Tolkien's Art: A Mythology for England (Paperback)

by Jane Chance (Author) "When Tolkien delivered the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture of 1936, he changed the course of Beowulf studies for the next sixty-five years and also..." (more)
Key Phrases: medieval parodies, subordinate warrior, secondary world, Farmer Giles, Ancrene Wisse, Sir Gawain (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
“Highly recommended as a serious critical study of Tolkien’s works.” -- Choice

Review

"Highly recommended as a serious critical study of Tolkien's works.-- Choice" -- Choice

"Examines the sources and influence of Tolkien's work as well as the paradigm of the critic as monster that colors so many of his writings.-- Giustificativo" -- Giustificativo

"The general reader in search of the scholarly roots of Tolkien's fiction together with informed discussion of how those roots nourished the tree will find both here.-- Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts" -- Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

"Chance's companion volumes on Tolkien are brilliantly written and critically significant. Her understanding of his works is profound, and she convincingly confirms him as a major writer of the 20th century.-- Kritikon Litterarum" -- Kritikon Litterarum

"An attractively presented short study based on an excellent idea, namely that of tracing the nature of the relationship between Tolkien's scholarship in Old and Middle English and his creative writing.-- Times Literary Supplement" -- Times Literary Supplement

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Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky; Rev Sub edition (October 26, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813190207
• ISBN-13: 978-0813190204
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,347,971 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A general survey from 1979, February 22, 2002

By	David Bratman (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a 23 year old book, reprinted with updates, and, apart from Verlyn Flieger's =A Question of Time= (a much superior, but specialized, work), this and Chance's =Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power= are currently the most easily available academic studies of Tolkien. This is unfortunate: Chance's work has some merit, but she is a dull, foggy writer, with a bent towards political and Freudian analysis alien to Tolkien's thought. Both books are analyses, not introductions. This one is a general survey of Tolkien's fiction published through =The Silmarillion=. It's been updated with many new references to later scholarship (not always summarized correctly), but there's very little on "The History of Middle-earth" or any other of Tolkien's more recently published fiction. =Tolkien's Art= remains a book from 1979, with none of the change of context its subject demands: to discuss "Imram" today without tucking in a single reference to =The Notion Club Papers=, from which it's excerpted, is inexcusable. I cannot recommend either of these very highly.

13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Crude Interpretation, June 27, 2002

By A Customer

Tolkien was an outsider. Chance mischaracterizes him as a soap box, Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia jingoist. His basic artistic credo is found in Leaf by Niggle which expresses an artists disaffection with his society, England. Chance's agenda is reductive and banal, and in fact Tolkien explicitly repudiated this simplistic interpretation. Tolkien wrote fantasy literature not propaganda. He was an artist not a politician.