Tolkien in the News

[Lindariel]

I'm with you Iolanthe and VERY curious to see The Professor's solution to this problem and how he goes about solving the inconsistencies between the four major versions of this myth, plus those tantalizing "missing" pages from the original Edda. This is a MAJOR legend underscoring the development of several key Western cultures. By learning more about this myth, we are learning more about ourselves.

[Riv Res]

JaneT over at Viggo-Works sent me this tidbit about Michael Drout on the History Channel this fall. I think we may want to mark our calendars.

http://www.wormtalk.blogspot.com/

[Philipa]

Hmmm interesting Sept 21st.

[Riv Res]

You're Invited!

It is July 1: Midsummer Day in Middle-earth!

We are Celebrating the Anniversary of the Royal Wedding of King Elessar and Arwen Undómiel this July 1 in a Very Special Way.






Middle-earth Journeys is delighted to invite all of you to our first Open House.

At Middle-earth Journeys we are all about J.R.R.Tolkien and his massive and masterful works of mythology and fiction. We discuss Tolkien's writings and the writings of others who are inspired by, and critique his mythology. We share our Tolkien inspired art and fictional short stories, as well as essays in study the Professor's extensive writings.

We discuss the Tolkien scholars from Shippey to Foster to Kocher and Fleiger and Anderson and Hammond and Scull and Drought ... to Fonstad and Garth and Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien ... and on and on (to name just a few).

We discuss Tolkien artists from Howe to Lee to Garland to Nasmith and Eissmann and the Hildebrandts and Edelfeldt and Carter-Hitchin ... to our own in house art group of Riv Res and Mabretherese and Iolanthe (to name just a few here as well).

But most of all, we discuss Tolkien's writings. We walk the paths and roads of Middle-earth with our friends like Frodo and Sam and Aragorn and Gandalf. We visit them often and are the better for taking our Middle-earth Journeys.

We also go back in time in Middle-earth and visit the like of The Children of Húrin, and Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham, and The Silmarillion, and (of course) The Hobbit. There is no corner of Middle-earth that we don't explore.

We are a small group, and we range from true Tolkien geeks to Tolkien novices. All are welcome and we enjoy the fellowship. We are holding this Open House in the hope that some of you may see the fun and enjoyment of joining us. The more the merrier!!

Here ... take a quick peak at what your can find if you take a few Middle-earth Journeys.





Come and Check Us Out


Spend some quiet time in The Tolkien Library.

Visualize Middle-earth with our in-house artists in the amazing Tolkien Art Gallery.





Take Your Own Middle-earth Journey: Another Place - Another Time


Follow the Fellowship's quest to destroy the Ring via Tolkien's Great Years Calendar.

Join Bilbo on a grand adventure via Tolkien's Hobbit Calendar.






Come Join in All the Fun and Conversations on Our Forums


Middle-earth Journeys: Talking Tolkien

Inspired Journeys: Tolkien Art

Middle-earth Journeys: The Books of J.R.R.Tolkien

Middle-earth Journeys: Tolkien Studies

Complete Forum Index



Upcoming Essay Competitions

From time to time we have some fun writing short essays and compete with each other on a particular subject. Here are some ideas we have for our upcoming essay writing ...

Pursuit of the Black Riders
Land of Lorien
The White Wizards
The Hold of the Ring
The Dominion of Men
Mordor’s Pervasive Gloom

Be sure to put your Tolkien thinking caps on (they look very much like Gandalf's enormous pointy hat ) and join in the fun.

Tolkien Poll

We also thought that you may want to participate in a fun Tolkien poll as a way to ease into your Middle-earth Journeys.

Come tell us Why I Love Tolkien. There are lots of reasons we all come back to Tolkien again and again.

You can browse the forums which are open to everyone, however, you will have to register on the forums in order to participate in the discussions, contests, and polls. We look forward to having you join us.

© Images: David Wyatt/Iolanthe/marbretherese/Riv Res

[Riv Res]

From today's Denver Post ...

