A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien's Road to Faerie

by Flieger

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , and Silmarillion have long been recognized as among the most popular fiction of the twentieth century, and most critical analysis of Tolkien has centered on these novels.  Granted access by the Tolkien estate and the Bodleian Library in Oxford to Tolkien’s unpublished writings, Verlyn Flieger uses them here to shed new light on his better known works, revealing a new dimension of his fictive vision and giving added depth of meaning to his writing. Tolkien’s concern with time―past and present, real and “faerie”―captures the wonder and peril of travel into other worlds, other times, other modes of consciousness.  Reading his work, we “fall wide asleep” into a dream more real than ordinary waking experience, and emerge with a new perception of the waking world.  Flieger explores Tolkien’s use of dream as time-travel in his unfinished stories The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers as well as in The Lord of the Rings and his shorter fiction and poetry. Analyzing Tolkien’s treatment of time and time-travel, Flieger shows that he was not just a mythmaker and writer of escapist fantasy but a man whose relationship to his own century was troubled and critical.  He achieved in his fiction a double perspective of time that enabled him to see in the mirror of the past the clouded reflection of the present.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Mythology

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[James Madsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not quite so gripping to me personally as Splintered Light, I nevertheless found this work very useful not only as an examination of how J.R.R. Tolkien handled time in his works but also as an introduction to J.W. Dunne's excellent An Experiment with Time.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2540819.html

This is another of Flieger's lucid explorations of Tolkien's thought, this time looking at his interpretation of Time, as evidenced both by the time distortions experienced by visitors to the fairy realm (be it the Fellowship in Lothlórien or Smith when he leaves Wootton Major) and by the prophetic dreams revealed to many of his characters, Frodo most of all. This is all tied in very nicely with the received wisdom of time-travel between the wars - I must admit I tend to think of it in terms of Wells and Doctor Who, vessels voyaging through the timelines, but there is also the tradition of Dunne and Priestley, which Tolkien was much more comfortable with and which reached its peak in his unpublished The Notion Club Papers. This book, slim as it is, will be a lot more comprehensible if you've already absorbed the huge volumes of the History of Middle Earth.

[Andrew Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading this excellent work of Tolkien scholarship for a final paper I am working on for the Fantasy Before and After Tolkien course. Since the last time I read it I actually met and spoke to the author!

[Chrissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second time attempting this book--this is a thorough work that delves into unpublished works in addition to published and, for a non-scholar, asks for a slower, more aware reading than previous works by the same author.

I found this book well worth the effort for the wide grounding in historical aspects of theories of time, exposure to unpublished but fascinating works (part of the challenge in reading was suppressing the my internal grumbling about not having a finished version of The Notion Club Papers), and for the ways that time dislocations lead to a comparison of war and Faerie. Notwithstanding the specificity of the discussion, this opened up my idea of what it means to write/read fantasy against a scientific understanding of nature.

My one caveat was that I would have preferred an anthology containing some of the poems mentioned (such as The Sea Bell) so that I could refer to a text within the book itself.

[Emily Millikan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned from this book about certain influences on Tolkien that I hadn't picked up anywhere else; fascinating.

[Othy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Flieger has a strangely simple understanding of Tolkien and of Christianity. The book is frustratingly bad.

[Oshun · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just saw a friend add this book to her reading list and popped in to see if I had rated it. I had. But I raised my ratings on Splintered Light and Music. It's been a while since I first read both of them and, as an amateur Tolkien scholar, I find Verlyn Flieger's work continues to be more and more useful to me as time passes.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was valuable beyond belief when i was researching for my undergrad thesis paper on the Celtic influences in Tolkien's Middle-earth. While this book is amazingly detailed and thorough, I would not suggest it to a casual reader of Tolkien's books.

[Katherine Sas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to be Verlyn Flieger when I grow up.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago and found it fascinating. I'd really like to read it again and see if I still feel the same.