The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
May. 25th, 2009 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI was going to write a review of the new Tolkien, his telling of the same Nordic mythic legends that inspired Wagner's Ring, but it looks as if I won't have to, as these two experts on exactly that subject - Tolkien and the North - have done so already.
Tom Shippey in the Times Literary Supplement
Marjorie Burns in the Wall Street Journal
And via Lingwë we have the news of another new Tolkien volume - sort of. Here and more here. The background is that Tolkien's name appeared as one of the major contributors to The Jerusalem Bible, a 1966 Catholic translation (incorporating the notes of, and many interpretive translational decisions made for, an earlier French translation) since revised. What did Tolkien do for it? Various claims floated around for years, but it seems that he prepared a draft of the Book of Jonah, which like the rest of the contents underwent heavy editorial revision, and consulted on some other points, minimized by his traditional tendency to niggle his way through work into epic procrastination. Jonah is a mighty short book, and what will be in "The Book of Jonah, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien" making it worth a separate volume remains to be seen.
Tom Shippey in the Times Literary Supplement
Marjorie Burns in the Wall Street Journal
And via Lingwë we have the news of another new Tolkien volume - sort of. Here and more here. The background is that Tolkien's name appeared as one of the major contributors to The Jerusalem Bible, a 1966 Catholic translation (incorporating the notes of, and many interpretive translational decisions made for, an earlier French translation) since revised. What did Tolkien do for it? Various claims floated around for years, but it seems that he prepared a draft of the Book of Jonah, which like the rest of the contents underwent heavy editorial revision, and consulted on some other points, minimized by his traditional tendency to niggle his way through work into epic procrastination. Jonah is a mighty short book, and what will be in "The Book of Jonah, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien" making it worth a separate volume remains to be seen.
