A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien

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A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien
A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien cover.jpg
Editor Stuart D. Lee
LanguageEnglish
SeriesBlackwell Companions to Literature and Culture
Subject J. R. R. Tolkien
Publisher Wiley-Blackwell
Publication date
2014
Publication placeUnited States
Media typeHardcover
Pages602
ISBN 9780470659823
OCLC 1204367569

A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien is a 2014 book edited by Stuart D. Lee and published by Wiley-Blackwell. It is a part of the Blackwell Companions to Literature series, which have been described as prestigious reference works, [1] and features authors well known in the field of Tolkien studies. [2]

Contents

Reviewers praised the book as a careful work and a valuable guide to the topic area. [3] Andrew Higgins writing for the Journal of Tolkien Research noted the distinguished line-up of scholarly contributors, and called it "joyous indeed" that Tolkien had finally attained acceptance by the literary establishment as measured by having a Blackwell Companion to his name. [1]

Context

Wiley Blackwell has published some 90 titles in its Companions to Literature and Culture series. These cover topics such as medieval poetry, the American short story, or the British and Irish novel; and major authors such as Mark Twain, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare. [4]

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English Roman Catholic writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . [5]

Book

Wiley Blackwell published the Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien in hardback in 2014, and in paperback in 2020. A second edition appeared in 2022. [6] [7]

The volume begins with a 12-page chronological table of Tolkien's life and works, [8] and an editorial introduction by Stuart D. Lee. [9] The rest of the book is divided into five main thematic areas: Life, The Academic, The Legendarium, Context and Critical Approaches. [10] The first part, a single chapter, is a brief biography by John Garth, summarising the diverse elements of Tolkien's life from the youthful Tea Club and Barrovian Society and wartime experience to lexicography, Oxford, The Hobbit , and his other writings. [11] The second part has three essays by scholars including Tom Shippey who writes about "Tolkien as editor", looking at a writing career with many false starts. [12] The third part contains fourteen contributions, by Gergely Nagy, John D. Rateliff, Verlyn Flieger and others on the complex body of stories, many times rewritten, that make up his Middle-earth corpus. [13] The fourth part consists of ten essays, including those by Elizabeth Solopova on Middle English, David Bratman on Tolkien's place among the Inklings, and Dimitra Fimi's look at his impact on fantasy fiction. [14] The final part is of twelve essays, examining the varied and sometimes hostile response to Tolkien, and the key elements such as Catholicism, war (by Janet Brennan Croft), the role of women, fantasy artists' responses to Middle-earth, and music in his fiction. [1] [15]

The work is illustrated with a few tables in the text, and in the "Art" essay by Christopher Tuthill, present in the final section, nine monochrome reproductions of fantasy artworks by major Tolkien artists such as Alan Lee, John Howe, and Ted Nasmith. [16]

Reception

Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium has inspired numerous responses from fantasy artists, here Tom Loback's Thingol Fights Boldog. The battle between the Elf-King and the Orc chieftain is described in The Lay of Leithian. THINGOL FIGHTS BOLDOG cropped.jpg
Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium has inspired numerous responses from fantasy artists, here Tom Loback's Thingol Fights Boldog. The battle between the Elf-King and the Orc chieftain is described in The Lay of Leithian .

The Tolkien scholar Jason Fisher, reviewing the book for Mythlore , called it a "sign of the growing maturity of Tolkien studies". [17] Observing that Lee had felt it necessary to apologise for a literary study of Tolkien; in response, Fisher commented it was time to "shake off this defensive note fifty years on" and ignore "those stodgy keepers of the canon who still dismiss Tolkien". [17] He stated that the book's "careful organization" means less repetition than in most works with many contributors, while its use of established experts "immediately conveys authority and confidence in the quality of the work". [17] He then reviewed each essay, remarking among many other things that Shippey both "gently reproaches the dilatory Tolkien on the one hand and praises his meticulous academic exertion". [17] He praises Nagy for his "thought-provoking conclusions" on The Silmarillion, such as that Tolkien's failure to complete it actually made literal his "conception of his fiction as a philological corpus". [17] He found Rateliff's summary of his own The History of the Hobbit excellent, even if he perhaps over-apologised to "film firsters" for how slowly the book built up to the action. [17] He questions whether many readers would need five chapters on the languages such as Old Norse, Finnish, and "Celtic" [Welsh and Irish] that influenced Tolkien, but welcomed the "extended explorations". [17] He found Bratman's coverage of the Inklings and Tolkien's wider milieu valuable, and likewise Fimi's analysis of Tolkien's legacy among writers, both imitators and those such as Alan Garner, Ursula Le Guin, Philip Pullman, and J. K. Rowling who recognised their debt to him while finding "their own distinct storytelling expression". [17]

