J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century in J.R.R. Tolkien

Dec 28, 2021 Allison rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I decided to not read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for the first time in 10 years! (Not sure this was a good idea; I missed it!) I wanted to read something Tolkien-related though. This was a great choice. It was incredibly interesting and incredibly dense. It took a long while to get through, piece by piece, but was worth it.

I particularly enjoyed the exploration of Tolkien’s apparent views on evil. Fascinating, relevant, and inspiring.

The author knows so much about the topics; he’s a ...more

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May 27, 2020 Rob rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, language, non-fiction, tolkien, biography, mythology, critique

This book is written by, with Christopher Tolkien's passing, the leading scholar of Tolkien's works, Tom Shippey.

Despite the hyperbolic sounding title, Shippey does not argue that Tolkien is the greatest author of the 20th Century (though I would be tempted to agree). He means that Tolkien's writing, though fantastic in style, is firmly rooted in 20th Century ideals and issues. His major contemplation is the nature of evil. Tolkien fought in World War I and saw his sons off into World War II and This book is written by, with Christopher Tolkien's passing, the leading scholar of Tolkien's works, Tom Shippey.

Despite the hyperbolic sounding title, Shippey does not argue that Tolkien is the greatest author of the 20th Century (though I would be tempted to agree). He means that Tolkien's writing, though fantastic in style, is firmly rooted in 20th Century ideals and issues. His major contemplation is the nature of evil. Tolkien fought in World War I and saw his sons off into World War II and whereas his contemporaries went down the trajectory of cynicism (Orwell, Vonnegut, and Golding), Tolkien dared to consider an optimistic, if tenuous, appraisal of humankind.

In the most compelling chapter of the book for me, Shippey discusses at length the constrasting views of evil - Boethian and Manichaean. The Boethian view is that there is no such thing as evil, per se, but that the perception of evil is really the absence of good. Evil arose out of the exercise of free will where people chose not to follow the intentions of God. According to Boethius, evil is caused by internal human sin. The Manichaean view considers the world as a battleground between the powers of good and evil.

Tolkien uses both these views in his Lord of the Rings. For example, in the Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf asks Frodo to hand him the ring for a moment, Tolkien writes that Frodo "handed it slowly to the wizard. It felt suddenly very heavy, as if either it or Frodo himself was in some way reluctant for Gandalf to touch it." The internal and external views of evil appear here, early in the tale. Shippey's analysis here is fascinating.

One of Tolkien's inspirations for creating his world was that there was no known mythology for the people of his home country - specifically the West Midland people (known as Mercia centuries ago). Whereas the Grimm Brothers were able to compile folk tales of their own Germanic heritage, Elias Lönnrot could compile Finnish tales into the Kalevala, and the Welsh have King Arthur, no such sources existed for the West Midland people.

Tolkien employed philology, the study of the history and structure on languages, to develop as a type of archaeology. In one aspect, he used this approach to bring historical authenticity to his created world. Middle-earth is not a world that lived on a distant planet, it is a supposed pre-history of our Earth. So whereas he used the world 'goblin' in The Hobbit, he recognized the term is out of place since it first appeared around the 16th Century and is likely derived from the Latin cobalus. Tolkien knew from Old English texts that the compound word orc-neas in Beowulf meant 'demon-corpses'. Thus the term orc was born.

A second aspect of Tolkien's archaeological use of philology is to sometimes correct ancient Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Shippey gets a little technical here, but I appreciate that. It gives a better glimpse into the incredible skill of this master philologist that no longer exists today. There is a line in the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that uses the word wodwos, which is translated as 'wood-trolls' by some people. This word should be plural since all the other creatures mentioned in this verse are plural as well. However, the speculated singular, *wodwo does not fit Old English etymology. Tolkien suspected the poem's copyist should have written wod-wosen but had wrongly assumed the -s ending was already the plural.

Now here is the really cool part. Tolkien would walk to work at the University of Leeds and regularly go by streets called Woodhouse Lane, Woodhouse Ridge, and Woodhouse Moor. It is easy to imagine Tolkien wondering the origin of this frequently used word. It could of course mean simply 'a house of wood.' However, it could also have come from the Old English since wood-wose would be pronounced the same as 'woodhouse.' So the modern day spelling could be a mistake like the Gawain copyist. So these street names could preserve the name of some creature from the ancient world. This gave birth to the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods that are first mentioned in The Return of the King.

This is just a taste of the insights Shippey brings to Tolkien's works - from the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings to his other writings. If you found any of this interesting, I strongly suggest you pick up this book! ...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Carol rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book really appealed to the nerd in me, digging deep into Tolkien's inspiration, study of Old and Middle English, and the hundreds of texts and stories that influenced LOTR. The author kind of got annoying after awhile though with his near-fanatical praise of Tolkien, constantly talking about how Tolkien's critics and other ordinary-folk like you and me just can't possibly understand Tolkien's genius. Okay, I get it, Tolkien was a literary genius. No one can dispute that. But the author's c ...more

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