Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits by Dimitri Fimi (11.09.08 by Pieter Collier) - Comments

This book, Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, presents an exploration of the evolution of tolkien's mythology within the framework of its cultural and historical context.

It contributes significantly to Tolkien studies, as well as understanding of many elements of popular culture in the pre-WW1 period.

This is the first book to look at issues of race and ethnicity in Tolkien with any kind of historical knowledge. Tolkien, Race and Cultural History explores the evolution of Tolkien’s mythology by examining how it changed as a result of Tolkien’s life story and contemporary cultural and intellectual history.

The book considers Tolkien’s creative writing as an ever-developing ‘legendarium’: an interconnected web of stories, poems and essays, from his early poems in the 1910s to his latest writings in the early 1970s. Uniquely, it discusses tolkien's early poems linking them with the literary/cultural history of the Edwardian period. It discusses tolkien's most popular works ("The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings") within a wider context of the writer's creativity and personal mythology, and also examines often-neglected works such as the twelve volume "History of Middle-earth" series, which has received little attention from critics.

This title includes 15 illustrations, including tolkien's own drawings and sketches, and offers original research based on tolkien's unpublished manuscripts.

Dimitra Fimi is Associate Lecturer at Cardiff University, UK. Her research interests include the history of fantasy literature, folklore and popular culture, literary adaptations, and the interaction between literature and visual culture.

Fimi explores the evolution of tolkien's mythology throughout his lifetime by examining how it changed as a result of his life story and contemporary cultural and intellectual history. This new approach and scope brings to light neglected aspects of Tolkien’s imaginative vision and addresses key features of Tolkien’s creativity: the centrality of the Elves and the role of linguistic invention in his legendarium, as well as race and material culture in Middle-earth.

This book is a fantastic and original work on tolkien and I highly recommend it to all serious Tolkien fans and lovers.

The contents

List of Figures
Conventions and Abbreviations
Introduction

PART I: HOW IT ALL BEGAN
  In the Beginning were the Fairies...
  'Fluttering Sprites with Antennae': Victorian and Edwardian Fancies
  The Fairies, Faith and Folklore

PART II: IDEAL BEINGS, IDEAL LANGUAGES
  The Cat and the Whiskers: tolkien's Linguistic Creation
  'Linguistic Aesthetic': Sounds, Meaning and the Pursuit of Beauty
  Ideal Languages and Phonetic Spelling

PART III: FROM MYTH TO HISTORY
  The Claim to History
  A Hierarchical World
  Visualising Middle-earth: Real and Imagined Material Cultures

Epilogue: From Fairies to Hobbits
Appendix: 'And Wither Then?': Stepping into the Road
Bibliography
Index

Enjoyed this post? Click to get the RSS feed.

Spread the news about this J.R.R. Tolkien article: