Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: “ Aldarion and Erendis:
The Mariner’s Wife.” An incomplete effort written in the 1960s and edited by
Christopher Tolkien for 1980’s Unfinished Tales, “Aldarion and Erendis” is
possibly the most unique story in Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium: a
serious and ultimately sad domestic drama about a failed marriage, mixed with
the origins of world-changing events. Why is it notable the Númenoreans
initially work with wood and not stone? How does the fact that there are
protagonists and antagonists but ultimately no heroes shape the story’s
impact? And above all else, where to start with that astonishing monologue
from Erendis to her daughter, one of Tolkien’s most powerful pieces of
Show Notes.
Peter Thiel and Palantir. As you can see, the title’s a little rude.
(Deservedly.) Subscribe to her
don’t need to belabor the long-term obvious, do we?
The article that broke the news of J. A. Bayona’s
hiring as initial series director for
Amazon’s TV series. Review his IMDB
page at your leisure; here’s a 2018
interview where he talks about his
film career in general, available as both podcast and transcript.
Some local New Zealand articles confirming Amazon’s filming in the
country
as well as the local impact in
Auckland,
where filming will be based.
Initial casting news did break literally the day
after we recorded! We’ll have more on this next episode.
The NZ ‘Hobbit law’ is very much a sore point
still. For
further background, we recommend Lindsey Ellis’s three-part
series on Jackson’s adaptation,
but especially the third
The initial news about Amazon’s collaboration with Leyou on an MMO Lord of
the Rings game,
and what it supposedly does and doesn’t involve. (The art that Jared was
distinctly unimpressed with
is from an older game, at least.)
There’s plenty out there on Númenor in general—here’s the Tolkien Gateway
summary. (And if you like,
here’s their summary of “Aldarion and
Erendis”
A possible comparative example to Erendis’s monologue to Ancalimë, one that
Tolkien would be familiar with by default, would be the Wife of Bath’s
Tale as written by Geoffrey Chaucer—a male author giving a female
character an actual sense of agency as well as voicing not so subtle protest
against a societal structure set up for the benefit of men. Specifically,
consider the famous ‘who painted the lion’ sequence, as this essay
Once again, Revolutionary
Road. It really does make
sense as another comparison point.
To give you an idea of what a Reddit relationship post can be like, here’s a
We all love Ursula K. Le Guin, because she
was that great. See the film on August 2nd on
Plenty of examples of laws of succession and whether women could hold thrones
over time. A famous European one: the Salic Law of
Grimdark is something you really can
Religion in Middle-earth—and its overt absence as is generally
understood—really is its own discussion topic. Tolkien, who was clear about
his work’s Christian and Catholic elements, had his own thoughts on the
The ‘George R. R. Martin wonders about Aragorn’s tax
policy’ query came up in a 2014 interview with the author.
The sentiment from Tolkien about how his readers wanted more information than
he could provide appears in Letter 187 in The Letters of J. R. R.
Tolkien. The specific
passage in full: “Musicians want tunes, and musical notation; archaeologists
want ceramics and metallurgy. Botanists want a more accurate description of
the mallorn, of elanor, niphredil, alfirin, mallos, and symbelmynë; and
historians want more details about the social and political structure of
Gondor; general enquirers want information about the Wainriders, the Harad,
Dwarvish origins, the Dead Men, the Beornings, and the missing two wizards
(out of five). It will be a big volume, even if I attend only to the things
revealed to my limited understanding!”
There’s a fair amount of attention to plants and trees in Númenor in these
specific writings, especially in the introductory “A Description of Númenor.”
A striking fan/botanical creation of recent years which looks into that and
much more from the legendarium is the Flora of Middle-earth book by Walter and Graham Judd.
there. But don’t forget Kate Beaton’s
The Stone of Erech is an intriguingly
Carl Sagan had the gift of public
presentation and high-end research chops in balance. An amazing combination
We’re sure Mary Matalin and James
Carville
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