Alas, not me

Before I retired I listened to several podcasts while driving back and forth to work. For me, driving seemed the best time. Now I don't ...

 

In January 1948 Tolkien said something to C. S. Lewis that hurt him. In Letter #113 Tolkien continues what appears to be a longer conversati...

This is a lighthearted not terribly serious post. It's a joke really. So nobody stones anybody, okay? The other night I came across a pa...

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In his introduction to the Lay of Leithian  in The Lays of Beleriand , Christopher Tolkien writes:  My father never explained the name Leith...

In the Ainulindalë  Melkor chooses to follow his own will rather than the design of Ilúvatar and to usurp the act of creation ( S  16-17). I...

Recently I have been reading Johm F. Whitmire Jr.'s interesting article, "An Archaeology of Hope and Despair in the Tale of Aragorn...

According to the Prologue  to The Lord of the Rings,  the sea is a symbol of death to hobbits ( FR Pr. 07). We tend to imagine mythical expl...

The Lay of the Children of Húrin  exists in two versions, neither of which tells the whole story its title promises. The second version is m...

A question posted online in a private group set me thinking about which hand Frodo wears the One Ring on. During The Lord of the Rings  Frod...

  Some months back John Garth and I were discussing the phrase "Mani Aroman," which is found in The Return of the Shadow as a pos...

Recently I saw someone somewhere inline asking about Gandalf's characterization of Gollum in The Shadow of the Past .   The most inquisi...

In his new book The Literary Role of History in the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien , Nick Birns has written a very interesting chapter called ...

  ...fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie , the realm or st...

After the composed and often wise Elves we meet in The Lord of the Rings , the dangerously passionate Elves of The Silmarillion  can come as...

I had read The Lord of the Rings many times before I discovered Jane Austen. Yet the tone of the beginning sounded so familiar. I can easil...

Well, the Story Girl was right. There is such a place as fairyland—but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is...

Over at his blog, Joe Hoffman  has thoughtfully suggested that Sam's moment of temptation by the Ring is not in fact his grand vision of...

"... and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees...