Literature and Poetry
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Celebrating Middle-earth by John West
Chesterton Day to Day by G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton's Early Poetry by G. K. Chesterton
The House of the Wolfings by William Morris
More to William Morris by William Morris
On the Lines of Morris' Romances by William Morris
The Roots of the Mountains by William Morris
Stories for Girls by Hans Christian Andersen
Untangling Tolkien by Michael W. Perry
Celebrating Middle-earth: The Lord of the Rings as a Defense of Western Civilization
John G. West Jr., Editor with articles by Janet Blumberg, Kerry Dearborn, Phillip Goggans, Peter Kreeft, Joseph Pearce, and John G. West Jr
In this book six Tolkien scholars comment on the literary,philosophical, political, and religious foundations of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The chapters are based on speeches given at the "Celebrating Middle Earth" conference, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington on November 9-10, 2001 and adapted by their authors for this book.
In an age when writers and artists routinely scorned the
wisdom of the past. . . . Tolkien's epic arrived like a
bracing mountain wind, for it introduced modern readers
to forms of literature that are unafraid to explore truth
as well as ambiguity, beauty as well as ugliness, good as
well as evil, and heroism as well as cowardice. -John
West
This is our story. It is a mirror. We are fascinated by
it most deeply because of its truth. . . . It is eternal
truth made flesh. Only a great myth can do that
astonishing feat, can translate the eternal truth of good
and evil into the radically other medium of a temporal
story. It makes the abstract concrete, the invisible
visible, the Word flesh. -Peter Kreeft
Tolkien argued that, far from being lies, myths were the
best way of conveying truths which would otherwise be
inexpressible. We have come from God and inevitably the
myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a
splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth
that is with God. -Joseph Pearce
ISBN: 1-58742-012-0 (paperback) and 1-58742-013-9 (hardback), 107 pages
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Chesterton Day by Day: The Wit and Wisdom of G. K. Chesterton
by G. K. Chesterton
For any author, much less a 'rolicking' journalist often caught up in the passing controversies of his day, the writings of G. K. Chesterton have shown remarkable staying power. During his life, this talented British writer was the private friend and public foe of writers such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. Two-thirds of a century after his death, the ideas of Shaw and Wells seem curiously quaint and dated, while Chesterton's writings remain fresh as the day they were written. That's why many of Wells later and more political writings are out of print while more and more of what Chesterton wrote is finding its way back onto the shelves of bookstores.
The reason simple. Chesterton is one of the most quotable writers of the twentieth-century. He has an incredible knack for capturing in a few concise and memorable words what other authors labor and groan to say over many pages. Lengthy books have been written to explain the essence of Fascism and its close kin Nazism. Few have come as close as Chesterton did when he remarked that, "The intellectual criticism of Fascism is really this: that it appeals to an appetite for authority, without very clearly giving the authority for the appetite." That is Hitler's Fuhrer Principle in a nutshell, and it also why so many followed the German dictator into madness.
For this book, Chesterton selected a reading from his writings between 1900 and 1911 for each day of the year and for each of the "moveable" Christian feasts.
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.
It has been found difficult; and left untried. -January
13
"Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty
has settled upon the organ of conviction where it was
never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about
himself, but undoubting about the truth: this has been
exactly reversed. . . The old humility was a spur that
prevented a man from stopping: not a nail in his boot
that prevented him from going on. For the old humility
made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make
him work harder. But the new humility makes a man
doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working
altogether. -April 2
It is not by any means self-evident upon the face of it
that an institution like the liberty of speech is right
or just. It is not natural or obvious to let a man utter
follies and abominations which you believe to be bad for
mankind any more than it is natural or obvious to let a
man dig up a part of the public road, or infect half a
town with typhoid fever. The theory of free speech, that
truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided
than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs
to hear every one's account of it, is a theory which has
been justified upon the whole by experiment, but which
remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory.