The scholar Jorge Luis Bueno-Alonso, reviewing A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien for Tolkien Studies , described Lee as "one of the outstanding names of recent Tolkien critical scholarship and co-author of one of the most imaginative books on the relationships between Tolkien's fiction and medieval English literature". [3] Of the book, he wrote that it brought order to the morass of publications on Tolkien, and noted that it finally brought Tolkien into the canon of Anglo-American studies as it was one of the "prestigious" Blackwell Companion series. He called the challenge of making a brief 25-page overview of Tolkien's life, undertaken by John Garth in the volume, "an enta geweorc", ("a work of giants"). [3]

Andrew Higgins, a Tolkien scholar, reviewing the book for the Journal of Tolkien Research , welcomed the "eminent line-up" of authors (naming among others Shippey, Flieger, Fimi, Rateliff and Nagy) who contributed to the work, and called it "joyous indeed that after many years of polite (and not so polite) disdain and dismissal by establishment 'academics' and the 'cultural intelligentsia'", Tolkien had reached the "academic pantheon" of Blackwell Companions. Higgins provided his own detailed reviews of all of the work's 36 articles, and applauded Lee for "the overall thematic structuring of this volume, which offers a progressive profile of Tolkien the man, the student and scholar, and the mythopoeist", and said that he "found Lee's ordering of these papers most helpful". He nonetheless observed that there are a few minor gaps in the coverage of the volume, such as no discussion of the foreign language adaptations of Tolkien's work or the significance of Beowulf as an influence on Tolkien, plus the need to update the volume with the analysis of Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur , a poem published only in 2013. [1]

The scholar of literature and curator of rare books Cait Coker, in her review for Extrapolation , wrote that the discipline of Tolkien studies had come of age, from being the "bad boy" of academic inquiry into science fiction and fantasy. In her view, this Blackwell volume "aptly illustrates the singular author's claim on greatness". [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Shippey</span> British medievalist (born 1943)

Thomas Alan Shippey is a British medievalist, a retired scholar of Middle and Old English literature as well as of modern fantasy and science fiction. He is considered one of the world's leading academic experts on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien about whom he has written several books and many scholarly papers. His book The Road to Middle-Earth has been called "the single best thing written on Tolkien".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mythopoeic Awards</span> Literary award

The Mythopoeic Awards for literature and literary studies are given annually for outstanding works in the fields of myth, fantasy, and the scholarly study of these areas. Established by the Mythopoeic Society in 1971, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award is given for "fiction in the spirit of the Inklings", and the Scholarship Award for non-fiction work. The award is a statuette of a seated lion, with a plaque on the base. It has drawn resemblance to, and is often called, the "Aslan".

The works of J. R. R. Tolkien have generated a body of research covering many aspects of his fantasy writings. These encompass The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, along with his legendarium that remained unpublished until after his death, and his constructed languages, especially the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin. Scholars from different disciplines have examined the linguistic and literary origins of Middle-earth, and have explored many aspects of his writings from Christianity to feminism and race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien's legendarium</span> J. R. R. Tolkiens mythological writings

Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings, and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth. The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps, and inventing languages and names as a private project to create a mythology for England. The earliest story, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star", is from 1914; he revised and rewrote the legendarium stories for most of his adult life.

Verlyn Flieger is an author, editor, and Professor Emerita in the Department of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, where she taught courses in comparative mythology, medieval literature, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. She is well known as a Tolkien scholar, especially for her books Splintered Light, A Question of Time, and Interrupted Music. She has won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award four times for her work on Tolkien's Middle-earth writings.

