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Like J. R. R. Tolkien, Shippey is a philologist who believes that language and literature are inextricably related. Names, especially, carry meaning, and, proceeding from Tolkien's assertion that his fantasy fiction was "fundamentally linguistic in inspiration," Shippey demonstrates how Tolkien used names to generate the plots, moral concepts, and cultural resonance of his works, especially The Lord of the Rings. He argues that Tolkien's larger project was to re-create the prehistory of the Anglo-Saxons by writing the literature suggested by the relationships among old names. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were set near the end of the prehistory he constructed. Shippey maintains that, despite their backward glancing, Tolkien's Middle-Earth stories are essentially modern in their concern with the nature of evil, the hollowness of victory, and--though Tolkien characterized The Lord of the Rings as a Catholic book--deep religious skepticism. However academic such a proceeding may seem, it is keenly interesting because of Shippey's clear, if not uncomplicated, writing and because it substantiates "common" readers' great esteem for Tolkien. In several recent polls, British readers declared that The Lord of the Rings is the greatest book of the twentieth century, to the great dismay, the press noted, of the literati. Similar results of and reactions to polls in America are highly likely, which only makes this magisterial book more intriguing. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Library Journal
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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The bulk of this book, of course, centers around Tolkien's stories of Middle-Earth: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Shippey attempts to explain why Tolkien wrote these stories the way he did, and the result is very insightful. Shippey explains why he wrote archaically, how the more modern hobbit society, with its postal system and manners, fits in with the rest of Middle-Earth, and how to classify the various cultures and nations (like Rohan and Gondor) appearing in the works, to name a few. The rest of the book deals with Tolkien's other, lesser-known works, including the two semi-autobiographical ones. For true fans of Tolkien, the criticisms of these shorter works are an invaluable resource.
All in all, this book is very insightful--there is definitely a great deal to be learned about Tolkien's works from a man who succeeded him to his Oxford chair, and who understands Tolkien's professional field as well. If you want to truly understand Tolkien, this is a book worth reading.
Yes, I said "maligned". Those, like me, who are not great fans of fantasy fiction as such, tend to find it a bit difficult to take Tolkien seriously. My own trajectory as a Tolkien reader has gone from utter worship (aetat 11 or so) via contempt and ridicule (aetat 24) to enjoyment and respect (aetat 31), and Shippey's book is partly to thank for this. One of his sharper insights is that a taste for Tolkien seems to be something that people have to be "educated out of" - i.e., that exposure to a modern literary studies curriculum is almost guaranteed to eradicate those more primitive parts of the imagination that respond to the kind of populist yarn-spinning that Tolkien was, almost despite himself, supremely good at. (This certainly accords with my experience.)
I say "almost despite himself" because one of the things I learned from this book was that Tolkien worked far harder on developing the mythological background to "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings" than he spent on actually writing those books; indeed, that long after he'd published "The Hobbit" and was at work on its august sequel, he had to go back and revise it so as to make it fit in with the overall plan. I have a certain polite interest in "The Silmarillion" and the voluminous posthumous books of early drafts, but for me, by far the best of Tolkien is to be found in his two most famous books.
Shippey makes out a pretty good case for why these books deserve to be regarded as classics, especially "The Lord of the Rings", which he clearly regards as being on a par with Orwell's "Animal Farm" and Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow". These are two books that I hold in the highest esteem, albeit for very different reasons, and for a Lit boy like me it's been a sweet, but sobering process to admit "The Lord of the Rings" into their sombre company. Shippey can make you read the book in a new way - it no longer seems like a daft and slightly overlong romp for eternal teenagers, but like a grim, adult and rather downbeat modern novel in a fantastic mode. Hell, he's even got me reading "Beowulf". That can't be bad, despite Woody Allen's crack about it in "Annie Hall".
I think it's a bit sad for Tolkien that the two books he wrote as more-or-less spinoffs from the great work of his imagination are the ones he is most remembered for, but it's just, nonetheless, as they are by far his best books. I'll keep on reading "Lord of the Rings" for pleasure and profit. "The Silmarillion" and its kindred...well, to be frank, they'll be lucky if I pick 'em up now and again to check a reference. Shippey's skill, sardonic wit, commitment to popular taste and respect for the intelligence of his reader make this a better critical study than many others I can think of, about far more "literary" writers. Author of the Century? I'm not so sure - I'm too much of a Joyce fan. But it's time a lot of readers admitted that there's a lot of empty guff out there masquerading as "serious" literature (Saul Bellow, step to the front of the class) while books as good as Tolkien's (and Philip K. Dick's, and Ursula Le Guin's) are ignominiously written off as "genre" fiction. (...)
This book is academic in nature and vocabulary, but it is also fun to read. As a Tolkien fan I found the book to be quite enlightening. Shippey delves DEEP in to the text, finding many treasures that I had not yet observed. I found it true, as one endorsement on the book jacket says, that Shippey "deepens your understanding of the work without making you forget your initial, purely instinctive response to Middle-Earth."
Professor Shippey, whose academic field is the same as that of Professor Tolkien himself, mines the philological earth and finds the likely background sources of numerous middle-earth creations, such as: Beorn, orcs, Rohan, etc. He also explores Tolkien's plot development strategy. One passage that I particularly liked was Shippey's description of how Tolkien used "interlacement" (the interweaving of different story lines) to convey an important thematic message of the work: that it's never wise to give up trying, no matter how bad the circumstances may appear. The examples he describes are very illustrative; for example: Aragorn's self-doubts as he pursues (in vain he fears) the orcs who had taken Pippin and Merry. I found several other sections to be thought-provoking as well: "wraithing"; "luck & courage"; and "eucatastrophe".
If there is one disappointment I had in reading this book, it is that some finishing touches seem to be missing. The later chapters in the book seem less well-developed, and not as well focused within the argument of the book as a whole. Near the end of his first full chapter on LotR Shippey summarizes the development of his argument thus far. But from there on, there is no further explicit reference to his argument. To be sure most of the remaining material still implicitly contributes to the theory, but I found no satisfying conclusion explicitly made in the end of the book.
In spite of that disappointment, this book significantly deepened my appreciation of the _Lord of the Rings_. I have for years considered LotR my all-time favorite book. As a result of reading Shippey's book, I understand better WHY LotR is such a great work, that it has great relevance and meaning in addition to its sheer wonder as entertainment.
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