Michael Martinez (Tolkien scholar)

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Michael Martinez is an author and Tolkien scholar.

Life

Michael Martinez was born in 1959. He is a Tolkien scholar. [1] In 1997 he launched the Xenite.Org website [2] for fans of fantasy and science fiction; he has published many essays on that website. He also writes about programming languages and search engine optimization. [3]

Contents

Tolkien scholar

The Tolkien scholar Colin Duriez states that Martinez has written about many aspects of Tolkien's writings, and has "a loyal following of readers" on the World Wide Web. [4]

David Bratman writes in Tolkien Studies that Understanding Middle-earth is a "somewhat rewritten... collection of Web-published essays by a popular online writer on Tolkien." [5] Bratman describes Martinez's subjects as including discussions of Tolkien's sources, "whimsical speculations and outright guesswork", noting that Martinez does use materials published by Christopher Tolkien after his father's death, and that his facts are "generally reliable". Bratman writes that Martinez's "most characteristic posture is a forceful intervention in debates over the sub-creation, especially in testing the limits of reliable sub-creational knowledge." [5] He describes Martinez as writing "informally and argumentatively but (in small doses) readably... without pretensions to formal scholarship." [5]

Robin Anne Reid, in Journal of Tolkien Research , notes Martinez's statement in his essay "What is the Munby Letter?" that Tolkien affirmed in that unpublished letter that there were "Orc-women". Reid adds that this agrees with Tolkien's mentions of "half-breed Orcs" and that they could reproduce. [6] Further, she cites Martinez's essay "Why is Azog Called the White Orc?" for his statement that the specially large type of Orcs, the Uruk-hai, are explicitly "described as having dark skin", implying that "while there is no canon support for white Orcs specifically", other Orcs may have been white. [6]

Thomas Honegger, also in Journal of Tolkien Research, writes that a single word can often be crucial in Tolkien scholarship. In the context of a discussion of whether Tolkien was envisaging late-medieval knightly chivalry, he quotes Martinez's essay "Was Imrahil's Vambrace Made of Metal?", noting that the key point is Martinez's statement that calling the forearm armour metal "is merely a product of wishful thinking" by people with an image of medieval knights in "full plate armor". [7] Honegger sums up Martinez's argument as stating that "even a burnished leather vambrace would work for Imrahil's first-aid check on Éowyn." [7]

Gregers Einer Forssling quotes Martinez's defence of Tolkien from the charge of Nordicism, the racist ideology of Nordic supremacy. He notes that Martinez quotes Tolkien's own rejection of "this Nordic nonsense", and that Martinez mentions Tolkien's regret that "the term Nordic had become associated with 'racialist theories'", thus rebutting Stephen Shapiro's assertion that "themes of cultural and biological Nordicism can be recognised in The Lord of the Rings". [8]

Works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gondor</span> Fictional kingdom in Tolkiens Middle-earth

Gondor is a fictional kingdom in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, described as the greatest realm of Men in the west of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age. The third volume of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, is largely concerned with the events in Gondor during the War of the Ring and with the restoration of the realm afterward. The history of the kingdom is outlined in the appendices of the book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bag End</span> Fictional location in Tolkiens novels

Bag End is the underground dwelling of the Hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From there, both Bilbo and Frodo set out on their adventures, and both return there, for a while. As such, Bag End represents the familiar, safe, comfortable place which is the antithesis of the dangerous places that they visit. It forms one end of the main story arcs in the novels, and since the Hobbits return there, it also forms an end point in the story circle in each case.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional legendarium, Beleriand was a region in northwestern Middle-earth during the First Age. Events in Beleriand are described chiefly in his work The Silmarillion, which tells the story of the early ages of Middle-earth in a style similar to the epic hero tales of Nordic literature, with a pervasive sense of doom over the character's actions. Beleriand also appears in the works The Book of Lost Tales, The Children of Húrin, and in the epic poems of The Lays of Beleriand.

The Battle of the Pelennor Fields, in J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings, was the defence of the city of Minas Tirith by the forces of Gondor and the cavalry of its ally Rohan, against the forces of the Dark Lord Sauron from Mordor and its allies the Haradrim and the Easterlings. It was the largest battle in the War of the Ring. It took place at the end of the Third Age in the Pelennor Fields, the townlands and fields between Minas Tirith and the River Anduin.

<i>Morgoths Ring</i> Volume of The History of Middle-earth

Morgoth's Ring (1993) is the tenth volume of Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth in which he analyses the unpublished manuscripts of his father J. R. R. Tolkien. It contains "The Annals of Aman" which presents the history of Arda with year-by-year entries like real-world annals, and "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" which presents a discussion of death and immortality between an Elf and a human.

