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This volume may best be read as a clustered collection of essays, these all arising from an ongoing and reasonably informed Oxford experience of the cultural and academic mindset behind, and in the variety of scholarly writings of, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973). That long time Oxford professor of 'English' and most eminent Indo-European languages scholar has now become perhaps the world's most popularly regarded author. And yet I had met him and studied under him and his colleagues and pupils before the explosion of the 'cult' which, from its American campus beginnings, would make him a bestseller of ever increasing renown. However, the scholarly context of Tolkien's mind that informed his creative narratives was not always perceived clearly by his new audience. Thus, my early researches, and so ultimate thesis about what I had read, became a scholarly concern for me, still somewhat removed from all of this, as I was then lecturing in northern New South Wales. |
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