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- From: cffitzge@IASTATE.EDU (Charles F Fitzgerald)
- Subject: Re: Questions
- Message-ID: <1993Jan28.004624@IASTATE.EDU>
- Sender: news@news.iastate.edu (USENET News System)
- Reply-To: cffitzge@IASTATE.EDU (Charles F Fitzgerald)
- Organization: Iowa State University
- References: <1993Jan27.061106.10870@leland.Stanford.EDU>
- Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 06:46:24 GMT
- Lines: 62
-
- rich writes:
- >Hey, just found this group, got some questions for y'all. .... second,
- >can anyone give me a listing of which books are tolkien, which are his
- >sons, and which are a mix? i've always wondered this.
-
- J.R.R.Tolkien's Middle-Earth books are:
- _The Hobbit_
- _The Fellowship of the Ring_
- _Two Towers_
- _The Return of the King_
-
- C.Tolkien had _The Silmarillion_ published for JRRT, posthumously. It is
- JRRT's work.
-
- The so-called History of Middle-Earth series (including _Unfinished Tales_
- and _Lays of Beleriand_, among others) were compiled by C.Tolkien from
- J.R.R.Tolkien's notes, with commentary by C.Tolkien regarding condition
- of the various notes and possible meanings of ambiguous entries.
-
- Other works include
- _The Tolkien Reader_ (containing "Leaf by Niggle", Tolkien's "On Fairy
- Stories" essay, and "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", among others)
- _Farmer Giles of Ham_
- a translation of "Gawain and the Green Knight", "the Pearl", and "Sir
- Orfeo"
- And his "Beowulf" essay.
-
- This list is not meant to include all Tolkien's works, merely those
- which happen to grace my shelves or are known to me :-).
-
- >And the third is how do simirilian and LOTR relate. i've only read the
- >hobbit and LOTR and haven't ever really gotten into sim. i had always
- >assumed that sim. was ancient history behind the middle earth of LOTR.
-
- Some (most notably Jim Chokey) would say that they do not relate at
- all, or at least not much. Tolkien wrote _The Hobbit_ and much of
- what would become _The Silmarillion_ before beginning the Lord of
- the Rings. It is not clear that _The Hobbit_ was in any way connected
- to _The Silmarillion_ at the time of its (_The Hobbit_'s) writing.
- The Lord of the Rings was begun as a sequel to _The Hobbit_, and as
- such, it may be argued that it had no connection to _The Silmarillion_
- at its onset.
-
- During writing, however, Tolkien started to incorporate more and
- more of the tales that currently make up _The Silmarillion_. As it
- stands now, the tales of _The Silmarillion_ serve mostly as a
- backdrop to LOTR to provide depth and a sense of history.
-
- >oh yeah...how do other books relate to his middle earth also...like
- >unfinished tales and that farmer of something book?
-
- See above notes after given selection for details. This question
- has been discussed very heatedly over the course of this news-
- group, and I don't intend to say anything more for fear of
- stirring it up again.
-
- --
- Charles F. Fitzgerald | '...it's a tale, told by an idiot,
- Iowa State University | full of sound and fury,
- cffitzge@iastate.edu | signifying nothing.'
- | _MacBeth_, by W. Shakespeare.
-
-