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Who is J.R.R. Tolkien?
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL (/ˈruːl ˈtɒlkiːn/, ROOL TOL-keen;[a] 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. He then moved within the same university to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, and held these positions from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
After Tolkien’s death, his son Christopher published a series of works based on his father’s extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda and, within it, Middle-earth. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings.
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused him to be popularly identified as the “father” of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy.
A while back a lady cursed her bf as being “faithless” and her friend’s response was “what does religion have to do with anything?” Normally I’m not a word stickler but that one annoyed me unduly.
I sometimes feel as though the language (or maybe the speakers of the language) is being dumbed down. But as I am not capable of writing at an elite level, maybe it is an advantage to see “greatness” becoming a smaller hill to climb.
Living in an increasingly individualistic society, we’re expected to handle our own “darkness.”
True. The worst thing to do, in some circles, is to burden someone else. But I do not think this is how we were meant to live.
I bought the Silmarillion last Christmas with a full intention to read the whole set. Must get back to it…Tolkien is great.
Now that is a literary challenge. That’s like the grad school level for Tolkien literature.
Good luck!