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Shakespeare's tragedy about two star-crossed lovers from warring families has stirred audiences and readers alike and inspired other artists for generations with its timeless themes of love and loss. This invaluable new study guide examines one of Shakespeare's greatest plays through a selection of the finest contemporary criticism.
The new edition of the definitive academic companion to Tolkien’s life and literature A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien provides readers with an in-depth examination of the author’s life and works, covering Tolkien’s fiction and mythology, his academic writing, and his continuing impact on contemporary literature and culture. Presenting forty-one essays by a panel of leading scholars, the Companion analyzes prevailing themes found in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, posthumous publications such as The Silmarillion and The Fall of Arthur, lesser-known fiction and poetry, literary essays, and more. This second edition of the Companion remains the most complete and up-to-date resource ...
At the 2013 "Celebrating The Hobbit" conference at Valparaiso University--marking the 75th anniversary of the book's publication and the first installment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies--two plenary papers were presented: "Anchoring the Myth: The Impact of The Hobbit on Tolkien's Legendarium" by John D. Rateliff provided numerous examples of The Hobbit's influence on Tolkien's legendarium; and "Tolkien's French Connections" by Verlyn Flieger discussed French influences on the development of Bilbo Baggins and his adventures. In discussions with the plenary speakers and other presenters, it became apparent that a book focusing on how The Hobbit influenced the subsequent development of Tolkien's legendarium was sorely needed. This collection of 15 previously unpublished essays fills that need. With Rateliff's and Flieger's papers included, the book presents two chapters on the Evolution of the Dwarven Race, two chapters on Durin's Day examining the Dwarven lunar calendar, and 11 chapters on themes exploring various topics on influences and revisions between The Hobbit and Tolkien's legendarium.
From the fire-breathing beasts of North European myth and legend to the Book of Revelation’s Great Red Dragon of Hell, from those supernatural agencies of imperial authority in ancient China to the so-called dragon-women who threaten male authority, dragons are a global phenomenon, one that has troubled humanity for thousands of years. These often scaly beasts take a wide variety of forms and meanings, but there is one thing they all have in common: our fear of their formidable power and, as a consequence, our need either to overcome, appease, or in some way assume that power as our own. In this fiery cultural history, Martin Arnold asks how these unifying impulses can be explained. Are they owed to our need to impose order on chaos in the form of a dragon-slaying hero? Is it our terror of nature, writ large, unleashed in its most destructive form? Or is the dragon nothing less than an expression of that greatest and most disturbing mystery of all: our mortality? Tracing the history of ideas about dragons from the earliest of times to Game of Thrones, Arnold explores exactly what it might be that calls forth such creatures from the darkest corners of our collective imagination.
When The Lord of the Rings was published in the 1950's it did not sit comfortably among any preconceived notions of literary genre. The critical responses reflected the confusion: for some, it was an unwelcome reappearance of narrative standards that modernism was supposed to have done away with, or just a bad novel. Others considered it a refreshing work in the epic and romance traditions. Ironically, much of the critical prejudice regarding the question of genre in The Lord of the Rings has been motivated by the same kind of blindness that Tolkien denounced in his famous 1936 lecture Beowulf: the monsters and the critics. Like Beowulf, Tolkien's work has also failed to be properly apprecia...
Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardcover volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, science, law, economics, and philosophy. Volume 47 showcases a variety of transnational and translingual perspectives, analyzing the works of humanist authors from across Europe, and how language can affect the interpretation of the literature. It expands beyond the Eurocentric appraisal of medieval works and takes into consideration a broader response.
Examination Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: Throughout the history of English the language was changing steadily. Not only was the English grammar, pronunciation or vocabulary being altered over the centuries but also the semantics of the lexemes. The changes in the field of semantics might have had several reasons. According to Antoine Meillet , a French linguist, there are basically three major causes of semantic change: changes of the socio-cultural circumstances, the linguistic context in which a word is used, or changes...
The first-ever standalone edition of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most important poetic dramas, that explores timely themes such as the nature of heroism and chivalry during war, featuring previously unpublished and never-before-seen texts and drafts. In 991 AD, Vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defense-force led by their duke, Beorhtnoth, resulting in brutal fighting along the banks of the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex. The attack is widely considered one of the defining conflicts of tenth-century England, due to it being immortalized in the poem, The Battle of Maldon. Written shortly after the battle, the poem now survives only as a 325-line fragment, but its value to today is incalcul...
Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the annual yearbook of the New Chaucer Society, publishing articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More generally, articles explore the culture and writing of later medieval Britain (1200-1500). Each SAC volume also includes an annotated bibliography and reviews of Chaucer-related publications.