I think where “fellowship” is concerned it is (almost) obvious that uncapitalized uses referred to the special companionship of the Nine Walkers, rather than to the company of the Nine Walkers. Tolkien had a tendency to be inconsistent with his capitalizations but sometimes he provided sufficient context to explain why a word was (not) capitalized.

Ignoring volume and chapter titles, most of the time that Tolkien uses the word “fellowship” he does not capitalize it until it is formally disbanded by Aragorn, almost as an afterthought.

What hoary old myths and etymological arguments might one resurrect to explain that? Well, I don’t want to get into all the whowroteitfirst memes but I did quickly check the etymology for “fellowship” and could not help but note with amusement that “-ship” is traced back to *skap- meaning “to create, ordain, or appoint.” Okay, so the Fellowship are the (fellows) appointed (or ordained) to the Company of the Ring.ĭare I ask if anyone feels there may be a spiritual aspect to this very special company? Its ending is proclaimed three times: once by Aragorn when he bids farewell to Gandalf and company at Isengard, once by Gandalf when he bids farewell to Sam, Merry, and Pippin, and once by the narrative in the “Tale of Years” where it is noted that Legolas took Gimli with him over Sea after Aragorn’s death. You have various companies in The Silmarillion and you have Thorin and Company in The Hobbit and you even have the Venturers Guild in “The Mariner’s Wife” but nowhere do you find Tolkien using “fellowship” to refer to a group of companions except in The Lord of the Rings, and there he only uses it of the Company of the Ring. A while, Jeffrey Ryan was walking down the yellow brick road and he stopped to ask on the Tolkien Society Facebook page about … well, here are his words: “So one thing I’ve been wondering, and I don’t think I’ve asked the group about this, why the books use the term ‘Company’ while the films use ‘fellowship’ to describe the Ring-bearer and his companions.” No one seems to have thought to ask Peter Jackson and his fellow writers to answer the question.īut the discourse about “company” versus “fellowship” drew my attention and got me to thinking about the uniqueness of the word “fellowship” in Tolkien’s Middle-earth fiction. It is such a little thing, the word “fellowship”, that one might not expect it to elicit so much commentary from so many learned and wise (or to draw administrative admonishment to be polite). Would it use a religious motif or simply a martial one? Posted by Michael Martinez at 8:44 on 22 December 2016 Imagine a bas-relief like this from the Arch of Marcus Aurelius for the Fellowship of the Ring.

Tolkien fellowship of the ring