Simon J. Cook's Blog, page 6

Apprenticeship: official launch of a new ebook

Having released my new ebook on August 29, and spent much of the last month patching and tweaking, I’ve now happy with it – so consider this an official launch. The book is available on Amazon as an ebook. Amazon gives me the opportunity to offer a print version, which I am considering. Many people […]

Shield of Sulis

Sulis-Minerva. A goddess here depicted with a moustache and snake hair, on a stone shield: the Gorgon’s head shield found in the classical temple the Romans built to the native goddess of Bath, a flourishing cosmopolitan spa town in the west country. When the Romans asked about the local deity in Bath, they were told about Sul. […]

Visual guide to the 1936 lecture on Beowulf

Index of the Beowulf lecture

Last post was a pub rant on podcast 092 from The Prancing Pony. Usually, Shawn Marchese and Alan Sisto, the Pony podcasters, read Tolkien’s mythological world with keen eyes. In this episode the allegory of the tower is read aloud, Tolkien’s dislike of allegory is noted, and the pair proceed to fall into our author’s trap. In my post, I pointed out what they had […]

Falling off a table at the Prancing Pony

On the odd occasion I leave the comforts of The Green Dragon to poke my head in the door of The Prancing Pony, I usually enjoy myself. But when last I tried to visit I found myself knee deep in that midge-plagued marsh on which a phantom tower of Tolkien studies has been raised. The podcast deals with Tolkien’s […]

A night at the Prancing Pony

On the odd occasion I leave the comforts of The Green Dragon and poke my head in the door of The Prancing Pony, I usually enjoy myself. But in this epidosde I heard talk that I have come to regard as voicing the original sin of contemporary Tolkien studies,  and so I thought I’d pen a criticism as a […]

Patches

The Apprenticeship of J.R.R. Tolkien (Ye Machine, 2018) was published on August 29. But this is the first announcement. Firstly, there is no point competing with The Fall of Gondolin (August 30). Basically, though, I’ve found myself unable to break the loop of patching. In fact, with this second ebook, I appreciate  that electronic release of an essay is not […]

Beowulf: Tolkien’s Apprenticeship

    But just as Bilbo was beginning to hope that the wretch would not be able to answer, Gollum brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole in a bank by a river… ___

But just as Bilbo was beginning to hope that the wret...

    But just as Bilbo was beginning to hope that the wretch would not be able to answer, Gollum brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole in a bank by a river… ___

The Apprenticeship of J.R.R. Tolkien

Here is a first part of my study of the making of The Lord of the Rings. I had originally envisaged one single book but I have found the way that Tolkien connected and interwove his ideas so subtle and intricate that a couple of months ago I came to the conclusion that I needed to break […]