It is really one of the great discoveries of the modern
time; but once admitted, it is a principle that does not
merely affect politics, but philosophy, ethics, and
finally, poetry. -May 9
It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who
brought me back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my
mind my first wild doubts of doubt. Our grandmothers were
quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the
Freethinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled
mine horribly. The rationalists made me question whether
reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished
Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the
first time) whether evolution had occurred at all. As I
laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic
lectures, the dreadful thought broke into my mind,
'Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.' -December
21
ISBN: 1-58742-014-7 (paperback) and 1-58742-015-5 (hardback)
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G. K. Chesterton's Early Poetry: Greybeards at Play, The Wild Knight and Other Stories, The Ballad of the White Horse
by G. K. Chesterton
Here under one cover are G. K. Chesterton's first three books of poetry: Greybeards at Play (1901), The Wild Knight and Other Stories (1901) and The Ballad of the White Horse (1911).
Greybeards at Play deserves far more attention than it has thus far received. In his contribution to G. K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal, the poet W. H. Auden praised it with these words: "I have no hesitation in saying that it contains some of the best pure nonsense verse in English. . . . Surely it is high time such enchanting pieces should be made readily available."
The playfulness of Greybeards at Play contrasts dramatically with the historical importance of The Ballad of the White Horse. During one of the darkest moments in World War II, the front page of The Times of London would quote these memorable words from it: "I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet and the sea rises higher." They expressed better than anything else the great trials England was passing through just five years after Chesterton's death.
In his great epic, Chesterton had done with English history what Tolkien would later do with his imaginary history of Middle-earth. He had molded events and placed them in a new light to give meaning and purpose to history. As Chesterton would note on the book's title page, he agreed with King Alfred that, "I say, as do all Christian men, that there is a divine purpose that rules and not fate."
ISBN: 1-58742-034-1 (paperback) and 1-58742-035-X (hardback)
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The House of the Wolfings: A Book that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien
by William Morris (1834-1896)
From the Introduction to The House of the Wolfings
In J. R. R. Tolkien's great epic, The Lord of the Rings, the climax of the Council of Elrond comes when the decision is made that "the Ruling Ring must be destroyed." When the noon-bell rings, a silence falls on the group as they ponder who will take up this seemingly impossible task. At that moment Frodo, the central character in the tale, is filled with dread, "A overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo's side in Rivendell filled all his heart." With a great effort, he makes his choice, "I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
In this earlier tale by Morris, the central actor, Thiodolf, faces a similar choice, one linked to a magical hauberk (a coat of chain mail) rather than a Ring. Like Frodo, he must choose either to live, remaining close to someone he loves (Wood-Sun) or face the near certainty that he will die defending his people.
Morris said as much in a 1888 letter when he wrote that The House of the Wolfings "is a story of the life of the Gothic tribes on their way through Middle Europe, and their first meeting with the Romans in war. It is meant to illustrate the melting of the individual into the society of the tribes: I mean apart from the artistic side of things that is its moral--if it has one."
Although it is no more than a coincidence, both Frodo and Thiodolf see in its starkness the choice they must make in the fourteenth chapter of their respective tales. For Frodo the choice was clear beyond doubt. He must carry the Ring to Mordor. But for Thiodolf, the choice was at that time no more than a dark suspicion, "that a curse goeth with the hauberk, then either for the sake of the folk I will not wear the gift and the curse, and I shall die in great glory, and because of me the House shall live; or else for thy sake I shall bear it and live, and the House shall live or die as may be, but I not helping, nay I no longer of the House nor in it."
Like Tolkien, Morris set his story within a larger history. Although there is no exact parallel between what happens in The House of the Wolfings and any particular historical event, the great struggle between Rome's drive to civilize and enslave their way into Central Europe and the Gothic (Germanic) tribes willingness to fight for their independence is a fact of history.
Perhaps the most important battle in that struggle between Romans and Germans was one in A.D. 9 between the Roman general Varus and Gothic soldiers led by Arminius, a German whose talent had been recognized the Romans, who attempted to buy his allegiance by giving him Roman citizenship and military training. He would use that training against them.
Knowing that troop strength and military skill gave the advantage to Rome, in September Arminius lured Varus out of his Westphalian fortress to put down what the Romans thought was a minor revolt. They were tricked into entering a wooded and hilly region, where heavy rains made movement difficult. Arminius then launched a series of lightning attacks on the Roman army, using every advantage imaginable. (Much as in Morris' tale, one key battle took place on a forested ridge.) In the end, Varus committed suicide to avoid capture and most of his army was either killed in battle or sacrificed to blood-thirsty pagan gods. Rome was left angry and bitter by the defeat, but in the end both sides were forced to come to an uneasy truce with the Rhine River as a boundary line. Later, barbarian tribes coming out of Central Europe would weaken and then destroy the Roman empire. Morris tells that history from a Gothic perspective in The Roots of The Mountains, where the Huns are the Wolfings' new foes.
