Talk:Interlacing in The Lord of the Rings

Eugène Vinaver
Some interesting information on Eugène Vinaver (mentioned on the Richard C. West page as the expert on entrelacement that West was studying under) is here. Verlyn Flieger has also written on Vinaver, I think it was in "Tolkien and the Idea of the Book" in The Lord of the Rings 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder (2006). Carcharoth (talk) 22:40, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, she talks of Vinaver there, pp. 291-298, but only about his work as editor of the Works of Sir Thomas Malory from the Winchester MS. No word about interlacing, I'm afraid. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:50, 3 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Though I am not finding where West studied under Vinaver? I am finding Vinaver's contributions to Orcrist and also West's “Letters of C. S. Lewis to E. Vinaver,” ed. Richard C. West, Orcrist, no.6 (1972-73): 3-6, 24. And apparently, at some point, "Professor Vinaver reported [something] to Richard West, who cites it in " The Interlace and Professor Tolkien". But I can't get any further than that. Carcharoth (talk) 23:26, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Having said that, I managed to find this, which appears to be Vinaver giving a talk in 1946 at Ohio State University, I think for postgraduates in the English School, so if he was giving similar talks or teaching in some way in the USA in the 1960s that might explain it. And indeed, if you start to put in "eugune vinaver University of Wisconsin-Madison" into searches, you get results such as "Professors Gwynn McPeek and Eugene Vinaver, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison" and "For this idea we are indebted to Professor Eugène Vinaver in his seminar on Racine at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) 1968-69". Carcharoth (talk) 08:36, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

From C. S. Lewis: an Annotated Checklist of Writings about Him (1974), page 46: "West, Richard, (ed.). "Letters of C. S. Lewis to E. Vinaver." Orcrist, No.6 (Winter 1971–1972): 3–6, 24. While Vinaver was a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he gave West six letters which Lewis had sent him or his wife - one of 46." So was West actually studying "under" Vinaver at the time, or were they just in the graduate school of English there at the same time? Carcharoth (talk) 08:41, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Same moon
I think Larsen has written about this reference to the Moon aspects, but has anyone mentioned it in the context of entrelacement? It is from the chapter 'Minas Tirith': "He wondered where Frodo was, and if he was already in Mordor, or if he was dead; and he did not know that Frodo from far away looked on that same moon as it set beyond Gondor ere the coming of the day." Or is this an example of the opposite of entrelacement? It might be something else, but I was reminded of it when reading the bit in this article about Tolkien weaving "an elaborately intricate story, presented through the eyes of the Hobbit protagonists [...] letting the reader know no more than what one Hobbit sees as he struggles forwards" (though here he is linking two threads). Carcharoth (talk) 23:56, 5 February 2021 (UTC)


 * This is an instance of what the article calls the 'hidden' interconnections that can be detected in retrospect, by the (scholarly) reader, probably with the assistance of Tolkien's timeline... Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:36, 6 February 2021 (UTC)