24 Result(s)
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Book
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Chapter
Epilogue
“One must stop somewhere.”
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Experience of War in Tolkien’s Fiction
On March 2, 1916, a few weeks before he was to marry, Tolkien wrote a diary-like letter to his fiance, Edith. He found himself stationed in Staffordshire with his battalion, which was due to be sent to the Wes...
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Interlude at Leeds
The professor of English at the University of Leeds, founded in 1904, died suddenly in a drowning accident in 1919, and in the following year, the university announced a new post as reader in English. Tolkien ...
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Language behind Everything
Språksnille (= linguistic genius) was a Swedish word that Tolkien became attracted to. He enjoyed the beauty of sounds, especially in Welsh and Finnish, but also in the Scandinavian languages. I once sent Tolkien...
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Tolkien’s Double Worlds
The origin and inspiration for my work on Tolkien were, in the first place, my own understanding of Tolkien’s ideas from my meetings with the author in the 1960s and 1970s. Tolkien’s oral descriptions of Middl...
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The Reception of The Lord of the Rings in the World
Tolkien’s debut on the world market, The Hobbit (1937), was met with a benevolent reception both in reviews and among readers, and not least in two unsigned reviews in The Times Literary Supplement and in The Tim...
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From Bloemfontein to Birmingham
During the 1960s, I was constantly impressed by Tolkien’s detailed reminiscences of his early life. Even his memory of his holiday with his mother near Cape Town at the age of three seemed a natural result of ...
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Facts and Fiction
What is reality? What is nonreality? What is unreality?
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An Orphan Drawn to Reading
From having his own single mother to acquiring a guardian and single adoptive father seems to be a long step for a twelve-year-old boy. Father Francis became a father-figure who guided Ronald firmly in his edu...
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Soldier at the Front
In June 1914, Oxford was as usual teeming with activities related to the university. There were examinees, visiting relatives, fellow students, and girlfriends. All of them began to return home, one after the ...
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Research as Motor
How early in life can a research talent be identified? When does a child’s curiosity lead to collections of facts, so that a scientific problem can be solved, or when is problem-solving on analytical grounds n...
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Our First Meeting
Suddenly there he was, J.R.R. Tolkien, standing in front of his house at number 76 Sandfield Road, in Headington, just outside Oxford. He had kept an eye out for me from the sizeable detached house, which had ...
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Interplay between Research and Fiction
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a brilliant example of English heroic-romantic literature from the Middle Ages. Tolkien’s translation into modern English of this romance, which is filled with humor and wit, pe...
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Like Lightning from a Clear Sky
When I came to know Oxford in the 1950s, I was struck primarily by the unique atmosphere. The streets were teeming with students, most of them wearing their academic gowns. The dons and fellows with their long...
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The AB Language: A Unique Discovery
“What a coincidence!” These were the spontaneous words that Tolkien almost cried out when I first described to him my interest in the medieval dialects of the English West Midlands. My plans for my doctoral th...
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On the Truth of Myth
Because Tolkien’s early childhood and school days were so turbulent, with so many changes of address and environment, that he was able to develop his imagination and curiosity from an early age. With qualities...
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The Final Years
One beautiful summer’s day in 1972, I stood in front of 21 Merton Street in Oxford, waiting for J.R.R. Tolkien, the cult figure, recluse, and world-renowned celebrity, professor, and fantasy writer, a figure r...
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New Media
The screen version of The Lord of the Rings supports my view that it is quite possible for all of us to interpret Tolkien to our own taste. Through the films, it became clear that Tolkien presented a world that c...
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From Sarehole to Shire
Was Tolkien strongly aware, when he worked on The Lord of the Rings, that his construction of the Shire was inspired by specific sceneries of his childhood?
