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This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle-earth, which aims to build an encyclopedic guide to J. R. R. Tolkien, his legendarium, and related topics. Please visit the project talk page for suggestions and ideas on how you can improve this and other articles.Middle-earthWikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earthTemplate:WikiProject Middle-earthTolkien ??? This article has not yet received a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale. Note: Though it states in the Guide to writing better articles that generally fictional articles should be written in present tense, all Tolkien legendarium-related articles that cover in-universe material before the current action must be written in past tense. Please see Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards for more information about this and other article standards.

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Archive 1

FA?

right, I would like to elevate this to FA status. A little more work is required, but I think the article is now at least as good as some of the other-language WP's FAs linked above. Any suggestions for what should be fixed? I'll put it on peer review in a couple of days, I think. dab (ᛏ) 07:31, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I've only made minor contributions here, but in general I think this is very good. It could use a copyedit here and there -- especially in the intro there's the occasional awkward phrase -- and I'm not sure about the organization of some of the later sections, but it's very close to what it needs to be IMO. TCC (talk) (contribs) 17:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I've looked through it, and will list it on FAC now to get more input, we can always improve it as the objections come in. dab (ᛏ) 13:45, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

re-imported section

I have only now realized that the "derivative art" section had been removed. I have re-inserted it. We do have a Works inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien main article, but the point of the section in this article is specifically about Tolkien's take towards derivative art during his lifetime. Discussion of the works themselves, especially those created after 1973, go of course to the main article. Instead of a separate h2-section, this could conceivably also be a subsection of the "Old Age" section, since popularity of the LotR only really came into full swing after 1959, and Tolkien's losing battle against fandom began when he was already old. dab (ᛏ) 14:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Referencing effort

The following is a list of statements that need a specific reference. (The Biography section is a summary of Carpenter's Biography, with additional statements taken from Letters and referenced, and imho needs no further references. In most instances, we name the publication we are talking about. For example,

"Beginning with The Book of Lost Tales, written while recuperating from illness during World War I, Tolkien devised several themes that were reused in successive drafts of his legendarium. The two most prominent stories, the tales of Beren and Lúthien and that of Túrin, were carried forward into long narrative poems (published in The Lays of Beleriand)"

as far as I'm concerned is sufficiently referenced with the two publications linked. The "Works" section is already well referenced from Letters, so I think we need mainly references for things in "Languages" and "Writing". dab (ᛏ) 11:40, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

• From around 1936, he began to extend this framework to include the tale of The Fall of Númenor, which was inspired by the legend of Atlantis. (where did we get the 1936 date?)
• Tolkien himself acknowledged Homer, Oedipus, and the Kalevala as influences or sources for some of his stories and ideas. His borrowings also came from numerous Middle English works and poems. (where did he do so?)
• The library of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin preserves many of Tolkien's original manuscripts, notes and letters; other original material survives at Oxford's Bodleian Library.
• In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium"
• In 2002 Tolkien was voted the ninety second "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC and in 2004 he was voted thirty fifth in a list of the Greatest South Africans,
• in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK’s "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found The Lord of the Rings (Der Herr der Ringe) to be their favourite work of literature.
• When in 1925, aged 33, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, he boasted that his students of Germanic philology in Leeds had even formed a "Viking Club".

oh dear, I didn't get round to doing this before time ran out. I'll try to address all concerns in the RFA and re-submit it. Don't know when that will be, help is appreciated of course. dab (ᛏ) 09:42, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Film complaints

Yes, we all know how PJ screwed with the story of LOTR when he committed it to film. He did indeed "add new situations to the films' plot", "leave out several of the book's characters and settings", and that "some characters have their roles modified or combined with those of other characters." There's a word for this in film adaptations of books. It's NORMAL. Nearly every film adaptation of a book ever done, from The Wizard of Oz to The Ten Commandments (both of them) to Blade Runner has done this. It's not worth mentioning. For my own part, this merely scratches the surface of my complaints about the films, but I think it's really tiresome for the reader looking for basic information. If it belongs anywhere -- which I doubt -- it's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Unless a cogent reason can be presented for leaving this expanded analysis in, I'll be reverting it again. TCC (talk) (contribs) 05:59, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

yes, discussion of the Jackson trilogy has no place at all in this article (as opposed to those projects Tolkien still did comment on). PJ's movies have no relation to Tolkien, since Tolkien had been dead 30 years before PJ even thought about making the films. So yes, revert away :) dab (ᛏ) 08:59, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

But you got to it before I did. Thanks. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

J. R. R.

The spaces in the title are awkward, and look bad typographically. You wouldn't abbreviate Federal Bureau of Investigation "F. B. I.", would you? The spaces should go, and this article be moved to J.R.R. Tolkien. Jon Harald Søby \ 13:41, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

