Tolkien and the Invention of Myth
A 2004 collection of essays on Tolkien's mythmaking.
Edited by Jane Chance, the 2004 volume Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader gathers scholarly essays on J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. Contributors include established experts Marjorie Burns, Michael D. C. Drout, Verlyn Flieger, Gergely Nagy, Tom Shippey, and Richard C. West. While critics gave the collection a warm reception, some felt the student-written pieces were less valuable than the revised journal articles, conference papers, and lectures from the more seasoned authors.
Quick Facts
- Editor
- Jane Chance
- Language
- English
- Subject
- Tolkien studies
- Genre
- Scholarly essays
- Publisher
- University Press of Kentucky
- Released
- 2004
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 340
Facts from the source article.
Background
Tolkien and the Invention of Myth is the middle volume in a trilogy of essay collections about Tolkien, released in 2004 by the University Press of Kentucky. Its contents come from conference talks, lectures, and updated journal articles. Ten of those conference papers were originally given at the 2002 International Congress on Medieval Studies. Two lectures were delivered separately, one by Tom Shippey in 1996 and another by Michael D. C. Drout in 2003. Four journal articles had first appeared during the 1980s and 1990s. According to Chad Engbers, the contributors mix well-known Tolkien scholars—Nagy, Shippey, Burns, Drout, Flieger, and West—with newer researchers and established academics from other fields.
Reception
Chad Engbers, writing in The Lion and the Unicorn, categorizes the essays into three groups. The well-known Tolkien scholars write knowledgeably in a style more expository than polemical. The weakest category, in Engbers's view, comprises junior scholars such as Baltasar, Dimond, and Lazo; he finds Baltasar's essay like a very respectable graduate paper, Dimond says too little, and Lazo says too much. The third category includes scholars and authors with established reputations outside Tolkien studies: Jeffrey writes freshly and well on philology, while novelist Madsen offers an incisive and honest assessment of Christianity in The Lord of the Rings. Engbers concludes that while not all essays are specially useful, the volume's virtues outnumber its vices. Carol Leibiger, in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, notes that Drout elegantly and convincingly shows Tolkien's way of linking to the Anglo-Saxon period to construct a pseudohistorical mythology for England. She finds Nagy's comparison of Tolkien's use of myth with Plato fascinating, but feels Straubhaar's use of two rabid and uninformed critics spoils her essay on Tolkien and race. Of the student essays, Leibiger writes that Lazo is long-winded, full of self-references and mistakes. She concludes that the volume assembles numerous important studies of the sources of Tolkien's legendarium. Margaret Sinex, in Tolkien Studies, calls the volume a superb collection of essays that illuminates Tolkien's understanding of myth and his process of mythmaking. She finds Zimmer's essay on Tolkien's verbal magic appealing, exploring incantations, two types of name magic, and the true name. Sinex views Straubhaar's essay as convincing in its argument that dynastic marriages between Gondor and Rohan reflect the later Roman Empire's gradual acceptance of mixed marriages with barbarian tribes.
More in Middle-earth Books
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced