> Unfortunately, right now, I'm buried in textbooks I have to review for work... and Tolkien is not in the stack right now. But, I was in the middle of the Silmarillion for the umpteenth time in preparation for reading the Book of Lost Tales immediately afterward cause I was wanting to outline comparisons. But, with the textbooks, I think that plan fizzled.
What, no Tolkien textbooks at your work? :) Seriously, though, what do you do for work?--sounds like you're in teaching maybe? What kind of textbooks are you reviewing?
On what I'm reading, actually I've also been rereading "Silmarillion" lately as background for working through "Lost Tales" (as well as "The History of Middle Earth" which I finally got recently), so I'd be interested to hear what comparisons you come up with. What got me into the project I'm doing was Shippey's book mentioning that Tolkien got some of his ideas on the different races of elves from the Norse concept of light and dark elves, and that Tolkien also got many of the names of the dwarves from the Norse poem "Volupsa" which appears in variant form in Snorri Sturluson's "Prose Edda". Here is Snorri's version:
"The dwarfs had first emerged and come to light in Ymir's flesh. . .Modsognir was the most famous, and next to him Durin. As it says in the 'Sibyl's Vision'. . .And the sibyl gives their names:
. . .Althjof, Dvalin
Niping, Dain,
Bifur, Bafur,
Bombor, Nori,
Ori, Onar
Oin, Mjodvitnir,
Vig and Ganndalf,
Vinndalf, Thorin,
Fili, Kili,
Fundin, Vali,
Thror, Throin. . .
And these too are dwarfs and they live in rocks, but the above-mentioned live in earth:
Draupnir, Dolgthvari. . .
Hledjolf, Gloin,
Dori, Ori. . ."
And in another place Snorri says,
"In the southern end of heaven is the most beautiful hall of all, brighter than the sun; it is called Gimle. . ."
Reading this got me very interested in learning more about how Tolkien was drawing from the Norse tradition and other traditions. So I started going through "Silmarillion" and taking chapter-by-chapter notes on which traditions Tolkien was drawing from in each chapter. For instance in "Ainulindale", the name "Iluvatar" meaning "Father of All" is an allusion to a Norse name for the supreme deity which Snorri mentions in the same work quoted above: "Gylfi began his questioning, 'Who is the foremost or oldest of all the gods?' High One replied: 'He is called All-father in our tongue, but in ancient Asgard he had twelve names. . .'" Also I interpret the name "Eru" as an allusion to Greek philosophy's concept of God as "the One"; and of course there are many allusions to the Bible in that part of "Silmarillion" as well. So I started going through each chapter and finding everything I could find like that. I guess one of these days I should write it up into readable form. Maybe I'll post some of it for discussion if people are interested.