tolkien literary purists' Journal (original) (raw)

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Friday, May 10, 2013

9:39AM - Tolkien Studies 10: an announcement

My co-editors, Michael D.C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger, are currently at the Kalamazoo medieval studies congress, where Tolkien tracks are a major event, so it is left to me at home to acquaint that small part of the Tolkienian world that is not there with the expected contents of Volume 10 of the journal Tolkien Studies. Oh, there's much I could say about these, but I'll let the titles speak for themselves. All of the works are now in the hands of our publisher, West Virginia University Press, and the volume is scheduled to be published in hardcover and on Project MUSE in July or August. - David Bratman, co-editor

Tolkien Studies 10 (2013)

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Notes and Documents

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Book Reviews

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Thursday, November 16, 2006

5:06PM - wiki's article of the day is on JRRTolkien!

I get the Daily Article email from Wiki, and today's is on Tolkien!

J. R. R. Tolkien was a British writer and university professor and is
best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He
was a professor of Anglo-Saxon language at Oxford University from 1925
to 1945, and of English language and literature, also at Oxford, from
1945 to 1959. He was a strongly committed Roman Catholic. Tolkien was
a close friend of C. S. Lewis, with whom he shared membership in the
literary discussion group the Inklings. In addition to The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's published fiction includes The
Silmarillion and other posthumously published books about what he
called a legendarium, a connected body of tales, fictional histories,
invented languages, and other literary essays about an imagined world
called Arda, and Middle-earth. Most of these works were compiled from
Tolkien's notes by his son Christopher Tolkien. The enduring
popularity and influence of Tolkien's works have established him as
the "father of modern fantasy literature". Tolkien's other published
fiction includes stories not directly related to the legendarium, some
of them originally told to his children.

Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien

Saturday, October 7, 2006

Monday, September 18, 2006

11:11AM - press release: The Children of Hurin

This comes via e-mail from a a reliable source (I haven't seen anything yet on the official sites). I know nothing more of it than this: ( Read more...Collapse )

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

11:21PM - Introduction and Order

Greetings! I've started a goal I've had for a while which is to read all of Tolkien's books about Middle-Earth. I've read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings before, but it's been a very long time. Is there a recommended order to reading all of these? Should I re-read the The Hobbit and LotR before starting a History of Middle-Earth? What about the Silmarilion, when should that be read? Sure I can just dive right in, but I really want to get my head around the entire world that Tolkien created.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

7:17PM

I know this is a bit off topic, but...

I'm currently reading an essay on Arthurian myths and legends, and I found something interesting. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, one of Emperor Costantine's cousins, called Conan Meriadoc, was one of those who left Britain after the Saxons' invasions. He eventually went back to Britain to fight the Saxons with his brother,who was also Arthur's father, Uther. Well, the name Conan became rather common in Britain, while the name Meriadoc disappeared for 8 centuries...till Tolkien used it for one of his hobbits. So Tolkien was the first one to mention that name after Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Just thought it was funny.

Monday, November 21, 2005

4:05PM - Brief introduction...!

Hi all!*waves*

I've just joined this community!Let me introduce myself..My name's Silvia,I'm 21 and I'm from Rome.I'm a student at University studying languages,but I have lots of other interests - art,literature and,above all,Shakespeare.I love reading,and I wish I had more time for pleasure reading..!I read The Lord of the rings 2 years ago,then I read the Silmarillion (which is my favourite one so far) and The Hobbit.I can't really explain why I fell in love with Tolkien..his world is so fascinating,and it includes a lot of other things I love,like medieval stories,languages,mythology.

Anyway..as you can see,there are lots of books I haven't read yet,so..any advice?

I hope to make friends in this community!:)

Saturday, November 19, 2005

1:11AM

I am desperately looking for the text of "Imram", a poem By J.R.R. Tolkien!
Does anybody have it (in any format) to share?
Or does anybody know where I can download it?
Many thanks to everybody in advance!

Saturday, April 23, 2005

5:55PM - Hola!

Greetings! My name is Allegra and I am new to this community. 'The Lord of the Rings' is my favorite book of all time (I consider it to be one book, since that's how Tolkien originally intended it). My favorite of the books is definately 'The Return of the King'. I was also extremely pleased with Peter Jackson's film. I thought it was for the most part very true to Tolkien and just a superb movie with great actors, all of which were perfect for their roles. I am planning on reading more on the history of Middle-Earth (The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales, etc.), but at the moment I'm way too busy with school for pleasure reading, unfortunately :(

Anyways, just so you know a little more about me, I'm a Christian and I love to read, write, draw and hang out with my friends. Some of my favorite things are: books (especially Classic literature), art, strawberry shortcake, Shakespeare, poetry, peanut butter (lol), quotes, horses (although I love all animals), wildlife, mythology, and movies. I'm also a bit of a tomboy and I love sports. Oh yeah, and did I mention I'm very talkative? Well, I hope to be seeing you guys around!

Thursday, February 24, 2005

12:41PM - Return of the Convention - Bristol 26-27th 2005

Return of the Convention (http://www.nadobra.com/conv/, 26th-27th March 2005 in Bristol, UK) will be attended by actor and stuntman Kiran Shah. All profits from the event will go to The Red Cross who are deeply involved in current relief efforts after the Asian Tsunami. Other guests are Jed Brophy, Alan Lee and John Howe.

Kiran will be available for autographs to all attendees and will be giving a presentation. We are also excited to be able to offer a stunt workshop with Kiran and Jed Brophy to a limited number of people.

RotC are also offering the opportunity to attend an art workshop with Alan Lee and John Howe and Practical Sword and Shield Wall workshops with LANISTA Ancient Warfare Academy. All workshops will be fully participatory. Other events will include showings of Dominic Monaghan's 'An Insomniac's Nightmare' and the John Howe documentary 'There and Back Again'. See website for full schedule details.

