Shippey's classic work, now revised in paperback, explores J.R.R. Tolkien's creativity and the sources of his inspiration. Shippey shows in detail how Tolkien's professional background led him to write "The Hobbit" and how he created a timeless charm for millions of readers.
Shippey's classic work, now revised in paperback, explores J.R.R. Tolkien's creativity and the sources of his inspiration. Shippey shows in detail how...
The middle ages remain a prize to be fought for and a territory to control. From early modern times rulers and politicians have sought to ground their legitimacy in ancient tradition - which they have often invented or rewritten for their own purposes. This issue of Studies in Medievalism presents a number of such cases, ranging from the rewriting of Mozart, and Merovingian history, for the King of Bavaria, to the anglicization of the medieval Welsh Mabinogion by the wife of an English ironmaster. Other articles consider the involvement of scholarship with national and professional...
The middle ages remain a prize to be fought for and a territory to control. From early modern times rulers and politicians have sought to ground their...
The middle ages provide the material for mass-market films, for historical and fantasy fiction, for political propaganda and claims of legitimacy, and these in their turn exert a force well outside academia. The phenomenon is too important to be left unscrutinised: these essays show the continuing power and applicability of medieval images - and also, it must be said, their dangerousness and often their falsity. Of the ten essays in this volume, several examine modern movies, including the highly-successful A Knight's Tale (Chaucer as a PR agent) and the much-derided First Knight (the Round...
The middle ages provide the material for mass-market films, for historical and fantasy fiction, for political propaganda and claims of legitimacy, and...
The 19th century was a time of fierce national competition for the -ownership- of medieval documents and the legitimation of national histories. This volume contains papers dealing with the attempts of French scholars to claim English documents (and vice versa), as also of disputes between Scandinavian and British scholars, and Dutch, German and Italian scholars. Regionalism is also a repeated topic, with claims made for the autonomy of Frisia within the Netherlands, and Languedoc within France. Other papers deal with the rediscovery of medieval music, with early American attempts to redirect...
The 19th century was a time of fierce national competition for the -ownership- of medieval documents and the legitimation of national histories. This ...
Professor Tom Shippey is best known for his books 'The Road to Middle-earth' and 'J.R.R. Tolkien. Author of the Century'. Yet they are not the only contributions of his to Tolkien studies. Over the years, he has written and lectured widely on Tolkien-related topics. Unfortunately, many of his essays, though still topical, are no longer available. The current volume unites for the first time a selection of his older essays together with some new, as yet unpublished articles.
Professor Tom Shippey is best known for his books 'The Road to Middle-earth' and 'J.R.R. Tolkien. Author of the Century'. Yet they are not the only co...
The best-known literary achievement of Anglo-Saxon England, "Beowulf" is a poem concerned with monsters and heroes, treasure and transience, feuds and fidelity. Composed sometime between 500 and 1000 C.E. and surviving in a single manuscript, it is at once immediately accessible and forever mysterious. And in Craig Williamson's splendid new version, this often translated work may well have found its most compelling modern English interpreter.
Williamson's "Beowulf" appears alongside his translations of many of the major works written by Anglo-Saxon poets, including the elegies "The...
The best-known literary achievement of Anglo-Saxon England, "Beowulf" is a poem concerned with monsters and heroes, treasure and transience, feuds ...
Robert D. Fulk is arguably the greatest Old English philologist to emerge during the twentieth century; his corpus of scholarship has fundamentally shaped contemporary understanding of many aspects of Anglo-Saxon literary history and English historical linguistics. This volume, in his honour, brings together essays which engage with his work and advance his research interests. Scholarship on historical metrics and the dating, editing, and interpretation of Old English poetry thus forms the core of this book; other topics addressed include syntax, phonology, etymology, lexicology, and...
Robert D. Fulk is arguably the greatest Old English philologist to emerge during the twentieth century; his corpus of scholarship has fundamentally sh...
From the riddling song of a bawdy onion that moves between kitchen and bedroom to the thrilling account of Beowulf's battle with a treasure-hoarding dragon, from the heart-rending lament of a lone castaway to the embodied speech of the cross upon which Christ was crucified, from the anxiety of Eve, who carries "a sumptuous secret in her hands / And a tempting truth hidden in her heart," to the trust of Noah who builds "a sea-floater, a wave-walking / Ocean-home with rooms for all creatures," the world of the Anglo-Saxon poets is a place of harshness, beauty, and wonder.
Now for the...
From the riddling song of a bawdy onion that moves between kitchen and bedroom to the thrilling account of Beowulf's battle with a treasure-hoardin...
"It is precisely against the darkness of the world that comedy arises, and it is best when that is not hidden."
With these words Tolkien replied to Rayner Unwin's comments upon first reading Book 1 of Lord of the Rings. Rayner had not commented on the comedy of Book 1 but on the overpowering effect of "the struggle between darkness and light," as he put it, and that omission disappointed Tolkien. If this was the response of Tolkien's famous first reviewer, it is not surprising that academic studies have also tended to overlook or disregard both the presence of humour in...
"It is precisely against the darkness of the world that comedy arises, and it is best when that is not hidden."
