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Palgrave Macmillan

Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages

  • Book
  • © 2005

Overview

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages (TNMA)

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About this book

J.R.R. Tolkien delved into the Middle Ages to create a critique of the modern world in his fantasy, yet did so in a form of modernist literature with postmodern implications and huge commercial success. These essays examine that paradox and its significance in understanding the intersection between traditionalist and counter-culture criticisms of the modern. The approach helps to explain the popularity of his works, the way in which they continue to be brought into dialogue with Twenty-First century issues, and their contested literary significance in the academy.

Keywords

  • antiquity
  • dialogue
  • ecology
  • English
  • English literature
  • essay
  • fashion
  • fiction
  • literature
  • Medieval Literature
  • medievalism
  • Middle Ages
  • Tennyson
  • tradition
  • William Morris

Reviews

"The reconsideration and further development of commentary on the disparate sources of, influences on, and analogues to LotR that I have summarized here make Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages a worthy addition to the canon of Tolkien scholarship." - W.A. Senior, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

"The outward appearance of this nicely designed volume spells 'quality' - and indeed, fair is not foul (though, as we all know, not all that is gold glitters . . .). The overall quality of the essays assembled in this collection is quite high and the two editors did a good job in dividing the fourteen papers into four parts - the medieval in postmodern Middle-earth, Middle-earth and Victorian medivalism, modern ideologies in Middle-earth, and visualizing medievalism in Middle-earth . . . To sum up: the collection is an interesting example of what happens when medievalists (most of them anyway) read modern theories and apply them to Tolkien's work." - Hither Shore

About the authors

Jane Chance is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Rice University, USA.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages

  • Editors: J. Chance, A. Siewers

  • Series Title: The New Middle Ages

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2005

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-6973-6Published: 26 March 2008

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-0-230-61679-0Published: 13 July 2009

  • Series ISSN: 2945-5936

  • Series E-ISSN: 2945-5944

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 250

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