Excellent essay! You would be surprised how many of the parents who fought to get the Harry Potter books out of school libraries had never read those books either. Lydia Fish October 16, 2008, at 08:41 AM
After reading the foreword to Shippey’s book, I feel that I basically knew most of the information that he talked about. We talked and watched movies in class that explained how Tolkien wrote a lot about his times in war and how much that influenced his works of literature. I did not know, however, the names of other authors that had similar experiences as Tolkien’s.
I was kind of shocked to learn that many critics could not believe that The Lord of the Rings was liked by so many of the people the polled. I found it some what amazing how one of the most “vehement” critics of Tolkien had never read the books that he debated about.
I knew that Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings had an impact on the literary community but I was unaware of the authors that have used what he did and made it into their own. The fact that Tolkien basically invented a genre of literature was also something that jumped out at me while I read the foreword.
On page xiii, I love the line of the letter that Tolkien wrote to the New York Times that reads “The storied were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.” These lines tell me that Tolkien really loved language. The lines tell me something about how Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings and his other books. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings without knowing exactly which path they were going to follow and how they were going to end. I find this extremely amazing because of the detail and connectedness that the stories have. This tells me that Tolkien truly believed the words that he was writing and he didn’t have to think about ways to connect his ideas and make them complete as one.
