Books
JRR Tolkien was one of the foremost writers of the 20th century. Many books by Tolkien are considered classics, and continue to be extremely influential today.
J.R.R Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, is a three volume epic fantasy set in Tolkien’s created world of Middle-earth. LotR (a common abbreviation) is composed of:
- The Fellowship of the Ring
- The Two Towers
- The Return of the King
The Lord of the Rings was, in many ways, the culmination of a life’s work for Tolkien. When the first volume of the “trilogy”, The Fellowship of the Ring was released in 1954, Tolkien had already spent the last 15 years working on the book. He had begun writing parts of the tale in 1936, after submitting The Hobbit to the publisher.
Many years after Professor Tolkien’s death, his son Christopher Tolkien gathered together and published many of the early false-starts, backtracks, revisions, and name changes that plagued The Lord of the Rings as volumes VI-IX of the History of Middle-earth series.
Tolkien himself apparently hadn’t the foggiest notion where he was going with the story and struck out blindly on the path of creation. The demand at the time was for a sequel to The Hobbit. Readers, it seemed, had become very attached to his small, furry-toed creations.
But some names and places from Tolkien’s earlier “mythologies”, such as Elrond and Gondolin, had already made an appearance in The Hobbit, and as he began to write the early versions of The Lord of the Rings, the world of The Hobbit was slowly and inevitably drawn into the larger world of Tolkien’s mythologies.
It soon became quite clear to Tolkien that the magic Ring that Bilbo found in Gollum’s cave in The Hobbit must be more than simply a ring of invisibility. It was the One Ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron in a former age. It was a link…and a foundation. But this was problematic.
In the original version of The Hobbit Gollum had actually given the ring to Bilbo. This is surprising to those who have read The Lord of the Rings and realize the importance (and the allure) of the One Ring. But at that point in its development, it was only a ring in Tolkien’s mind, not what it later became.
In 1951, before the publication of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien revised the chapter of The Hobbit entitled “Riddles in the Dark”, where Gollum supposedly “gave” Bilbo the ring, to fit with his new perspective of the Ring’s power and hold. In it, Bilbo actually finds the Ring in the darkness and then tricks Gollum into showing him the way out.
Due to the fame of the books, New Line Cinema decided to bring this universal saga to the big screen, where he scored 16 oscars and a very good review from the academy.
Shortly after beginning work on “a sequel to The Hobbit”, he wrote the rhyme that has become so famous, and later became the driving force behind the narrative:
- Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Url- http://www.tolkien-online.com/lord-of-the-rings.html
26/10/09
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Academic year 2009/2010
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Roxana Purdea
ropur@alumni.uv.es