I found that I like Shippey’s voice in this book. I can tell how deep an interest and how much respect he has for Tolkien just by how enthusiastic he is about the material.
The first thing that caught my eye was something I learned early in the semester but was put in better perspective through how it was conveyed in the book. The “seminal sentence,” so eloquently put by Shippey, that triggered The Hobbit and coincidently The Lord of the Rings. It’s funny how the work that Tolkien was doing since 1914 regarding languages and Elvish and Human legends from the first two ages culminated into a phrase scrawled on a blank exam page, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Such humble beginnings for such an earth shattering phenomenon. I also liked how Shippey described how Bilbo finding the one ring in Gollum’s cave was not only a turning point in Bilbo’s career but also one in Tolkien’s, for it gave a cause for the latter three books.
Another point that was brought to my attention was just how anachronistic hobbits are in Middle Earth. It made perfect sense to me up until now. Before I may have thought, “Oh, they’re smoking tobacco, getting mail delivered, and have a much better structured class system and community than the rest of the Humans in the world.” But now I know that Tolkien did this on purpose to make them more relatable to the reader and to bridge the gap between the reader and the more Anglo Saxon-like cultures in the saga, such as the Rohirim.
Another thing I particularly enjoyed was the section on where the dwarven names were found. It’s a good example of how Tolkien pulled things right out of Norse mythology and emulated them to his fit his needs and desires. It also demonstrates his flow of thinking by how he obtained the meaning of Gandalf’s name and how he may be affiliated with the dwarves.
Lastly, Tolkiens attempts to make Hobbits generally and Bilbo especially English in nature just by the words he uses to describe them and the mannerisms he attaches to them. I enjoyed the blatant distaste for French influences he peppered in with the Sackville-Bagginses’ name being taken from the french phrase cul-de-sac, in contrast to Bilbo’s very English abode titled Bag End.
On an ending note - “Asbjørnsen and Moe” would make for an awesome band name.
Brian Nacov October 22, 2008, at 01:22 AM