Why would an Englishman like Morris take pride in a long-ago victory by a distant tribe when his own homeland, England, had been successfully occupied and colonized by Rome? The reason is simple. In his day, many educated Englishmen believed that their racial ('blood') roots lay in the Germanic tribes of this era. In his often-reprinted 1851 Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, Edward S. Creasy made the bold claim that, "an Englishman is entitled to claim a closer degree of relationship with Arminius than can be claimed by any German of modern Germany." Strange as it may sound today, the Englishmen of Morris' day had no problem imagining themselves as brave and fierce Wolfing warriors, even as a heavily industrialized Great Britain ruled a Rome-like empire that bore little resemblance to a Gothic village.
Those who have read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings will notice similarities. There is a forest named Mirkwood in Morris, although it is not as dark and mysterious as Tolkien's. (Both have as their source the Nordic Elder Edda saga.) In Chapter 2, a messenger brings to the Wolfings (as to Rohan) a "war-arrow ragged and burnt and bloody" that is a call to war. And, much like Bilbo and Frodo, Thiodolf acquires a protective coat of mail (hauberk) made by dwarves and having, in addition, dangerous and hidden powers much like the Ring that both Hobbits bear. But while the Ring can bestow an unimaginably dangerous power on its possessor, the hauberk has a far different effect. In both tales, however, the plot hinges on the hero making the right choice about the use of the powerful weapon he has been given.
ISBN 1-58742-025-2 (paperback) and 1-58742-026-0 (hardback)
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More to William Morris: Two Books that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien--The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains
by William Morris (1834-1896)
More to William Morris combines in one inexpensive wide-format volume two of Morris' greatest tales of courage, romance and war. They are The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountain. Each is described separately on this web page and both are available separately in paperback and hardback.
ISBN 1-58742-023-6 (paperback)
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On the Lines of William Morris: Two Books that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien--The Well at the World's End and The Wood Beyond the World
by William Morris (1834-1896)
From the Introduction to The Well at the World's End
Much like his fellow writer, J. R. R. Tolkien, William Morris liked to slip into his writings a description of places he had visited and enjoyed. In his Collected Works (Vol. 18), his daughter May explained how, "vivid notes of places seen may be recognized time and again through my father's writings: beautiful country moved him deeply, as in The Well at the World's End he made full use of his remembrances."
Indeed, as May notes, The Well at the World's End held a special charm for his family for, "the King's sons start on their adventures from the very door of [their family home] Kelmscott Manor transformed into the palace of a simple-living kinglet." Even Kelmscott's location was accurately placed, "between river and upland, with the ford at the corner where the harvesters in News from Nowhere [another Morris tale] landed at their journey's end."
The tale of the mysterious Well centers on the journey of Ralph, one of those four princes, after he leaves home seeking adventure. Morris' family knew that, "our eyes can any day sweep the long blue line above the water, up which Ralph rode as he made his way to the down-country." The Wulstead of the tale is the real-life Faringdon, but "with a richer, fairer architecture." The mysterious Champion of the Dry Tree is first met at what is actually Uffington Church, a "gem-like little building sweetly placed at the meeting of the green plains and the downland." This close match between imagined and actual geography continues until "Ralph leaves the downland for the Wood Perilous and the Burg of the Four Firths." Later, it returns in brief flashes. The volcanic desert and the Wall of the World recall the "keen emotion that the terrible Icelandic desert aroused in him."
For the Morris children, the parallels between tale and truth left them feeling that on, "going out one fine morning along the meadows of our sweet uneventful country it would not be at all out of the way to meet a Dragon or at the least a Lady in distress on a white palfrey." What could be more appealing than a tale linking the everyday with a mysterious new world?
Readers of The Lord of the Rings will recall that Tolkien put much the same sentiment into the mouth of Frodo who remarks, on the first afternoon of their hike to Crickhollow, that Bilbo had told him "there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.'"
