J.R.R. Tolkien

by Katharyn W. Crabbe

A detailed analysis of the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion is accompanied by a brief profile of Tolkien

Genres: Biography

233 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Rick Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's challenging, to say the least, to try to package Tolkien, given that his work is almost literally (and literarily) cosmic in its scope. This is someone, remember, who created several languages that you can actually learn to speak and write, not to mention composing a massive history that follows hundreds of discrete characters over many thousands of years. Even so, Tolkien is also able to get us right into the hearts and minds of people who must confront their own weaknesses and, at their best, struggle through them nonetheless. Yes, he can be tedious. He's an Oxford professor of philology who learned Old Norse as a young man for fun. He is a great lover of genealogies, charts, appendices, footnotes, and digressions. He is, occasionally, a pedant.
But, as Crabbe points out, he is also a believer in a creative divinity whose best creation is the desire in all of us to create something ourselves. Look what Tolkien did with that immanent impulse. This book frames the great canon of Middle-Earth in terms of the Quest, the search for Something Out There that ultimately brings us back to ourselves. It's the subtitle to The Hobbit: "There And Back Again." Considering Tolkien's quests as progressing from fairy tale to legend to myth is, perhaps, a bit obvious, but Crabbe's understanding of the texts and her insights into them are certainly worth an attentive audience.

[Joel Zartman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the great things you can do after you have read and re-read Tolkien is read good books that revisit and meditate on them. Crabbe is outstanding. Nothing condescending, all sensible; this book is engrossing and enjoyable.

She provides a biography of Tolkien in the first chapter. She then works through the Hobbit, the trilogy, and the Silmarillion explaining the quest as fairy tale, as legend, and as myth. What is it like? A long analysis in a coherent, essay form of each of Tolkien's works. So many insights!