Pointed ears?

Have the elves pointed ears? I cannot recall any quote about their ears, but i know thy often are depicted with pointed ears. I personally don´t imagine elves with pointed ears: for me the difference between elves and men would be the luminosity of elves´ face and hair and perhaps something about their voices. What do you think? Do you know a "canon" depict of the elves?...

Hmm, interesting point. I think of the Elves with pointy ears, but I can't recall a passage from the text stating as much.

As anyone who's ever read the Tolkien newsgroups on Usenet knows, this is a highly contentious issue. Many a flame war has been fought over this subject. I believe it's second only to the question of whether or not Balrogs have wings in falme-production. There is a "canonical" quote somewhere (I don't know where) that Elves' ears are leaf shaped. Of course, the degree of pointedness depends on the leaf, so we're really back at square one. I believe the answer is that they're somewhat pointed, but not to the extent of Mr. Spock.

I don't think they do, and I think it's part of the americanization of everything good. However, they will be a little pointed in the movie , simply because of America's view of things

Thanks all! I didn´t know it was such as debated issue, Eruve Anyway, if they´re going to be pointed in the movies i hope it´ll be not too much... and that ears may not be the only difference between men and elves. Tater why do you say that of "America's view"? do americans have pointed ears? :P

I don't think so, but thanks to our good friends at Disney everyone thinks elves should

LOL Why Disney, Tater? I can't recall any Disney film with elves in it... unless you count the Fair Folk from The Black Cauldron, but that was from the 70s.

It wasn't Disney.......it was Keebler!!! :P

It's an old idea. Elves have always had pointed ears in gaelic/norse/whatever mythology--that's why I think they should in the movie. Tolkien was a scholar in that kind of stuff, and based lots of Middle-Earth on it.

Personally, I just hate the idea of pointed ears. He never mentioned them, and seeing them just makes me think of Rice Krispy's and the American version of Saint Nicholas.

Mr. Spock, the ugly elf. hehe

Are you crazy? Spock is sexy!!! :P

Grey Havens has this essay: Did Elves Have Pointed Ears? Xenite.Org has this Fact/ Rumor Roundup excerpt: "The Orcs will have pointed ears, thus implying an "Elvish" ancestry. It has also been reported that the Uruks will be black-skinned and the other, "regular" Orcs will be green-skinned and scaly in appearance." It's no great demand on the imagination that Tolkien's Elves originally had different ears than humans. Especially if mankind in general always embellishes what little they see of Elves in the ancient and modern world, so that the question mark in the corner of the eye is eventually conceived as the long pointy-eared guys in Legend w Tom Cruise and Merlin w Sam Neil. But those are only modern impressions, facsimilies, of a race no longer available for study. Same thing with trying to correctly anatomically depict the dinosaurs - not all the subtleties would come across so nicely that another dinosaur would consider it a mirror image. Perhaps our image would even freak out one of Tolkien's Elves! Spock's ears could be considered leaf-shaped, depending on the leaf. Has anyone heard of the process Gene Rodenberry used to design his Vulcans? There've always been likenesses between Tolkien's Elves and the Vulcans as a spacefaring kind of Noldor, but I've never run into any causative links pertaining to Rodenberry in the fashion of Lucas and Joseph Campbell. Eruve? It would make fascinating material, and would tie together three of the greatest achievements in storytelling known to the twentieth century.

Sorry Hernalt, I know next to nothing about Star Trek! I can remember watching the series when it was in it's first run (when I was very young-- I have an older brother and sister who were into it) and later in reruns. I know nothing of the behind-the-scenes stuff. It's interesting that you mention the Xenite site. My summary of the "pointed ear" debate from the newsgroups basically recalls the argument of that site's webmaster. He is IMHO the absolute most knowledgable person in all matters Tolkien that I have ever come across. And woe be to anyone who disagrees with him or makes a wrong statement about JRRT! (Don't even mention Balrog wings to him!)

I hear the Prancing Pony has Dime Balrog Wings on Wednesday nights. We should invite him.

Mild, spicy or 5 alarm? (Actually he's on the pro-wing side; it's just that the whole debate has been done to death.)

