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Understanding The lord of the rings : the best of Tolkien criticism / edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs.

Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublication details: Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2004.Description: 294 p. ; 22 cmISBN:
  • 061842251X
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction : on the pleasures of (reading and writing) Tolkien criticism / Neil D. Isaacs -- The dethronement of power / C.S. Lewis -- The lord of the hobbits : J.R.R. Tolkien / Edmund Fuller -- The quest hero / W.H. Auden -- Power and meaning in the lord of the rings / Patricia Meyer Spacks -- Moral vision in the lord of the rings / Rose A. Zimbardo -- Men, halflings, and hero worship / Marion Zimmer Bradley -- Tolkien and the fairy story / R.J. Reilly -- Folktale, fairy tale, and the creation of a story / J.S. Ryan -- Frodo and Aragorn : the concept of the hero / Verlyn Flieger -- Middle-earth : an imaginary world? / Paul Kocher -- Tolkien : archetype and word / Patrick Grant -- Myth, history, and time in the lord of the rings / Lionel Basney -- The lord of the rings : Tolkien's epic / Jane Chance -- Another road to middle-earth : Jackson's movie trilogy / Tom Shippey.
Summary: Publisher's description: When first published, The Lord of the Rings stood far from the mainstream: no one had seen anything like it for decades. Tolkien's almost stridently antimodern tale needed valiant defenders, vocal admirers who understood its sources and relished its monumental scale. While such champions of modernism as Edmund Wilson mocked Tolkien's archaic structure and language, W.H. Auden -- a great modernist poet in his own right -- rose to his defense with a spirited essay on the true nature of the Hero Quest. Edmund Fuller's essay collected here discusses the nature of the fairy tale, returning to the roots of the term to remove the treacle of Disney and restore the value of realistic enchantment. Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis takes up the question of why, if you have a serious comment to make about real life, you would drape it in a never-never land of your own. He shrewdly argues that it is because real life does have mythic and heroic qualities -- in abundance. This collection also includes, among others, essays by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Verlyn Flieger, Paul Kocher, Jane Chance, and each of the editors, as well as a brand-new essay by Tom Shippey that shows us how to process all this vast learning, adding to it the many delights of the film versions of Tolkien's epic masterpiece, so we can relish his achievement all the more.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 823.912 U55 Available 33111004923013
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

When first published, The Lord of the Rings stood far from the mainstream: no one had seen anything like it for decades. Tolkien's almost stridently antimodern tale needed valiant defenders, vocal admirers who understood its sources and relished its monumental scale. While such champions of modernism as Edmund Wilson mocked Tolkien's archaic structure and language, W. H. Auden -- a great modernist poet in his own right -- rose to his defense with a spirited essay on the true nature of the Hero Quest. Edmund Fuller's essay collected here discusses the nature of the fairy tale, returning to the roots of the term to remove the treacle of Disney and restore the value of realistic enchantment. Tolkien's friend C. S. Lewis takes up the question of why, if you have a serious comment to make about real life, you would drape it in a never-never land of your own. He shrewdly argues that it is because real life does have mythic and heroic qualities -- in abundance.
This collection also includes, among others, essays by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Verlyn Flieger, Paul Kocher, Jane Chance, and each of the editors, as well as a brand-new essay by Tom Shippey that shows us how to process all this vast learning, adding to it the many delights of the film versions of Tolkien's epic masterpiece, so we can relish his achievement all the more.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-274) and index.

Introduction : on the pleasures of (reading and writing) Tolkien criticism / Neil D. Isaacs -- The dethronement of power / C.S. Lewis -- The lord of the hobbits : J.R.R. Tolkien / Edmund Fuller -- The quest hero / W.H. Auden -- Power and meaning in the lord of the rings / Patricia Meyer Spacks -- Moral vision in the lord of the rings / Rose A. Zimbardo -- Men, halflings, and hero worship / Marion Zimmer Bradley -- Tolkien and the fairy story / R.J. Reilly -- Folktale, fairy tale, and the creation of a story / J.S. Ryan -- Frodo and Aragorn : the concept of the hero / Verlyn Flieger -- Middle-earth : an imaginary world? / Paul Kocher -- Tolkien : archetype and word / Patrick Grant -- Myth, history, and time in the lord of the rings / Lionel Basney -- The lord of the rings : Tolkien's epic / Jane Chance -- Another road to middle-earth : Jackson's movie trilogy / Tom Shippey.

Publisher's description: When first published, The Lord of the Rings stood far from the mainstream: no one had seen anything like it for decades. Tolkien's almost stridently antimodern tale needed valiant defenders, vocal admirers who understood its sources and relished its monumental scale. While such champions of modernism as Edmund Wilson mocked Tolkien's archaic structure and language, W.H. Auden -- a great modernist poet in his own right -- rose to his defense with a spirited essay on the true nature of the Hero Quest. Edmund Fuller's essay collected here discusses the nature of the fairy tale, returning to the roots of the term to remove the treacle of Disney and restore the value of realistic enchantment. Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis takes up the question of why, if you have a serious comment to make about real life, you would drape it in a never-never land of your own. He shrewdly argues that it is because real life does have mythic and heroic qualities -- in abundance. This collection also includes, among others, essays by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Verlyn Flieger, Paul Kocher, Jane Chance, and each of the editors, as well as a brand-new essay by Tom Shippey that shows us how to process all this vast learning, adding to it the many delights of the film versions of Tolkien's epic masterpiece, so we can relish his achievement all the more.

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