Aragorn

But this book does not offer a single page of original and unpublished work. What then is the need, now, for such a book? (Beren and Lúthien 11) That, as a Danish prince once said, is the question. There are, indeed, no words of J. R. R. Tolkien here that have not already appeared in The Silmarillion or The History of Middle-earth, and there are many which have been left out. As Christopher points out in the preface, this particular tale changed dramatically over the years, becoming more and…

It’s no surprise that this story is based off a war, more specifically World War I. J.R.R Tolkien was in his first phases of creating the story when the war started, so what better place to draw inspiration from. The Fellowship and Sauron’s war is meant to, in a sense, embody World War I. The book itself was published almost to the day, 40 years after WWI started. Throughout the story the main theme is good versus evil, which is the main point of a war one side is made of wrong doers the other…

In 2001, the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo allowed three sessions on Tolkien to be presented. That seminal event was the ‘nucleus’ from which this collection sprang. For forty years, editor Jane Chance, Professor Emerita in English of Rice University, has written and taught medieval literature, medieval culture, medieval women and modern medievalism. She has authored or edited five critical studies of Tolkien’s work, as well as numerous…