Harken Not to Wild Beasts: Between Rage and Eloquence in Saruman and Thrasymachus

One of the giant gaps in Tolkien scholarship has been to miss how deeply Saruman answers the age-old antagonism between rhetoric and philosophy. Like John Milton, Tolkien cannot bring himself to trust rhetoric. It threatens the unitary truth of a divinely-revealed moral order and, ironically, Tolkien applies great rhetorical skill to convince his reader of rhetoric’s illusionary nature. In this matter Tolkien has been largely successful, since few readers (if any) question the de-privileging of Saruman’s perspective. In the process, though, I suggest that Tolkien has developed in his master rhetorician a new relationship between rhetoric (eloquence) and rage (thymos). The “wild beast” (LOTR III.10 563) in Saruman’s nature eventually overwhelms the Art of his Voice. Yet by examining Saruman in light of another “wild beast,” Plato’s Thrasymachus (Republic 336b), we begin to see how Tolkien has subverted the hierarchy first established by Plato between art and anger. Thrasymachus subordinates his rage to his rhetorical skills, but Saruman allows his skills to wane as his anger waxes. The example of Sauron, who needs no rhetoric, drives home to Saruman the (mistaken) lesson that rhetoric is superfluous. It belongs to the weak. Saruman thereby allows his anger freer rein. Following his defeat at the Battle of Isengard, Saruman’s rage overwhelms him completely, and that rage quickly turns to resentment (ressentiment). After Saruman escapes Treebeard’s watchful eye, a “new” Saruman emerges. Following Peter Sloterdijk’s Rage and Time, I then expand my argument to suggest that Sharkey’s Shire exemplifies the forces of rage and resentment in modern politics. Defeating Sharkey, though, comes at a high price for the hobbits of the Shire. Since the meek do not inherit the earth, rage and eloquence must be marshalled together to defeat their oppressor—a situation tragic to Tolkien because it finds no easy reconciliation with his Christian beliefs

The Relegation of Bilbo: The Narrative Diminishment of Mr. Bilbo Baggins Across J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium

Despite the relative clarity with which Bilbo was conceptualized and written, Bilbo’s role within the Legendarium at large – and even his role within his own text, The Hobbit – has proved definitively lacking. With an entire novel devoted to Bilbo (he is The Hobbit, after all), and considering the extent to which he is centrally involved with the quest that progresses across The Lord of the Rings, the identification of Bilbo’s increasingly diminished role across the Legendarium comes not only as an unanticipated reality, but, for Bilbo Baggins fans especially, a distressing one. While he may be protagonist in name, even within his own book Bilbo is not given much action or agency in the conventional heroic sense. Indeed, in the gallant, daring, dragon-slaying sense of the fantasy-genre protagonist, Mr. Bilbo Baggins fails on nearly all accounts. What Tolkien instead provides is a hero of a different variety. The question, therefore, is whether The Hobbitultimately promotes Bilbo’s variety of heroism

Ofermod and Aristocratic Chivalry in J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s The Lord of the Rings

This paper explores connections between J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1953 Essays and Studies publication The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son and representations of ofermod and aristocratic “chivalry” in The Lord of the Rings. Focusing on the motivations and leadership-related decisions of Denethor and Faramir in The Lord of the Rings, this paper argues that Faramir\u27s behavior and motivations, despite Denethor’s implications to the contrary, cannot be described in terms of ofermod regardless of the risk that his choice to reject the Ring appears to pose to Gondor. By contrast, Denethor and his son Boromir represent the pride-motivated decision-making and rash heroics that Tolkien ties to ofermod and aristocratic “chivalry” in Homecoming. This becomes particularly apparent through close linguistic analysis of Denethor’s speeches to Faramir and Gandalf in The Return of the King. Ultimately, this paper argues that Denethor’s behavior leading up to and during the siege of Minas Tirith draws out a prominent danger of ofermod in Tolkien’s literature: the ability of the privileged leader to abandon hope on behalf of subordinates. By contrast, Tolkien’s protagonists represent the opposite impulse: they embrace hope on behalf of others, setting the stage for Tolkien’s eucatastrophic interventions

GASP III. JO36: a case of multiple environmental effects at play?

The so-called jellyfish galaxies are objects exhibiting disturbed morphology, mostly in the form of tails of gas stripped from the main body of the galaxy. Several works have strongly suggested ram pressure stripping to be the mechanism driving this phenomenon. Here, we focus on one of these objects, drawn from a sample of optically selected jellyfish galaxies, and use it to validate SINOPSIS, the spectral fitting code that will be used for the analysis of the GASP (GAs Stripping Phenomena in galaxies with MUSE) survey, and study the spatial distribution and physical properties of gas and stellar populations in this galaxy. We compare the model spectra to those obtained with GANDALF, a code with similar features widely used to interpret the kinematic of stars and gas in galaxies from IFU data. We find that SINOPSIS can reproduce the pixel-by-pixel spectra of this galaxy at least as good as GANDALF does, providing reliable estimates of the underlying stellar absorption to properly correct the nebular gas emission. Using these results, we find strong evidences of a double effect of ram pressure exerted by the intracluster medium onto the gas of the galaxy. A moderate burst of star formation, dating between 20 and 500 Myr ago and involving the outer parts of the galaxy more strongly than the inner regions, was likely induced by a first interaction of the galaxy with the intracluster medium. Stripping by ram pressure, plus probable gas depletion due to star formation, contributed to create a truncated ionized gas disk. The presence of an extended stellar tail on only one side of the disk, points instead to another kind of process, likely a gravitational interaction by a fly-by or a close encounter with another galaxy in the cluster.Comment: ApJ in press, 26 pages, 18 figure

