Subject
PF and LOTR? (Jerry responds to Carolyn)
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> Dear Jerry,
>
> I have explained above how I got to Jekyll & Hyde from Pale Fire - -
how
> do you get to the Lord of the Rings from Pale Fire?
As I said, they're on the very short list of successful novels that
have indexes. Also, I was thinking of LOTR all the way through
the Zemblan parts of PF, as for me LOTR is /the/ book in which
an imaginary country has a geography and language(s). One of its
languages is even of not-all-that-phony Scandinavian type.
Indeed, the fragments of Zemblan, including the scraps of verse,
could parody /The Lord of the Rings/ as well as anything else. A
glance at /The Prisoner of Zenda/ suggests that it doesn't contain
any Ruritanian. I did find a sentence of Graustarkian in /Beverly
of Graustark/, the second of George Barr McCutcheon's romances
in this genre, but I don't think there's much more (and that's
as far as I went). I found no Samavian in Frances Hodgson
Burnett's /The Lost Prince/, and /Prince Otto/, by Stevenson
(again!), seems to be set in a German-speaking country.
But my point is that whatever connection (even "woodwose"--
is it worth mentioning that that's the same word as P. G.
Wodehouse's surname?) leads a reader from /Pale Fire/ to
LOTR, that reader will find many more connections that might
seem to confirm an essential role for LOTR in PF. And yet I
don't think there is such a role.
Jerry Friedman
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>
> I have explained above how I got to Jekyll & Hyde from Pale Fire - -
how
> do you get to the Lord of the Rings from Pale Fire?
As I said, they're on the very short list of successful novels that
have indexes. Also, I was thinking of LOTR all the way through
the Zemblan parts of PF, as for me LOTR is /the/ book in which
an imaginary country has a geography and language(s). One of its
languages is even of not-all-that-phony Scandinavian type.
Indeed, the fragments of Zemblan, including the scraps of verse,
could parody /The Lord of the Rings/ as well as anything else. A
glance at /The Prisoner of Zenda/ suggests that it doesn't contain
any Ruritanian. I did find a sentence of Graustarkian in /Beverly
of Graustark/, the second of George Barr McCutcheon's romances
in this genre, but I don't think there's much more (and that's
as far as I went). I found no Samavian in Frances Hodgson
Burnett's /The Lost Prince/, and /Prince Otto/, by Stevenson
(again!), seems to be set in a German-speaking country.
But my point is that whatever connection (even "woodwose"--
is it worth mentioning that that's the same word as P. G.
Wodehouse's surname?) leads a reader from /Pale Fire/ to
LOTR, that reader will find many more connections that might
seem to confirm an essential role for LOTR in PF. And yet I
don't think there is such a role.
Jerry Friedman
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm