A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages

A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages
Andrew Higgins

Dimitra Fimi

First ever critical study of Tolkien’s little-known essay, which reveals how language invention shaped the creation of Middle-earth and beyond, to George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones.J.R.R. Tolkien’s linguistic invention was a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a home and peoples to speak them. As Tolkien puts it in ‘A Secret Vice’, ‘the making of language and mythology are related functions’’.In the 1930s, Tolkien composed and delivered two lectures, in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology. The second of these, the seminal Andrew Lang Lecture for 1938–9, ‘On Fairy-Stories’, which he delivered at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, is well known. But many years before, in 1931, Tolkien gave a talk to a literary society entitled ‘A Hobby for the Home’, where he unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art that he had both himself encountered and been involved with since his earliest childhood: ‘the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement’.This talk would be edited by Christopher Tolkien for inclusion as ‘A Secret Vice’ in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays and serves as the principal exposition of Tolkien’s art of inventing languages. This new critical edition, which includes previously unpublished notes and drafts by Tolkien connected with the essay, including his ‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’, goes some way towards re-opening the debate on the importance of linguistic invention in Tolkien’s mythology and the role of imaginary languages in fantasy literature.

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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

All texts and materials by J.R.R. Tolkien © The Tolkien Estate and The Tolkien Trust 1983, 2016

Foreword, Introduction, Notes and Coda © Dimitra Fimi & Andrew Higgins 2016

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Source ISBN: 9780008131395

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008131401

Version: 2016-03-21

Contents

COVER (#u588d31ed-c9da-5dcd-8b1f-4b37bdbc0383)

TITLE PAGE (#u5ba442d1-35c1-5753-bfe2-f6a77ed52130)

COPYRIGHT (#u6100b5f2-b4e3-5b56-b215-2719906501fc)

FOREWORD (#u224d6cf2-2067-546d-a579-92472f83975d)

INTRODUCTION (#ub6b508fb-98c7-5ef2-9e62-57b35646c276)

Part I (#litres_trial_promo)

‘A Secret Vice’ (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Part II (#litres_trial_promo)

‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’ (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Part III (#litres_trial_promo)

The Manuscripts (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Coda: The Reception and Legacy of Tolkien’s Invented Languages (#litres_trial_promo)

Footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)

Appendices (#litres_trial_promo)

CHRONOLOGY (#litres_trial_promo)

ABBREVIATIONS (#litres_trial_promo)

BIBLIOGRAPHY (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Authors (#litres_trial_promo)

Works by J.R.R. Tolkien (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

FOREWORD (#ulink_978dba70-c3e8-56d5-a5fb-c14a798d9340)

‘A Secret Vice’ is widely considered to be the principal exposition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s art of inventing languages. In this essay, Tolkien charts his first ventures in language creation during childhood and adolescence through to the development of his first ‘artistic’ imaginary languages, which later became the heart of his mythology. It includes samples of these languages in the form of poetry and outlines Tolkien’s theories on the aims and purposes of composing imaginary languages within a fictional setting. The essay also outlines and interrogates important views and theories about the nature of language itself, and delineates Tolkien’s own bold ideas on language as art, as well as language change and language preferences.

This volume makes available for the first time all the drafts of, and attendant notes for, ‘A Secret Vice’ currently deposited in the Bodleian Library as part of their holdings labelled MS Tolkien 24. In Part I of this ‘extended edition’ we present Tolkien’s lecture, ‘A Secret Vice’, delivered in 1931, including new sections not printed before. Part II contains a brief essay by J.R.R. Tolkien on Phonetic Symbolism, which appears here for the first time. Part III presents Tolkien’s hitherto unpublished notes and drafts associated with both essays. The present edition, therefore, contains significant new material by J.R.R. Tolkien and shows that the previously published text of ‘A Secret Vice’ that is printed in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays was the product of an extended series of notes and drafts, including an entire related essay. Published together, the papers provide an expanded view of Tolkien’s thoughts and ideas on language invention and related linguistic notions, especially as they pertain to the relationship between language and art. This additional material also places the essay firmly within the intellectual context of the 1920s and 1930s: the tail-end of the fin de siècle vogue for international auxiliary languages (languages constructed to aid international communication, such as Esperanto); the empirical research and theoretical work of linguists such as Edward Sapir and Otto Jespersen on sound symbolism; and the Modernist experimentation with language. Tolkien’s ‘secret vice’ of devising imaginary languages (languages invented for works of fiction) enriched the long tradition of fictional languages and fantasy literature, while simultaneously offering a considered and studied response to intellectual trends of the time. This extended edition situates ‘A Secret Vice’ within its immediate and larger historical, cultural and intellectual context, and provides extensive notes on both essays and the rest of the new material that is presented here for the first time.

For this expanded edition of ‘A Secret Vice’ we have tried to be faithful to the text while making it as readable as possible, with minimal editorial intrusion. We have adhered to the conventions below:

Tolkien was not consistent in using single or double quotation marks, and this text reflects his inconsistency

Words or phrases which defy decipherment are marked as {illeg}

Words written above other words where neither is cancelled are divided by a slash: /