Rachel Fulton and Lucy Pick
Department of History and the
The
5jyj-
5aj j91
“Nolwë ola, ar
cuila lohta”
[“Wisdom grows,
and life puts forth flowers and fruits”]
Spring 2005
TOLKIEN: MEDIEVAL AND MODERN
Now we must
praise the Guardian of Heaven,
the might of the Lord and His purpose of mind,
the work of the Glorious Father; for He,
God Eternal, established each wonder,
He, Holy Creator, first fashioned
heaven as a roof for the sons of men.
Then the Guardian of Mankind adorned
this middle-earth below, the world for men,
Everlasting Lord, Almighty King.
--Caedmon’s hymn
(trans. Kevin Crossley-Holland)
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is one of the most popular works of
imaginative literature of the twentieth century. This course seeks to
understand its appeal by situating Tolkien's artistic and scholarly creation
alongside its medieval sources and modern parallels. Themes to be addressed
include the problem of genre and the uses of tradition, the nature of history
and its relationship to place, the activity of creation and its relationship to
language, beauty, evil and power, the role of monsters in imagination and
criticism, the twinned challenges of death and immortality, fate and free will,
and the interaction between the world of "faerie" and religious
belief.
Course
requirements
Grades will be based on an in-class
mid-quarter exam worth 35% and a final project worth 45%. Students are required to do all the required
readings for class and to come prepared to participate. Additionally, we have established a bulletin
board for this class on the Chalk website, and students are strongly encouraged
to post questions and comments there. We
hope this will provide a useful forum for more informal discussion of topics of
interest to the class. The final 20% of
the course grade will be based on attendance in class, participation in class
discussion and participation in the discussion fora on the Chalk website. At a minimum (C+ level), everyone should post
at least three such comments (about
300 words each) in the discussion fora for the course readings (“Tolkien as
Scripture”).
Books Available
for Purchase at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (
________, The
Silmarillion, ed. Christopher
Tolkien (New York: Del Rey, 1985).
________, Letters,
ed. Humphrey Carpenter with Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000;
first published 1981) [=Letters].
________, Unfinished Tales, ed.
Christopher Tolkien (New York: Del Rey, 1988).
________, The
Lost Road, History of Middle Earth [=HME] 5, ed. Christopher Tolkien (New
York: Del Rey, 1996).
________, Sauron
Defeated, HME 9, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992).
________, Morgoth’s
Ring, HME 10, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993).
________,
The Tolkien Reader (New York: Del Rey, 1966).
________,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
Kevin
Crossley-Holland, The Anglo-Saxon World:
An Anthology including the complete Beowulf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) [=ASW].
Verlyn
Flieger, Splintered Light: Logos and
Language in Tolkien's World, rev. ed. (
T.A.
Shippey, The Road to Middle Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New
Mythology, rev. ed. (
For readings from LotR, references are given by book (not volume!), chapter and page number. The page numbers are those
from the Houghton Mifflin editions.
Students are free to use any other edition but should make sure that
their reading follows the sections in the syllabus. Please note: as it is a prerequisite for the course
that students should have already read LotR,
we reserve the right to add to or change these readings from LotR as the quarter progresses. All such emendations will be posted in the
Announcements on the Chalk website.
March
29 Tolkien
as Scripture
Tolkien, “Mythopoeia” (handout)
Map of Middle-earth in the Third Age
March
31 Genre: Fantasy and Fairy Tale
Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” and “Leaf by
Niggle,” in The Tolkien Reader
________, Smith
of Wooton Major
________, LotR, bk. I, chap. 7 (pp. 127-29).
________, Letters, nos. 109, 199, 215.
Ursula
LeGuin, “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?,”
in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Susan Wood, rev. ed. (New York: Harper
Collins, 1989), pp. 34-40.
Recommended:
A.S.
Byatt, “The Story of the Eldest Princess,” in The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (New York: Random House, 1994),
pp. 39-71.
Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien: A
Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), pp. 97-106, 118.
Flieger, Splintered Light, pp. 21-31.
________, A
Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie (Kent: Kent State
University Press, 1997), pp. 227-53.
April
5 Story and Tradition: “Sources” I
Tolkien,
“The Cottage of Lost Play,” in Book of Lost Tales, HME 1, ed.
Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983-1984), pp. 12-21.
________,
“The early history of the legend,” and “The Lost Road: iii. The unwritten chapters,” HME 5
________,
LotR, Prologue: “Note on the Shire
Records” (pp. 13-15); bk. I, chap. 9 (pp. 154-157); bk. IV, chap. 8 (pp.
