What is an eavesdropper and why is it relevant to this project?
According to the yorkshire historical dictionary, ": 1) The eavesdropper was once the scourge of the local community – a person who lurked at night under the eaves of a neighbour’s house in the hope of gathering titbits of gossip that could then be turned to advantage". The publication then discusses at some length the social and legal implications.
CITATION
Apparently soon after the building code definition emerged in language, the legal meaning followed hard upon. Just as Oxford and Tolkien himself were situated right in the middle of the Protestant Reformation and its effect on civilization; so too Bologna was key in the Papal/Prince problem and as the oldest western european university, apparently started out as a Law school to interpret Canon Law. (cite)
Eavesdropping has a social, a moral, a legal and a spiritual significance. In Tolkien's essay "Leaf by Niggle" he is in purgatory for inter alia feuding with the gardener over his painting, and is chided mildly for eavesdropping on divine discourses.
JRR Tolkien, the author of the first text we feature here, portrayed Samwise as debatably the greatest hero in the War of the Ring, but also as an eavesdropper. We know that Tolkien was of an aristocratic background and probably was often vexed by the gardener overhearing private conversations and then going into the main campus of Oxford and telling everyone he was wasting his time researching ancient tales of elves and not profitting the university or raising the salaries of their gardeners. Yet Tolkien from the essay it is clear he thought of himself as an eavesdropper in the land of the supernatural, peering through a hedge into the garden of Paradise, one might say, and trying to overhear the discourse of angels. In real life Tolkien was quite devoted to his guardian angel. It can be assumed he spent hours trying to understand the discourse of this heavenly being, since angels according to those who believe in them are invisible almost all the time, and do not speak with what we would call audible voices very often either. .