One podcast to rule them all? Tolkien prof's is a big hit

By Daniel de Vise
The Washington Post


CHESTERTOWN, Md. — Corey Olsen had a lot to say about J.R.R. Tolkien. But it seemed a pity to consign his thoughts to a scholarly journal, to be read by a few hundred fellow academics who already knew more than enough about the author of "The Lord of the Rings."

So in spring 2007, the Washington College professor took his scholarship public, with a podcast called "How to Read Tolkien and Why" and a website called the Tolkien Professor.

A million downloads later, Olsen is one of the most popular medievalists in America. His unusual path to success — a smartly branded website and a legion of iTunes listeners — marks an alternative to the publish-or-perish tradition of scholarship on the tenure track.

"Instead of spending all my time doing scholarly publishing, which we're told to do — which most people will never read — I basically decided to put myself out to the public," Olsen said.

It remains to be seen whether academia will reward Olsen or punish him for breaking out of his scholarly track. When it comes to building resumes and courting full professorships, podcasts don't typically count.

Olsen is a new breed of public intellectual, the latest in a long line of scholars who have leveraged mass media to reach a broader audience.

Traditional public scholars — Umberto Eco, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Jay Gould — spoke mainly through books, magazines and op-ed pieces. Today's populist profs tap potent new platforms: blogs and podcasts, tweets and Facebook fan pages. Podcast celebrities include Harvard government professor Michael Sandel, whose "Justice" course explores right and wrong. Yale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan has a course called simply "Death."

At 36, Olsen represents a new generation of professors who grew up around computers and knows its way around an iPhone. The bookish son of a New Hampshire construction worker, Olsen read "The Hobbit" at age 8 and was a self-professed expert on "The Lord of the Rings" by seventh grade. As an undergraduate at Williams College in Massachusetts, Olsen took "every medieval thing that they offered" and later earned a doctorate in medieval literature at Columbia.

The young medievalist proved an immediate hit at Washington College, a small liberal arts school tucked behind the Chester River in the colonial hamlet of Chestertown on Maryland's Eastern Shore. "You go to class, and he has all these new insights that you didn't even think of," said Elizabeth Hurlbut, 21, a junior from Keller, Texas.

Olsen published an article and a review in the scholarly journal Tolkien Studies in 2008 and 2009, but he sensed an opportunity squandered. More than 100 million copies of "The Lord of the Rings" have been sold. The Peter Jackson movies of the past decade earned roughly a billion dollars each.

Tolkien is not as popular among academics. Though Tolkien was a language scholar at Oxford, he is not generally counted among the great fiction writers of his century, nor is "The Lord of the Rings" counted among its great books. Yet, Tolkien scholars and Tolkien classes have multiplied over the years, and Middle-earth fanzines have evolved into academic journals.

"If something isn't going away, that tells you something," said Verlyn Flieger, a Tolkien scholar at the University of Maryland.

Olsen's website generated little traffic until summer 2009, when he uploaded his 28-minute introductory lecture to iTunes. He's put up 78 more podcasts, with such titles as "On Dragons and Orcs" and "Tolkien and Food." His lectures have ranked as high as third among top university course downloads.

"Within two months, I had 5,000 subscribers," he recalled in an interview in his office on campus. "And then the people who were listening wanted to talk."

The questions never cease: Do elves farm? What do orcs eat? Could any living author write a worthy sequel? What does Olsen think of the upcoming "Hobbit" movie? Has he played "The Lord of the Rings" computer game online?

Naturally, Olsen knows all sorts of arcana about Tolkien and hobbits. He likes to note, for instance, that the One Ring of power and its corruptive influence were absent from the first edition of "The Hobbit" in 1937. "Gollum and Bilbo end up shaking hands and waving," he chuckled.

© The Denver Post

[Merry]

'Tolkien and Food': now that would be interesting!

[Philipa]

'Tolkien and Food': now that would be interesting!

My thoughts as well Merry.

For those of you looking for his website here it is. The Tolkien Professor. I'm going to add this to my reference blog but am excited to browse this evening. Thanks Riv.

[Philipa]

While looking for a new article to give us something to talk about I came across this blog post from the blog The Mary Sue: The girls guide to geek culture. It's the tale of a man who in 1976 published the very first biography of Tolkien that has since gone out of print. The blog post gives us the story of the author Daniel Grotta's escapades with the Tolkien family from when he first was researching his book back in '76 as well as his attempts at republishing it with new material as a free e-book.

