J. R. R. Tolkien's the Hobbit: Realizing History Through Fantasy: A Critical Companion

ISBN-13: 9783031112652 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 121 str.

Robert T. Tally Jr.

Spis treści

Preface and Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: In a hole in the ground . . .

            There and Back Again

            A Hobbit in All But Size

            The Fish Out of Water

2. The Way to Talk to Dragons: Interpellation, Style, and Narrative Form

            A Silliness of Manner

            “Praps we sits here and chats”

            From a Mythic to a Historical Mode

3. Nasty Disturbing Uncomfortable Things: The Intrusions of History

            A Waverley of the Shire

            The Vanishing Mediator; or, the Uses of Anachronism

            The Seamless Web of Story

            Bringing It All Back Home

4. Show Me Now Your Map: Towards a Literary Cartography of Middle-earth

            Thrór’s Map: The Hidden Entrance to Middle-earth

            The Edge of the Wild

            Roads Go Ever Ever On

            Plus Ultra: Gandalf’s Peregrinations

5. More Dangerous and Less Wise: Race, Class, and the Geopolitical Order

            What is a Race?

            Good People and Decent Enough People

            Cruel, Wicked, and Bad-Hearted

            Dragon Sickness

6. Conclusion: Quite a little fellow in a wide world

Bibliography

Index

O autorze

Robert T. Tally Jr. is a Professor of English at Texas State University, USA. His books include For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism (2022), Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination (2019), and Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism (2014).

Blurb

This book is a critical introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but it also advances an argument about the novel in the context of Tolkien’s larger literary and philosophical project. Notwithstanding its canonical place in the fantasy genre, The Hobbit is ultimately a historical novel. It does not refer directly to any “real” historical events, but it both enacts and conceptualizes history in a way that makes it real. Drawing on Marxist literary criticism and narrative theory, this book examines the form and content of Tolkien’s work, demonstrating how the heroic romance is simultaneously employed and subverted by Tolkien in his tale of an unlikely hero, “quite a little fellow in a wide world,” who nonetheless makes history. First-time readers of Tolkien, as well as established scholars and fans, will enjoy this engaging and accessible study of The Hobbit. 

Robert T. Tally Jr. is a Professor of English at Texas State University, USA. His books include For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism (2022), Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination (2019), and Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism (2014).