That sense of unexpected adventure, Tolkien tells us in "On Fairy Stories," is the very essence of a fairy tale: "Stories that are actually concerned primarily with 'fairies,' that is with creatures that might also in modern English be called 'Elves,' are relatively rare, and as a rule not very interesting. Most good 'fairy stories' are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches." In his great masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien exaggerated that contrast by sending four Hobbits, whose love for homely comfort is greater than that of most men, on a great quest to battle Sauron and destroy the Ring. Morris sticks closer to the basic literary model and uses men or, more accurately, a man and a woman, as the chief characters in his great quest. But their journey is no less dangerous and a part of the "Perilous Realm" into which they journey is called quite literally the "Wood Perilous."
In their respective tales, both Morris and Tolkien ask the same basic question: Is a much-prolonged life a blessing or a curse? (For Morris's remarks, see Book 3, Chapter 16.) You will also find similarities that seem to go beyond mere coincidence. There is in The Well at the World's End a horse named Silverfax (Book 1, Chapter 22), a name not that different from Tolkien's great Shadowfax. The story also has a major character named Gandolf (Book 2, Chapter 30), although he is the evil Lord of Utterbol, rather than Gandalf, Tolkien's wise and good wizard. In addition, there is a folkmote among shepherds (Book 4, Chapter 24) to decide on war plans that resembles Tolkien's Entmoot, where Ents, the shepherds of trees, debate their war plans.
With that I leave you to enjoy a mysterious, dreamlike story that is both alike and yet somehow different from Tolkien's far better known tale.
From the Introduction to The Wood Beyond the World
The Wood Beyond the World is a rewrite of an earlier tale that Morris began and abandoned. As his daughter May noted in his Collected Works (Vol. 17), Morris had written "some sixty-five pages of a tale called The King's Son and the Carle's Son before he threw it aside and made a fresh beginning." From his notes, she pieced together the differences. "It is delightful to watch the story-maker at his craft," she says as she describes how the plot changed. "Here one can see how the peasant's son, entering straightway into the wood to seek adventure, is transformed into the young merchant who breaks away from home and a bad wife and reaches the Wood Beyond the World in a skillfully wrought atmosphere of wonder and romance. . . . [I]n comparing the unfinished manuscript and its plot with the finished work, one can feel how the story took hold of the writer as he progressed, with what zest he rounded off the incidents, concentrated the action, visualized the scenes; one can watch how the atmosphere grew around his personages as he moulded them, till all behold the written word is transformed into a series of pictures before our eyes and the story lives."
After his book came out, Morris experienced the same problem with The Wood Beyond the World that J. R. R. Tolkien would later have with The Lord of the Rings and he became just frustrated at those who failed to understand his purpose. Reviewers, it seems, wanted to turn his uncomplicated romance into an allegory with hidden messages about contemporary social issues.
As his daughter would note, Morris "rarely made public comment to his critics." But in this case he made an exception and wrote a letter to the Spectator. After thanking them for their kind review, he went on to write that he "had not the least intention of thrusting an allegory into The Wood Beyond the World; it is meant for a tale pure and simple, with nothing didactic about it. If I have to write or speak on social problems, I always try to be as direct as I possibly can be."
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The Roots of the Mountains: A Book that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien
by William Morris (1834-1896)
From the Introduction to The Roots of the Mountains
Move forward several hundred of years from the time of The House of the Wolfings, and you arrive at the setting for The Roots of the Mountains. The tribe in the former tale has moved and now lives in the foothills of a large mountain chain, although we cannot be certain if it is the Alps of Western Europe or the Carpathians of Eastern Europe. Morris clearly wants us to focus on the lives and the personal dilemmas his characters face rather than the broader historical context. This is a tale of Everyman living in Anytime.
As the tale progresses, we discover that these people are threatened by a cruel, fierce and ugly (for them) people called the Dusky Men or Huns. Like Rome in the previous tale, the Dusky Men want to enslave them and destroy their living and harmonious culture. Unlike Rome, they seem to have no particular talent for warfare or ruling. Instead, they rely on sheer numbers and raw terror to defeat and dominate. In The House of the Wolfings, some readers may feel that the Wolfings, with a religion that involved the sacrifice of prisoners of war, might have benefited from more contact with the civilized and literate Rome. It is unlikely readers will feel that these Dusky Men have anything to teach.
Again, the plot contains romance, including one involving two women, the unfortunately named Bride and the mysterious Sun-beam. As sometimes happens, both want to wed Burgstead's most eligible bachelor, the heart-stoppingly handsome Gold-mane. (As in Tolkien, major characters often have more than one name. Gold-mane's other name is Face-of-god.) The parallels to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and to Eowyn and Arwen's romantic interest in Aragorn (also known as Strider) should be obvious. There is even a father who tries to block the marriage, although in Morris, the unhappy father is that of the groom-to-be. In both cases, the one in love is thought to be marrying below his or her station in life.
Much as in The House of the Wolfings, in this tale Morris wrestled with the conflict that often exists between an individual and his society. But in this tale, that conflict took a different twist.
In The House of the Wolfings. Thiodolf had to choose between serving his people and following the desires of the woman he loves, a goddess who was willing to do almost anything to make sure he does not die in battle. Gold-mane faces a different conflict. When he eventually learns of the threat the Dusky Men pose to Sun-beam's tiny people and the role she wants him to play in protecting them, it is clear at almost the same time that the Dusky Men pose the same threat to his own people. By making war on them, he can serve his people and possess Sun-beam. On that point, there is no conflict between individual and society.
The conflict in this tale is more personal and emotional. For much of the story, Thiodolf suspects he is the victim of another's choice to serve her society. As Sun-beam eventually admits, her romantic pursuit of him began as a carefully planned scheme by her people to win his much more numerous people's support in a struggle with the Dusky Men. When Gold-mane realizes that, he is torn inside. Is he being loved or merely used? In Chapter 20, he puts those doubts into a painful question: "But tell me this if thou wilt: dost thou desire me as I desire thee? or is it that thou wilt suffer me to wed thee and bed thee at last as mere payment for the help that I shall give to thee and thine?"
Gold-mane will have no peace in his heart until he resolves that conflict and another that is linked to obligations placed on him by his people. Unlike many, he is as kind and honorable as he is handsome. He must find a way to ease the hurt that his sudden love for Sun-beam has inflicted upon Bride, the woman his community has long expected him to marry.
As you read this story, keep in mind a major difference between Morris and Tolkien. Morris not only had no personal experience with warfare, he lived in an England and a Europe that was in the midst of an extraordinarily lengthy period free of extended, violent warfare at home (the century from the Napoleonic Wars until World War I). Tolkien, on the other hand, experienced first hand what war could be like in World War I trenches. As a result, while both men attach a high value to bravery in combat, Morris seems less aware of what war demands physically, particularly in the age of sword and spear (hence his pretty young maiden warriors). He also does not seem to grasp the tremendous psychological costs of war. In this tale you will find no equivalent to Tolkien's deeply wounded Frodo. . . .
Morris planned to create a trilogy of historical novels to carry on this tale, but he never completed the third book, one his daughter entitled The Story of Desiderius. So regrettably, the tale of the Wolfings must end here.
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Stories for Girls: Lovingly Adapted for Twenty-first Century Children
by Hans Christian Andersen with a foreword by George MacDonald
Today, over a century and a quarter after his death, Hans Christian Andersen remains perhaps the world's most beloved author of children's stories. This talented Danish writer's tales have been translated into dozens of languages and have become the theme for major motion pictures.
This book contains the best stores in which a young girl or woman plays the key role. Among its fourteen tales are such classics as "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," and "The Little Match Girl." Ever so gently, they teach growing girls the value of courage, imagination, humor, kindness, faith and love.
In adapting these stories for "twentieth-first century children," the editor has respected Andersen's wisdom about what children need and what they can understand. The sometimes stilted language of old translations has been replaced by more modern phrasing. But "adapted" doesn't mean the stories have been trivialized. Andersen's little mermaid remains as he created her, a courageous and complex young woman with much more on her mind than catching a rich husband.
Each story opens with a brief summary of its plot and an age rating. Keeping in mind that story time is often bed time, the longer stories have been broken into sections. For instance, "The Little Mermaid," which might take over an hour to read, is divided into four parts.
