The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays · Beowulf and the Critics · Tolkien On Fairy-stories · As explained in the Forward, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the early chapters of The Lord ofthe Rings in successive phases. [1] In the First Phase the professor wrote four different versions of A Long-expected Party, which are published in this chapter (later in the Second Phase a fifth version is provided [2]). For each of the four versions a short introduction is given, followed by the text (as far as it went), with notes and commentary thereafter. At the end of the chapter Christopher highlights the differences between the versions (and the story as eventually published), [3] Tolkien's musings on the further direction of the story, [4] and details of communications with Allen and Unwin. [5] The first part of The History of The Lord of the Rings, an enthralling account of the writing of the Book of the Century which contains many additional scenes and includes the unpublished Epilogue in its entirety. The History of The Lord of the Rings reveals much of the slow, aggregative nature of Tolkien's creativity. As Christopher Tolkien noted of the first two volumes, Tolkien had eventually brought the story up to Rivendell, but still "without any clear conception of what lay before him". [T 2] He also noted how, on the way, his father could get caught up in a "spider's web of argumentation" [T 3] – what Tom Shippey described as getting "bogged down in sometimes strikingly unnecessary webs of minor causation". [1] Thus (for example) the character eventually known as Pippin Took was, in a series of rewriting and of deleted adventures, variously known as Odo, Frodo, Folco, Faramond, Peregrin, Hamilcar, Fredegar, and Olo – the figures also being Boffins and Bolgers, as well as Tooks. [T 4]

Although I have always read "The Lord of the Rings" in English, I have read this book by Christopher in its Spanish translation, and found out that I don't like the names used by the translators in these two books, both for people and for places. For instance: what is the justification of translating "Woodhall" (a city of the hobbits) as "Casa del Bosque"? If Oxford would appear in a book, would any translator into Spanish convert it into "Vado el Buey"? Not even Google Translator does that :-) In the War of the Ring is traced the story of the history at Helm's Deep and the drowning of Isengard by the Ents, then is told of the journey of Frodo with Samwise and Gollum to the Morannon, of the meeting with Faramir and the stairs of Cirith Ungol, of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and of the coming of Aragorn in the fleet of Umbar. The Mythgard Academy sessions are always free for all and open to the public. Every week, the first 100 participants will be able to join us for the live discussion, which are recorded and made available at no cost through our iTunes U course and on the Signum University YouTube channel. The concept of mutually assured destruction, which took hold after 1962, is that each side has a clear window on the other’s routines and thinking. Most of the information-sharing that was put in place has been abandoned in the past decade. Putin has closed down cold war protocols and even accused Russian nuclear scientists who want to meet their US counterparts of being spies. This means the two adversaries, which account for 90 per cent of the world’s warheads, are far more ignorant of each other’s signalling than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. Ignorance, in this situation, is not bliss. The Great Tales of Middle-earth ( The Children of Húrin [2007] • Beren and Lúthien [2017] • The Fall of Gondolin [2018])

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J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Return of the Shadow, "The First Phase: I. A Long-expected Party, (i) The First Version" The Return of the Shadow, the first volume of Christopher Tolkien's History of the Lord of the Rings series, tells the story of the early development of The Lord of the Rings, taking the narrative from the beginning up to the Mines of Moria. I love how the little penciled note above shows just how uncertain the beginning of The Lord of the Rings was. The story might have gone anywhere, no matter how inevitable it now seems. This is what makes The Fellowship of the Ring my favorite of the three books: the time available for whimsical wanderings, little adventures and events and details that don't really seem connected directly to the big story that emerges. Now I see that this meandering opening is partly a reflection of J.R.R. Tolkien's own gradual realization of where the story was going. It's wonderful. J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Return of the Shadow, "The First Phase: I. A Long-expected Party, [Untitled section: Notes on letters"

The Nature of Middle-earth [2021] • The Fall of Númenor and Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth [2022] J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Return of the Shadow, "The First Phase: I. A Long-expected Party, (iv) The Fourth Version" John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets.This book covers a larger part of the content of The Fellowship of the Ring. It encompasses TLotR's three initial stages of composition or, as Christopher Tolkien calls them, "phases", including what Tolkien later called "the crucial chapter" which sets up the central plot, " The Shadow of the Past" [1]. It finishes with the Fellowship of the Ring entering the Mines of Moria. In hindsight it's also fascinating to see Tolkien struggling with The Lord of the Rings as a sequel to The Hobbit. We're now used to thinking of The Lord of the Rings as the main story, for which The Hobbit is a pleasant introduction but a much different kind of story. Tolkien wrote: I absolutely loved reading the notes that Tolkien wrote, and which went every time I bit further, as he envision the story and how it evolved. It’s like watching the story take shape under my very eyes. I loved the part of notes where Tolkien explored the nature of the One Ring, because it was like seeing his ideas move, chang and finally find a familiar form. I was excited to see Sam appear for the first time in the second draft. It’s such a different story from the one we know, but also so strangely familiar.

