Bilbo's Birthday and Frodo's Adventure of Faith [Paperback]

Robert Morse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 2002

In the form of myth, elves,orcs, men and hobbits become real to every reader of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's pen gave shape to that which can be called evil and presented the mysterious nature of all that is sinister in life for every eye to see. More importantly, Tolkien has left his readers wondering how he was able to create on a truly cosmic scale.Bilbo's Birthday and Frodo's Journey of Faith is a fascinating reading of Tolkien's famous trilogy. It extends our understanding of Tolkien the thinker and storyteller to include Tolkien the Christian believer for whom myth was more than poetic fancy- it was a symbol of his faith. The book sets out the conflict between Tolkien's understanding of the meaning and nature of myth and the theories of other scholars of his time. Then, it explains how Tolkien used the images associated with certain Greek words commonly used in the time of Augustus. The result is a refreshing and different approach that emphasizes Tolkien's personal beliefs while answering questions like:Why does Tolkien put so much emphasis on Bilbo's Birthday Party?Why does Tolkien stress the hobbitt interest in family lines? Who is the model for Tom Bombadil?Is Odin the only model Tolkien used for Gandalf?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Morse has written numerous articles for trade and professional publications. He lives in Phoenix where he teaches literature and philosophy at Western International University. He speaks regularly about Tolkien's writing to groups of all ages, and has been an invited speaker at Tolkien conferences.

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (March 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595219357
• ISBN-13: 978-0595219353
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,210,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Content obscured by abysmal editing, April 11, 2003

By 

Jonathan Hurshman (Ypsilanti, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bilbo's Birthday and Frodo's Adventure of Faith (Paperback)

The author of this book has, I believe, something valuable and interesting to say about The Lord of the Rings. However, his argument is hindered by very sloppy editing.

The book abounds with spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. Now, I find errors in many books, but usually only a handful in the entire work. Open this book to any page at random and you will find a half-dozen at least. It doesn't appear that even a cursory spell-check was performed. Even important terms like "hobbit" are misspelled, on the back cover, no less!

Bold, italic, and underlined text are used idiosyncratically, rather than according to accepted editing practices. For example, titles of books, which should be in italics, are often bold instead (though sometimes they're bold and italic). Text the author wants to emphasize is sometimes bold, sometimes italics, sometimes bold and underlined, and sometimes bold, italics, and underlined.

There are also grosser editing errors. There is at least one place (page xi) where an identical sentence is repeated a few lines down from its first occurrence.

Furthermore, a book that makes such extensive reference to Greek terms should either transliterate them into Roman characters according to accepted practice or use Greek characters. Instead, this book often transliterates Greek words according to their appearance rather than their sound. For example, one sees gamma transliterated as "y" instead of "g", and nu as "v" instead of "n". This is distracting to those who know some Greek, and misleading to those who don't.

Depending on the reader, all this may go mostly unnoticed. For me, however, the effect was so irritating that I had to set the book aside. Perhaps I can attempt to finish it on another occasion.

5.0 out of 5 stars New Perspective on Tolkien's work, April 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bilbo's Birthday and Frodo's Adventure of Faith (Paperback)

I liked this book because the author interprets Tolkien's story by relating details associated with Greek words.
This is very different from other approaches I have read and it gave the story a new depth.
It is easy to see Gandalf as described. I had not thought of the time frame as Pentecost to Parousia.

This book is easy to read and makes a lot of sense