Abstract
Building upon the previous examination of the eddic and skaldic contours of Goldberry’s River kenning names, this reading of Goldberry’s enigma focuses on the mythological referents of her kinship relations and their narrative consistency in the legendarium. Tending to the intrinsic connection between “[t]he incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale” (Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 41), I contend that the poetics of kenning diction sustain if not demand a reading of the River-woman references mythologically through various textual strata of ‘the Silmarillion’ between The Book of Lost Tales and The Silmarillion. This serves to identify the River-woman mother and probe her narrative profile as an implied divinity relevant to Goldberry’s enigma. Tolkien's conception of the Valarindi is key to the argument establishing the mythological consistency of Goldberry’s River kennings in relation both to Ulmo as the primary Valar in the element of water and to Uinen her River-mother. Tending to the dynamic link between tongue and tale saves the evidence of Tolkien’s poetic names enlivening the mythological contours of Goldberry’s enigma in “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” as well as The Fellowship of the Ring.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Copyright held by Artist
Included in
Celtic Studies Commons, Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Fiction Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Religion Commons, Scandinavian Studies Commons
