English 333 - SEM: J. R. R. TOLKIEN

: J. R. R. Tolkien was an Oxford don and professor of Old and Middle English literature who used fantasy fiction as a technique of moral philosophy and historical analysis, a way of pondering the meaning of human life on earth and the trajectory of human experience through time. We will explore Tolkien’s Middle-earth in The Hobbit (1936), The Lord of the Rings (1965) and The Silmarillion (2001) with special attention to the medieval and early modern sources of Tolkien’s literary imagination as intimated in his essays, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” (1936) and “On Fairy-Stories” (1947).

Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores