recent Postings

  • Horning In (2) February 1, 2023
  • Horning In (1) January 25, 2023
  •  Things You/They Know That Ain’t January 18, 2023
  • Sympathy for a Devil? January 11, 2023
  • Trumpeting January 4, 2023
  • Seating December 28, 2022
  • Yule? December 21, 2022
  • Sequels and Prequel December 14, 2022
  • Rascals December 7, 2022

Blog Statistics

  • 69,108 Views

Posting Archive

  • February 2023 (1)
  • January 2023 (4)
  • December 2022 (4)
  • November 2022 (5)
  • October 2022 (4)
  • September 2022 (4)
  • August 2022 (5)
  • July 2022 (4)
  • June 2022 (5)
  • May 2022 (4)
  • April 2022 (4)
  • March 2022 (5)
  • February 2022 (4)
  • January 2022 (4)
  • December 2021 (5)
  • November 2021 (4)
  • October 2021 (4)
  • September 2021 (5)
  • August 2021 (4)
  • July 2021 (4)
  • June 2021 (5)
  • May 2021 (4)
  • April 2021 (4)
  • March 2021 (5)
  • February 2021 (4)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • December 2020 (5)
  • November 2020 (4)
  • October 2020 (4)
  • September 2020 (5)
  • August 2020 (4)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • May 2020 (4)
  • April 2020 (5)
  • March 2020 (4)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (6)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • November 2019 (4)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (4)
  • August 2019 (4)
  • July 2019 (5)
  • June 2019 (4)
  • May 2019 (5)
  • April 2019 (4)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (4)
  • January 2019 (5)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (4)
  • October 2018 (5)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (5)
  • July 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (5)
  • April 2018 (4)
  • March 2018 (4)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • January 2018 (5)
  • December 2017 (4)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (4)
  • September 2017 (4)
  • August 2017 (5)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (4)
  • May 2017 (5)
  • April 2017 (4)
  • March 2017 (5)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • December 2016 (4)
  • November 2016 (5)
  • October 2016 (6)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (5)
  • July 2016 (5)
  • June 2016 (5)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (4)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (4)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (5)
  • November 2015 (5)
  • October 2015 (4)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (4)
  • July 2015 (5)
  • June 2015 (5)
  • May 2015 (4)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (4)
  • February 2015 (4)
  • January 2015 (4)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (6)
  • September 2014 (1)

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • doubtfulsea
    • Join 68 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • doubtfulsea
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...