Lecture: Michael Drout: Tolkien's The Hobbit
Date: Monday, December 10th
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Lincroft Campus, Performing Arts Center
How to Make a World Worth Saving: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most beloved writers in English because in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings he creates a “secondary world” that his readers care about as much—or more—as the one in which they live. Readers become so thoroughly invested in Middle-earth because rather than just feeling as if they are reading a novel, they feel as if they are experiencing the events in the book. This lecture explains how Tolkien creates this feeling of experience through techniques that he began to invent in The Hobbit (which began as a children’s story) but which fully evolved in his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings.
Michael D.C. Drout is Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College, Norton, Mass., where he teaches Old and Middle English, Old Norse and fantasy literature. Drout is the author of How Tradition Works and Tradition and Influence, editor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf and the Critics and the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, and co-editor of the journal Tolkien Studies. Currently he is co-directing NEH-supported Lexomic research to develop methods for the computer-assisted statistical analysis of literary texts. Drout has produced ten college courses on CD for Recorded Books, most recently, Tolkien and the West. http://michaeldrout.com
 |
FYE Passport Category: Major Exploration |
