36 used & new from $8.23

See All Buying Options

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

The Monsters and the Critics: And Other Essays. J.R.R. Tolkien Paperback – April 1, 2007

by J. R. R. Tolkien (Author), J.R.R. Tolkien (Author)

24 customer reviews

See all 4 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$6.78

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$209.67

$134.84

Paperback

"Please retry"

—

$8.23

$10.65

Complete collection of Tolkien's essays, including two on Beowulf, which span three decades beginning six years before The Hobbit to five years after The Lord of the Rings. The seven 'essays' by J.R.R. Tolkien assembled in this new paperback edition were with one exception delivered as general lectures on particular occasions; and while they mostly arose out of Tolkien's work in medieval literature, they are accessible to all. Two of them are concerned with Beowulf, including the well-known lecture whose title is taken for this book, and one with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, given in the University of Glasgow in 1953. Also included in this volume is the lecture English and Welsh; the Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford in 1959; and a paper on Invented Languages delivered in 1931, with exemplification from poems in the Elvish tongues. Most famous of all is On Fairy-Stories, a discussion of the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy, which gives insight into Tolkien's approach to the whole genre. The pieces in this collection cover a period of nearly thirty years, beginning six years before the publication of The Hobbit, with a unique 'academic' lecture on his invention (calling it A Secret Vice) and concluding with his farewell to professorship, five years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings.

The Monsters and the Critics: And Other Essays. J.R.R. Tolkien

Available from these sellers.

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

J. R. R. Tolkien

26

Paperback
J. R. R. Tolkien

87

Paperback
$13.35
Humphrey Carpenter

67

Paperback
$10.74
Christopher Tolkien

105

Hardcover
$20.41
J.R.R. Tolkien

105

Paperback
$11.37
J.R.R. Tolkien

96

Hardcover
$17.98

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins (April 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 026110263X
ISBN-13: 978-0261102637
Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.7 x 7.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,829 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #48 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > History & Criticism
- #297 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays & Correspondence > Essays
- #721 in Books > Reference > Writing, Research & Publishing Guides > Writing

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars

5 star		63%
4 star		37%
3 star		0%
2 star		0%
1 star		0%

See all 24 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

121 of 126 people found the following review helpful

The Mind Behind

By Douglas Harper on April 3, 2002

Format: Paperback

The contrast between the elegant prose of LotR and the meandering academic style in these essays is astonishing. It's not hard to realize, after reading this, why Prof. Tolkien had a reputation as a dull lecturer (a reputation he cheerfully confesses to in his valedictory address). But if you can penetrate the prose, these writings are full of gems.
This collection will appeal to you if you are any kind of devotee of medieval English literature. Even if Tolkien had never written his great fantasy novels, he'd be revered for his work in Old English, especially as a champion of the poetic reputation of "Beowulf," a poem he almost single-handedly wrested from historians and philologists and set in its proper place at the root of English literature.
He also makes an eloquent case for the essential connection between the study of language and that of literature. If you consider yourself a student of great writing, but have only read Anglo-Saxon poetry in someone's "translation," Prof. Tolkien will politely shame you out of complacency.
In his valedictory address, speaking as a native of South Africa, he says, "I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White."
The book will also appeal to you if you have spent years immersed in the world of Middle Earth. Though there are scarcely any direct references to LotR in these essays, they illuminate the mind behind the masterpiece -- the quirky love of languages, the vision of fantasy as a godly act of creation, the deep Catholic faith.Read more ›

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

79 of 81 people found the following review helpful

Good collection of lectures/articles

By A Customer on September 26, 2001

Format: Paperback

This volume contains several essays/articles by Tolkien, most of which were originally delivered as lectures. The essays included are: "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", "On Fairy Stories", "English and Welsh", "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", "On Translating Beowulf", "A Secret Vice" (about imaginary languages), and a Valedictory address given at Oxford upon his retirement. Most of these had been published before, of course. Some, like "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and "On Fairy Stories" have been republished and reprinted many times, while others, like "English and Welsh" have only appeared a handful of times in obscure locations. Many of these others, however, appear in print here for the first time.
Of these essays, the two most interesting are undoubtedly the two that have appeared most often in print-- the first Beowulf essay and "On Fairy Stories". "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", of course, is the most important article on Beowulf of the 20th century. Incredible as it may now seem, prior to Tolkien, Beowulf had been seen primarily as a curious linguistic-literary artifact, useful as a source of information about the early Germanic past (customs, language, laws, toponymy, etc.). Tolkien was the first critic to draw attention to the poem *as* a poem and to point out that the central literary structure of the tale revolves around the hero's battles with them monsters, which previous critics had dismissed as mere fabulous emendations to a tale whose primary value was historical.Read more ›

