Allan Turner
Allan Turner is a linguist and medievalist, best known as a Tolkien scholar. His 2005 book Translating Tolkien has been welcomed by other scholars.
Life[edit]
Allan Turner was born c. 1949. He was educated at Deacon's School, Peterborough. His bachelor's degree was in German at the University of Reading, where he also gained an M.Phil with a dissertation on Christi Leiden, a medieval manuscript. He took another master's degree, in linguistics, at St John's College, Cambridge. He obtained a certificate in education at the University of Leeds. His PhD was in translation studies, from Newcastle University. He taught successively in the universities of Basel, Trier, Greifswald, and Marburg, and most recently in the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena until his retirement. He has written or edited several books on the fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien,[1][2] and has appeared as a keynote speaker at Tolkien conferences.[3]
Reception[edit]
Joe Christopher, reviewing Tolkien's Poetry in Mythlore, calls the volume "valuable" as the first scholarly collection on Tolkien's verse, while noting that the essays are "uneven". He praises the contributions by Tom Shippey, Carl Phelpstead, and Nancy Marsch on Tolkien's metre and style, and Petra Zimmermann's essay on how Tolkien uses poetry in The Lord of the Rings.[4]
David Doughan, reviewing Thomas Honegger's books on translating Tolkien, to which Turner contributed, comments that Turner is "not only a highly intelligent and (dare one say) perceptive scholar—[but] he writes comprehensible English." He writes that Turner deals with "many matters [of translating Tolkien] ... sagely".[5]
Arden R. Smith, reviewing Turner's Translating Tolkien in Tolkien Studies, writes that the book is "the first single-author, book-length examination of the difficulties inherent in translating Tolkien into any other language." He describes it as systematic, and well-grounded in relevant theory, including Shippey's philological criticism.[6]
In 2014, to mark Turner's 65th birthday, Thomas Honegger and Dirk Vanderbeke edited a festschrift in his honour, entitled From Peterborough to Faëry: The Poetics and Mechanics of Secondary Worlds.[1]
Works[edit]
- Books
- 2005 Translating Tolkien, Peter Lang.
- 2007 The Silmarillion: 30 Years On (editor), Walking Tree Publishers.
- 2013 Tolkien's Poetry (editor, with Julian Eilmann), Walking Tree Publishers.
- Chapters
- 2007 The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Routledge.
- 2014 A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, Wiley-Blackwell.
References[edit]
- ^ a b Honegger, Thomas; Vanderbeke, Dirk, eds. (2014). "Introduction". From Peterborough to Faëry: The Poetics and Mechanics of Secondary Worlds (PDF). Walking Tree Publishers.
- ^ "Allan Turner". Tolkienists.org. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
- ^ "Interview with Allan Turner". Tolkien.hu. 20 August 2015. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
- ^ Christopher, Joe (2013). "[Review:] Tolkien's Poetry". Mythlore. 32 (1): 164–169.
- ^ Doughan, David (2006). "Tolkien in Translation, and: Translating Tolkien: Text and Film (review)". Tolkien Studies. 3 (1): 218–222. doi:10.1353/tks.2006.0012.
- ^ Smith, Arden Ray (2006). "Translating Tolkien: Philological Elements in "The Lord of the Rings" (review)". Tolkien Studies. 3 (1): 228–231. doi:10.1353/tks.2006.0031.
