Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy A Tolkien Compass: Including J. R. R. Tolkien's Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on A Tolkien Compass: Including J. R. R. Tolkien's Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings. Check out the link below:
>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers
A Tolkien Compass: Including J. R. R. Tolkien's Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings ReviewPublished in 1975, this is a good collection of essays about Tolkien's fiction given that the essays are ostensibly written by "fans" rather than scholars. A few of the essays are, it must be conceded, naive in style and scope-- like the one which makes the rather obvious claim that the main theme of the Lord of the Rings is that "power corrupts". Quite a few others, however, are quite insightful, particular Charles Huttar's article on "Hell and the City", Robert Plink's analysis of the "Scouring of the Shire" chapter, and Richard West's analysis of the 'interlace' structure of The Lord of the Rings. Also Bonniejean Christiansen's article on the characterological differences between Gollum that were produced by the *major* revisions of the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter of the Hobbit is extremely valuable-- both for what she has to say about Gollum and for the fact that she offers side-by-side quotations from both the first and second editions of that chapter so the reader can see what has changed from one to the other.Quite surprisingly, these essays aren't nearly as dated as a lot of other Tolkien criticism that came out at the same time or earlier. (The publication of Carpenter's biography of Tolkien in 1977, as well as the posthumous publication of the _Silmarillion_ and then later of Tolkien's letters has rendered a lot of older Tolkien criticism out-of-date or irrelevant). In fact, these essays are just as good and insightful as a lot of Tolkien criticism being written now (in fact, they're better than a lot of it!). The main reason for their continued relevance, I think, is tha they are clearly focused on Tolkien's fictional *texts* as texts that can be analyzed on their own terms. Rather than delving into lots of biographical details, into questions of authorial intention, trying to place The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the context of _The Silmarillion_, or connecting them to Tolkien's alleged goal of creating a 'mythology for England', these articles focus on specific chapters, images, themes, and structures from The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, this gives them a kind of 'permanence' that other earlier Tolkien criticism has lacked. (Also, I think the emphasis upon Tolkien's texts themselves leads to more insightful analysis than the biographically-oriented authorial-intention-minded criticism that's still dominant among Tolkien criticism). It's a real shame this has gone out of print...A Tolkien Compass: Including J. R. R. Tolkien's Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings Overview
Want to learn more information about A Tolkien Compass: Including J. R. R. Tolkien's Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings?
>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now
