A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Stuart D. Lee (review) (original) (raw)
Related papers
ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 2023
This article proposes the addition of four items to “Section A” of Oronzo Cilli’s Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist (2019) and the inclusion of complementary information to two other entries after demonstrating J. R. R. Tolkien’s ownership and acquaintance with the volumes. Tolkien’s contribution to Derek J. Price’s editorial labor and possession of photostats of The Equatorie of the Planetis (c. 1393) as well as editions of Handlyng Synne (started in 1303), Ormulum (c. 1170-1180) and Heimskringla (c. 1220-1230) seem mere encyclopedic data in appearance. However, the addenda reveal strong potential for future investigations by disclosing: the reasons behind Tolkien’s personal interest in scribal corruption, an attempt to anglicize Old Norse dróttkvætt verse, the whereabouts of a batch of twenty to thirty books owned by him, further scholarly attention paid to Handlyng Synne and Ormulum, and Christopher Tolkien’s friendship with Eric Christiansen.
One Name Two Lifetimes One Legendarium One Legacy: Christopher Tolkien
Christopher Tollkien: a Commemoration, 2020
A remarkable man has died, all the more remarkable because he did what he did for another rather than for his own self, purely out of filial duty. JRR Tolkien died September 2nd, 1973. Had his son Christopher not taken it upon himself to quit his successful career at Oxford University to ensure the gradual release into the daylight of much of his father's immeasurable wealth of unpublished material, whether it be Legendarium oriented or other texts and illustrations, and allowed key scholars to do so with his guidance, our love for his father's writings and our understanding of these would be much more restricted. Christopher Reuel 1 was one of his father's earliest collaborators and disciples. Albeit informally, his collaboration with his father began remarkably early, at about four or five years of age, when he commented on his father's inconsistency in changing the colour of Bilbo's front door and of Thorin's tassel during one of his readings of The Hobbit, which he was then writing in serial format. When The Hobbit was made ready for publication, Tolkien paid him for finding errors in the text as published. His feedback on The Lord of the Rings was invaluable to his father and, as chapters emerged one after the other, he was his father's first reader. At Inklings meetings, he took over reading his father's texts, as his elocution and delivery were much clearer than his father's. Later he redrew the maps of LotR for publication. A Fellow of New College, Oxford, and a Lecturer in Old and Middle English and Old Icelandic, Christopher had already established a solid reputation built on his collaboration with Nevill Coghill, another Inkling, on editions of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale, Nun's Priest's Tale and Man of Law's Tale, and on his own edition of the Saga of King Heidrek the Wise. John Bowers, the author of the recent Tolkien's Lost Chaucer, made an apt comparison in the last chapter of his book between Chaucer's own son and Tolkien's, as both worked on the posthumous publications of their father's works. To him, Christopher's skills, seen through the prism of his notes to The Nun's Priest's Tale (1959), ideally prepared him to edit his father's works. Indeed, Christopher would soon apply the same exacting standards to his father's texts that he had acquired on editing centuries old ones.
Tolkien, the Author and the Critic
2005
Tolkien not only taught medieval literature but also edited medieval texts - such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ancrene Wisse -, translated Pearl (a 14th century poem), and wrote important articles on Beowulf and Sir Gawain. A common feature of these articles is the claim for originality: Tolkien asserts that he takes the opposite view from his predecessors; besides,his reflexion on medieval literature seems, over twenty years, extremely coherent concerning heroism and war. Moreover, what seems important to him in these texts corresponds to important elements in his fiction. If the relation between fiction and non-fiction is examined in itself, more globally, Tolkien's works appear to present us a peculiar relation between fiction and essays or articles (his critical comments on medieval literature).
Christopher Tolkien: A Scholar’s Trove
https://elexquisito.com, 2023
This is a review of the compendium book, The Great Tales Never End: Essays in honour of Christopher Tolkien. The review also covers the book's coverage at the Oxford Literary Festival 2023. This coverage included a panel featuring the Bodley Library's Librarian Richard Ovenden, J.R.R. Tolkien writer John Garth, Oxford academic Stuart Lee & DPhil student Grace Khuri. Published in the Spanish & English Language journal El Exquisito. Review Link: https://elexquisito.com/christopher-tolkien-a-scholars-trove/