[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I have never read BOLT, so I apologize if my questions and comments are very obvious, but please bear with me.

No need to apologise! That's what this thread is for.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Quick note - in this Vaire related to the one we all know as one of the Valar? I know Tolkien reused many discarded names, often for completely different characters.

It's one of the reusings, I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

But if I picked one of the Valar to tell a story, it would be Vaire. Like, if she would have been a Greek goddess instead of a Valie, she would have been the goddess of history. It would make total sense for stories - and what is history, if not stories? - to be told in her house.

Actually, now that I think about, having spun out the connection, I wonder if Tolkien's choice of reusing the name for the Vala Historian wasn't influenced by a similarity of roles.

Vairë in the Lost Tales is the wife of Lindo and the Cottage of Lost Play is their household. And, as indicated in my post above, I think the cottage compares well to the Last Homely House. Comparing it to the Halls of Mandos... maybe not so much.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Well, this is the first time I hear this name for ME, and I think it works quite well as a synonym. I think many a reader has thought or felt about ME like that - as if it's a world of lost tales - but maybe just hasn't phrased it exactly like that. The World of Lost Tales is what an outsider like myself might call Middle-earth; the locals would probably never call themselves that, but readers are (much to their regret) not locals.

True--as a name for the legendarium, ME isn't 100% precise: too much of it takes place in Valinor. In case you're wondering, the Lost Tales use "the Great Lands" (itself an emendation from generally using "the Outer Lands") in place of using "Middle-earth" to refer to the lands of men east of the sea.

I like the implications of "the Outer Lands," and I actually meant to bring it up when talking about how Kortirion is called the Citadel of the World, because it corroborates the idea that, in the Lost Tales, the Lonely Isle may have been lonely, but it was at the heart of things, not the periphery.

Once again, I can't comment very much on this having never read the book, but I have seen several such excerpts (thanks to you educated Downers ). The use of gnome and fairy really bugs me. It does not bring the right image to mind. Especially the word gnomes - Russian has adopted that word to refer to little people (like garden gnomes), and in LOTR the word is actually used to signify Dwarves. Gnom Gimli is a perfectly sound combination. Gnom Legolas makes me doubt my sanity. Each time I have to remind myself that gnomes are Elves, or at one point I think it referred specifically to the Noldor, but either way they are not Dwarves and are nothing like Dwarves (and each time I encounter that word first thing that comes to mind is something akin to Andvari, but also eager to make mischief and craft things like a LOTR Dwarf.).

And on top of that there's the common modern meaning of "gnomes" and "fairies" - a meaning significantly different from what it once used to be. On one hand the choice of name is a bad thing, since the modern image interferes with how the reader understands the character. But on the other hand, for careful readers it revives the idea that fairies and princesses and etc are not what Disney makes them out to be, but the lore behind them is much deeper (and quite different!). Seriously, though - have you never heard of a child saying "that can't be Cinderella, she doesn't have a blue dress"? The same goes for fairies. They don't have to be little winged sparkly things fluttering around, and people need a reminder of that.[/QUOTE]

There's a lot of things that could be spun off into a separate thread from these (and most) CbC-type discussions, so in time-honoured fashion, I'm going to do just that for "Gnomes and Fairies"--not least because Tolkien kept up the habit until at least the publication of [i]The Hobbit/i] (I do not remember offhand if the earliest LotR drafts still used them, but I think so) and because now I have translations questions.

SEE HERE FOR THAT THREAD