1 Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful

Green suns & "star-spangled grammar"

By John L Murphy TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on March 2, 2009

Format: Hardcover

Finding out at the age of twelve from the back covers of "The Lord of the Rings" that there were medievalists and that Tolkien was one, I vowed to study what he did. While unlike "Tollers" my doctorate did not lead me to a donnish tenure on an ivy-draped quad, I always admired the humanity and grace not only of his famed fiction but his patient letters and insistent essays. Re-reading his collected criticism twenty-five years after it first appeared, its engrossing paths through scholarly debates make occasional detours permissible and often worthwhile. As with Tolkien's "Secondary World" of Middle Earth, as a "sub-creator" not only of probably our greatest modern mythology but as a rigorous (if rambling in his donnish digressions) scholar, you find in "Monsters" much evidence that without his deep understanding of language, that he'd never have been able to convince you of the essential reality of his imagined realms.

This knack, as T.A. Shippey, his successor in his position at Oxford, has argued in "The Road to Middle Earth," depends on "asterisk reality," or what JRRT calls here more delightfully "star-spangled grammar." (237) As his son and editor Christopher explains: "the reference is to enquiry into the forms of words before the earliest records; in those studies the conventional practice is to place an asterisk before hypothetical, deduced forms." (n. 3, 240) This may seem dry to non-academics or those lacking a fascination with philology. But for Tolkien and his audience, the invention of sustainable elements of his myth depended on the languages he concocted-- and vice versa.Read more ›

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

See all 24 customer reviews (newest first)

Write a customer review

Customer Images

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Great lectures

Got it for the chapter, "On Fairy Stories." A little weighty, yet insightful. I enjoy fairy-tales, CS Lewis, Grimm, HC Anderson and my new favorite, "The Troll of... Read more

Published 13 months ago by Tony Foglio

Tolkein Has His Say

There's much here of worth to the Tolkein scholar, not the least of which is the opportunity to see The Master's evaluation of the critics who did or did not see what he was up to. Read more

Published 14 months ago by Russell L. McCollom III

Tolkien without hobbits

I recently bought and read Tolkien's translation of Beowulf, and found Tolkien's notes to the text wonderfully illuminating. Read more

Published 15 months ago by rd

Tolkien

I have not read this yet, but how can it not be interesting. Of course, he is the scholar who discovered Beowulf and brought the manuscript to life. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Threads

must have for tolkien fans

if you have a tolkien collection or know someone who does this book is a must have for that collection though not about middle-earth it is a great read about tolkiens studies as a... Read more

Published on October 20, 2013 by Tom Brooks

A stimulating collection of essays

Tolkien is a careful commentator. All the essays and lectures in this book enhance the reading of his translations. Warmly recommended.

Published on July 25, 2013 by Christopher Lawson

For the scholar or the Tolkien fan

This book has the essay that is the reason why we still read Beowulf, namely, Beowulf: The Monsters and Critics. Read more

Published on July 16, 2013 by Greg Camp

Finally Available Again...

Finally available after years being out of print, this book provides amzing insight into the development of fairy tales and modern myth. Read more

Published on March 19, 2013 by James Attwood

Gained a Better Understanding of Tolkien and "Beowulf"

I had heard of this book and had hunted for it everywhere. So glad to find it on Amazon. I used it for my Brit. Read more

Published on January 13, 2013 by Rachel E. Moore

Dense and learned essays

Unless you read Anglo-Saxon and Latin (and a little Greek), you will need several readings (and trips to various reference books) to relish fully the very good fruit in 'The... Read more

Published on January 3, 2013 by S. Legard