When you are young, you read Tolkien with a sense of wonder, at the complexity of the world he created and its discovery. When you are older you read Tolkien with the sense of understanding, marvel at the complexity of the world mirroring this one and how it follows familiar and comfortable and uncomfortable paths.
Worth every second. Reading Tolkien transformed my life in a way that nothing ever did. Because, as he said, it is not a simple fairy tale, its an experience. And Tolkien for sure poured himself into his work, a part of his soul, and his suffering and the hope and nostalgia, the innocence preserved in the hearts of the unknowing (the hobbits) by sacrifice of those 5 hobbits, the goodness people are still capable of, even after so much pain and heartache. Selflessness, duty, honour. And he put in a happy ending, which we all know thats the real escapist part of it, in real life, this happy ending hardly ever come.
@@pepestanley1994 "nur" Es kommt ja wohl auf die Kombination dieser Wörter und Buchstaben an. Warum schaust du dir das Video an, wenn HDR für dich nur Buchstaben ist?
Reading Tolkien is worth every second. This speaker is not worth one. Funnier than any of his jokes would be if a little kid ran up and sprayed him in the crotch with a super soaker.
There are bittersweet endings with loss and partings as the Fourth Age begins. Life is never one or the other. That was Sauuron's (and Morgoth's) biggest mistake.
I clicked the play button, expecting to simply watch a minute or two just to see what this was about but was wholly unaware of how profusely I would be drawn into this video. If you are a fan of Tolkien's works I greatly suggest watching the entire thing. It was, to say in the very least, quite interesting
many thanks! i was hop/clicking through the first part of this clip trying to gauge whether it was worth listening to and just as i was deciding to give up, glanced down thru the replies. your comment made me persist and the clip got really interesting. there's some very good insights. to return the favour (if you havent already come across it) give this book a go; isbn 978-1137269447
What a thoroughly enjoyable lecture. Being a reader of Tolkien since 1974 and having also read a few very interesting and engaging critiques of his work, it was really refreshing to hear a truly expansive and focused academic appraisal of Tolkien which brought a hitherto unknown perspective to my understanding of this tremendous mythology.
I strongly believe that Sam's simple line "Well, I'm back" fully encapsulates everything that is great about LotR, and here's Dr. Drout giving an hour-long presentation to make that point.
@@silverdragon710 I don't htink that he is THE hero of the story. He surely is A hero within the story, but in this context he is simply the last character in the book remaining, the final author of the "Red Book". The sense of textual tradition is not just a stylistic element, but a key feature of the whole tale (or, to be more precise, "epos"). Inside the main narrative frame, the story is written by Frodo after he returns to the Shire, before leaving Middle Earth. Thus, it primarily focusses on Frodo's perspective (when he is present) as well as the perspectives of the other characters. They told their parts of the story to Frodo and he combined all of that into the "Red Book", which is then finished by Sam. All four Hobbits have their own "hero's journey", but Sam's journey is the last one to end in the frame of the text, since Frodo has sailed to Aman and Merry and Pippin did not take part in the writing of the main text (although they are responsible for gathering part of the information that became the Appendix of TLotR). This is importanrt to understand: The "present" of the main narrative frame is Frodo sitting in his home and writing down the whole story. This is why there are frequent references to later events and the eventual fate of characters and places all over the text.
I like his reading but he tries to entertain a little too much for me. Still, he did really well and made it a cohesive reading. Also it's kind of funny that he works at Mellon university. (In middle-Earth Mellon is elvish for friend)
Table of Content >Learning by Knowledge Construction (LKC) [12:19] >>Zusammenhang of pseudo references/broken reference[25:14] >Philologists are the tribologists of text [42:22] >>Transcendental references[46:23] >Summary[53:04]
I must of read Lord of the Rings 20 times. Silmarillion even more than that. And the funny thing is, my English teacher in 9th grade suggested that I might like The Hobbit it from a poem I wrote at the time for her class. And from there I was hooked. She was a most amazing teacher. When we were studying Macbeth, she read each line and explained them in their context and then she did the whole play in a one woman show. Just brilliant of her the way she embodied each character and changed her voice and mannerisms accordingly.
very easy. Tolkien was motivated by love. not money or fame or pursuit of intellectual or artistic excellence. his work has a soul and reader with a soul can feel it.
One reason he wrote LOTR was because of the success of The Hobbit and to capitalize on that success. So money is one of the main reasons why we have LOTR.
If The Hobbit wasn't successful, we wouldn't have LOTR today. Tolkien's interest in language and the publication of these stories are two different things. Money has been the catalyst for many great works of art. Thinking that art requires pure motivations is just silly.
Tom Dean Perhaps we wouldn’t have Lord of the Rings, but who’s to say he wouldn’t have written them anyway if only to read them to his children? He’s written stories for his kids before. Perhaps if the Hobbit wasn’t successful, only his family would have Lord of the Rings.
@FREEDOM LIGHTRIDER The sole reason he wrote LOTR was because his publisher wanted a sequel to The Hobbit rather than publish The Silmarillion. They wanted an another fairy tale for children, but while writing it, the story "revealed" itself to Tolkien as being much larger. Money was definitely a large reason why his most popular work got made. He didn't create the languages for the story, he created the story for the languages (which were created long before).
"...they need a building code more than they need a White Council." Uber-nerd humor at its best! Furthermore, it's nice that Jackson and his production design crew took the fact of numerous ruins in middle earth to heart. The movies (especially the extended cuts) are replete with beautiful, evocative ruins.
I feel the opposite is true. While the ruins in itself look good, it just feels like they're out of place in a wide, undiscovered world that feels new. Like how we never see actual roads that lead to those ruins, like they stood in the middle of nowhere even when they were still in use. And only sporadically we get to see them. In fact, this is true for the whole world in the films: every city feels out of place: great walled settlements just placed into an empty field. Just compare Minas Tirith and the description Tolkien gave of the Pelennor Fields - dotted with farmstead, barnes and byres - with the big green empty field we get to see in the film. It's like everyone lives in cities that don't even have a food supply. Tolkien managed to create a world that felt old, lowly populated and yet very organic, Jackson did almost the opposite imo.
There's a problem which Jackson and crew fell foul of, and which film and TV still haven't resolved, which is how to fill the world with the normal rural life of a medieval and/or iron age past when their only available locations are parkland and wilderness. So Jackson's ruins, or the castles in Vikings and The Last Kingdom, as always surrounded by empty waste devoid of the peasant farming and coppicing and abundant wildlife and domesticated livestock which were there in those periods and were all around Minas Tirith, Edoras and Pelargir. Until they start backfilling the human settlement in CGI or whatever, it will always be unimmersive.
I was studying computer science in University of Montréal (& Operational Research), filled with D&D culture around the 1990's. That's when I've discovered Tolkien's work and learned English by reading all his books (some more than once i.e. the Silmarillion), along a dictionary.
My sister, gave me the Hobbit when I was 7. When I was 8 I picked up LOTR. Took me a year to read. Then I read it every year until I had children. 17 times.
I'm not a philologist, but even I know that Tolkien was the person that put the words precisely where they should be because languages were his speciality, and he was truly thorough when creating his world and its history - peoples, languages etc. This is what happens to people when no one reads them fairy tales of different peoples and cultures when they are kids, and they don't read books of different writers from different nations and historical backgrounds - they get narrow-minded and don't understand the usage of old fashioned words, archaisms and characteristics of protagonists and antagonists of the stories. It was nice listening to this lecture, but I don't need explanations of Tolkien's motivation or anything like that to enjoy his works... Nostalgia - yeah, may not be popular, but anyone who has felt deep nostalgia and longing for what has been and is gone, for the passing of time and seeing birds leave to go to the south in autumn - anyone will understand the feeling Tolkien has weaved into his writings...
That was incredible, beautiful even. The last ten minutes of the lecture really put a frame around what I've never been able to articulate, on why the books have impacted me and so much of my decision making, outlook, and the beauty of sadness, these past 40 years. From hiking the AT to see my own mountains and elves (naming myself ïrandir on the trail), to being an Old English Literature major and tasting what that was about. Good morning indeed! 🙂 Going to pick up his book on ruins.
The prof’s conclusion is why I majored in English in early 60’s. I’ve had to justify my degree for years saying Lit used to be taught without a party line. I’m glad such professors as he continue to explain the way of the human heart.
A little geeky, but fun, and very informative. I had never considered that errors or inconsistencies within the text might be indicative of translational or fragmentary issues with the "original" Quenya autographs, nonexistent by the time of the recording of the Lord of the Rings.
He has a good form of analysis. Very different, nearer to actual experience than most academic discourse (it's mostly just frustrating and you have to sort it out to make it more normal, so that's actually very advanced).
I picked this book up today to hopefully get better at English because reading apparently helps with that, so im gonna go start reading this now, wish me luck :)
Drout is a great scholar as well as a darned good Tolkien scholar, and I've never read anything by him that I didn't profit by. (Even when I disagree with him, I learn something.) That said, Tolkien is something you read primarily to be entertained. The proper way to approach him is, "Tell me a story, please." All of the great authors and epic poets are master storytellers first and foremost, and you won't get anything else out of them if you think you're too good to get absorbed into a story. I first read LOTR when I was in elementary school, and I get something new out of it every time I read. But mostly, I get drawn farther into the story. If you've never read Tolkien before, please let go of your preconceptions and just read. Allow yourself to be surprised, and to wonder what the heck is going on. Don't be too awed to enjoy, and don't be put off by the oddities of the book. Just take it in, and make a judgment later. Don't freak out because The Hobbit is so different from Lord of the Rings, but do read The Hobbit first, if you can. And if thick books intimidate you, just listen to an unabridged audiobook in chunks.
And you're allowed not to like the book. Tolkien was the first to point out that people tended to love or be totally bored and disgusted by his books, with no inbetween. Sadly, one of the Inklings who was a novelist (not Lewis, and not anybody anyone's heard of) felt the latter way, and not politely, and not in a "just let me disappear into the other room for a bit" way. He tried to get Tolkien to stop writing, and pretty much broke the Inklings apart. There are writers I can't stand, and that other people love; and there are writers that I used to dislike and now love. Books can be slippery like that.
Regarding the audiobooks Andy Serkis (Gollum) reads the new unabridged versions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - those versions are absolutely recommended, they're incredible. Next, Martin Shaw's audio version of Silmarillion is freaking brilliant if you want something heavier :D
@@PleaseNThankYou - did you hear what happened with Corey Olson and dwarf women's beards? He's an actual genuine Tolkien Scholar, and super knowledgeable, but in his recent IGN interview he said "dwarf women don't have beards, Tolkien _never_ said that, that's a fan theory because Aragorn made a joke about it in the two towers movie and everyone loved it" - but Tolkien strongly implied they have beards in the appendices when he said "dwarf men and women are so alike in voice and appearance that other people cannot tell them apart" and in Histories he said "the Naugrim (dwarves) have beards from the beginning of their lives, both men and women alike, and a shaven dwarf will die of shame" .. Olson then made a tweet and a further podcast episode reiterating that Tolkien never said dwarf women have beards. It's so freaking strange!!