J.R.R. Tolkien, JRR Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, John Tolkien, and various other variations (and mis-spellings) all redirect to this page. Thus, people using any of these will get to the right place and the question is only over how the page title should appear. Tolkien himself used the initials far more often than the full names and that is how he is generally known. I see 'J.R.R.' more often than 'JRR' or 'J. R. R.', but I believe the last is technically correct for abbreviations of a person's name. 'FBI', like most acronyms, is usually given without dots at all. --CBD ✉ 14:29, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

see also Talk:J._R._R._Tolkien/archive1#Name_style. 14:44, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I see. I also found Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions_(people)#Middle_names_-_abbreviations_of_names, which says every point has to be followed by a space. I don't agree to that at all, but the guide is thus. Jon Harald Søby \ 14:57, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I suggest deletion of any "Tolkein" redirects. The misspelling is far too common (not as a typo, but by people who actually think this is how the name is spelled), and I consider {{R from misspelling}} harmful in most cases (it prevents you from spotting misspellings, that would otherwise show up as redlinks). dab (ᛏ) 18:59, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

The purpose is to save people who search for the mis-spelling. Rich Farmbrough. 22:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

filmed interview

this movie clip (mov format) is taken from a 1992 video documentary entitled "J.R.R.T. - A Film Portrait Of J.R.R. Tolkien" -- but can anybody tell me when the actual interview took place, and who made it (is it BBC?) -- there is another interview, dated to 1971, here, by Denys Gueroult for BBC, but it is audio only. dab (ᛏ) 16:06, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Works Inspired

How about Stephen King's books? In several of his stories (The Shining, Insomnia, etc.), King uses Tolkien's characters often as parallels to his own. Should he be considered? 01:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

possibly at the main article; we're trying to keep it confined to works JRRT himself commented on in this article. dab (ᛏ) 11:12, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Request for article check

Hi, can someone who knows their Tolkien facts better than I check the commentary section of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for accuracy and NPOV?

--Tomandlu 21:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

It states Tolkien's criticisms clearly and fairly, as I recall them. Septentrionalis 16:43, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Christian books

-- maybe an article on Tolkien and Christianity or even Tolkien and Christian propaganda is in order with the recent surge of "find God via Tolkien" publications. dab (ᛏ) 15:56, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Calling it "Christian propaganda" is a bit POV I think. It's been clearly established that Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic. While he stated on numerous occassions that the books were not meant to be allegorical, they do examine the nature of good and evil, of light and darkness, of how the smallest, meekest individual can affect the fate of many. It would not be unreasonable to examine how Tolkien's Christian beliefs had an affect on the stories. IMO, Tolkien's works do a better, more subtle job than C.S. Lewis's Narnian chronicles. While the paragraph looked more like a sales pitch for the book, I believe removing it entirely was not correct. However, it should not be listed under the derivative works section. --malber 16:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

we can drop the "propaganda", but an article on "Tolkien and Christianity" may still be warranted. Yes he was a Christian. That doesn't mean his books are there to be employed for proselytization. If he had wanted to he as in-your-face Christian as Lewis, he could have done that himself. dab (ᛏ) 22:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Deleting it was fully correct. It simply lifted the last two sentences of the blurb here and was little more than a promo for the book. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:53, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

highly unusual

went to http://en.wikipedia.org/Tolkien and it said "Joe Rock Red Tire" instead of "John Ronald Reuel Tolkien", and i refreshed it and it went back to normal. what was that all about?

Since Misplaced Pages can be edited by anyone we occasionally get people vandalizing articles. So what happened is that when you loaded it the first time the incorrect text was on there, but then by the time you refreshed the page someone had gone through and corrected it. --CBD _☎ 19:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

POV?

"he made a somewhat sarcastic comment" Rich Farmbrough. 22:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I think so. The remark in question didn't strike me as necessarily sarcastic at all, and such a reading didn't even occur to me until I saw it here. TCC (talk) (contribs) 02:23, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

he made a somewhat sarcastic comment about a fan letter by a twelve-year-old American reader (It's nice to find that little American boys do really still say 'Gee Whiz'., Letters no. 87)

If you know Tolkien's attitude towards American English, the comment can be interpreted as nothing but sarcastic. dab (ᛏ) 10:48, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Archived FAC Discussion

Here it is Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/J. R. R. Tolkien/archive1 - Judgesurreal777 09:18, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Far too many {{fact}} templates.

Seriously... there's no need for all those citations anyway - they'll ruin readability. Cite the sources at the end of the article instead. UrbaneLegend 18:41, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree it is a little overboard. Most of the requested citations can be found in the three references already listed. Do we really need to put (Carpenter 1977) or (Carpenter 1981) at the end of every other sentence in the article? Likewise, the request for a reference about the Peter Jackson films is (aside from being common knowledge / readily confirmable) met by the link to the entire Misplaced Pages article on the subject which appears in the same sentence. --CBDunkerson 18:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree as well. If there're more than a few sentences all from the same source, then I think citing the sources at the end of the article would be alright. —Mirlen 20:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

