Shippey is a philogist much as Tolkien was, and in fact had JRR's job once the old don retired. So he's not exactly unbiased in his appraisal. The title itself is pretty darn argumentative, but kind of silly. Reminds me of childhood arguments over who has the "best" Beatle, and who was better, the Stones or the Beatles. He cites some pretty weak reasons for his claim (a survey of ten thousand people). But then he seems to forget about it and moves on to showing how EVERY plot element was determined by ancient works and words. This is downright weird, when you think about it. You claim Tolkien is the finest author of the 20th century, and then go on to argue that the man never had an original thought? The Ents, that's right, he thought up the Ents. Otherwise, nope, all based on Nordic tales, Beowulf, that sort of thing. Tolkien was simply resurrecting Lost Tales from the ancient past, claims Shippey. Then later, he changes thesis yet again, to claim that Tolkien wrote LOTR as a story for his languages and history to live in. Now, that I can buy, and has been told elsewhere. There are some interesting nuggets here, but he spends far too much time getting into the little niggling bits of the history and heritage of words. Three pages, for instance, on the roots of the Wild Men of the Woods, who only get a brief mention in Tolkien. To be fair, there are some good arguments here for why LOTR is so special, and if you're a fan, you'll enjoy those parts. When the runic words show up, you may want to just to skip ahead. Unless Old Norse is your bailiwick. ( )

Many years after The Road to Middle-Earth, Shippey brings us a new volume full of new insights from the man that currently holds the Oxford chair once occupied by Tolkien. His analysis in this book certainly supports his claim to it.

There are things in here that even the most die-hard Tolkien fans wouldn't know. The structure of the story itself in terms of flow and symmetry that often go unnoticed are dissected and examined to appreciate their full effect. Tolkien's knowledge of Old English is examined in the context of The Lord of the Rings, with particular examples such as "emnet" which appears in Rohan and which was an Old English word discovered by Tolkien himself ("emnet", by the way, means "plain", which Tolkien never liked as a word because it was taken from the French word "plaines").

If you enjoy Tolkien's work, you will love this book. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/148170.htm...

this is a very good book, well worth the investment. Shippey argues strongly that Tolkien wanted to achieve the same for the relationship of England with the history of English that Lönnrot did with the Kalevala for Finnish, or that the Grimm brothers (philologists as well as compilers of fairy-tales) did for German. He argues even more strongly, backed by empirical evidence of opinion polls and popular votes (and this was before the BBC Big Read) that Tolkien succeeded as well as any author of the 20th century could do.

Middle Earth, according to Shippey, is an attempt to re-create the mythic background of the English language. Where other writers are content to note that Tolkien nicked the names of the dwarves in The Hobbit from the Elder Edda, Shippey believes that Tolkien is trying to get at the nature of dwarves, elves, etc and to bring back a better understanding of their lost history, which the compilers of the Elder Edda may have known but its readers have certainly forgotten. And he succeeded.

He also argues for a central moral message in the Lord of the Rings, that it is worth trying to do good even if you don't know if you will succeed. Very interesting reflections on the question of whether evil is something that people do (a la Boethius) or has an external objective reality (Manichaeism), which he thinks LOTR debates but leaves unanswered.

There's a lot of other good stuff here, but the most effective for me was a moving look at Tolkien's (non-Middle Earth) short story Leaf by Niggle as autobiography. Niggle is "the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees", who is obsessed by the idea of painting one big Tree, so much so that other smaller works get tacked onto the edges of the bigger picture, and he neglects to do the necessary routine work on his own house and garden. It's straightforward enough to read Niggle as Everyman, but Shippey shows quite convincingly that he is also Tolkien.

Strongly recommended. ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/m... ( )

The best of the critical works on Tolkien. Shippey makes a convincing case for the thesis of the title, and one acquires a renewed respect for the prodigious amount of learning behind the construction of Middle Earth. Tolkien was one of perhaps only a handful of scholars with the requisite knowledge of Old English, Icelandic and other ancient languages to invent a linguistic structure for his fictional universe which would resonate--often, perhaps, unconsciously--with the modern reader. How fortunate that he would also discover a gift for storytelling. Shippey also reveals fascinating details about the process of writing The Lord of the Rings--that Strider was originally a hobbit, for example. ( )