@@Vexarax Yes! and I watched those. Late 2020 I started watching Olsen videos(Signum U.) and started noticing something that I did not like about his canon theory… that it was THEORY. He is very knowledgeable but since there are some empty spaces in the lore, Olsen tends to use conjecture often, and many times without clarifying such. Those who are just learning all the basic points will take his scholarship as gospel and be then tainted. When I was young I acquired the Lost Tales One and had tried very hard to grasp it’s odd literary style (I’d already read The Hobbit and LR back to back in 8th grade and so I had a bit of it down already. I didn’t get the Silmarillion for almost 10 years more and knew it’s place in the line up… I was SO confused. So, all that to say this- Olsen may have years of study and paperwork to prove it but he is still prone to inserting his own narrative to fill gaps. I feel this is disingenuous of him as he has full access to all writing (Nature of M.E. excluded as it’s new, so older speculation will receive a pass as long as it’s not a repeated offense). But you know that Olsen just got his Signum Univ. accredited , right!! I wonder if there are any sponsors that he is “ Beholden too”? Being a university in the 2020’s seems to carry the burden of Wokedom as a prerequisite for validation. Hmm🤔
(1) This is an edifying and engrossing lecture. It validates something I have always appreciated but could not articulate about Tolkien's writing. Fabulous job. (2) This guy should NEVER tell another joke EVER again.
"Well, I'm back." - You got me already. And then I watched it, and I have to admit... I welled up a little, here and there. Glad you came back, glad you spoke, glad I heard.
I used to be scared to read Lord of the Rings but ever since then I read all of the published Game of Thrones books (well, the main ones not the novellas) and I am hoping that it will be my next successful read-through. Starting with the Hobbit. :)
Never fear books, or assume they are "above your level", it's simply by reading them, even if it takes many readings, that you consume them and make them part of you- much like food, nourishment for the brain/soul
The late (and much-missed) Ursula Le Guin wrote a couple of really, really useful and perceptive essays on Tolkien - please if you enjoy this kind of thing, look them up. Also can recommend a book by Randall Helms called "Master of Middle-Earth" published BEFORE the Silmarillion, amazingly perceptive and useful if you want to understand more about Tolkien's work.
Interesting lecture even if you're not that interested in how to read JRR Tolkien. But the brilliant speaker makes it interesting and relevant. And he preserved his youthful humour which is super likable.
I don't really know why I'm watching this on a Sunday morning in 2022, except that I'm a Tolkien fan who happens to have been at Carnegie-Mellon at roughly the same time as the lecturer, and his anecdotes of life at Carnegie-Mellon in those days amuse me. Only, I can't actually relate that much to his trials concerning course registration, since I was in Department of Drama, where one did not really have choices over courses, so much as one had a full slate of required courses. I think I maybe had one elective slot per semester, and otherwise, classes from 0800 to 2300 Monday through Friday, with a one hour break for lunch and a 2.5 hour break for dinner (from 1700 to 1930), then back to class from 1930 to 2300, plus 3.5 hours of class on Saturday. Also, there was no "Dietrich College" in the late 1980s-early 1990s. Strange that I don't remember Jim Kempf, even though we were apparently in the same program, and there weren't very many people in that program. I think he was a year behind me.
Great lecture, it really makes you appreciate the difference between good writers (George Martin, Frank Herbert) and great Writers (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis).
My boss answered that question. He said "it's smart people humor" i said, "that's what i said, well, i said it in the opposite as, you're stupid but basically the same" he got a kick out of it but im too passionate to say i was wholly kidding. . .
Aweful comedic timing. That's the whole problem. The jokes are fine, but he totally fails to build momentum and rapport with the audience. The fact that he is basically reading it from paper doomed his chances of the jokes having a successful delivery.
The other thing that Tolkien did an extraordinary job of was "delivering" his love of nature right onto those pages. As I read the descriptions of the settings and so on, first of all I felt like I was "there," but even more I felt that it was BEAUTIFUL and wholesome and very much a place that it would be pleasant to live in - a place that I could "feel love for." That's good writing.
I have been told that when "The West Side Story" film was released in India, the audience jeered because there is singing in it! That is, in their experience, singing in a film meant it was low end, like a Bollywood movie, for example. Interesting that some critics assumed that the high language, "messiness," etc., is a "flaw in LOTR, whereas it is a subtle form of being a very different kind of text.
