Tolkien and the Modernists

Tolkien and the Modernists PDF Author: Theresa Freda Nicolay
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476617201
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
The Lord of the Rings rarely makes an appearance in college courses that aim to examine modern British and American literature. Only in recent years have the fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien and his friend, C.S. Lewis, made their way into college syllabi alongside T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land or F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. This volume aims to situate Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings within the literary period whose sensibility grew out of the 19th-century rise of secularism and industrialism, which culminated in the cataclysm of world war. During a pivotal moment in the history of Western culture, both Tolkien and his contemporaries--the literary modernists--engaged with the past in order to make sense of the present world, especially in the wake of World War I. While Tolkien and the modernists share many of the same concerns, their responses to the crisis of modernity are often antithetical. While the work of the modernists emphasizes alienation and despair, Tolkien's work underscores the value of fellowship and hope.

Tolkien and the Modernists

Tolkien and the Modernists PDF Author: Theresa Freda Nicolay
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476617201
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
The Lord of the Rings rarely makes an appearance in college courses that aim to examine modern British and American literature. Only in recent years have the fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien and his friend, C.S. Lewis, made their way into college syllabi alongside T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land or F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. This volume aims to situate Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings within the literary period whose sensibility grew out of the 19th-century rise of secularism and industrialism, which culminated in the cataclysm of world war. During a pivotal moment in the history of Western culture, both Tolkien and his contemporaries--the literary modernists--engaged with the past in order to make sense of the present world, especially in the wake of World War I. While Tolkien and the modernists share many of the same concerns, their responses to the crisis of modernity are often antithetical. While the work of the modernists emphasizes alienation and despair, Tolkien's work underscores the value of fellowship and hope.

Defending Middle-Earth

Defending Middle-Earth PDF Author: Patrick Curry
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0544106563
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
A scholar explores the ideas within The Lord of the Rings and the world created by J. R. R. Tolkien: “A most valuable and timely book” (Ursula K. Le Guin, Los Angeles Times–bestselling author of Changing Planes). What are millions of readers all over the world getting out of reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Defending Middle-earth argues, in part, that the appeal for fans goes far deeper than just quests and magic rings and hobbits. In fact, through this epic, Tolkien found a way to provide something close to spirit in a secular age. This thoughtful book focuses on three main aspects of Tolkien’s fiction: the social and political structure of Middle-earth and how the varying cultures within it find common cause in the face of a shared threat; the nature and ecology of Middle-earth and how what we think of as the natural world joins the battle against mindless, mechanized destruction; and the spirituality and ethics of Middle-earth—for which the author provides a particularly insightful and resonant examination. Includes a new afterword

Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism

Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism PDF Author: Harry Raphael Garvin
Publisher: Lewisburg [Pa.] : Bucknell University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description


A Shrinking Island

A Shrinking Island PDF Author: Joshua Esty
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400825741
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This book describes a major literary culture caught in the act of becoming minor. In 1939, Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary, "Civilisation has shrunk." Her words captured not only the onset of World War II, but also a longer-term reversal of national fortune. The first comprehensive account of modernism and imperialism in England, A Shrinking Island tracks the joint eclipse of modernist aesthetics and British power from the literary experiments of the 1930s through the rise of cultural studies in the 1950s. Jed Esty explores the effects of declining empire on modernist form--and on the very meaning of Englishness. He ranges from canonical figures (T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf) to influential midcentury intellectuals (J. M. Keynes and J.R.R. Tolkien), from cultural studies pioneers (Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson) to postwar migrant writers (George Lamming and Doris Lessing). Focusing on writing that converts the potential energy of the contracting British state into the language of insular integrity, he argues that an anthropological ethos of cultural holism came home to roost in late-imperial England. Esty's interpretation challenges popular myths about the death of English literature. It portrays the survivors of the modernist generation not as aesthetic dinosaurs, but as participants in the transition from empire to welfare state, from metropolitan art to national culture. Mixing literary criticism with postcolonial theory, his account of London modernism's end-stages and after-lives provides a fresh take on major works while redrawing the lines between modernism and postmodernism.

The Fellowship

The Fellowship PDF Author: Philip Zaleski
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713790
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times. In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections and vexations that drove the group's most significant members. C. S. Lewis accepts Jesus Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, maps the medieval and Renaissance mind, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating, for family and friends, the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner, and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years-and did so in dazzling style.

Tolkien

Tolkien PDF Author: B. Rosebury
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230599982
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This comprehensive and discriminating account of Tolkien's work has been revised and expanded, to take account both of recent developments in scholarship, and of the recent films directed by Peter Jackson. Tracing the development of Tolkien's creative technique over several decades, it explores the bewildering profusion of shorter works, as well as devoting an extended analysis to The Lord of the Rings . Chapters consider Tolkien's contribution to the history of ideas, and review the reception of the Lord of the Rings film adaptations and other popular adaptations of his work.

A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien

A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien PDF Author: Stuart D. Lee
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118517482
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
This is a complete resource for scholars and students of Tolkien, as well as avid fans, with coverage of his life, work, dominant themes, influences, and the critical reaction to his writing. An in-depth examination of Tolkien’s entire work by a cadre of top scholars Provides up-to-date discussion and analysis of Tolkien’s scholarly and literary works, including his latest posthumous book, The Fall of Arthur, as well as addressing contemporary adaptations, including the new Hobbit films Investigates various themes across his body of work, such as mythmaking, medieval languages, nature, war, religion, and the defeat of evil Discusses the impact of his work on art, film, music, gaming, and subsequent generations of fantasy writers

A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages

A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages PDF Author: J. R. R. Tolkien
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0008131406
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
First ever critical study of Tolkien’s little-known essay, which reveals how language invention shaped the creation of Middle-earth and beyond, to George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones.

Forgotten Leaves

Forgotten Leaves PDF Author: Jessica Burke
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781534923461
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
In June 2015 Myth Ink Books released an Advance Copy of Forgotten Leaves: Essays from a Smial at the New York Tolkien Conference. This volume of essays is a mixture of new Tolkien studies and previously published papers from the Journal of the Northeast Tolkien Society (once a smial of the Tolkien Society UK). Forgotten Leaves showcases fans as the first scholars. This publication presents a scholarly discussion that is open to scholars and non-scholars alike. Forgotten Leaves has discussions that are academic, fannish, and pleasant blend of the two.

Approaches to Teaching Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Other Works

Approaches to Teaching Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Other Works PDF Author: Leslie A. Donovan
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 1603292071
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
A philologist and medieval scholar, J. R. R. Tolkien never intended to write immensely popular literature that would challenge traditional ideas about the nature of great literature and that was worthy of study in colleges across the world. He set out only to write a good story, the kind of story he and his friends would enjoy reading. In The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien created an entire world informed by his vast knowledge of mythology, languages, and medieval literature. In the 1960s, his books unexpectedly gained cult status with a new generation of young, countercultural readers. Today, the readership for Tolkien's absorbing secondary world--filled with monsters, magic, adventure, sacrifice, and heroism--continues to grow. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," introduces instructors to the rich array of resources available for teaching Tolkien, including editions and criticism of his fiction and scholarship, historical material on his life and times, audiovisual materials, and film adaptations of his fiction. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," help instructors introduce students to critical debates around Tolkien's work, its sources, its influence, and its connection to ecology, religion, and science. Contributors draw on interdisciplinary approaches to outline strategies for teaching Tolkien in a wide variety of classroom contexts.