62 books
—
25 voters
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century” as Want to Read:
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century
by
Tom Shippey
Recent polls have consistently declared that J.R.R. Tolkien is "the most influential author of the century," and The Lord of the Rings is "the book of the century." In support of these claims, the prominent medievalist and scholar of fantasy Professor Tom Shippey now presents us with a fascinating companion to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, focusing in particular on The Hobb
...more
Paperback, 384 pages
Published
September 8th 2002
by Mariner Books
(first published January 1st 1950)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
J.R.R. Tolkien,
please sign up.
Be the first to ask a question about J.R.R. Tolkien
Community Reviews
(showing 1-30)
If you are ever interested in re-reading The Lord of the Rings, this book will add to your enjoyment. I say "re-read" because if you haven't read Tolkien, it is better to just dive into The Hobbit and then move on to his masterpiece. But re-reading a book you love is a different type of reading - a slower reading imbued with leisure where you can stop and smell the words, as it were. Tolkien was a philologist, a lover and a scholar of words and this book will show you how Tolkien took an Old Eng
...more
Fantastic analysis of how Tolkien constructed the language, world, and characters of Lord of the Rings, with particular attention to word origins and connotations. Easy to read and fascinating.
Excerpt:
Tolkien also thought - and this takes us back to the roots of his invention - that philology could take you back even beyond the ancient texts it studied. He believed that it was possible sometimes to feel one's way back from words as they survived in later periods to concepts which had long since ...more
Excerpt:
Tolkien also thought - and this takes us back to the roots of his invention - that philology could take you back even beyond the ancient texts it studied. He believed that it was possible sometimes to feel one's way back from words as they survived in later periods to concepts which had long since ...more
This is a fantastic book and really the place to start for non-biographical secondary sources on Tolkien. My only major gripe is the stuff about Boethian vs. Manichaean views of evil in Tolkien. What Shippey sees as a Manichaean presentation of evil in Tolkien is only superficially so, and I think if he had a better understanding of Christian theology he wouldn't have gone so far down this line of thought. For Christians, even when speaking of a "totally evil" being such as Satan, there is an un
...more
Well worth reading. Any fan of LOTR or the Hobbit will likely enjoy it. Shippey's unravelling of the distinct speech patterns and linguistic elements in the council of Elrond is fascinating and illustrates how much thought Tolkien put into what are the largely unseen (or unnoticed) details of his epic in order to make it as authentic as possible. Shippey's treatment of the mythic images of the eternal stars seen through the tree-tangled canopy of middle earth is interesting as well. His answers
...more
Dec 13, 2007
Martine
rated it
really liked it
Recommends it for:
Tolkien fans and haters
Shelves:
non-fiction,
literary-criticism
Tom Shippey is a Professor of Philology at Oxford, specialising in Old English and Old Norse. So he was well placed to explain what made J.R.R. Tolkien, himself a Professor of Philology at Oxford, tick. By analysing the texts Tolkien himself read and translated, Shippey introduces the reader to Tolkien's literary and linguistic sources of inspiration, many of which can be traced in The Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works. Other chapters focus on historical, political, ethical and religio
...more
Book 13 in #15in2015
It's deeply pleasing to read about the language Tolkien uses in his work. Not the one he created, which this book barely touches on, but the old words, names, and place names that he drew on when he wrote.
Having studied in the same field at Professor Tolkien, the author is well-placed to talk about the complexities, structure, and foundation of Tolkien's work. It's clear he's irritated at the literary critics who dismiss Lord of the Rings as having no value at all, but in hi ...more
It's deeply pleasing to read about the language Tolkien uses in his work. Not the one he created, which this book barely touches on, but the old words, names, and place names that he drew on when he wrote.
Having studied in the same field at Professor Tolkien, the author is well-placed to talk about the complexities, structure, and foundation of Tolkien's work. It's clear he's irritated at the literary critics who dismiss Lord of the Rings as having no value at all, but in hi ...more
The title of this book is not as overblown as it sounds; Shippey is making the case for Tolkien as "an author of the century, the twentieth century, responding to the issues and the anxieties of that century." He puts Tolkien in a group of influential "traumatized authors" who tended to write fantasy and fable because they were convinced that this was the only way to address their experiences. Shippey also discusses Tolkien's ancient sources. I'm familiar with a few of them (Beowulf, some other ...more
This book was a lot more academic than I expected based on the description. Probably not for the average reader and not really a biography. I expected a lot more comparative analysis between the work and person with other candidates for Author of the Century and more analysis of Tolkien criticism. While there was some of the latter there was little to nothing addressing the former.