The Cats of Queen Beruthiel were explained in Unfinished Tales. Queen Beruthiel was the wife of Tarannon Falastur, 12th king of Gondor. She was a witch, who trained her ten cats to act as her spies. Her husband eventually banished her from his kingdom and she was last seen in a boat, sailing south, accompanied only by her cats.
He wrote it like a professor lives his life. When students ask questions, the professor tells some of what they need to know, but if he told them all he knew, they would be his age by the end of the telling.
Read The Lost Road (vol IV of the History of Middle Earth) and you will see that all these features are there explicit. It’s a strange book, perhaps the strangest in Tolkien’s morphology, but considering it was written just before he started writing the lord of the rings it contains his vision, his Weltanschauung that led him to write eventually his masterpiece.
@@moritzbenner4190 in German means something similar to “worldview”. It’s used in other languages because there is not an exact translation in English, so you keep it like that.
I was profoundly puzzled by the title of the lecture. Who needs a tutorial on how to "read" Tolkien? Surely the books are fairly straightforward - in their essence, that is. But he truly strikes us all with wildly interesting analysis on how Tolkien has gone beyond just "Here's an epic battle in Chapter 1, followed by this world's ontology in Chapter 2." Marvelous lecture, it's always a delight to draw connections that were hidden in plain sight!
I think he gave it that title as to not scare people away and let them know it wasn't going to be a dry or intimidating lecture where you had to already be a medieval or Tolkien scholar. Since this is a visiting alumni lecture from a professor in a field that many people find daunting or not always applicable or relatable. I think he didn't want the title to come off too academic.
My parents read me the Hobbit as a young child, and at age 10 I was deemed old enough to read my father's leather-bound copy of The Lord of the Rings. It was a massive red tome with all of the books in one, as Tolkien intended. The experience meant so much to me, that I have repeated it at least once every year for the past 38 years. It has literally guided my life and formed my character in endless ways. I learn something new about the story and about myself each time I reread it. I transferred my love in the same way to my 5 children, and I expect them to do the same.
My Daughter went to Keuka College and they have a yearly event. The Library has a book sale and I bought all the books for super cheap. One of the best purchases ever.
It's the richness of his world, which is ours, and so operates according to all the natural laws we already know. So we immediately feel comfortable. Finally there are the hobbits who are quaint and rustic, but relatable people who unlike the other races are modern people (or at least modern period form the perspective of Tolkien's youth and so familiar. This bases the reader in a mundane reality in the midst of a magical world, from whence they venture. For example, when the hobbits are leaving the shire, they pass near the village of Stock, where Pippin (i think) wants to to stop because they have a pub with really good beer. Frodo rules against it figuring Pippin in a pub means a long delay. It is just a homey little detail, one of the last bits of normality before nothing will be normal. The solidity makes it so easy for the reader to enter the reasonably familiar world of the Shire, and then learn with the hobbits about the magical world outside of the Shire, which allows the reader to experience the magical world as if they were there.
I first read the Hobbit and LOTR when I was 12, and then read them every 2 years since then. I read them to my kids too. These books are part of my life.
I doubt it is the taking of an engineering class that molds a person's humour type. Most likely the humour type of people who end up taking engineering classes is already a set type of engineering mind humour, that in fact is likely how it occurs that these people are even interested in engineering classes and able to excel in such classes.
What a wonderfully enriching lecture from one of the foremost scholars on Tolkien. My only complaint and point of disagreement is when Drout remarks that Tolkien is not literature but pop culture. I agree that he's a pop culture phenomenon but I think that hi work is nevertheless literature. In fact, Drout's entire presentation demonstrates ever more deeply that Tolkien is and should be studied as literature.
*sees beginning* *pauses video* Did I read that right? Did I... Carnegie MELLON university???? oh my goodness. MAE GOVANNEN, WHOEVER NAMED THAT, WHETHER IT WAS INTENTIONAL OR NOT.
when is the book The Tower And The Ruin to be published ? also, i love the 'standing in two moments at once' portion at 58:26 i always thought it would be great for the custodians of stonehenge to replace the missing uprights with solid glass replicas, so that you could see both the present and how it was in the past, but this etched glass panel is the next best thing to it.