Stories Included
Foreword by George MacDonald
1. The Princess and the Pea
2. Little Ida's Flowers
3. Thumbelina
4. The Little Mermaid
5. The Daisy
6. The Wild Swans
7. The Ugly Duckling
8. The Snow Queen
9. The Little Match Girl
10. Five Peas in One Pod
11. There's No Doubt About It
12. The Girl Who Stepped on a Loaf of Bread
13. The Jewel of Wisdom
14. The Snowdrop
The Little Match Girl
It was terribly cold and quickly growing dark on the last evening of the old year. The snow was coming down fast and covering everything in a thick white blanket. In the cold and dark, a poor little girl, with a bare head and naked feet, roamed the streets all alone.
She had been wearing a pair of slippers when she left home that morning. But they were of little use. They were too large, so large, in fact, that they belonged to her mother. The little girl had lost them running across a street to avoid two horse-drawn carriages that were racing along very fast and might have crushed her beneath their steel-covered wheels. Afterward, she could not find one of the slippers. A boy grabbed the other and ran away, saying that he would use it as a cradle when he had children of his own.
So the little girl went on in her naked feet, which soon turned red and blue from the cold. In an old apron that was much too big for her, she carried some matches. She had a bundle of them in her hands and had tried very hard that day to sell them to strangers on the street. But no one had bought a single match the whole day. No one had even given her a penny out of kindness. Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along, ignored by all and unseen by most. The snowflakes fell on her long hair, which hung in curls down to her shoulders. Poor little child, she looked so miserable and so lonely.
It was terribly cold and quickly growing dark on the last evening of the old year. The snow was coming down fast and covering everything in a thick white blanket. In the cold and dark, a poor little girl, with a bare head and naked feet, roamed the streets all alone.
She had been wearing a pair of slippers when she left home that morning. But they were of little use. They were too large, so large, in fact, that they belonged to her mother. The little girl had lost them running across a street to avoid two horse-drawn carriages that were racing along very fast and might have crushed her beneath their steel-covered wheels. Afterward, she could not find one of the slippers. A boy grabbed the other and ran away, saying that he would use it as a cradle when he had children of his own.
So the little girl went on in her naked feet, which soon turned red and blue from the cold. In an old apron that was much too big for her, she carried some matches. She had a bundle of them in her hands and had tried very hard that day to sell them to strangers on the street. But no one had bought a single match the whole day. No one had even given her a penny out of kindness. Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along, ignored by all and unseen by most. The snowflakes fell on her long hair, which hung in curls down to her shoulders. Poor little child, she looked so miserable and so lonely.
ISBN: 1-58742-009-0
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Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings
by Michael W. Perry
Here is the book Tolkien fans have needed for half a century--a detailed, day-by-day, book-length chronology of J. R. R. Tolkien's complex tale. Whether you are a serious Tolkien fan or simply someone who enjoys reading the story over and over again, this is the book for you. It's the first totally new reference for The Lord of the Rings since the 1970s.
Beginning over 1400 years before the major events in Tolkien's epic, it describes, year-by-year, the amazing and imaginative background history that Tolkien created for his masterpiece. Then for the main narrative, it becomes a day-by-day reference, describing what each character does on that day and all the places where those events are described in Tolkien's writings. You can find out, for instance, what Merry and Pippin are doing as Sam prepares rabbit stew on the morning of March 7.
Probe deeper into Tolkien. See why someone as serious as Gandalf was interested in fun-loving Hobbits. Discover an exciting new plot, based on Tolkien's notes, that begins when Aragorn captures Gollum. Follow along as the Black Riders and Gandalf race for the Shire. Decide for yourself whether Sauron and the Ring have any ties to Hitler and Stalin. Explore what Tolkien believed about nature and technology.
A few facts illustrate how helpful this chronology is. Most of narrative is a deliberately confusing sea of next days and third days that leave readers as confused as the tale's main characters.The middle 60 percent of The Lord of the Rings gives the current date only once. In the narrative as a whole, the date is given only 23 times, or once for every 43 pages, and most of those come when the plot is moving slowly. That's why those who want to dig deeper and understand better what Tolkien was saying will find this book a must-have.
For a much more detailed description of the book's contents, follow the sidebar link for Untangling Tolkien
ISBN: 1-58742-019-8 (paperback)
Amazon: Paperback
Amazon Canada: Paperback
Amazon France: Paperback
Amazon Germany: Paperback
Amazon Japan: Paperback
Amazon UK: Paperback
Barnes & Noble: Paperback
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