Tolkien Day in Cornwall

The Lord of the Rings author JRR. Tolkien’s popular literature will be explored at the University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus as part of a special Tolkien Day on Wednesday 13 May.

Tolkien set The Lost Road, an early version of what was to become The Lord of the Rings, in Cornwall.

He spent some of his holidays in Cornwall and was familiar with the landscape, rural culture, people and language. Cornwall provided an early link between Anglo-Saxon England and Tolkien’s fantasy worlds of elves and orcs.

Three of the foremost experts on Tolkien, will be giving presentations as part of the Tolkien Day at the University. The free event is open to members of the public and will take place at Chapel Lecture Theatre on the Cornwall Campus from 11:30 – 16:00. Patrick Curry, Tom Shippey and Terri Windling will share their knowledge on the far-reaching impact of Tolkien, the ‘father’ of modern fantasy literature.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings drew immense world-wide recognition and the popularity of these books has had a lasting effect on literature and more recently on film. Today, Tolkien’s influence is also clear from the degree to which computer game designers have drawn from Tolkien’s creation of new worlds, new creatures, and whole new alphabets and languages. Despite all this, Tolkien has often been neglected by academics.

Professor Groom teaches Tolkien at postgraduate level and next year plans to launch an undergraduate option for BA English students dedicated to Tolkien’s achievements as a writer, scholar, and critic. Tolkien was not only an author and poet, but also Merton Professor at Oxford and a skilled linguist of ancient languages. He worked for example on the Oxford English Dictionary tracing the history of words starting with the letter W, from ‘walnut’ to ‘warlock’.

Although Tolkien’s work goes in waves of fashion and popularity, the University of Exeter’s School of English is committed to developing academic research into one of England’s most popular and influential English writers.

For more information visit http://www.exeter.ac.uk

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State in South Africa. The Lord of the Rings was completed in 1949, but publication was further delayed while Tolkien tried to find a publisher who would agree to publish both The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. When this proved impossible, Tolkien allowed Allen and Unwin to publish The Lord of the Rings on its own. The book was divided into three separately titled volumes (somewhat to Tolkien’s annoyance, since the work was not intended as a trilogy). The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were published in 1954 and The Return of the King in 1955.

Posted: May 10th, 2009
Author: Floresiensis
Categories: JRR Tolkien

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