author : J. R. R. Tolkien

• film adaptation review

• film adaptation review

• film adaptation review

Contents (possible spoilers)

• Farmer Giles of Ham. 1949

• The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. 1961

Contents (possible spoilers)

• On Fairy Stories. 1947

[Lecture 1939, enlarged for publication 1947]

Also printed in The Monsters and the Critics, there with the corrected lecture date.

• Leaf by Niggle. 1947

• Smith of Wootton Major. 1967

• The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son. 1975

Contents (possible spoilers)

• Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin

• Narn I Hin Hurin

• A Description of the Island of Numenor

• Aldarion and Erendis

• The Line of Elros: Kings or Numenor

• The History of Galadriel and Celeborn

• The Disaster of the Gladden Fields

• Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan

• The Quest of Erebor

• The Hunt for the Ring

• The Battles of the Fords of Isen

• The Druedain

• The Istari

• The Palantiri

Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. Lecture, 25 November 1936.

On Translating Beowulf. 1940.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Lecture, 15 April 1953.

On Fairy-Stories. Lecture, 8 March 1939, enlarged for publication 1947.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which "Escape" is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. Just so a Party-spokesman might have labelled departure from the misery of the Fürher's or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery. In the same way these critics, to make confusion worse, and so to bring into contempt their opponents, stick their label of scorn not only on to Desertion, but on to real Escape, and what are often its companions, Disgust, Anger, Condemnation, and Revolt. Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the 'quisling' to the resistance of the patriot. To such thinking you have only to say 'the land you loved is doomed' to excuse any treachery, indeed to glorify it.

English and Welsh. Lecture, 21 October 1955.

Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.

A Secret Vice. Lecture, 1931.

The man next to me said suddenly in a dreamy voice: 'Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!'

Valedictory Address. Lecture, 5 June 1959.