The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien's Creation

ISBN: 1324093889

Author: Drout, Michael DC

Condition: New

A leading scholar draws on fifty years of reading and studying J.R.R. Tolkien to explain how he created an entire world.No writer has surpassed the epic achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent decades refining his Middle-earth-a world that has felt so real to so many readers that it is almost impossible to imagine that any single person could have simply created it, seemingly out of thin air. In The Tower and the Ruin, Michael D. C. Drout takes us deep into Tolkiens genius, allowing us to glimpse the making of not only The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion but also lesser-known books such as The Fall of Gondolin as well as Tolkiens poetry and innovative scholarship.Drout, who has spent decades reading, studying, and teaching Tolkien, allows us to understand the authors methods and to embrace his works as never before. With great erudition and sparkling prose, Drout shows us how Tolkien invented myths, legends, cultures, languages, histories, and an intricate, multivocal narrative. We come to understand how Tolkien drew upon and modified material he found in Beowulf, the Kalevala, and other medieval literature from northern Europe, using the subtle qualities of those famous works as inspiration for his own. We also see the process by which he created the complex form of sorrow that is the primary emotional effect of his mature works, a sadness blessed without bitterness, carefully woven through a tapestry of themes that has resonated with generations of readers.Sweeping and hugely perceptive-and enhanced throughout by Drouts personal reflections on how Tolkien has shaped his own life and relationships-The Tower and the Ruin illuminates Tolkien anew and will come to be seen as an essential work for anyone who has journeyed to Middle-earth.