Please pass this info on to anyone who may be interested.

Monday, February 7, 2005

11:22AM - Tolkien Novels - Book Club?

The following link is to a post I just made in my blog. If anyone has any ideas or is in the target group for the post's topic, I'd love to hear from you. I'm hoping that others are wanting to start reading the novels (or start again) and I'm not just the only one. And to not only read, but perhaps blog a little as we go along. Thanks, everyone.

http://www.hesaysandshesays.com/2005/02/book_club_idea.html

Sunday, January 9, 2005

6:49PM

Hello, my name is Zachary. I'm a 20 year old college student from Massachusetts. I was introduced to Tolkien by my mother who read the Hobbit to me as a child.

Thursday, January 6, 2005

2:49PM - The History of Middle-Earth

For those who are interested, I'm selling the first 6 books of the HoME series, all early UK hardback editions in top condition:

Click here for sale

Sorry for x-post!

Sunday, September 12, 2004

11:45PM - On running a tolkien panel at worldcon

Well after work, I went right back to the con, and got back and met up with Ken and Mercy. I got back just in time to go to the panel I wanted to attend on Tolkien.

Just as I was heading to the panel with Ken, we bumped into Nightwing, who was comming out of the ladies room. So she went to the panel with us.

No one showed up to moderate the panel, so the attendies tried to turn it into a chat session. But that was not working, to many conversations were breaking out. Some people were talking a lot, while others were not speaking at all, but I could see in their faces that they wanted to speak. I kept wishing that someone whould step up and organize the panel. In fact, I kept trying to send mental messages to Ken, who I figured as an experience moderater would take over.

I finally realized that if I was that upset at the colapse of the panel, that I should do something. So I did, I got up and took over the panel.

I told everyone that I did not want to control the thoughts, only the process, so that everyone would get their turn to speak. This was a 10:30 or so, and I asked everyone at midnight if it was alright to end now. But I think that we could have continued for far longer. People even came up to me after wards and thank me for doing it. And I was even told that I did a good job running the discussion.

My favorite part of the panel was when we taked about or favorite part of the books, and our favorite character. Everyone was on agreement with Tolkien that Samwise was the hero of the story.

My favorite scene in the books covers a span of time, I like to compaire the early scenes of the trip, when Sam tells Frodo that he hopes to see an elephant on the trip, then the person that Sam has become when he see's the elephant. I compare those two events to how Tolkien himself must have felt before and after the war.

He went in to his 'adventure' a niave young man, and returned much harder, just as Sam does.

Anyone else?

Saturday, July 31, 2004

3:17PM

Hi, I'm posting this all over my favorite communities so I'm sorry if you see this more than once.

Inspired by Christopher Lee's yearly reading of the Lord of the Rings, I decided to read the books once a year. Last year I read the trilogy in mid January (into early February) and I think I've waited long enough for this reading. So, I was wondering if anyone would want to do the same with me? We could read a certain amount every week and then discuss. I love reading these books and I think it'd be excellent to be able to discuss them while reading.

:)

-Sam

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

2:15PM - A Long-expected Party

Happy 50th, Fellowship of the Ring!

I know it's a little early - it's still the 28th in Denver, but TORn has started the party with three threads on its main board devoted to the 50th anniversary celebration.

My personal favorite - a pants thread!
For those of you new to the game, you substitute the word "pants" for a line from the book or movie.
For example, Boromir's line: "Gondor has no king, Gondor needs no king" is translated to "Gondor has no pants, Gondor needs no pants."

TORn will have three days of 50th anniversary threads to celebrate this auspicious occasion.

So what are you all doing to celebrate? I'm taking the day off tomorrow to re-read at least part of FOTR and a Verlyn Fleiger book on Faerie that I hadn't read yet. Also going to a 50th birthday party tonight hosted by the Denver Tolkien Society.

Thursday, July 8, 2004

10:21PM - Reading the books again after the movies

It being a while since I'd read the Lord of the Rings (I've long ago stopped counting the number of times), I figured it was high time to do so again.

I was also interested to see if the film has affected my mental picture of the story, or more particularly, the characters.

Interestingly, it has and it hasn't. Characters like Gandalf I've always had so clearly pictured that it would be hard to think of them any other way - and thankfully, the casting of the films was so spot on that it didn't offend me, either.

Others, like maybe Legolas, or even to an extent Frodo, I don't think I had as crystal-clear a picture of, so as I read, they are taking on some of the attributes of their film representation.

Has anybody else experienced a similar or opposite reaction, we wonders, we does?

Friday, June 11, 2004

11:37PM - Introducing...!

How I was inducted into the cult of Tolkien introduced to the works of Tolkien.
I was practically born a Tolkien fan. My dad has been a fan since the 60s, and he read The Hobbit and the Fellowship to me when I was a kid. After that, I was too impatient to listen to it aloud, so I read it myself. Before the movies came out I went back and re-read the books, and now I'm contemplating tackling the Silmarillion.

Tuesday, June 1, 2004

6:39PM - Influence?

Hello, I have a question that has been bothering me for some time now and was hoping that someone here would be able to help me out.

In english class the professor said that 'The Ring Circle' (I don't remember the authors name) influenced J.R.R Tolkein's 'The Lord of the Rings'. Has anyone heard of this before? Does anyone know the author of 'The Ring Circle'? I've been going to some Library and book sites to find out more but I am coming up empty handed. I think that Wagner wrote an Opera about a ring or something like that, but am not sure.

Any help would be greatful, and sorry if this is a little off topic.
:)

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

10:35AM

Que 2:

Witch-King of Angmar.
Who is this? A Nazgul?
Where would I find stories about him?

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