The Tolkien Family Refuses to Let An Unauthorized Biography Pass

by Rebecca Pahle

Guys, it’s been at least a few weeks since the Tolkien estate got into a copyright dispute with someone. The lucky person this time around is Daniel Grotta, author of J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle-earth, the very first biography of the legendary author.

The book was first published in 1976, and now Grotta wants to release an updated e-book edition (for free). But he can’t. Because the Tolkien estate’s lawyers are standing in the wings, slapping rolled-up lawsuits against their palms while backup dancers finger-snap menacingly behind them.

The story behind how the book first came to be published is pretty interesting. Tolkien’s family didn’t want Grotta to write it because J.R.R.’s son Christopher Tolkien had already hired another author for an official biography. So, like some sort of fantasy-leaning mob organization, the Tolkiens shut down all avenues of research to Grotto:

© TheMarySue, LLC

You can read the rest of the blog post on The Mary Sue.

My goodness every time I read this kind of thing it makes me think the Tolkien family (Christopher in particular) is just a wee bit loony.

And now I'm excited there was an edition of the Lotr that is in the public domain? Huh

Here is from Daniel Grotta's own blog with more on this story. Why You Won't Be Reading a New Tolkien Biography

I plan to give Grotta's post a read this evening.

[Merry]

I read Grotta's biography and I thought it was terrible, very second-rate and derivative stuff. Grotta alleges that JRRT suffered from chronic clinical depression, with no evidence. I don't see how someone who suffered thus could have written as he did.

I don't blame Christopher at all! I've never read that Humphrey Carpenter was hired by the family to write the biography; he did have the family's blessing, however. There's a big difference!

[Philipa]

Merry I'm glad you piped in. How very interesting to know your thoughts on Grotto's book. It's a bit strange the author would write of depression without having any clinical evidence.

What do you think of Humphrey's biography? Was it insightful with external information or just matter of fact like?

[Merry]

You know, it's been so long since I've read it that I can't remember! Have you read it, Philipa? How would you answer your question? I do remember reading an interview with Carpenter during which he said he didn't even like Tolkien's books. So it's not as if the family chose a sycophant.

I was thinking about this last night: a hypothetical question. Let's say the JRRT was clinically depressed or that his wife was mentally unstable, or that something bad happened in their marriage, or that there were some things that the family wanted to keep private, or any number of possibilities. Would Christopher be right to try to protect their memory? If it were my parents, I would try!

I'm not saying that I have evidence or think that any of those things are true of JRRT! I know that there were some unhappy periods during their marriage. I guess that I just think that people deserve some privacy.

[Philipa]

You know, it's been so long since I've read it that I can't remember! Have you read it, Philipa? How would you answer your question? I do remember reading an interview with Carpenter during which he said he didn't even like Tolkien's books. So it's not as if the family chose a sycophant.

No, I've not read anything but Tolkien's books so I know nothing of the bio.

I was thinking about this last night: a hypothetical question. Let's say the JRRT was clinically depressed or that his wife was mentally unstable, or that something bad happened in their marriage, or that there were some things that the family wanted to keep private, or any number of possibilities. Would Christopher be right to try to protect their memory? If it were my parents, I would try!

I'm not saying that I have evidence or think that any of those things are true of JRRT! I know that there were some unhappy periods during their marriage. I guess that I just think that people deserve some privacy.

Absolutely, I wasn't implying that it was ok to write about such private matters. I'm sure what I did write was misleading to you.

[Merry]

And I wasn't meaning to be argumentative with you, either, Philipa, but rather with the writer of the little article you posted. But you see these criticisms of the family a lot. I think Tolkien and his family lived in a time when it was possible for an author to write books and still live a private life. Our Age of Celebrity is markedly different.

[Merry]

I always forget it is April Fools Day, but they don't forget over at TOR.n! They report today that the whole Tolkien franchise was purchased by Disney--just about stopped my heart when I first read it!

[MICHKA]

un poisson? Hi!hi!!