If you can do a footnote to each fact tag, it will not obscruct readability, and FAC will be a breeze. It's good to stick tightly to your sources, especially on Featured Articles. Of course most of the statements will be from Carpenter or HoME, but having the page reference handy won't hurt. dab (ᛏ) 10:32, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Footnotes do obstruct readability. UrbaneLegend 14:41, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I think we'll value encyclopedicity over "easy reading" any day, but you may be interested in simple:. dab (ᛏ) 16:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Encyclopedias don't list individual references for each individual factual statement. People are valuing 'something' over readability, but it isn't 'encyclopedicity'. I don't know what to call it. 'Referencitis'? --CBDunkerson 16:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how footnotes encumber your reading experience, I can only say that I find they rather enhance mine. Also, I'm just the messenger here. I submitted this article to FAC some time ago, and it was turned down because of unsatisfactory density of references. Take a look at our WP:FAs: Theodore_Roosevelt: 46 footnotes. Amateur Radio Direction Finding: 22 footnotes. Scotland in the High Middle Ages: 85 footnotes. Marian Rejewski: 38 footnotes. dab (ᛏ) 17:02, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

My point is that the information in an encyclopedia should be verifiable - all the claims/facts stated in the article should be verifiable if one checks other sources - but that verification doesn't have to be supplied in the encyclopedia article itself. A bibliography is a good idea, but excessive footnote citations make the article look less like an encyclopedia entry and more like an essay. That said, I can put my opinions about citationmania aside for now - getting the article up to standard is paramount. This isn't the place for arguing about Misplaced Pages's manual of style anyway. - UrbaneLegend 18:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

WP may be special in this regard. You have a point, considering encyclopedias edited by solid boards of editors. Since WP is Schroedinger's encyclopedia, however, it is reassuring to have things sourced as closely as possible, to dispel as much as possible suspicions that a given statement may have been snuck in by a stoned kid last week. dab (ᛏ) 18:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

This, of course, is very true. Misplaced Pages is very special in this regard - point taken! ▫ UrbaneLegend 14:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

looking at the present state of the article, I admit it is now well referenced, and some of the remaining 'fact' tags are a bit over the top. I am removing those I find to be so. dab (ᛏ) 17:15, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Link pruning

There are too many internal links in this article; they obstruct readability. I'm going to go through and remove those that are duplicated, redundant, or just plain useless (like years and dates). Hopefully this will improve the look of the article while still providing reference where necessary. UrbaneLegend 02:24, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I've done the dates, and a few other housekeeping and tiny content details. Rich Farmbrough 09:17 13 March 2006 (UTC).

"primary" vs. "secondary" sources

I don't get your division here. How is David Day's book a "primary" source, and the Tolkien's "Family album" a secondary source? Strictly speaking, primary sources are written accounts about Tolkien by Tolkien himself and by "eye-witnesses". But we don't need the distinction. What we need is a distinction between references sourcing statements made in the article on one hand, and literature listed as recommendations for further reading on the other, hence my change to the ToC. dab (ᛏ) 17:28, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

English and Welsh

In the Academic Works section, most of the lectures and essays are linked. There's a mention of "1963 English and Welsh, in Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures, University of Cardiff Press.". We have an English and Welsh article about a Tolkien lecture. I have not linked to it, though, because it describes the thing as a valedictory address to the University of Oxford of 1955, explaining the origin of the word "Welsh". Are they the same thing? I have no idea. So someone who knows the topic can decide whether to link it or not :) --Telsa (talk) 00:02, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

yes, they are. The lecture held in 1955 was printed in 1963. dab (ᛏ) 07:04, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Academic accomplishments?

Is it worth adding that Tolkien set in motion, during his time at the University of Leeds, the project that would ultimately produce The Linguistic Atlas of England (a record of the dialect words used in England)? Admittedly he did not remain at Leeds long enough to be an actual contributor to the project, but Bill Bryson (in The Mother Tongue) notes that the original idea for the project was Tolkien's. I didn't know if it would be a good non-LOTR detail to help give a more rounded picture of his life, or whether it was too minor to be mentioned. Jwrosenzweig 21:16, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Noteworthy?

Is the big list of names in the section "Tolkien's family in the English Census" noteworthy? I don't think it is... ▫ UrbaneLegend 12:45, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

It might be worthwhile for inclusion in some form in a 'Tolkien family' article, but not here. --CBDunkerson 13:24, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Citation and historical context for "father of modern high fantasy" quote

This article needs a citation and historical context for the "father of the modern high fantasy genre" quote. Also, the use of the word "modern" needs to be put in context. It seems to be used here to distinguish from earlier (pre-1950s) fantasy genres, but in 20 years time the word "modern" will be very confusing, and could be confusing even now. I think that what Tolkien "fathered" was an explosion of fantasy stories, from the 1960s onwards, that imitated his style. It is possible that the explosion started in the 1950s or 1970s though, so I'm not really sure. If the genre is still recognised as such today, then it is still 'modern', but in its origins (1950s/60s/70s) it is NOT modern (that is 30-50 years ago now)! Carcharoth 15:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

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