Tolkien was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford for almost forty years, teaching Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse and Gothic. His illuminating lectures on works such as the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, illustrate his deep knowledge of ancient languages and at the same time provide new insights into peoples and legends from a remote past. The Return of the Shadow is the story of the first part of the history of the creation of The Lord of the Rings, a fascinating study of Tolkien’s great masterpiece, from its inception to the end of the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring. Again, what's hopefully clear from the above is that the story seems to come almost fully formed. There is no location which Tolkien decided to cut, and the events basically happen just the way they happen in the final edition, with a surprisingly small amount of rewrites. This makes perfect sense. If Tolkien had used a word processor, I suspect he would have revised more extensively, but being tied down to the typewriter, I suspect that he wanted to use as much as he thought good. What is remarkable is how much the characters change. Tolkien really does succeed here though: his first glimpse of Frodo in the final version is a wistful and regretful Frodo missing Bilbo, which gives the character the personality we will see go over mountain and under hill over the next few books. Thank goodness Tolkien got rid of Trotter. A Long-expected Party is the title of the opening chapter of The Return of the Shadow, the sixth book of The History of Middle-earth series by Christopher Tolkien. It is also the title of the first chapter in The Lord of the Rings, but in this volume Christopher provides the history of how that first chapter was written. Confronting the demon invasion, powerful dark heroes from all corners of the world have been summoned to your territory. They stand ready to aid you in your struggle against the demons. Remember, you are never alone! Gather every available force to conquer the demons!

The Return of the Shadow

Reading "The History of Middle-earth" books make me think of the commentary and 'special features' on DVD movies. The difference is that the writer/director/producer is dead and so it is all hosted by his son Christopher Tolkien. J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Return of the Shadow, "The First Phase: I. A Long-expected Party, (ii) The Second Version" The Return of the Shadow seminar originally took place from December 14, 2016 – April 19, 2017 on Wednesdays evenings. Week 1: In Search of a Sequel The Annotated Hobbit · The History of The Hobbit · The Nature of Middle-earth · The Fall of Númenor

csillag között hezitáltam, de az öt talán túlzás lett volna, mert néha tényleg szinte rá kellett vennem magam, hogy olvassam. Masszívan fanoknak szól, de bevallom, amikor letettem, azonnal elkezdett hiányozni. Szuper visszaröppenni a Gyűrű Szövetsége világába, és rendkívül érdekes és izgalmas belelátni Tolkien fejébe, a regény keletkezéstörténetébe, a különböző vázlatokban kibontakozó ötletekbe (akár végül elvetett, akár végül kibontott-megvalósított ötletről van szó). So, first, one thing that I found intensely telling was that none of the edits that Tolkien makes are explicitly on the basis of symbolism or any other codes left for sharp critics. I think this is significant, because I predict that literary critics will soon turn their chops to making Lord of the Rings (like Shakespeare and many other works of fiction) into nothing more than a bunch of ideas cleverly disguised as symbols, as decoded from the story. I think this will happen because people have overprotected Tolkien from this by over-emphasizing his aversion to allegory, when in fact it's as clear as day that Tolkien included what we could call symbolism: for instance, Frodo and the company leave on their journey on December 25th and the ring is destroyed on March 25th, which fits Easter. But there's no sign of that here, and so the critics should not make their interpretations idea-centric. This book (#6) covers part from beginning of LOTR to Mines of Moria, when Company discovers Balin's tomb, though there are glimpses of future events such as siege of Minas Tirith and destruction of the Ring. Of course this means that such a work is largely boring and not nearly as exciting as it sounds on paper, but there are some real gems that are of particular interest to me as a lover of Tolkien. If you want to write essays about this stuff, you had better read it and the following. However, if you just like Tolkien and want to know what's in here, read on. Version II: Bilbo gives the party and he is 71 years old. Elves, Dwarves, and even Men from Dale arrive at Bag End with goods for the party. Gandalf appears with his fireworks. Bilbo uses his Ring to disappear but only after stepping down so that no one noticed his going. [7]

Let me admit first off that _The Return of the Shadow_ (book 6 in the History of Middle-earth series) is exactly what I didn’t want to read when I first heard that Christopher Tolkien was putting out a series of books of his father’s unpublished writings. As far as I was concerned we already had what Tolkien was willing and able to publish in The Hobbit and LoTR (and even something he hadn’t yet been able to publish in his lifetime in the form of The Silmarillion) so the appeal for me of seeing early drafts and material that the author himself had either superseded or conceivably felt was unpublishable didn’t seem like an appealing prospect. Why examine the dross when we already had the gold on display? Well, my foray into the other volumes of the series which detailed his monumental work in building the world, languages, and stories of what would become the First Age of Middle-earth in the Silmarillion material really opened my eyes to what a treasure trove there was and only added to my appreciation of what had previously been published. I saw that this was not simply a collection of discarded notes, imperfect drafts, and unpublishable material, but an expanded glimpse at the world Tolkien was creating. The sheer variety in both content and form meant that I was able to see much fuller versions of some stories that were only hinted at or told in precis in the published Silmarillion, and even the tales I was familiar with were often told in much more expanded, or even more impressive and enjoyable ways in some of these earlier documents. I’m enjoying The History of Middle-earth in general, but this first volume about the creation of The Lord of the Rings is particularly outstanding. I loved reading of how the book was created, because in a way it’s a story in itself.