Chapter 5 posting- Word Count: 562
To start, I cannot believe Shippey managed to sum up Tolkien’s book “The Silmarillion” in one single chapter. This was amazing to me. For my final term paper my topic was about Tolkien’s invented languages, many of which are found in his book “The Silmarillion.” While doing my research for the paper I came across some interesting articles that I chose not to use, but were explained in better detail in Shippey’s chapter. Shippey explained the difference between light elves and dark elves in the beginning portion of this chapter and I found his descriptions to be very interesting. Light elves are those who had “seen the light” such as the sun and the moon. The dark elves are those who decided to stay in Middle earth and not venture outside their homeland. All of these explanations never cease to amaze me because after all, elves are fictional characters thought up in the creative mind of J.R.R. Tolkien. Shippy went on to mention that the dark elves are those who live in the woods and are more commonly known as “wood elves.” This concept got me to thinking a little bit about the elves that were mentioned in “The Lord of the Rings.” I thought about Gladriel and her fellow elves and how the last description I would use to describe them would be “dark.”
If I had not already started my research paper before reading this chapter I would have probably been a little lot and I would not have understood as much as I did. Shippey mentioned some of Tolkien’s elves languages such as the Sindarin and Quenya. Both of these languages were explained in great detail and it was interesting to read about them from an additional source that I did not choose to use in my research paper. I was surprised how in this chapter Shippy stated that the elvish language was based on Welsh and Finnish. During my research I also found articles that claimed Tolkien based his languages on German and Old English. I guess it just depends on the source used. Some may have different opinions that others but I believe as long as they have material to support their views (as Shippey did) the it should be ok.
Shippey broke down the book to a very basic summary and the additional information that Shippey included in this chapter was very insightful. I wish I would have been able to get a copy of “The Silmarillion” for my paper but I received an interlibrary loan email saying that it was unavailable after I sent out the request. After reading the outline of the book and the different topics of information it contained, I realize how much it would have helped me.
My favorite part about this chapter was how Shippey explained the family history of the elves that Tolkien included in “The Silmarillion.” The story of the three original elvish leaders and their lives was fascinating. I have to admit, even though I had a topic that related to elves and the elvish languages, I was a little lost when I was reading this section. There was so much information and although I had a brief background it still was hard at times to comprehend.