Trolls are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and feature in films and games adapted from his novels. They are portrayed as monstrously large humanoids of great strength and poor intellect. In The Hobbit, like the dwarf Alviss of Norse mythology, they must be below ground before dawn or turn to stone, whereas in The Lord of the Rings they are able to face daylight.

J. R. R. Tolkien came to feel that the flat earth cosmology he embodied in his legendarium would be unacceptable to a modern readership. In The Silmarillion, Earth was created flat and was changed to round as a cataclysmic event during the Second Age in order to prevent direct access by Men to Valinor, home of the immortals. In the Round World Version, Earth is spherical from the beginning.

"Epic Pooh" is a 1978 essay by the British science fiction writer Michael Moorcock, which reviews the field of epic fantasy, with a particular focus on epic fantasy written for children. In it Moorcock critiques J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings for its politically conservative assumptions and its escapism. Originally written for the British Science Fiction Association, "Epic Pooh" was revised for inclusion in Moorcock's 1989 book Wizardry and Wild Romance. Critics and scholars have objected to multiple aspects of Moorcock's essay.

<i>Tolkiens Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth</i> 2000 collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter

Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth is a collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter on the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth, relating to J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction and compiled and edited by his son, Christopher. It was published by Greenwood Press in 2000. That series comprises a substantial part of "Tolkien's legendarium", the body of Tolkien's mythopoeic writing that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings and which Christopher Tolkien summarized in his construction of The Silmarillion.

<i>The Lord of the Rings: A Readers Companion</i>

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (2005) is a nonfiction book by the scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. It is an annotated reference to J. R. R. Tolkien's heroic romance, The Lord of the Rings.

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.

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.

J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings have been said to embody outmoded attitudes to race. However, scholars have noted that he was influenced by Victorian attitudes to race and to a literary tradition of monsters, and that he was anti-racist both in peacetime and during the two World Wars.

John Garth is a British journalist and author, known especially for writings about J. R. R. Tolkien including his biography Tolkien and the Great War and a book on the places that inspired Middle-earth, The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien. He won a 2004 Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship for his work on Tolkien. The biography influenced much Tolkien scholarship in the subsequent decades.

Ralph C. Wood is a scholar of theology and English literature, with a special interest in Christian writers, mainly of fiction, including J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert, and Dorothy Sayers.

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's presentation of heroism in The Lord of the Rings is based on medieval tradition, but modifies it, as there is no single hero but a combination of heroes with contrasting attributes. Aragorn is the man born to be a hero, of a line of kings; he emerges from the wilds and is uniformly bold and restrained. Frodo is an unheroic, home-loving Hobbit who has heroism thrust upon him when he learns that the ring he has inherited from his cousin Bilbo is the One Ring that would enable the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth. His servant Sam sets out to take care of his beloved master, and rises through the privations of the quest to destroy the Ring to become heroic.

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.

Patrick Curry is an independent Canadian-born British scholar who has worked and taught on a variety of subjects from cultural astronomy to divination, the ecology movement, and the nature of enchantment. He is known for his studies of J. R. R. Tolkien.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Honegger</span> Tolkien scholar

Thomas Honegger is a scholar of literature, known especially for his studies of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth.

References

  1. ↑ "Michael Martinez". Tolkien Gateway . Retrieved 16 July 2024.
  2. ↑ Martinez, Michael. "Middle-earth Blog". Xenite.Org. Retrieved 16 July 2024.
  3. ↑ Martinez, Michael. "About Michael Martinez". Michael Martinez. Retrieved 16 July 2024.
  4. ↑ Duriez, Colin (2003). "Survey of Tolkien Literature". VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center. 20: 105–114. JSTOR   45296990.
  5. 1 2 3 Bratman, David (2006). "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2003". Tolkien Studies . 3 (1): 241–265. doi:10.1353/tks.2006.0008.
  6. 1 2 Reid, Robin Anne (2020). "Making or Creating Orcs: How Thorinsmut's Free Orcs AU Writes Back to Tolkien". Journal of Tolkien Research . 11 (2). Article 3.
  7. 1 2 Honegger, Thomas (2017). "Riders, Chivalry, and Knighthood in Tolkien". Journal of Tolkien Research . 4 (2). Article 3.
  8. ↑ Forssling, Gregers Einer (2020). "The Flotsam of Nordicism in Our Liquid Modernity" (PDF). Nordicism and Modernity: 215–259.
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