JRR Tolkien
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Mitchell Finds His Inner Tolkien
After reading from his forthcoming release Slade House at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, David Mitchell announced that he has created “his own version of middle earth.” Like Mitchell’s prior works, Slade House will incorporate various genres and points of view: I like to…
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Language: “A Barometer of Society’s Health”
For the BBC, Hephzibah Anderson explores the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin, two authors who invented languages to color their fictional worlds. In addition, the article considers how words created by novelists are adopted by contemporary culture: Language,…
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Walking the Road Into Mordor
A Tolkien scholar writes about how he fought off a lawsuit from the Tolkien Estate: I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and put my research skills to work on my defense. Unfortunately, the case law was sparse. The…
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Genealogy of Hobbits and Hiawatha
Through his research for an article for the journal Tolkien Studies, John Garth believes he has discovered a surprising source text for several episodes from Middle Earth: Longfellow’s trochaic epic, “The Song of Hiawatha.” The dragon Smaug has long been…
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Disappearing Act
Invisibility has a long literary history, from science fiction, like in H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man, to fantasy, like in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Often, the difference is between methodology and motive. Wells focused on scientific accuracy to illustrate “the…
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Resurrecting a Monster
Forty-one years after his death, JRR Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf has been published by his son Christopher. Tolkien translated Beowulf early in his career, yet never published it. In the New Yorker, Joan Acocella speculates on the reason: Another possible…
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Nobody Tell Gollum About This
“Among those who bear the name of Senicianus to none grant health until he bring back the ring to the temple of Nodens.” It sounds like it comes from a fantasy novel, but it’s a real inscription regarding a real…
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The Art of The Hobbit
It turns out J.R.R. Tolkien also had a knack for doodling. While he wrote The Hobbit, he drew several illustrations, ten of which were included in the first printing of the book. In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the…