<i>The History of The Hobbit</i> 2007 nonfiction book about The Hobbit

The History of The Hobbit is a two-volume study of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 children's fantasy novel The Hobbit. It was first published by HarperCollins in 2007. It contains Tolkien's unpublished drafts of the novel, with commentary by John D. Rateliff. It details Tolkien's various revisions to The Hobbit, including abandoned revisions for the unpublished third edition of the work, intended for 1960, as well as previously unpublished original maps and illustrations drawn by Tolkien.

<i>J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century</i> Book by Tom Shippey

J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century is a 2001 book of literary criticism written by Tom Shippey. It is about the work of the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien. In it, Shippey argues for the relevance of Tolkien today and attempts to firmly establish Tolkien's literary merits, based on analysis of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Tolkien's shorter works.

J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings had an initial mixed literary reception. Despite some enthusiastic early reviews from supporters such as W. H. Auden, Iris Murdoch, and C. S. Lewis, scholars noted a measure of literary hostility to Tolkien, which continued until the start of the 21st century. From 1982, Tolkien scholars such as Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger began to roll back the hostility, defending Tolkien, rebutting the critics' attacks and analysing what they saw as good qualities in Tolkien's writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard C. West</span> American librarian and Tolkien scholar (1944–2020)

Richard Carroll West was an American librarian and one of the first Tolkien scholars. He is best known for his 1975 essay on the interlace structure of The Lord of the Rings, for which he won the 1976 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies.

Jason Fisher is a Tolkien scholar and winner of multiple Mythopoeic Scholarship Awards, including one in 2014 for his book Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays. He served as the editor of the Mythopoeic Society's monthly Mythprint from 2010 to 2013. He is the author of many book chapters, academic articles, and encyclopedia entries on J. R. R. Tolkien.

Stuart Dermot Lee is a British specialist in information technology at Oxford University Computing Services and a Reader in E-learning at Oxford University, but is best known for his scholarly books on J. R. R. Tolkien. He has written several plays, two of which won Oxford Playhouse new writing awards.

Gergely Nagy is a Hungarian medievalist and a well-known Tolkien scholar.

The prose style of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth books, especially The Lord of the Rings, is remarkably varied. Commentators have noted that Tolkien selected linguistic registers to suit different peoples, such as simple and modern for Hobbits and more archaic for Dwarves, Elves, and the Rohirrim. This allowed him to use the Hobbits to mediate between the modern reader and the heroic and archaic realm of fantasy. The Orcs, too, are depicted in different voices: the Orc-leader Grishnákh speaks in bullying tones, while the minor functionary Gorbag uses grumbling modern speech.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the bestselling fantasy The Lord of the Rings, was largely rejected by the literary establishment during his lifetime, but has since been accepted into the literary canon, if not as a modernist then certainly as a modern writer responding to his times. He fought in the First World War, and saw the rural England that he loved built over and industrialised. His Middle-earth fantasy writings, consisting largely of a legendarium which was not published until after his death, embodied his realism about the century's traumatic events, and his Christian hope.

<i>Splintered Light</i> Book of literary criticism of Tolkiens Middle-earth

Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World is a 1983 book of literary criticism by the leading Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger, in which she argues that light is a central theme of Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology, in particular in The Silmarillion. It has been admired by other scholars to the extent that it has become a core element of Tolkien scholarship.

<i>Tolkiens Art: A Mythology for England</i> 1979 book by Jane Chance

Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England' is a 1979 book of Tolkien scholarship by Jane Chance, writing then as Jane Chance Nitzsche. The book looks in turn at Tolkien's essays "On Fairy-Stories" and "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"; The Hobbit; the fairy-stories "Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith of Wootton Major"; the minor works "Lay of Autrou and Itroun", "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth", "Imram", and Farmer Giles of Ham; The Lord of the Rings; and very briefly in the concluding section, The Silmarillion. In 2001, a second edition extended all the chapters but still treated The Silmarillion, that Tolkien worked on throughout his life, as a sort of coda.

