You make some good points, but this is just a little short. Next time expand your ideas a bit. Lydia Fish October 16, 2008, at 08:36 AM
While one usually expects the foreword of novels to be meaningless information in relation to the rest of the novel, I actually found Shippey’s “Author of the Century” foreword to be rather insightful. Before I read Lord of the Rings for this class, I had already known that the trilogy was and still is a big part of mankind’s culture. Every person that I have spoken to has at least heard of Lord of the Rings, and the majority of them have read the narrative and are completely in love with it. However, I never really gave Tolkien any second thought about his influence on literature. After reading Shippey’s foreword, it turned out that Tolkien had such an impact on society that the Lord of the Rings has had a sixty year shelf life and publishers are still printing out new editions. I learned that while there was a fantasy genre before Tolkien, especially with past myths, this genre never received too much publicity, and not a whole lot of people dealt with it. Tolkien was able to turn the fantasy genre into a full out movement of his time, and it’s still expanding today. After all, when we walk into a book store, we see just as many fantasy novels, if not more, than any other book section in the building.
I think it’s fascinating how one man, throughout all of his experiences, was able to create a world that the human race might actually believe to be true if we didn’t know any better. The brief notes that Shippey mentions in the foreword are just the tip of the iceberg. He compacted so much information into about 30 pages, and he hasn’t even gone in depth into the history and workings of Tolkien.
I was also pleased to find out that Shippey didn’t just solely focus on Tolkien’s literary work, but he included parts of Tolkien’s life and personal history as well. This included both of Tolkien’s parents dying between his ages of four and twelve. Then Shippey mentioned how Tolkien had also married at the age of twenty one and soon after enrolled into the infantry. Knowing background information about an author allows one to not only appreciate that person’s literature more, but also become more interested in related information. I haven’t really experienced such an interest or connection between an author and that person’s work, but plenty of people have become devoted scholars, or merely devoted fans, to such philanthropy.
I found it rather peculiar how one whole section of the foreword was devoted to the question of whether Tolkien was the author of the century or not. Clearly people consider him to be such an inspiration because Tolkien managed to create such an intricately detailed and lengthy world of his own. However, I do not think that immense detail and scholarly information should be enough to give Tolkien such an honor. For example, there are critics for movies that give great reviews for films, while many audiences would have preferred to have received a refund or their money back for the same movie. Then there are professional critics for art who would say that Raphael or van Gogh or Pollock is the greatest artist of all time, while many would say that the work of all three artists was horrible. While it is easy to say that Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy has sold millions of copies, and has lasted for sixty years on book store shelves, it doesn’t mean that every buyer had enjoyed Tolkien’s writing.
Lauren Brych? October 08, 2008, at 03:59 PM Lauren Brych? October 17, 2008, at 05:49 PM