Jul 26, 2010
Kirsten
rated it
liked it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Super-duper Tolkien nerds
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This is a marvelous examination and celebration of the works of the man who has often been declared the most influential author of the century. Shippey seeks to support this claim by exploring Tolkien's writings in detail, from The Hobbit book: The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, to the lesser-known works like Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major.
Shippey is himself a scholar in the same area as Tolkien, and this gives him a deep familiarity with the works and languages inspir ...more
Shippey is himself a scholar in the same area as Tolkien, and this gives him a deep familiarity with the works and languages inspir ...more
A lot of interesting stuff going on in here, and this book made it clearer to me just how complex Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth was. For any fan of LOTR, this is a good read.
That said, the title is silly. What the shit does it mean to be "author of the century"? I was left unconvinced after finishing the book. Tolkien has made a contribution that created its own GENRE, and there's definitely something to be said for that. And the books have stood the test of time pretty well, say what you ma ...more
That said, the title is silly. What the shit does it mean to be "author of the century"? I was left unconvinced after finishing the book. Tolkien has made a contribution that created its own GENRE, and there's definitely something to be said for that. And the books have stood the test of time pretty well, say what you ma ...more
“What Tolkien certainly did was introduce a new, or possibly re-introduce an old and forgotten taste into the literary world.”
On every page of this book, I found something deep and fascinating to learn about Tolkien and the way he interacted with both the primary world and the secondary one of his own creation. I've come away profoundly grateful to Tom Shippey for his energizing, brilliant analysis of Tolkien's true influence on the twentieth century. Shippey has done so much in the way of raisi ...more
On every page of this book, I found something deep and fascinating to learn about Tolkien and the way he interacted with both the primary world and the secondary one of his own creation. I've come away profoundly grateful to Tom Shippey for his energizing, brilliant analysis of Tolkien's true influence on the twentieth century. Shippey has done so much in the way of raisi ...more
This is a fascinating book, but a little too serious for light reading in bed. I gave it up a quarter of the way through. I thought it was a biography, but it is an examination of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, showing how Tolkien developed the plots and where he got the names from. It looks at folklore and literature from Anglo-Saxon, Old English and Old Norse sources in particular. I am interested in words and their history, and this is a very readable book, but just too much for the moment
...more
This book is finished only in that I went through and read the parts of interest to me, such as Shippey's commentary about Tolkien's representations of evil in the book, etc. I read some of everything but wound up skimming parts because it would delve into scholarly levels that were beyond my interest. An excellent book, but a bit deeper than I wanted ... for the moment anyway.
A very useful background to Tolkien and TLoTR.
Shippey has the background in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, so there are many great insights. Summary: LoTR grew out of Tolkien's assimiliation of Anglo-Saxon, and Norse literture and language.
Shippey has the background in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, so there are many great insights. Summary: LoTR grew out of Tolkien's assimiliation of Anglo-Saxon, and Norse literture and language.
What seems missing, or is deliberately avoided due to political correctness....the political correctness of the 80 and 90, is, the mention of the Aryan. During Tolkien's surge in popularity post WW2, the word "Aryan" instantly drew accusations of collusion with the Nazi's mythology.
Also by Tolkien's own disavowal of allegory, we never quite see what all this fantasy is to represent.
Oh, there is the old "figure it out for yourself" reference to authenticity so cherished by the generation after g ...more
Also by Tolkien's own disavowal of allegory, we never quite see what all this fantasy is to represent.
Oh, there is the old "figure it out for yourself" reference to authenticity so cherished by the generation after g ...more
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey is a rousing, affectionate, and reverent look at the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Shippey seamlessly blends biography, critical analysis, and etymology in such a way that seasoned readers of Tolkien will enjoy. That, however, presents a distinct problem. Someone not intimately familiar with Tolkien's oeuvres may, at times, struggle with this book. I have a passing interest in Tolkien, and I found several of the chapters impenetrable.
Furthermore, ...more
Furthermore, ...more
Shippey applies a bit of literary analysis to all of Tolkien's published works, concentrating on the Middle Earth ones, but covering others too. I've always considered Tolkien to be one of my favourite authors, so this was right up my alley.
In Tom Shippey’s book, *J. R. R. Tolkien, Author of the Century*, the professor examines the works of Tolkien, and the reasons for the positive and negative reactions from fans and academics to the works.
A thing needs to be said about the title used. In the book, which was written in 2002, the author examines the disconnect between the popular perceptions of Tolkien and his work to the perceptions on the part of Academia to Tolkien and his work. In several polls over the years, Tolkien has come ...more
A thing needs to be said about the title used. In the book, which was written in 2002, the author examines the disconnect between the popular perceptions of Tolkien and his work to the perceptions on the part of Academia to Tolkien and his work. In several polls over the years, Tolkien has come ...more
Rezension | J. R. R. Tolkien - Autor des Jahrhunderts von Tom Shippey Meine Meinung
Mit „J. R. R. Tolkien – Autor des Jahrhunderts“ legt Tom Shippey keine gewöhnliche Biographie, sondern die Ergebnisse seiner Tolkien-Forschung vor. Gekonnt untermauert er die Herangehensweise von Tolkien an seine einzelnen Werke. In diesem Fall werden „Der Hobbit“, „Der Herr der Ringe“, „Das Silmarillion“ und einige kleinere Geschichten wie z. B. „Bauer Giles von Ham“ näher durchleuchtet.
Sehr spannend fand ich v ...more
Mit „J. R. R. Tolkien – Autor des Jahrhunderts“ legt Tom Shippey keine gewöhnliche Biographie, sondern die Ergebnisse seiner Tolkien-Forschung vor. Gekonnt untermauert er die Herangehensweise von Tolkien an seine einzelnen Werke. In diesem Fall werden „Der Hobbit“, „Der Herr der Ringe“, „Das Silmarillion“ und einige kleinere Geschichten wie z. B. „Bauer Giles von Ham“ näher durchleuchtet.
Sehr spannend fand ich v ...more
Tom Shippey believes J.R.R. Tolkien is the author of the century and does not care who knows it. After laying out the case against—the opinions of literati and the intellectual elite, many of whom obviously never read Tolkien—Shippey moves on to the case for—facts regarding The Lord of the Rings sales figures and its dominance of pretty much any reader survey.
Written by one of Tolkien’s academic successors, Author of the Century is not a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien. Rather, it takes a critical l ...more
Written by one of Tolkien’s academic successors, Author of the Century is not a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien. Rather, it takes a critical l ...more
This book is not meant as an introduction into Tolkien’s work but as an introduction into the serious interpretation of Tolkien’s work for those already familiar with it. Shippey is to be greatly admired for standing up for Tolkien in the face of cheap elitism. The book contains brilliant reconstructions of Tolkien’s philological attitude in creating his stories and excellent discussions on the role of Hobbits and anachronism in his mythology, the narrative interlacings in The Lord of the Rings,
...more
En este libro, una especie de secuela de El Camino a la Tierra Media, Shippey se explaya un poco más en la parte argumental y de personajes, y ofrece además un análisis del trato que la crítica especializada le dedicó a Tolkien durante su vida.
Se podría decir que es una especie de contra-crítica, argumentando en contra (y a veces a favor) de aquellos comentarios que se han hecho sobre ESDLA, El Hobbit y El Silmarillion. Resulta un libro interesante que te da otra perspectiva, si bien no tan prof ...more
Se podría decir que es una especie de contra-crítica, argumentando en contra (y a veces a favor) de aquellos comentarios que se han hecho sobre ESDLA, El Hobbit y El Silmarillion. Resulta un libro interesante que te da otra perspectiva, si bien no tan prof ...more
I should, in the interests of transparency, declare an interest before proceeding to review this wonderful book.
Back in the mists of time, while I was an undergraduate at Leeds University, Professor Tom Shippey was my tutor and had the thankless task of trying to guide me through the beauties and mysteries of Old English and Old Icelandic literature. His lectures were marvellous: engaging, entertaining and highly memorable, and a lot of my friends studying completely different subjects used to ...more
Back in the mists of time, while I was an undergraduate at Leeds University, Professor Tom Shippey was my tutor and had the thankless task of trying to guide me through the beauties and mysteries of Old English and Old Icelandic literature. His lectures were marvellous: engaging, entertaining and highly memorable, and a lot of my friends studying completely different subjects used to ...more
This book functions as a key to helping the reader understand Tolkien's purposes and meanings in his major writings.
This complex and yet highly readable literary criticism and commentary of J R R Tolkien's major works, and examination of his influences, should be the begin many discussions that engage the reader deeper and deeper into the complexities of Tolkien's works.
Professor Shippey had the privilege of teaching from Tolkien's syllabus at Oxford and brings to this work the rare perspective ...more
This complex and yet highly readable literary criticism and commentary of J R R Tolkien's major works, and examination of his influences, should be the begin many discussions that engage the reader deeper and deeper into the complexities of Tolkien's works.
Professor Shippey had the privilege of teaching from Tolkien's syllabus at Oxford and brings to this work the rare perspective ...more
I really appreciate Shippey's view of Tolkien. Of all the biographies of JRRT I resonate best with Shippey's. He's also intelligent on the writing itself, without slipping into Moorcockian sneer or hagiography.
It's more of an exploratory essay. He discusses what Tolkien's definition of philologist was: not just the quantifier of old words (to paraphrase) but those words within their literary context. Yes, it makes sense, and of course you see this attitude in everything Tolkien did: he loved for ...more
It's more of an exploratory essay. He discusses what Tolkien's definition of philologist was: not just the quantifier of old words (to paraphrase) but those words within their literary context. Yes, it makes sense, and of course you see this attitude in everything Tolkien did: he loved for ...more
This is an absolute masterwork of Tolkien criticism. It is rare I walk away with the feeling and desire to read a non-fiction book over again. He carefully examines all of Tolkien's works, beginning with the Hobbit, moving to three chapters on LOTR, another chapter on The Silmarillion, and finishes the main body of the book with an examination of Tolkien's minor works like Farmer Giles of Ham and others. Though his readings of these last are a bit too autobiographical and allegorical in nature (
...more
I've read Tolkien's standards and they have always appealed to me and in some ways it was more a feeling than an actual understanding of why. I moved on to HoME and many of Tolkien's translations, such as Beowulf, Sigurd, and the Fall of Arthur with more to come, such as Kullervo and Sir Gawain.
I recently read Shippey's "The Road to Middle-Earth" and followed it up with "Author of the Century".
These books helped me better understand in some ways that feeling.
I always understood that there was a ...more
I recently read Shippey's "The Road to Middle-Earth" and followed it up with "Author of the Century".
These books helped me better understand in some ways that feeling.
I always understood that there was a ...more
Mar 24, 2014
Kevin de Ataíde
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
biography
An interesting, scholastic biography, not of Tolkien but of his greatest works, notably the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. It portrays with great care his estimation of tradition and story-telling in society and how an important element of that, moral narrative and allegory, has either completely vanished from his own English society or has been diminished and belittled into childrens' stories. The great vindication of this linguistic theories and his life-long attempt to pr
...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goodreads Librari...: ISBN 0261104012 | 3 | 22 | Nov 10, 2012 07:08PM |
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic. This may appear a surprising claim, which would not have seemed even remotely
conceivable at the start of the century and which is bound to encounter fierce resistance even now. However, when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and also George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity’s Rainbow. The list could readily be extended, back to the late nineteenth century with H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds, and up to writers currently active like Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin. It could take in authors as different, not to say opposed, as Kingsley and Martin Amis, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Don DeLillo, and Julian Barnes. By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode.
This is not the same, one should note, as fantasy as a literary genre – of the authors listed above, only four besides Tolkien would find their works regularly placed on the ‘fantasy’ shelves of bookshops, and ‘the fantastic’ includes many genres besides fantasy: allegory and parable, fairy-tale, horror and science fiction, modern ghost-story and medieval romance. Nevertheless, the point remains.
