33 lines
1.9 KiB
Plaintext
33 lines
1.9 KiB
Plaintext
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Topic: Tolkien, J. R. R. {tohl'-keen}
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Text: The English writer and scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, b.
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Bloemfontein, South Africa, Jan. 3, 1892, d. Sept. 2, 1973,
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reestablished fantasy as a serious form in modern English
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literature. As professor of medieval English literature at
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Oxford University, he presented (1936) the influential lecture
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"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," an aesthetic
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justification of the presence of the mythological
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creatures--Grendel and the dragon--in the medieval poem; he then
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went on to publish his own fantasy, The HOBBIT (1937). There
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followed his critical theory of fantasy, "On Fairy-Stories"
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(1939), and his masterpieces, the mythological romances The Lord
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of the Rings (1954-55) and The Silmarillion (1977).
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Brought to England as a child upon the death of his father in
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1896, Tolkien was educated at King Edward's School in
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Birmingham and at Oxford. He enlisted in 1915 in the Lancashire
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Fusiliers; before leaving for France, he married his longtime
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sweetheart, Edith Bratt. Tolkien saw action in the Battle of
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the Somme, but trench fever kept him frequently hospitalized
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during 1917. He held academic posts in philology and in English
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language and literature from 1920 until his retirement in
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1959.
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Inclination and profession moved Tolkien to study the heroic
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literature of northern Europe--Beowulf, the Edda, the Kalevala.
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The spirit of these poems and their languages underlies his
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humorous and whimsical writings, such as Farmer Giles of Ham
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(1949) and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962), as well as his
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more substantial works. RANDEL HELMS
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bliog: Carpenter, Humphrey, Tolkien: A Biography (1977); Helms,
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Randel, Tolkien's World (1974).
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