695-99).
________,
Letters, nos. 131, 203.
Verlyn
Flieger, “The Footsteps of Aelfwine,” in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, eds.
Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, (
Charles Noad, “On
the Construction of the Silmarillion,” in Tolkien’s Legendarium, eds.
Flieger and Hostetter, pp. 31-68.
April
7 Story and Tradition: “Sources” II
Tolkien, “The Lost Road: i. The opening chapters;
ii. The Númenórean chapters,” HME 5
________,
The Notion Club Papers, part 1, HME
9, pp. 155-211.
________,
LotR, bk. I, chap. 5 (p. 106), chap.
7 (pp. 123-26), and chap. 8 (pp. 137-41); bk. II, chap. 7 (pp. 351-57); bk. VI,
chap. 7 (p. 974), and chap. 9 (pp. 1006-1008).
________,
Letters, nos. 24, 163, 213, 257.
Voluspa
(“The
Seeress’s Prophecy”), in The Poetic Edda, trans. Carolyne Larrington
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 3-13.
Recommended:
Flieger, A Question of Time, pp. 61-88, 117-41.
April
12 Style: Poetry vs. Prose, High vs.
Low, Westron vs. English
Tolkien,
“Lay of Leithian,” Cantos III and XIII,
in Lays of Beleriand, HME 3, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1985), pp. 171-181, 294-304.
________,
“The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,” in The
Tolkien Reader.
________, LotR, bk. I, chap. 11 (pp. 187-90); bk.
II, chap. 2 (pp. 233-64), chap. 8 (pp. 368-69); bk. VI, chap. 5 (p. 942);
Appendix F.II: “On Translation” (pp. 1107-1112).
________, Letters, no. 165, 190.
Ursula
LeGuin, “From Elfland to
T.A. Shippey, Tolkien: Author of the
Century. (
Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in
Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1953), pp. 143-173 (“Adam and Eve”).
Recommended:
Brian Rosebury, Tolkien:
A Cultural Phenomenon (
April
14 History & Time; Nature &
Place
Tolkien,
“Farmer Giles of Ham,” in The Tolkien Reader
________,
LotR, Foreword to the Second Edition;
Appendices A: “Annals of the Kings and Rulers,” B: “The Tale of Years,” and D:
“The Calendars”
________,
“The Later Annals of Valinor,” and “The Later Annals of Beleriand,” HME 5
________,
“The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor,” in Unfinished
Tales.
________,
The Notion Club Papers, part 2,
Nights 62-65, HME 9, pp. 222-33.
________,
Letters, no. 53, 151, 183.
“The Ruin,” ASW, pp. 59-60.
T.H.
White, The Once and Future King, bk. 4, chap. 3 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1958), pp. 521-30.
Recommended:
Karen Wynn Fonstad, The Atlas of Middle-Earth, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1991).
Wayne G. Hammond
and Christina Scull, J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist & Illustrator (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1995), pp. 35-65.
April
19 Language and Names
Tolkien,
“Tale of Eärendil” and “Aelfwine of
________,
The Notion Club Papers, part 2,
Nights 66-67, HME 9, pp. 233-53.
________, “The Lhammas," and
"The Etymologies,” HME 5
________,
LotR, bk. II, chap. 1 (pp. 226-32);
Appendix E: “Writing and Spelling,” and Appendix F.I: “The Languages and
Peoples of the Third Age.”
________, Letters, nos. 297, 347.
“The Wanderer,” ASW, pp. 50-53.
“The Seafarer,” ASW, pp. 53-56.
Recommended:
Tolkien,
“English and Welsh,” in The Monsters and the Critics, ed. Christopher
Tolkien, pp. 162-97.
________,
“Lowdham’s Report on the Adunaic Language,” HME 9, pp. 413-40.
Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, pp. 136-46.
Flieger, A Question of Time, pp. 143-74.
April
21 Language and Music
Tolkien, “Ainulindalë,” in The Silmarillion.
________, “Ainulindalë,” HME 5
________, “Ainulindalë,” HME 10, pp. 3-44
________, Letters, no. 96.
Genesis 1-2
[any translation or edition]
Flieger, Splintered
Light, pp. 49-79, 87-95.
April
26 Creativity & Free Will; Power
& Beauty I
Tolkien,
“Valaquenta,” inThe Silmarillion.