Since they're lit by an inner fire, definately 5 alarm hotwings. Erik Tracy's essay on Balrogs goes a long way towards ruling out literal wings, but I feel perfectly fine thinking that although wings were never mentioned, they may have still had vestigal remnants of wings, a curious permutation of their spirit's embodiment. John Howe's Glorfindel and the Balrog <A HREF="http://soar.berkeley.edu/rolozo/images/howe/balrog.jpg"> <IMG SRC=http://soar.berkeley.edu/rolozo/thumbs/howe/balrog.jpg></A> would suffer grievously if the beastie literally had NO wings, vestigal or otherwise. In Gandalf and the Balrog <A HREF="http://soar.berkeley.edu/rolozo/images/howe/bridge.jpg"> <IMG SRC=http://soar.berkeley.edu/rolozo/thumbs/howe/bridge.jpg></A> Howe does take liberty to solidify Tolkien's "shadows like wings" into a definate fleshly appendage, and I guess people can rightly take offense to it. The word "like" Is the word "like", after all. I'm guessing Ted Nasmith went for the literal interpretation of no wings in Khazad-dum <A HREF="http://soar.berkeley.edu/rolozo/images/nasmith/DBP_Khazadum-dum.jpg"> <IMG SRC=http://soar.berkeley.edu/rolozo/thumbs/nasmith/DBP_Khazadum-dum.jpg></A> But in his Bridge of Khazad-Dum <A HREF="http://soar.berkeley.edu/rolozo/images/nasmith/balrog.jpg"> <IMG SRC=http://soar.berkeley.edu/rolozo/thumbs/nasmith/balrog.jpg></A> Nasmith maintains a careful neutrality, cleaving to Tolkien's distinction of the shadows being "like wings." *sigh* So many choices...

Here's my personal take for what it's worth. Balrogs didn't have wings literally but they could envelop themselves in shadow (like Ungoliant) and this shadow might have looked like wings under certain circumstances. Does that straddle the fence enough for you?

Door Number FOUR!!!!

