19.11.2015, 22:52
Your clarification is welcome.
Still, I may have been blunt, but I stand by my words regarding the title. "Definitive" is terribly misleading and cannot but lead your readers astray both regarding an informed appreciation of Tolkien's creation and the content of the book. You will never correct people's misrepresentations as you hope to if you are starting like that. And to an informed reader, it shouts "wrong!" as if you were claiming to write A refferrense for good spelling.
Words matter. What you are writing is called an introduction, or a detailed introduction if you wish. This is still pretty useful indeed for newcomers to the field, who certainly cannot be expected to tackle the raw complexities of a PE, or for the many people more interested in using than studying the scripts (although a bit of study is of course inescapable).
There is no wrong in writing such simplified accounts that may be a key to a fuller appreciation of the whole. Quite like The History of Middle-earth would have been difficult to enjoy without the previously published Silmarillion. But it is crucially important (and quite difficult in practice) to get people to understand that Tolkien's languages and scripts creations were in a state of flux and subject to constant experimentation, and (in such a setting) to be abundantly clear that what you are presenting is only a part of the iceberg. The tidiest one.
Tolkien's uses are quite reminiscent of mediaeval scribal habits: there are clear sets of practices and traditions (reflected in various modes for the same language), but also a variability much greater that in modern orthographies. Actually, I think that pedagogically, Tolkien's scripts could be quite useful for people to grow more aware of the distinction between the language and the letter.
Still, I may have been blunt, but I stand by my words regarding the title. "Definitive" is terribly misleading and cannot but lead your readers astray both regarding an informed appreciation of Tolkien's creation and the content of the book. You will never correct people's misrepresentations as you hope to if you are starting like that. And to an informed reader, it shouts "wrong!" as if you were claiming to write A refferrense for good spelling.
Words matter. What you are writing is called an introduction, or a detailed introduction if you wish. This is still pretty useful indeed for newcomers to the field, who certainly cannot be expected to tackle the raw complexities of a PE, or for the many people more interested in using than studying the scripts (although a bit of study is of course inescapable).
There is no wrong in writing such simplified accounts that may be a key to a fuller appreciation of the whole. Quite like The History of Middle-earth would have been difficult to enjoy without the previously published Silmarillion. But it is crucially important (and quite difficult in practice) to get people to understand that Tolkien's languages and scripts creations were in a state of flux and subject to constant experimentation, and (in such a setting) to be abundantly clear that what you are presenting is only a part of the iceberg. The tidiest one.
Tolkien's uses are quite reminiscent of mediaeval scribal habits: there are clear sets of practices and traditions (reflected in various modes for the same language), but also a variability much greater that in modern orthographies. Actually, I think that pedagogically, Tolkien's scripts could be quite useful for people to grow more aware of the distinction between the language and the letter.
Le langage a à la fois renforcé l'imagination et a été libéré par elle. Qui saura dire si l'adjectif libre a créé des images belles et bizarres ou si l'adjectif a été libéré par de belles et étranges images de l'esprit ? - J. R. R. Tolkien, Un vice secret