Deep Roots in a Time of Frost (Cormare) by Patrick Curry

by Patrick Curry

In this collection of his published essays, Patrick Curry explores two themes in Tolkien’s great enchantment, the Elves and Faërie, and the natural world of Middle-earth. He considers their different effects on both readers and literary critics, and brings to light the deep connections between these two subjects, as well as between them and Tolkien's ultimate concern, 'Death and the desire for deathlessness.' Also illuminated, in contrast, is magic, as epitomised by the One Ring. Finally, he argues that the hobbits are exemplars of how to live in relation to neither pursuing, nor avoiding, but honouring it.

Paperback

About the author

I hold a B.A. (University of California at Santa Cruz, 1978, in Psychology, with highest honours), M.Sc. (L.S.E., 1980, in Logic and Scientific Method), and Ph.D. (University College London, 1987, in the History and Philosophy of Science).

Since September 2006 I have been a Lecturer (0.5) in Religious Studies at the University of Kent (Canterbury), where I teach in the MA programme on the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination. From 2002-06 I was a Lecturer (0.5) at the Sophia Centre, Bath Spa University College, where I co-taught the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astronomy.

I have reviewed books for History Today, New Statesman, The Guardian, The Independent and (most often) the Times Literary Supplement; appeared on two television programmes; and taken part in two programmes on BBC Radio Four. I also appear in interviews of two of the three extended New Line DVD’s on The Lord of the Rings.

My ongoing project (when I get time) concerns enchantment as a common but little-mentioned human experience – one which touches on and connects a wide range of strange bedfellows: nature, erotic communion, art, divination and spirituality. It is influenced by the work of Max Weber and succeeding critical theorists, as well as other writers such as as J.R.R. Tolkien, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, David Abram, Sean Kane, Val Plumwood, Bruno Latour and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. I am also very interested in related issues such as the nature of truth, metaphor, embodied phenomenology, pluralism and post-secularism.

Reviews

[Sue Bridgwater · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of Curry's published essays, and inevitably for the dedicated student of Tolkien this may easily result in having duplicate copies of some essays; indeed, for me it has resulted in having two copies of a footnote acknowledgement of my minute contribution to one of the essays! However, it's a great benefit to have all these essays in one handy volume, and I'm glad to have it for my Tolkien bookshelves.

I won't go through each essay in turn, since - as Curry says himself in the introduction - there is some understandable repetition from one to another.

Curry's themes speak positively to me both in terms of his insights into Tolkien, and in terms of his related passions for Enchantment (Faerie), ecology ('less noise and more green'), and his suspicion of 'hyper-modernity,' which aligns with Tolkien's own (and with mine.)

He writes particularly well, and often amusingly, on the topic of the 'critical response' to Tolkien - meaning the 'extraordinary critical hostility' of 'so many professional literary intellectuals' that is still operative after - indeed probably because of - the even more extraordinary success and popularity of Tolkien's writings. He argues for further reception studies of Tolkien's writings, since there is still much to be investigated in the gap between his popular success and this critical disdain.

If you do not yet know Curry's work, do look at this book, and also at his 'Defending Middle-Earth' (1998) - he has a lot to say that's relevant not only to Tolkien, but also to the conditions of 21st Century life; especially those that affect us negatively.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good and thoughtful book, knowledgeable and perceptive, though inclined to give much closer attention to the opinions of secondary sources than the evidence of primary.