Have you ever read Myriam Librán-Moreno's article "'Byzantium, New Rome!': Goths, Langobards and Byzantium in
The Lord of the Rings" in the book "
Tolkien and the study of his sources" edited by Jason Fisher?
I have, at least pages 91 to 102 of Fisher's book, which was about one third of Librán-Moreno's article (pages 84-115). What I have also done is just now order the book via telephone (cordless, but landline or fixed-line!) with my favorite bookstore, it should arrive early next week. So thank you for the suggestion of the book
(my wife is rolling her eyes at "
another Tolkien book?!?" 😁 ).
So I'll reserve more detailed comment until after I have read the entire article. The impression I got from that excerpt is that there are many incidents, involving not just Goths and Langobards, but Huns, Franks, Vandals, Bulgars, Persians and more, and spanning several centuries (from the 4th to the 9th at least). But the situations, intrigues, coups,
battles and whatnot are far more confused than that at the
Pelennor Fields (for which there seems to more than just one parallel, as for several scenes. or at least entries in Appendix B to LoTR). I still find it difficult to distill Byzantium as a
primary source for
Gondor from this. But this part that I was able to read could well b a listing of parallels that are to be found, while I'm assuming Librán-Moreno will also be drawing some conclusions at the end of the article (and perhaps stating some assumptions at the beginning).
What I am currently re-reading is Verlyn Flieger's 2001 "A Question of Time". One thing it does is firmly establish JRRT as an author of his time (or Century as per
Tom Shippey), citing some
authors from the late 19th and early, or perhaps first third of the 20th century none of whom I'd heard of before, except for HG Wells and his "Time Machine", as having influenced JRRT as per his own admission of having read them. It led him to abortively write "The Lost Road" (his part of the "wager" with CS Lewis that led Lewis to write "The Cosmic Trilogy") discussed by Christopher Tolkien in the HoMe volume 5 of the same title. Flieger then shows how this line of JRRT's thinking influenced his writing in LoTR over the next 7 years, very much so about
Lothlórien. Then, during a hiatus in writing LoTR from late 1944 to mid-1946, JRRT took another shot at writing a time-travel story, "The Notion Club Papers", discussed by Christopher in HoMe volume 9 "
Sauron Defeated".
Point is, JRRT seems to have been thinking quite deeply of
concepts of time (especially in connection with dreams) at the time, was writing LoTR, had greatly increased duties at Oxford due to WW II, changed his chair in 1945, moved house in 1947 and again 1953, fell out with Allen & Unwin about publishing LoTR (and The Sil, the sticking point), did not get LoTR published by Collins, either (again that Sil), finally got LoTR published, but with RoTK delayed due to his struggle with appendices ...
When was he supposed (at this time, anyway) to have time to research Byzantium, let alone what Librán-Moreno researched, as she quotes sources without end? Some things may fit. From my first reading of the article some things also do not fit, certainly not neatly. I'm looking for ward to reading the whole article.
I think I might have written a reply to this thread and then deleted it as unnecessary. Not sure.
That would be
the one about the duck that I got an e-mail notification about? 😁
I'm still not convinced that it's a Byzantine duck ...