Those authors of the twentieth century who have spoken most powerfully to and for their contemporaries have for some reason found it necessary to use the metaphoric mode of fantasy, to write about worlds and creatures which we know do not exist, whether Tolkien’s ‘Middle-earth’, Orwell’s ‘Ingsoc’, the remote islands of Golding and Wells, or the Martians and Tralfa-madorians who burst into peaceful English or American suburbia in Wells and Vonnegut. A ready explanation for this phenomenon is of course that it represents a kind of literary disease, whose sufferers – the millions of readers of fantasy – should be scorned, pitied, or rehabilitated back to correct and proper taste. Commonly the disease is said to be ‘escapism’: readers and writers of fantasy are fleeing from reality. The problem with this is that so many of the originators of the later twentieth-century fantastic mode, including all four of those first mentioned above (Tolkien, Orwell, Golding, Vonnegut) are combat veterans, present at or at least deeply involved in the most traumatically significant events of the century, such as the Battle of the Somme (Tolkien), the bombing of Dresden (Vonnegut), the rise and early victory of fascism (Orwell). Nor can anyone say that they turned their backs on these events. Rather, they had to find some way of communicating and commenting on them. It is strange that this had, for some reason, in so many cases to involve fantasy as well as realism, but that is what has happened.”
—
2 likes
conceivable at the start of the century and which is bound to encounter fierce resistance even now. However, when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and also George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity’s Rainbow. The list could readily be extended, back to the late nineteenth century with H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds, and up to writers currently active like Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin. It could take in authors as different, not to say opposed, as Kingsley and Martin Amis, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Don DeLillo, and Julian Barnes. By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode.
This is not the same, one should note, as fantasy as a literary genre – of the authors listed above, only four besides Tolkien would find their works regularly placed on the ‘fantasy’ shelves of bookshops, and ‘the fantastic’ includes many genres besides fantasy: allegory and parable, fairy-tale, horror and science fiction, modern ghost-story and medieval romance. Nevertheless, the point remains.
Those authors of the twentieth century who have spoken most powerfully to and for their contemporaries have for some reason found it necessary to use the metaphoric mode of fantasy, to write about worlds and creatures which we know do not exist, whether Tolkien’s ‘Middle-earth’, Orwell’s ‘Ingsoc’, the remote islands of Golding and Wells, or the Martians and Tralfa-madorians who burst into peaceful English or American suburbia in Wells and Vonnegut. A ready explanation for this phenomenon is of course that it represents a kind of literary disease, whose sufferers – the millions of readers of fantasy – should be scorned, pitied, or rehabilitated back to correct and proper taste. Commonly the disease is said to be ‘escapism’: readers and writers of fantasy are fleeing from reality. The problem with this is that so many of the originators of the later twentieth-century fantastic mode, including all four of those first mentioned above (Tolkien, Orwell, Golding, Vonnegut) are combat veterans, present at or at least deeply involved in the most traumatically significant events of the century, such as the Battle of the Somme (Tolkien), the bombing of Dresden (Vonnegut), the rise and early victory of fascism (Orwell). Nor can anyone say that they turned their backs on these events. Rather, they had to find some way of communicating and commenting on them. It is strange that this had, for some reason, in so many cases to involve fantasy as well as realism, but that is what has happened.”
“Why could Tolkien not be more like Sir Thomas Malory, asked [Edwin] Muir, in the third Observer review of those cited above, and give us heroes and heroines like Lancelot and Guinevere, who ' knew temptation, were sometimes unfaithful to their vows,' were engagingly marked by adulterous passion? But T.H. White had already considered that paradigm, was indeed rewriting it at the same time as Tolkien in The Once and Future King; and he had seen the core of Malory's work not in romantic vice but in the human urge to murder. In White the poisonous adder that provokes the last disastrous battle is no adder but a harmless grass-snake, and the flash of the sword which brings on the two armies is not natural self-defense but natural blood-lust, creating a continuum from cruelty to animals to world wars and holocausts. Malory has to be rewritten to encompass a new view of evil.”
—
1 likes
More quotes…