Evidence for non-axisymmetry in M31 from wide-field kinematics of stars and gas

As the nearest large spiral galaxy, M31 provides a unique opportunity to learn about the structure and evolutionary history of this galaxy type in great detail. Among the many observing programs aimed at M31 are microlensing studies, which require good three-dimensional models of the stellar mass distribution. Possible non-axisymmetric structures like a bar need to be taken into account. Due to M31's high inclination, the bar is difficult to detect in photometry alone. Therefore, detailed kinematic measurements are needed to constrain the possible existence and position of a bar in M31. We obtained $\approx$ 220 separate fields with the optical IFU spectrograph VIRUS-W, covering the whole bulge region of M31 and parts of the disk. We derive stellar line-of-sight velocity distributions from the stellar absorption lines, as well as velocity distributions and line fluxes of the emission lines H$\beta$, [OIII] and [NI]. Our data supersede any previous study in terms of spacial coverage and spectral resolution. We find several features that are indicative of a bar in the kinematics of the stars, we see intermediate plateaus in the velocity and the velocity dispersion, and correlation between the higher moment $h3$ and the velocity. The gas kinematics is highly irregular, but is consistent with non-triaxial streaming motions caused by a bar. The morphology of the gas shows a spiral pattern, with seemingly lower inclination than the stellar disk. We also look at the ionization mechanisms of the gas, which happens mostly through shocks and not through starbursts.Comment: 23 pages, 39 figures; accepted for publication in A&

Reference Resolution in Multi-modal Interaction: Position paper

In this position paper we present our research on multimodal interaction in and with virtual environments. The aim of this presentation is to emphasize the necessity to spend more research on reference resolution in multimodal contexts. In multi-modal interaction the human conversational partner can apply more than one modality in conveying his or her message to the environment in which a computer detects and interprets signals from different modalities. We show some naturally arising problems and how they are treated for different contexts. No generally applicable solutions are given

Contextualizing the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien on Literary Criticism

This essay offers a reinterpretation of Tolkien\u27s writings about literary criticism, which are focused on Beowulf, fairy stories, and his own works. Whereas his writings have often been taken to mean that analytic scholarship is not valid and should not be pursued, my essay takes the intellectual climate of the time into consideration and offers an alternative interpretation, according to which he did not mean to forbid these studies outright and indeed intended that scholars should continue writing them. The essay ends with a call to academics not to be discouraged by his strong language from producing analytic studies

The Stellar Halos of Massive Elliptical Galaxies II: Detailed Abundance Ratios at Large Radius

We study the radial dependence in stellar populations of 33 nearby early-type galaxies with central stellar velocity dispersions sigma* > 150 km/s. We measure stellar population properties in composite spectra, and use ratios of these composites to highlight the largest spectral changes as a function of radius. Based on stellar population modeling, the typical star at 2 R_e is old (~10 Gyr), relatively metal poor ([Fe/H] -0.5), and alpha-enhanced ([Mg/Fe]~0.3). The stars were made rapidly at z~1.5-2 in shallow potential wells. Declining radial gradients in [C/Fe], which follow [Fe/H], also arise from rapid star formation timescales due to declining carbon yields from low-metallicity massive stars. In contrast, [N/Fe] remains high at large radius. Stars at large radius have different abundance ratio patterns from stars in the center of any present-day galaxy, but are similar to Milky Way thick disk stars. Our observations are thus consistent with a picture in which the stellar outskirts are built up through minor mergers with disky galaxies whose star formation is truncated early (z~1.5-2).Comment: ApJ in press, 12 pages, 6 figure

Data communication network at the ASRM facility

The main objective of the report is to present the overall communication network structure for the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor (ASRM) facility being built at Yellow Creek near Iuka, Mississippi. This report is compiled using information received from NASA/MSFC, LMSC, AAD, and RUST Inc. As per the information gathered, the overall network structure will have one logical FDDI ring acting as a backbone for the whole complex. The buildings will be grouped into two categories viz. manufacturing critical and manufacturing non-critical. The manufacturing critical buildings will be connected via FDDI to the Operational Information System (OIS) in the main computing center in B 1000. The manufacturing non-critical buildings will be connected by 10BASE-FL to the Business Information System (BIS) in the main computing center. The workcells will be connected to the Area Supervisory Computers (ASCs) through the nearest manufacturing critical hub and one of the OIS hubs. The network structure described in this report will be the basis for simulations to be carried out next year. The Comdisco's Block Oriented Network Simulator (BONeS) will be used for the network simulation. The main aim of the simulations will be to evaluate the loading of the OIS, the BIS, the ASCs, and the network links by the traffic generated by the workstations and workcells throughout the site