Hm. Well, I'm one of the news group regulars who has been deeply immersed in these controversies for the past couple of years. I won't post my lengthy notes on Elvish ears. I've done that at Xenite.Org and other fora. There's almost always someone who tries to pick it apart. Let me say there is NO "canonical" description of Elvish ears. What people usually refer to is an entry for "las-" in "The Etymologies" which was published in THE LOST ROAD AND OTHER WRITINGS (Volume V of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH). This entry is not "canonical" because, mainly, no two people seem able to agree on what constitutes "canon". I've often had to contend with people who want to bring THE BOOK OF LOST TALES into discussions about THE LORD OF THE RINGS, which didn't exist and wasn't conceived until many years after Tolkien abandoned TBOLT. In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, THE SILMARILLION, and contemporary material which was pubilshed in UNFINISHED TALES, people distinguished between Men and Elves by their eyes, not their ears. If Elvish ears were really different from those of Men, they weren't different enough to merit mention in any of numerous passages which use the eyes as the distinguishing factor. Take that for what it's worth. As for Balrog wings, I've read Erik's essay (and he has read my arguments). He is a very knowledgeable researcher (and the Grey Havens, btw, butchered his essay -- I don't know about the Deutch site given above). I recommend that people visit Erik's own homepage, The Scrolls of Orthanc to be sure they're reading unedited Tracy material. He and I don't agree on much, but he does ground his opinions in solid research. All that said, the fact of the Balrogs' wings was established by Tolkien. The arguments on the news groups arose because some people didn't want to accept the wings and started looking for ways to disprove their "existence" in the text. The most often used argument focuses on the use of the word "like" in the passage where the wings stretch out from behind the Balrog (Tolkien says "and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings"). The problem with this argument (usually referred to as the simile argument) is that it completely disregards the earlier passage a couple of paragraphs up where Tolkien says "what it was could not be seen; it was like a great shadow". Well, the point is that if the wings don't exist because the word "like" is there, then the shadow itself doesn't exist because the word "like" is there. Hence, the pseudo-wings cannot be a shadow because there is no shadow. So the simile argument is self-defeating. Some people are willing to concede the shadow (which would better be called the dark emanation around the Balrog -- it was not a true shadow, which would only exist behind the Balrog with respect to a source of light, but since the Balrog itself was flaming, it was its own source of light) was shaped like wings. I've always maintained that we don't know what the wings were made of. We do know they couldn't have been made of flesh and blood or feathers. The Balrog doesn't have blood, for one thing (we know this because it's a spirit of fire, and flames are seen coming out of its nostrils -- so its body is not a flesh-and-blood body). Some people envision bat-like wings. By that, I think they mean they envision membraneous, leathery-like wings -- not wings extending from arm-and-hand-like appendages. But Tolkien never says the wings are solid, fleshly, or anything other than vast and stretching from wall to wall of the huge cavern. So some people who don't want to concede the wings are there say that the shape of the shadow-stuff -- if that's all Tolkien was referring to -- isn't enough to justify saying the Balrog had wings. The problem with THAT argument is that there is no one type of material from which wings are made. The wings of butterflies, for example, are not made of the same stuff as the wings of birds (although some people would bring up the protoplasm argument, the point is that a butterflie's wings are not interchangeable with a bird's wings). The wings of an airplane are true wings, but they aren't even made of protoplasm. And you could cut wings out of cardboard and put them on your back (many angel costumes consist of wings made of cloth and wire, for example). A wing is a thing shaped like a wing. That's the best definition one can offer, because as soon as you go with "a wing is an appendage of a bird or other flying creature" you must rationalize how anything else can be called a wing. Tolkien's reference to the wings on the Moria Balrog was very specific. There was nothing unusual in the way he presented them. He simply unveiled them gradually to provide a transition from vagueness to clarity, to share with the reader the uncertainty and growing realization that the characters experienced. Legolas recognized the Balrog for what it was immediately. Gandalf didn't acknowledge it until Legolas cried out. Finally, some people point to THE BOOK OF LOST TALES and "The Fall of Gondolin". Without missing a beat they skip over the mechanical dragons, the great differences between the world of "The Fall of Gondolin", the fact there were no Edain, and many other significant discrepancies and say, "But the Balrogs of 'The Fall of Gondolin' didn't have wings." That's right. The Balrogs of "The Fall of Gondolin" didn't have wings. Nor were they fallen Maiar. Nor did any of them engage in 11-day battles with Maiar as the Balrog of Moria engaged in an 11-day battle with Gandalf. Nor were they surrounded by the great dark emanation as the Balrog of Moria was surrounded, nor use magic as the Balrog of Moria did, etc. The early Balrogs were simply different creatures. Tolkien's conception of them evolved considerably. THE BOOK OF LOST TALES simply doesn't offer any insights into the creatures of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. It's unfortunate that Christopher based "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin" in THE SILMARILLION on THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, but he really didn't have any other material to work with. "The Fal of Gondolin" was the one story Tolkien never really updated. His only attempt, "Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin", left off with Tuor looking out upon Tumladen. Nonetheless, some people make the mistake of assuming that since Christopher did base the later story on the early one (and "The Fall of Gondolin" was the very first BOLT story Tolkien ever wrote) then the Balrogs of the earlier story must be the same as the Balrog of Moria. That simply isn't the case. We can review the early manuscripts for "The Bridge of Khazad-dum" in THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH and see how Tolkien changed the description of the Balrogs. We can also examine the history of the Maiar and see that Tolkien brought them into the mythology during the 1940s before he was finished working on THE LORD OF THE RINGS. So the Balrog of Moria evolved under his hand from a creature of Morgoth into a fallen Maia, a creature merely corrupted by Morgoth. Hence, the published Balrog differs considerably in nature and physical description from the unpublished Balrogs of "The Fall of Gondolin". There is therefore no benefit to using THE BOOK OF LOST TALES to analyze the Balrog encountered in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Anyway, that turned out to be longer than I intended, but I hope that sheds some light on the controversies, if it doesn't settle any questions for you.