The Notion Club Papers
The Notion Club Papers is an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written in 1945 and published posthumously in Sauron Defeated, the 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth. It is a time travel story, written while The Lord of the Rings was being developed. The Notion Club is a fictionalization of Tolkien's own such club, the Inklings. Tolkien's mechanism for the exploration of time is through lucid dreams. These allow club members to experience events as far back as the destruction of the Atlantis-like island of Númenor, as narrated in The Silmarillion.
The unfinished text of The Notion Club Papers runs for some 120 pages in Sauron Defeated, accompanied by 40 pages of Christopher Tolkien's commentary and notes, with examples of the pages hand-written by his father.[1]
Context
Structure and plot
The story revolves around the meetings of an
The Notion Club Papers is elaborately constructed. The main story (the Notion Club, itself the frame of the Númenor story) is set within a
In the frame story, a Mr. Green finds documents in sacks of
Writing and publication
Analysis
Literary group
The text comments on
Jane Stanford links The Notion Club Papers to John O'Connor Power's 1899 The Johnson Club Papers; the two books have a similar title page. The Johnson Club was a "Public House School" and met in taverns as the Inklings did. The purpose was "Fellowship and free Exchange of Mind". Both clubs presented papers "which were read before the members and discussed". The Johnson Club was named for Samuel Johnson, who like Tolkien, had a strong connection to Pembroke College, Oxford. Stanley Unwin, Tolkien's publisher, was a nephew of Fisher Unwin, the founding member of The Johnson Club.[12]
Time travel
The Notion Club Papers may be seen as an attempt to re-write the incomplete
Relation | Germanic | Old English | Meaning | Modern name | Quenya (in Númenor) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Father | Alboin | Ælfwine | Elf-friend | Alwin, Elwin, Aldwin | Elendil |
Son | Audoin | Eadwine |
Bliss-friend | Edwin | Herendil |
— | — | Oswine | God-friend | Oswin, cf. Oswald | Valandil ("Valar-friend") |
Both stories however break off before much time-travelling takes place.
Virginia Luling writes of The Notion Club Papers that "Tolkien had reason to abandon it: the existing chapters are unsuccessful, though with gleams."[13] Flieger comments that had either The Lost Road or The Notion Club Papers been finished,[9]
we would have had a dream of time-travel through actual history and recorded myth which would have functioned as both introduction and epilogue to Tolkien's own invented mythology. The result would have been time-travel not on the scale of ordinary science fiction but of epic, a dream of myth and history and fiction interlocking as Tolkien wanted them to, as they might well once have done.[9]
Prophecy
The Notion Club Papers mentions a great storm in England, on 12 June 1987.
References
- ^ a b c Tolkien 1992.
- ^ a b Chance 2003, Introduction.
- ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 104, 190–197, 217.
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #131 to Milton Waldman, late 1951
- ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 111, 200, 266 and throughout.
- ^ Flieger 2005, pp. xi.
- ISBN 0-06-064575-X.
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #257 to Christopher Bretherton, 16 July 1964, and #294 to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, 8 February 1967
- ^ a b c d Flieger, Verlyn (1996). "Tolkien's Experiment with Time: The Lost Road, The Notion Club Papers and J.W. Dunne". Mythlore. 21 (2). Article 9.
- ^ a b c Carpenter 1977, p. 174
- ^ Fisher 2007, p. 593.
- ISBN 978-1-84588-698-1.
- ^ Mallorn(53 (Spring 2012)): 30–31.
- ^ Hostetter, Carl F.; Smith, Arden R. (1996). "A Mythology for England". Mythlore. 21 (2). Article 42.
- ^ Tolkien 1977, "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age": Family Trees I and II: "The house of Finwë and the Noldorin descent of Elrond and Elros", and "The descendants of Olwë and Elwë"
- ^ Garth, John (24 September 2014). "Middle-earth turns 100". John Garth. Retrieved 29 March 2023.
He's also doing some pretty obvious signposting with those names. I don't need to explain Arundel – it's the name of a real town in Sussex, but its purpose in The Notion Club Papers is to remind us of the names Éarendel and Eärendil. Alwin is a version of Old English Ælfwine, which means 'elf-friend' and therefore connects this character with the elf-friends in Tolkien's legendarium
- ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 336–337.
- ^ Flieger, Verlyn B. (15 March 1990). "A Question of Time". Mythlore. 16 (3).
- ISBN 978-0261-10401-3.
- ^ Flieger 2001, pp. 117–141.
- ^ Flieger 2005, pp. 125–136.
- ^ Tolkien 1992, pp. 157, 252.
- ^ Great Storm 1987: The day 18 people were killed BBC News Online.
- ^ Tolkien 1992, note 1 on page 211.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.
- ISBN 978-0-35-865298-4.
- OCLC 53706034.
- ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0.
- ISBN 978-0-87338-824-5.
- ISBN 978-0-87338-699-9.
- ISBN 978-0261102750.
- ISBN 978-0-395-25730-2.
- ISBN 0-395-60649-7.