Parma Eldalamberon

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Revision as of 15:01, 17 July 2022 by Luotiansha (talk | contribs) (I've seen many people losing faith in the publication of PE, calling the editor-team "dead", as there's no news about the next issue, and many old issues aren't available (which is indeed upsetting), so I think it's good to give people some hope)
Parma Eldalamberon
Latest editor: Paula Marmor, Christopher Gilson
Latest Issue: 22
Website: Eldalamberon
Publication Information
Frequency: Irregular
Format: Irregular

Parma Eldalamberon (Quenya "The Book of Elven-tongues"), often simply Parma or PE for short, is a journal of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien's languages.

History

Parma Eldalamberon was started in 1971, as an irregular periodical published by the Linguistic Fellowship of the Mythopoeic Society. The first editor was Paula Marmor. It ran for five issues, ending in 1977, but resulted in the landmark book An Introduction to Elvish. Of that book Paula Marmor was co-author, several other co-authors, Bill Welden, Christopher Gilson, Lawrence J. Krieg and editor Jim Allan, were regular contributors to Parma and parts of it had grown from their articles in the journal. The publication of The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien made most of the discussions outdated, however, and the project was shelved.

Another regular contributor was Robert Foster, who had already published his Guide to Middle-earth, which he revised and extended to The Complete Guide to Middle-earth after the publication of The Silmarillion.

Six years later, in 1983, Chris Gilson revived Parma. He kept the original name, despite the fact that the increase in Quenya material gave the correct translation as Parma Eldalambion. Gilson published Parma outside the Linguistic Fellowship,[1] but after the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship was founded it became associated with that organisation.

In 1991, Christopher Tolkien approved of Parma publishing original text by Tolkien, especially the long linguistic texts for which he could find no place in The History of Middle-earth.[2]

In the meantime, Vinyar Tengwar also started publishing Tolkien's original texts. Now, they are both edited by more or less the same team, and Parma specializes in the longer wordlists, while Vinyar Tengwar publishes Tolkien's essays.[3]

Issues

Name

Parma Eldalamberon is a Neo-Quenya attempt for "Book of Elf-tongues", however like with Vinya Tengwar the rendering is questionable as in its 18th issue it gives the genitive plural of lambë as lambion[4] instead of lamberon.

Concerning future issues and back issues

Though a somewhat unusually long period has passed since the publication of the last issue, the journal is in fact being worked on, and one may see the publication of PE 23 (and possibly PE 24[5]) in the foreseeable future. As was informed by Vinyar Tengwar's editor Carl F. Hostetter, "... the next issue of Parma Eldalamberon is in the works."[6]

As for the availability of the back issues, though at present only one-third of the issues are available as "print on demand", efforts are being made by the editors to make older issues available too. According to Carl[7], and (reportedly) to PE's main editor Christopher Gilson[8], "the main issue is technical", as "... for over 40 years now, PE has seen many changes in technology (fonts, file formats, etc.)", which suggests that many of the older contents need to be re-written into modern formats, thus the republication is only a matter of time.

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ David Doughan, "Book Reviews: Parma Eldalamberon 6", in: Quettar 21 (November 1984), p. 8
  2. ↑ Christopher Gilson, "Foreword", in: Parma Eldalamberon 11 (1995), p. 2
  3. ↑ David Bratman, "Posthumous Publications", in: J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (edited by Michael D.C. Drout), p. 547-8
  4. ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, "Tengwesta Qenderinwa and Pre-Fëanorian Alphabets Part 2", in Parma Eldalamberon XVIII (edited by Christopher Gilson, Arden R. Smith, and Patrick H. Wynne), pp. 8, 71
  5. ↑ a report from a conference on Reddit
  6. ↑ Carl on Reddit
  7. ↑ Carl on Reddit
  8. ↑ a report from a conference on Reddit
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