Tolkien Essay
Introduction
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa. His parents were English. At the age of three with his younger brother Hilary John was taken back to England, in lived with his family members in a small town of Sarehole. Right after their departure from South Africa John’s father died (Carpenter, 2002).
Tolkien’s family members was genteelly poor and soon had to leave for Birmingham, which was a grimy suburb northwest of Sarehole. At the age of 12 Tolkien’s mother died and a couple of brothers became wards of the Catholic priest. A content childhood in the rural landscape of Sarehole differed much inside adolescent years, which Tolkien spent from the industrial center of Birmingham. This difference was later reflected in his works (Carpenter, 2002).
Education
John Tolkien attended King Edward’s School in Birmingham. He performed well in modern-day and classical languages. In 1911 John went to Exeter College, Oxford. Between the subject he studied there have been Old English, Classics, Germanic languages, Finnish and Welsh. He excelled in philology and soon began doing his personal languages (Carpenter, 2002).
The Great War
Tolkien had completed his degree at Oxford right in the beginning of Globe War I. He enlisted and was assigned on the Lancashire Fusiliers, on the other hand didn’t perform an active duty during quite a few months. After he learned that he would be moved out, he married his longtime friend Edith Bratt (Carpenter, 2002).
Tolkien was fighting over a Western Front. Most of his friends were killed during that time. Following four months he caught a typhus-like infection and was moved back to England for ones sleep with the war (Carpenter, 2002).
Academic Career
Tolkien began his job as lexicographer on a New English Dictionary. At that time he started working on languages that have been spoken by elves, as he imagined. The languages had mainly Finnish and Welsh basis. He also began working on his “Lost Tales”, a mythic history of elves along with other creatures, who served as context for his “Elvish” languages. His very first public presentation was performed once he read “The Fall of Gondolin” to an Exeter College Essay Club audience (Hammond, 1998).
John Tolkien soon became a professor in English Language at the University of Leeds. There he worked together with E. V. Gordon on edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien was working at Leeds until 1925. Them he began teaching Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University (Hammond, 1998).
Tolkien at Oxford
The sleep of his task Tolkien spent at Oxford. He retired in 1959. While some critics claim that in accordance with contemporary “publish or perish” standards Tolkien made little, his writings on the other hand had been on the greatest content and quality. One of his most famous works is his lecture “Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics” (Hammond, 1998).
At Oxford Tolkien became a member of a group referred to as “The Inklings”. Its members have been meeting for conversations, drinks, and readings of their works-in-progress. C. S. Lewis was also among the members of this group. Lewis and Tolkien soon became incredibly close friends (Hammond, 1998).
One day at Oxford Tolkien scribbled a note in his student’s exam book: “In a hole inside ground there lived a Hobbit.” Soon he began building a story about a short creature, who lived inside a globe referred to as Middle-earth. Very first he was telling this story to his children, but soon a single publishing corporation received a copy of it and in 1937 published it under the title The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. These days this story grew to the enduring classics (Carpenter, 2002).
Lord with the Rings
The publisher with the Hobbit was stunned by its accomplishment and asked Tolkien for a sequel, which grew into a multivolume epic. This sequel required him really detailed and precise exploration of details, so it took Tolkien more than a decade to do “Lord with the Rings” (Carpenter, 2002).
The Lord from the Rings was very first published in 1954-1955 and consisted of 3 parts: The Fellowship on the Ring, The 2 Towers, and also the Return from the King. The reading public has eagerly received the book, but most in the critics was far from getting neutral (Carpenter, 2002).
The culmination of reputation for this book was achieved after it finally appeared in paperback. The lower cost of paperbacks boosted sales of this book considerably and it was soon it was well-known far outside of England, specifically in The united states during the countercultural 60s (Carpenter, 2002).
Today Tolkien’s epic The Lord in the Rings has been sold in over 100 million copies and was translated into over 25 languages (Carpenter, 2002).
Tolkien’s Legacy
The Lord of the Rings is very a contradictory work. Packed with strange words, written in archaic form, and containing obscure historical facts it is claimed by quite a few as antimodern. Nevertheless, it has usually been read as an allegory from the Cold War or World War II, even though Tolkien himself did not recognize these kinds of interpretation and mentioned that this story was merely an end in itself to become perceived on its individual terms.
The appeal of this story, however, must be looked for not in not in its straightforward action or literary oddness, but in its beautifully realized alternative world and themes of self-sacrifice, loss and friendship. Tolkien’s jobs has truly left a lasting legacy in hundreds of digital worlds that had been created in several books and films ever since.
J.R.R. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. However, his death did not put the end to Middle-earth legacy for readers. His devoted son Christopher immediately after Tolkien’s death endeavored to try and do his father’s life works. In 1977 he edited and published The Silmarillion. In 1980 he started publishing the rest of his father’s incomplete writings, which later became a series of 12-volume History of Middle-earth (Carpenter, 2002).
A Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, J.R.R. Tolkien was not only a brilliant philologist plus a self-described “hobbit”, but will most of all remembered as an author of two best-loved stories in the 20th century: “The Hobbit” and “The Lord with the Rings”. Perhaps, many years from now his works is going to be studied and analyzed as classical writings having a deep philosophical context, but these days they remain among the most useful and interesting books for each young children and adults.
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