Tolkien on Play

Abstract

Perhaps the most universally known writer of the 20th century, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973), an Oxford professor of earlier English 1925-59, was arguably also the most communicative writer on play of his generation. A classicist initially, a lover of "sources and word, forms," he would later become recognized globally as establishing the fantasy genre. From a British following for his The Hobbit (1937), he attained world stature in the mid-1960s for The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) concerned with "Middle-earth," which seemingly resembles Western Europe with England still a part of the continent. The core focus of all these texts, despite splendid horse-lords, great battles, and fortified cities, is a race of small people, hole-dwellers with furry feet, home-lovers, generously hospitable, and passionate about food and dancing, with all celebration offering the opportunity for fireworks. It has been critically agreed and later, admitted by their creator, that the hobbit race was molded on his recollections of the harmoniously satisfying rural Warwickshire lifestyle, one still intact in 1914 and nostalgically yearned for by so many. The series achieved even greater recognition from the recent Peter Jackson films, enabling our envisaging of the diminutive and childlike folk, their compulsive hospitality and joyous celebrations.