Tuesday, November 28, 2017

The Making Of Middle Earth, Christopher Snyder -- November 28, 2017

The Making of Middle Earth: A New Look Inside the World of J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Snyder, c. 2013

Grapevine Library

DDS: 823 SNY



Preface
For a long time, only one significant biography of JRR Tolkien, the one by Humphrey Carpenter in 1977.

philology: now called historical linguistics

modern literary genre of fantasy: virtually invented by Tolkien

most successful film franchises:
Tolkien
Harry Potter
James Bond
Star Wars

Chapter 1: Learning His Craft

From Africa to Birmingham

b. January 3, 1892
left Africa at age 3, so not much influence on his writing
left before the outbreak of the Boer war in 1899
exceptions: bitten by a spider while in Africa; led to arachnophobia, and ultimately this fear embodied by his menacing Middle-earth spiders
1900: a place at King Edward's School, Birmingham, which his father had attended

Oxford

The Great War

Tolkien The Scholar

"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"

 "On Fairy-Stories"

Tolkien the Teacher

The Inklings

Fame and Retirement

Writing Tolkien

Chapter 2: Tolkien's Middle Ages

Back to the Sources

Ancient Greece and Rome

Celtic Britain and Ireland

The Anglo-Saxons and Old English

The Vikings and Old Norse

Middle English Literature

King Arthur and the Matter of Britain

Victorian Fairy Tales and the Gothic Revival

Finnish and the Kalevala

William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites

Andrew Lang

George MacDonald

The Northern Land

Chapter 3: "There and Back Again"

Hobbits and Dwarves

Trolls and Goblins, Gnomes and Elves

Mountains, Rings, and Riddles in the Dark

Beorn

Mirkwood and Lake-Twon

Smaug

Endings

Chapter 4: Tales of the Third Age

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

The Return of the King

Chapter 5: The Son of Iluvatar

The Silmarillion

The Children of Nurin

Appendices

Appendix I: Monsters and Critics

Appendix II: Media and Middle Earth

Appendix III: Tolkieniana

Appendix IV: The Moral Virtues of Middle Earth

A Tolkien Timeline

Notes

Bibliography and Tolkien Resources

Index

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