________,
“Quenta Silmarillion,” chapters 1-13, in The
Silmarillion
________, Letters, nos. 52, 153, 156.
Augustine,
City of
Dorothy
Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, chap. 2 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941;
New York: Harper Collins, 1979), pp. 19-31 (“Image of God”).
Recommended:
Flieger,
Splintered Light, pp. 81-86, 97-126.
April
28 Creativity & Free Will; Power
& Beauty II
Tolkien, “Akallabêth,” inThe Silmarillion
________,
“The Fall of Numenor,” HME 5
________,
“The Drowning of Anadûne,” HME 9, pp. 357-75
________,
“A Description of the
________,
“The Palantíri,” in Unfinished Tales
Augustine, City of
Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, chap. 7, pp. 93-107 (“Maker of All Things,
Maker of Ill-things”).
Recommended:
Tolkien,
The Notion Club Papers, part 2,
Nights 68-70, HME 9, pp. 253-82
Flieger, Splintered Light, pp. 127-30.
May
3 Creativity & Free Will; Power
& Beauty III
Tolkien, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age,”
in The Silmarillion
________, LotR, bk. I, chap. 2 (pp. 45-63),
chap. 5 (p. 106), chaps. 11-12 (pp. 190-194), chap. 12 (pp. 207-209); bk. II,
chap. 1 (pp. 215-218 and 225-226), chap. 2 (pp. 236 and 258-64), chap. 9 (pp.
383-84), chap. 10 (pp. 386-392); bk. III, chap. 1 (pp. 403-10), chap. 2 (pp.
414-416 and 428), chap. 3 (pp. 434-37 and 446), chap. 5 (pp. 485-90), chap. 6
(p. 510), chap. 9 (p. 550), chap. 10 (pp. 564-70); bk. IV, chap. 1 (pp.
600-05), chap. 8 (pp. 688-92); bk. V, chap. 4 (pp. 793-96 and 802-11), chap. 6
(pp. 821-826), chap. 7 (pp. 832-33); bk. VI, chap. 3 (pp. 912-26).
________, “
________, Letters, nos. 66, 183, 186,
191-192, 246.
Ursula
LeGuin, “The Child and the Shadow,” in The Language of the Night, pp.
54-67.
Jane Chance, Tolkien’s
Art: A Mythology for England, 2nd ed. (
May
5 Mid-Term
Exam
May
10 Monsters and Critics
Tolkien,
“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” in The Monsters and the Critics and
Other Essays, ed. Christopher
Tolkien (London; Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), pp. 5-48.
________,
“Quenta Silmarillion,” chap. 21: “Of Túrin Turambar,” inThe Silmarillion
________, LotR,
bk. IV, chaps.9-10 (pp. 707-13) (Shelob)
________, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, chaps. 2
(trolls), 5 (Gollum), 8 (spiders), 12 (Smaug)
________, Letters, no. 183.
“Beowulf,”
ASW, pp. 76-78, 86-89, 91-94, 105-6,
109-116, 126-27, 129-54 [selections on monsters and the dragon]
Andrew
Lang, “The Story of Sigurd,” The Red Fairy Book (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967; originally
published London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1890), pp. 357-67.
Kalevala, poems 34-36
(Kullervo), ed. Elias Lönnrot, trans. Keith Bosley (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), pp. 468-96.
Recommended:
Tolkien, “Narn I Hîn Húrin: The Tale of the
Children of Húrin,” in Unfinished Tales
A.S. Byatt, “Dragon’s Breath,” in The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (New
York: Random House, 1994), pp. 73-92.
Chance,
Tolkien’s Art, pp. 12-47, 202-7.
May
12 Jewels and Trees I
Tolkien,
“Quenta Silmarillion,” chaps. 1, 7-8, 11, 24, in The Silmarillion
________, “The Tale of the Sun and the Moon,” in Book
of Lost Tales, HME 1, pp. 174-197.
________,
LotR, bk. II, chaps. 6-7 (pp.
324-46).
Exodus
28 [any translation or edition]
Revelation
21
“
Marbode
of Rennes, “Lapidary of 12 Stones in Verse,” “Medical Prose Lapidary,” and
“Christian Symbolic Lapidary in Prose,” in Marbode
of Rennes’ (1035-1123) De lapidus considered
as a medical treatise, with text, commentary and C.W. King’s Translation,
together with text and translation of Marbode’s minor works on stones, ed.
John M. Riddle, Sudhoffs Archiv
Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Heft 20 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 1977), pp. 119-129.
