This is all solid and fascinating stuff. An early chapter looks into what it meant for Tolkien to be a philologist rather than a "Lit." scholar, and how he felt that his chosen branch of scholarship had not really succeeded in fighting off the competition. He got his revenge in other ways, of course, but Shippey shows just how unreasonable some of Tolkien's critics have been often appealing to idealised concepts of what great literature should be and declaring that LotR fails to pass muster. There are lots of other interesting insights too - "bourgeois" and "burglar" both come from the same root, which gives us some further insights into Bilbo and the original concept of hobbits (which of course moved on as the story developed). The one very minor point of disappointment is that the version of the essay on the Peter Jackson films here is different from that in the Zimbardo and Isaacs collection - the latter is more detailed, the one here a bit more fannish. But that is also a little exhilarating.
May Books 21) The Road To Middle-Earth, by Tom Shippey
This is all solid and fascinating stuff. An early chapter looks into what it meant for Tolkien to be a philologist rather than a "Lit." scholar, and how he felt that his chosen branch of scholarship had not really succeeded in fighting off the competition. He got his revenge in other ways, of course, but Shippey shows just how unreasonable some of Tolkien's critics have been often appealing to idealised concepts of what great literature should be and declaring that LotR fails to pass muster. There are lots of other interesting insights too - "bourgeois" and "burglar" both come from the same root, which gives us some further insights into Bilbo and the original concept of hobbits (which of course moved on as the story developed). The one very minor point of disappointment is that the version of the essay on the Peter Jackson films here is different from that in the Zimbardo and Isaacs collection - the latter is more detailed, the one here a bit more fannish. But that is also a little exhilarating.
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