Tolkien's View

From Tolkien Gateway
Tolkien's View: Windows into his World
Tolkiens View Windows into his World.png
AuthorJ.S. Ryan
PublisherWalking Tree Publishers
Released15 August 2009
FormatPaperback
Pages286
ISBN978-3-905703-13-9
SeriesCormarë Series
Preceded byTolkien's The Lord of the Rings – Sources of Inspiration
Followed byMusic in Middle-earth

Tolkien's View: Windows into his World is a collection of essays on J.R.R. Tolkien and his works. It was published as No. 19 in the Cormarë Series.

According to Jason Fisher, this book is the first of two planned volumes collecting the essays of Ryan.[1]

From the publisher[edit | edit source]

'Tolkien's View: Windows into his World' contains a number of selected essays by Professor J.S. Ryan, for their most part originally published over three decades from the 1960s to the 1990s, on the theme of J.R.R. Tolkien and his works. Having himself studied under Professor Tolkien at the time of the publication of his masterwork The Lord of the Rings, Professor J.S. Ryan is uniquely well-placed to comment on some aspects of Tolkien's academic environment in Oxford, the subject matters J.R.R. Tolkien studied and brooded upon in his regular professional work and the people he personally knew, cherished and was influenced by as a student and then as a professor of Old and Middle English, a writer and a person.Note on the cover: The stunning cover photograph by John Gibbons, which extends over the full width of the front and back covers, shows the view of Merton Meadows, Oxford, seen from the window of Tolkien's study.

Contents[edit | edit source]

  • Preface
  • Introduction and Background
  • List of Abbreviations and References
  • Part A. Early Biographic Pieces and Emerging Tastes
    • Those Birmingham Quietists: J.R.R. Tolkien and J.H. Shorthouse (1834–1903)
    • The Oxford Undergraduate Studies in Early English and Related Languages of J.R.R. Tolkien (1913–1915)
    • An Important Influence: His Professor’s Wife, Mrs Elizabeth Mary (Lea) Wright
    • Trolls and Other Themes – William Craigie’s Significant Folkloric Influence on the Style of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit
    • Homo Ludens — Amusement, Play and Seeking in Tolkien’s earliest Romantic Thought
    • Edith, St. Edith of Wilton and the other English Western Saints
  • Part B. The Young Professor and his Early Publishing
    • Tolkien and George Gordon: or, A Close Colleague and His notion of ‘Myth-maker’ and of Historiographic Jeux d’Esprit
    • J.R.R. Tolkien: Lexicography and other Early Linguistic Preferences
    • The Work and Preferences of the Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1945
    • The Poem ‘Mythopoeia’ as an Early Statement of Tolkien’s Artistic and Religious Position
    • Tolkien’s Concept of Philology as Mythology
    • By ‘Significant’ Compounding “We Pass Insensibly into the World of the Epic”
    • Barrow-wights, Hog-boys and the evocation of The Battle of the Goths and Huns and of St. Guthlac
    • Dynamic Metahistory and the Model of Christopher Dawson
    • Folktale, Fairy Tale, and the Creation of a Story
    • The Wild Hunt, Sir Orfeo and J.R.R. Tolkien
    • Mid-Century Perceptions of the Ancient Celtic Peoples of ‘England’
    • Germanic Mythology Applied – the Extension of the Literary Folk Memory
    • Perilous Roads to the East, from Weathertop and through the Borgo Pass
    • Before Puck – the Púkel-men and the puca
  • Appendix. Othin in England – Evidence from the Poetry for a Cult of Woden in *Anglo-Saxon England
  • Bibliography
  • Index

External links[edit | edit source]

References

  1. Jason Fisher, "New Books this Summer: Part One" dated 14 August 2009, Lingwë: Musings of a Fish (accessed 9 March 2012)


Cormarë Series volumes
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