Tolkien’s 1929 essay on the language of Ancrene Wisse and its associated texts was so convincing that it all but stopped the study of Middle English dialects in its tracks. People reckoned that without a consistent shared and standardised dialect of the kind Tolkien discovered, one could come to no conclusions about authorial or scribal dialect at all, because they were bound to be Mischprachen, jumbled by copying. It was not till 1986, when the Linguistic Atlas of Late Middle English came out, edited by Angus McIntosh and his team, that the view was refuted, and dialect study revived.
See also Shippey, ‘Tolkien’s Academic Reputation Now’, in his Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (2007).
Tolkien’s essay is still considered seminal, but his conclusions have been modified or refined by other scholars, perhaps most notably *E.J. Dobson, who have more closely localized the ‘AB language’, held different views than Tolkien on scribal practice, and enlarged the scope of the investigation by examining the ‘AB’ manuscripts next to others of the period. Michael D.C. Drout has commented (‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), p. 122) that
some of Tolkien’s discussion of the AB language has come in for criticism …, and there is less confidence in contemporary scholarship about the complete regularity of the AB standard; in particular, there is now some argument that the A and B texts actually do differ from each other …, challenging some of Tolkien’s conclusions. However, the broader argument about the persistence of Old English in the West Midlands remains accepted even if all of Tolkien’s conclusions about the AB texts are not.
See further, Richard Dance, ‘The AB Language: The Recluse, the Gossip, and the Language Historian’, in A Companion to Ancrene Wisse, ed. Yoko Wada (2003). Dance comments, among other points, that medieval scribes sometimes did ‘translate’ between written dialects, which would diminish Tolkien’s argument for a scribal community of the ‘AB language’. Also see comments by Drout on philological criticism in our essay on *Chaucer as a Philogist: The Reeve’s Tale.
Angles and Britons see English and Welsh
Annals of Aman see Annals of Valinor
Annals of Beleriand. The Annals of Beleriand exist in three versions. The first two, the ‘earliest’ Annals from the early 1930s, published with commentary and notes in *The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986), pp. 294–341, and the ‘later’ Annals from the mid-1930s, published with commentary in *The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987), pp. 124–54, chronicle events in Tolkien’s mythology (*‘The Silmarillion’) east of the Sea from the first appearance of the Sun and Moon to the end of the First Age. The Grey Annals from c. 1951, published with commentary and notes in *The War of the Jewels (1994), pp. 3–170, include events which happened in Middle-earth before the appearance of the Sun and Moon until the release of Húrin, at which point Tolkien left the manuscript unfinished.
In the internal context of the mythology the Annals of Beleriand (and the *Annals of Valinor) ‘were written by Pengolod the Wise of Gondolin, before its fall, and after at Sirion’s Haven, and at Tavrobel in Tol Eressëa after his return unto the West, and there seen and translated by Eriol of Leithien, that is Ælfwine of the Angelcynn’ (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 263; see *Eriol and Ælfwine); while the Grey Annals ‘were made by the Sindar, the Grey Elves of Doriath and the Havens, and enlarged from the records and memories of the remnant of the Noldor of Nargothrond and Gondolin at the Mouths of the Sirion, whence they were brought back into the West’ (The War of the Jewels, p. 5).
*Christopher Tolkien has speculated that his father’s ‘primary intention’ in writing the ‘earliest’ Annals of Beleriand ‘was the consolidation of the historical structure in its internal relations and chronology – the Annals began, perhaps, in parallel with the Quenta [*Quenta Noldorinwa] as a convenient way of driving abreast, and keeping track of, the different elements in the ever more complex narrative web’ of ‘The Silmarillion’ (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 294). The first manuscript of the ‘earliest’ Annals was apparently written at speed, much of it in a staccato style, then heavily emended, with many changes to the dates. At this stage the First Age lasted 250 years. Tolkien began a second text as a fair copy of the first, but this soon became a new work, with the Siege of Angband extended by a hundred years. This text was left unfinished, as was another version, in Old English, attributed to Ælfwine or Eriol, which corresponds in part to each of the other two texts but breaks off in mid-sentence just as the Siege of Angband begins.
Closely associated with the ‘earliest’ Annals are a series of genealogies of the Elven princes, of the Three Houses of the Fathers of Men, and of the Houses of the Eastern Men, together with a table of the divisions of the Qendi and a list of the many names by which the three divisions of the Elves were known; and a list of all the names in Tolkien’s works concerned with the legends of the Elder Days. These are described in The Lost Road and Other Writings, pp. 403–4.
The ‘later’ Annals of Beleriand are ‘not only fuller in matter but also more finished in manner’: they were now ‘becoming an independent work’ though ‘still annalistic, retaining the introductory Here of the year-entries (derived from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), and lacking connection of motive between events’ (Christopher Tolkien, The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 124). It is clear from various title-pages produced by Tolkien that he intended the Annals of Beleriand to be included in any published ‘Silmarillion’ following the *Quenta Silmarillion (begun mid-1930s) and the *Annals of Valinor (early and mid-1930s). The ‘later’ Annals of Beleriand are in a clear manuscript which Tolkien later emended, notably during the writing of the Quenta Silmarillion when he further extended the length of the First Age.
Tolkien began work on the Grey Annals by extensively revising the manuscript of the ‘later’ Annals of Beleriand, then writing a fuller version on the blank versos of the manuscript and some loose sheets. Before he had proceeded very far with this he began a new manuscript version, with the title The Annals of Beleriand or the Grey Annals. Although Tolkien never finished the Grey Annals, writing little beyond the death of Túrin, it is still a work of considerable length and substance: as in the contemporary Annals of Aman (see *Annals of Valinor), here the annalistic form almost gives way to a ‘fully fledged narrative’ (Christopher Tolkien, *Morgoth’s Ring, p. 192). Indeed, Christopher Tolkien considered that ‘for the structure of the history of Beleriand the Grey Annals constitutes the primary text’, and he used ‘much of the latter part … in the published Silmarillion with little change’ (The War of the Jewels, p. 4).
Tolkien introduced a lengthy excursus on the languages of Beleriand into the first text of the Grey Annals, partially rewrote it for a second text, then replaced most of the latter and introduced a new conception.
For the part played by the Annals in the evolution of Tolkien’s mythology, see entries for the separate chapters of *The Silmarillion.
Annals of Valinor. The Annals of Valinor chronicle events in Tolkien’s mythology (*‘The Silmarillion’) from the arrival of the Valar in Arda until the raising of the Sun and the Moon. They exist in three versions: the ‘earliest’ Annals from the early 1930s, published with commentary and notes in *The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986), pp. 262–93; the ‘later’ Annals from the mid-1930s, published with commentary in *The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987), pp. 109–23; and the Annals of Aman from c. 1951, published with commentary and notes in *Morgoth’s Ring (1993), pp. 47–138.
Tolkien emended