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Re: Doworst in "Monash Review"

Subject: Re: Doworst in "Monash Review"
by Morgan on 2012/3/3 14:23:12

I've been trying to read up a bit on the poem Doworst, and noted a small difference in how the title of the fanzine from the Fellowship of Middle Earth is rendered:

1) The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader's Guide (p. 214) has "A Elbereth Gilthoniel!".

2) Douglas A. Anderson, in an article in Tolkien Studies, uses the title "A Elbereth Gilthoniel", without the exclamation mark (vol. III, p. 144). The author of the article on TolkienBooks.net follows Anderson's usage.

In the online catalog of Marquette University Libraries, the fanzine is listed with the exclamation mark ("elbereth" and "gilthoniel" are furthermore rendered in lower-case, which I suspect is merely a database issue). The article on the fanzine in the bibliography here on TCG does the same.

Looking at the scan of the cover of the ?first issue of the fanzine in the TCG article – is the vertical line to the right of "A Elbereth Gilthoniel" supposed to be an exclamation mark?

Well, perhaps it's impossible to establish a "correct" rendering of the title. After all, many publications have ambiguous titles (for example, is it "Lembas-extra" or "Lembas Extra"?).