May
17 Jewels and Trees II
Tolkien,
LotR, bk. I, chap. 2 (pp. 43-44),
chap. 6; bk. III, chap. 2 (pp. 430-432), chap. 4, chap. 7 (p. 529), chap. 8
(pp. 530-40), chap. 9 (pp. 550-58).
________,
Letters, no. 241, 339.
“The Dream of the Rood,” ASW, pp. 200-4.
“Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight,” stanzas 1-21, 80-101, in Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight,
Verlyn
Flieger, “The Green Man, The Green Knight, and Treebeard: Scholarship and
Invention in Tolkien’s Fiction,” in Scholarship
and Fantasy: Proceedings of The Tolkien Phenomenon, May 1992, Turku, Finland, ed. K.J. Battarbee, Anglicana Turkuensia 12 (Turku, Finland:
University of Turku, 1993), pp. 85-98.
May
19 Immortality and Death I: Elves and
Men
Tolkien,
LotR, bk. I, chap. 3 (pp. 77-83), chap.
11 (pp. 186-190), chap. 12 (p. 209); bk. II, chap. 7 (pp. 344-357), chap. 8
(pp. 358-370); bk. IV, chap. 5 (pp. 662-66); Appendix A.v: “The Tale of Aragorn
and Arwen” (pp. 1032-38)
________,
“Quenta Silmarillion,” chaps. 17, 19, and 24, inThe Silmarillion
________,
“Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth,” HME 10, pp. 303-66.
________,
Letters, nos. 43, 181, 200, 340
C.S.
Lewis, The Discarded Image: An
Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1964), pp. 122-138 (“The Longaevi”).
Recommended:
Tolkien,
“Laws and Customs among the Eldar,” HME 10, pp. 207-53.
________,
“Aman,” HME 10, pp. 424-31.
________,
“The History of Galadriel and Celeborn,” in Unfinished
Tales
Flieger, Splintered Light, pp. 131-46.
May
24 Immortality and Death II: Men and
Hobbits
Tolkien,
LotR, Prologue 1-3 (pp. 1-10); bk. I,
chap. 1 (p. 22), chap. 2 (pp. 43-44 and 61-63), chap. 4 (pp. 84-86); bk. II,
chap. 1 (p. 221); bk. IV, chap. 3 (p. 624), chap. 4 (p. 638), chap. 6 (p. 672);
bk. IV, chap. 8 (pp. 699-700), chap. 10 (pp. 713-16); bk. VI, chap. 1 (pp.
889-91), chap. 3 (pp. 912-26); Appendix C: "Family Trees" (pp.
1073-77)
Tolkien,
Letters, no. 5, 208, 214, 316.
Verlyn
Flieger, “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero,” in Understanding The Lord of
the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, eds. Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D.
Isaacs (
________, Splintered Light, pp. 147-74.
Marion Zimmer
Bradley, “Men, Halflings, and Hero Worship,” in Understanding The Lord of the Rings, eds. Zimbardo and Isaacs, pp.
76-92.
May
26 The Meaning of Life I: Worship
Tolkien, Letters, nos. 54, 89, 142, 183,
211-212, 250, 310, 328.
Ancrene
Wisse, Author’s Introduction and pt. 1 (“Devotions”), trans. as The Ancrene riwle by M. B. Salu, with an
Introduction by Gerard Sitwell and a preface by J.R.R. Tolkien (London: Burns
and Oates, 1955), pp. 1-20.
Recommended:
Bradley J.
Birzer, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying
Myth: Understanding Middle Earth (
May
31 The Meaning of Life II: Cult
Tolkien, LotR, bk. II, chap. 3 (pp. 266-267); bk. IV, chap. 8 (pp. 696-97);
bk. VI, chap. 4 (pp. 929, 933).
A.S. Byatt, Babel Tower (New York:
Random House, 1996), pp. 34-37, 315-19, 327-28, 370-71, 399-401, 450, and
611-17.
________,
A Whistling Woman (
________,
“Old Tales, New Forms,” in On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays (
Recommended:
Carpenter,
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, pp.
222-34, 259-60.
June
2 The Spring 2005
June
7 Final
Projects Due
Additional
Resources
Jane Chance, ed., Tolkien the Medievalist (
________, Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader
(
Wayne G. Hammond,
with Douglas A. Anderson, J.R.R. Tolkien:
A Descriptive Bibliography (Winchester, Eng.: St. Paul’s Bibliographies;
New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Books, 1993).
Richard C. West, Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist,
rev. ed. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1981).
Weblinks to
various Tolkienian sites:
Return to homepage: http://home.uchicago.edu/~rfulton