Elfcon
Elfcon (also ELFcon) is short for "Elvish Linguistic Fellowship Convention", a convention first proposed by Jorge Quninonez, and then organized and originally hosted by Bill Welden, dedicated to the study of the languages created by J. R. R. Tolkien.
"Elfconners" is a loose term to refer to any attendee of an Elfcon, but the term is by some narrowed in use to refer to certain group of people involved with the edition of unpublished writings by Tolkien.
E. L. F. Conventions
The ELFcon was the annual open conference of the E.L.F., advertised in the E.L.F. journals. The purpose of ELFcon was to present scholarly papers on any subject relating to Tolkien's invented languages, and then to discuss the paper amongst the attendees, and to serve as a friendly gathering of folks who share a common intellectual pursuit.
There were four ELFcons:
- First Annual Colloquium on the Languages of Middle-earth, later referred to as ELFcon I (1991)
- Second Annual Coloquium on the Languages of Middle-earth, a.k.a. ELFcon II (1992, report in Vinyar Tengwar #23)
- ELFcon III (1993)
- ELFcon IV (1994)
ELFcons ended in 1994, but Tolkienist conventions organized by Bill Welden continue: "International Conference on J.R.R. Tolkien's Invented Languages"
"Elfconners"
Originally the term "Elfconner" simply meant "attendee of an ELFcon". The term "Elfconners" has subsequently been used by critics as well as members, at least in quotation marks, to refer to a clearly defined group of people who had access to unpublished material by J. R. R. Tolkien, although in some instances members have rejected the term as derogatory and preferred the neutral term "the Editorial Team".
Christopher Tolkien, as the holder of the copyrights of his father's works, at one point in the early 1990s invited Christopher Gilson, Carl F. Hostetter, Arden R. Smith and Patrick H. Wynne (all of whom were active ELFcon participants) to undertake a project to analyse, edit and publish material written by Tolkien concerning his invented languages and alphabets. (Bill Welden was later brought into the project at their request.) Members of the project report that these previously unpublished writings extend to some 3000 pages of linguistic material, consisting of photocopies supplied by Christopher Tolkien to the editorial team during the 1990s and handwritten copies made in the Bodleian Library in 1992.
Work based on some of this material was presented during the ELFcons, and those in attendance were unofficially allowed to look at the photocopies and take notes for private use. However, according to Hostetter, frequent unauthorized sharing of such notes eventually led Christopher Tolkien to prohibit even showing the material to "outsiders". These restrictions have led to accusations that some scholars were denied access to the material, and the issue has resulted in a hostile split of Tolkien linguistic scholarship in "Elfconners" and non-"Elfconners", and accusations of secrecy and cabal-forming against the editorial team.
The first reflection of the conflict on the Tolklang mailing list dates to 28 October 1996 with a post by Lisa Star, the editor of the Tyalië Tyelelliéva journal, entitled Failure of Elfconners. In her post, Star impatiently calls for rapid publication of the material then in possession of the group for at least four years. In a reply of 4 November, 1996, the four team members counter that they do not have the permission to publish all material, and even if they did, it would take years to decipher and edit it, and that Star's outrage was due to a misunderstanding. Hostetter adds that, as of 2004, he still does not have permission to publish any of his group's work with Tolkien's papers without the review and approval of the Tolkien Estate's lawyers for copyright reasons.
On 6 November, 1996, David Salo posted on the list a detailed and very critical report of a visit to Hostetter in Washington, D. C. ("I felt surprised, especially at the extreme insularity of his group. I did not and do not feel that to be a healthy attitude"). In a reply on the following day, Hostetter dismissed Salo's report as insulting and partly false. The conflict continued both online and offline for several years.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, portions of the disputed material were published at an increasing rate in the E.L.F. journal, Vinyar Tengwar. While this seems to have appeased some critics of the "Elfconners", much remains unpublished and the camps persist.
In a 2001 article in Wired, Erik Davis reports on the issue, adding allegations that the "Elfconners" had attempted to prevent publications by other scholars: "…the Elfconners have behaved as informal copyright police, pressuring other linguists not to publish their dictionaries and grammars". Hostetter claims that he has never objected to fair use of Tolkien's works.
For the critics of the "Elfconners", the story is reminiscent of similar scholarly controversies surrounding unpublished philological material (for example the Dead Sea Scrolls and the mycenaean Thebes tablets) in which some scholars have abused their privileged access to unpublished material to enhance their own prestige. For the people in possession of the material, on the other hand, it is a simple fact that the material is privately owned and that nobody has any inherent claim to access it. Also, they maintain that they are proceeding in the manner that will permit the documents to be presented properly, as determined from the nature and the contents of the documents themselves, and that Christopher Tolkien shares that judgement.
Since even Tolkien's published work will remain copyrighted until 2043, and some of his unpublished works possibly until as late as 2098 (until 125 years after their composition, according to the present Copyright law of the United Kingdom), the legal position of the "Elfconners" is very strong. In the course of the conflict, their critics have been accused of having their own private agendas, although before the rise of personal hostilities their impatience was likely due to their simple desire to see and study Tolkien's writings as soon as possible, edited or not. The question of whether the editorial team could have been expanded to include other scholars, and whether this would have led to a quicker pace of publication, is unanswerable, precisely because of the unavailability of the material, at least as long as Christopher Tolkien does not comment on the issue.