Thursday, 27 June 2024

Tolkien plus something-else made me a Romantic

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Before reading JRR Tolkien's Hobbit and  The Lord of the Rings at age 13, my attitude was that of a mainstream, down to earth, science ...
Saturday, 22 June 2024

Charles Williams's false ideal of the mathematical impersonality of love

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Mrs. Anstruther opened her eyes and met Pauline's. She smiled. "My dear," she said, "I've been meaning to ask you som...
2 comments:
Wednesday, 22 May 2024

Why the evil of the One Ring cannot for long be resisted by anyone At All

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It is striking that the possession of the One Ring is rejected by even the most good and most powerful characters of The Lord of the Rings. ...
10 comments:
Tuesday, 7 May 2024

What did Sauron do with the three recovered Dwarf Rings?

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Apparently, Sauron reclaimed three of the seven dwarf rings (the other four seem to have been destroyed by dragon fire). Sauron later offere...
Tuesday, 30 April 2024

Nicol Williamson's abridged audio Hobbit (1974)

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There are (officially) only two (!) complete recorded readings of The Hobbit (Rob Inglis and Andy Serkis) - all the rest have cuts, thereby ...
5 comments:
Sunday, 21 April 2024

Tolkien gave a lecture about The Notion Club Papers in Stonyhurst seminary, March 1946

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Oronzo Cilli has found a description of a lecture JRR Tolkien gave at the Roman Catholic boarding school of Stonyhurst, in Lancashire (wher...
1 comment:
Wednesday, 27 March 2024

Review of Tolkien's Faith: a spiritual biography by Holly Ordway (2023)

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Word on Fire publishers deserve congratulation for producing such a handsome and well-made volume Holly Ordway. Tolkien's Faith: a spiri...
5 comments:
Friday, 1 March 2024

Notice of the expanded - but underwhelming - "new" edition of selected Letters by JRR Tolkien (2023)

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The main benefit of this new, expanded, version of the original 1981 selection of The Letters of JRR Tolkien , edited by Humphrey Carpenter ...
5 comments:
Tuesday, 27 February 2024

The elvish strain in Mankind, and the motivation of Men and elves

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For JRR Tolkien, " elvishness " is a quality that first entered Mankind by heredity from the rare "interbreeding" of Men...
Saturday, 17 February 2024

A joke quoted by JRRT

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From letter 97b, of the 2023, expanded, edition of Letters by JRR Tolkien*:  Mother discovered her small daughter drawing. "What are yo...
1 comment:
Sunday, 11 February 2024

Free, high quality e-books of Charles Williams and CS Lewis - downloadable from fadedpage.com

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I have recently discovered the excellent Fadedpage  web site; which is done by volunteers, and provides free, high quality, downloadable e-b...
3 comments:
Sunday, 4 February 2024

Valedictory Address: The only published piece by Tolkien that I dislike

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Of course I do not enjoy everything by JRR Tolkien that has been published; but - with one exception - I do find all his works (finished and...
10 comments:
Thursday, 1 February 2024

"Broad Relic" in the Notion Club Papers is the island of Flat Holm in the Bristol Channel

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JRR Tolkien. The Notion Club Papers - in "Sauron Defeated" The History of Middle Earth Volume 9, HarperCollins: London, 1993.   [...
4 comments:
Friday, 26 January 2024

Ramer contra Lowdham - comparing Tolkien's alter ego characters in The Notion Club Papers

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Christopher Tolkien published the surviving material of The Notion Club Papers (in The History of Middle Earth - Volume Nine ) in two parts...
1 comment:
Monday, 22 January 2024

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other verses from The Red Book by JRR Tolkien, 1962 - a review of 50 years re-reading

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When I first read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings  some half century ago, I didn't much enjoy the poetry - mostly because I did not enj...
Wednesday, 20 December 2023

JRR Tolkien, Beowulf; and the nature of this mortal life

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From Beowulf and the Critics by JRR Tolkien, edited by Michael DC Drout, 2002.  [ Drout :] Tolkien located civilization in the masculine in...
Friday, 24 November 2023

Numenor and the insufficiency of mortal life in this-world

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The recent collection of Tolkien's Numenor material into a single volume The Fall of Numenor (edited by Brian Sibley, 2022) has trigge...
2 comments:
Saturday, 18 November 2023

A note on the silver-handed Nodens and Tar-Telemmaite - resonances across the decades in JRR Tolkien

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From The name Nodens by JRR Tolkien - Report on the excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and post-Roman sites in Lydney Park, Gloucestersh...
3 comments:
Thursday, 9 November 2023

Experiencing spiritual contact with JRR Tolkien via The Notion Club Papers

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I have a strong, and still increasing, conviction that we ought to move away-from the kind of impersonal abstraction that has been character...