Literary devices in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> Literary techniques in Tolkiens work

The philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien made use of multiple literary devices in The Lord of the Rings, from its narrative structure and its use of pseudotranslation and editorial framing, to character pairing and the deliberate cultivation of an impression of depth while constructing the novel. The narrative structure in particular has been seen as a pair of quests, a sequence of tableaux, a complex edifice, multiple spirals, and a medieval-style interlacing. The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, on the other hand, has a single narrative thread, and repeated episodes of danger and recuperation in five "Homely Houses". His prose style, too, has been both criticised and defended.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien and antiquarianism</span> J. R. R. Tolkiens literary approach

J. R. R. Tolkien included many elements in his Middle-earth writings, especially The Lord of the Rings, other than narrative text. These include artwork, calligraphy, chronologies, family trees, heraldry, languages, maps, poetry, proverbs, scripts, glossaries, prologues, and annotations. Much of this material is collected in the many appendices. Scholars have stated that the use of these elements places Tolkien in the tradition of English antiquarianism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anachronism in Middle-earth</span> Theme in Tolkiens fantasy writings

Anachronism, chronological inconsistency, is seen in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth in the juxtaposition of cultures of evidently different periods, such as the classically-inspired Gondor and the medieval-style Rohan, and in the far more modern hobbits of the Shire, a setting which resembles the English countryside of Tolkien's childhood. The more familiar lifestyle and manner of the hobbits, complete with tobacco, potatoes, umbrellas, and mantelpiece clocks, allows them to mediate between the reader and the far older cultures of Middle-earth. They were introduced for The Hobbit, a children's story not planned to be set in Middle-earth; their anachronistic role is extended in The Lord of the Rings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings</span>

The fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien have had a huge popular impact. His Middle-earth books have sold hundreds of millions of copies. The Lord of the Rings transformed the genre of fantasy writing. It and The Hobbit have spawned Peter Jackson's Middle-earth films, which have had billion-dollar takings at the box office. The books and films have stimulated enormous Tolkien fandom activity in meetings such as Tolkienmoot and on the Internet, with discussion groups, fan art, and many thousands of Tolkien fan fiction stories. The mythology's Orcs, Trolls, Dwarves, Elves, Wizards, and Halflings are firmly established in popular culture, such as in the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and in Middle-earth video games. Individual characters like Gollum, too, have become familiar popular figures, for instance featuring in a song by Led Zeppelin.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Higgins, Andrew (2015). "A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee, reviewed by Andrew Higgins". Journal of Tolkien Research. 2 (1). Article 2.
  2. ↑ Price, Ludovica (1 January 2015). "A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien". Reference Reviews. 29 (6): 27–28. doi:10.1108/RR-03-2015-0046. ISSN   0950-4125.
  3. 1 2 3 Bueno-Alonso, Jorge Luis (2015-12-18). "A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien ed. by Stuart D. Lee (review)". Tolkien Studies. 12 (1): 177–189. doi:10.1353/tks.2015.0016. ISSN   1547-3163. S2CID   170885143 . Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  4. ↑ "Series: Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture". Overdrive. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  5. ↑ Carpenter, Humphrey (1978) [1977]. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. Unwin Paperbacks. pp. 111, 200, 266 and throughout. ISBN   978-0-04928-039-7.
  6. ↑ Lee 2020, p. Publication data page.
  7. ↑ "A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien by Stuart D. Lee". WorldCat . Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  8. ↑ Lee 2020, pp. xxii–xxxiv.
  9. ↑ Lee 2020, pp. 1–4.
  10. ↑ Lee 2020, pp. vii–ix.
  11. ↑ Lee 2020, pp. 7–24.
  12. ↑ Lee 2020, pp. 25–76.
  13. ↑ Lee 2020, pp. 77–214.
  14. ↑ Lee 2020, pp. 215–366.
  15. ↑ Lee 2020, pp. 367–544.
  16. 1 2 Lee 2020, pp. 487–500.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Fisher, Jason (2016). "A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien". Mythlore . 35 (1 (Fall/Winter)): 191–200 (article 10).
  18. ↑ Coker, Cait (2017). "A Comprehensive Overview of Tolkien Studies". Extrapolation. 58 (2/3): 331–333.

Bibliography

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