I watched this just after the 80th anniversary of the publishing of "The Hobbit". Make sure you have the hour to commit to this program. It is very insightful and added a new level of my understanding of the Sage of Middle Earth.
While I found a lot of this to be padded and overlong, he does raise some interesting points (which I will keep an eye out for during my next reading of Tolkien). I would say that the two things that make Tolkien so appealing to me as a reader are 1) that his style strikes just the right level of formality to give the story a sense of seriousness without being stuffy, and 2) the stories. After all, if the story isn't good, all the fancy writing tricks in the world aren't going to keep my attention. That said, he did have a good grasp on advanced writing techniques, which certainly elevate his books.
I liked in the hobbit where there were breaks in the story where a narrator would jump in to explain something. Like as if Bilbo was reading his own work to the hobbits by the fire. I wonder why he didnt use that technique in lotr.
"Himself" doesn't alliterate with "Hador and Hurin", it actually alliterates with "assembled". The Old Norse verse, which I assume is what Tolkien was referencing with that poem, only ever alliterated on the stressed syllables, not the unstressed ones. The stressed syllables in both "himself" and "assembled" are the second ones, which both start with an S-sound. This actually makes the poem work better: Hador and Hurin are connected through alliteration, while Hurin and Turin are connected through rhyme, but the line with Beren breaks the pattern and starts a new alliterating couplet. This reinforces the feeling that "Beren himself" is somehow set apart from and stands above the three people mentioned before him. The poem from the lecture I'm referring to, for reference: elf-friends of old, Hador and Hurin, and Turin, and Beren himself were assembled
Like some other commenters, I was surprised that his jokes weren't getting laughs from the audience. I think it's possible that they were laughing but his lavalier microphone was very directional and didn't pick up other sounds from the lecture hall.
Exactly. I think people are expecting a sitcom style laugh track. I think, know, in person people respond very favorably to his humor. His humor also lends itself to nods and chuckles than outbursts and guffaws.
heh. erm...Treebeard can be the oldest living thing, and Bombadil can be "oldest and fatherless", without there being a contradiction. Bombadil just has to be a different order of being to Treebeard.
Okay I know its a stupid detail, and over all I really enjoined what he had to say, But the birds in the Barbara Remington Tolkien illustrations are Crowned Cranes not Emu.
And that makes it OK? Just kidding. I've always liked her cover illustrations; they were the covers on the paper back addition of LOTR that I first read and I have the large poster where they all make one big picture.
Actually, i feel that Dr Drout is pitching way above the cognitive ability of the audience. He deserves much more than the feedback he gets back from his audience - not even close to if he had pitched a responsive audience - try Oxbridge please. Indeed this lecture would've been best pitched to Prof Tolkien's college...
Why because the audience isn't micced? So you can't hear there laugh track like a sitcom? As this was a visiting alumni lecture, I am sure the people who were there all wanted to be and were greatly enjoying and appreciating Dr. Drout albeit in an academic, heads nodding reserved sort of way.
Carnagie Mellon is one the best schools in the country. The students here may actually be smarter than Oxbridge students on average given the more explicit class considerations that come into play over there, i.e. attending Eton or being a viscount, etc.
Please do a whole lecture on the different speech styles. I was very interested to see that there is a whole graph worked out. In my view the different speech modes is one of the most important aspects of LOTR. It seems to get too little attention. I see Sam Gamgee taken from his garden as Joe Gargery taken from his smithy and dropped in the middle of the Bible and The Iliad. The whole contrast between a working class everyman and posh ancient folk is, I believe, the meat and potatoes of the LOTR.
MrPwmiles LOTR is a tale of the ultimate underdog vs the ultimate villain. The garden boy vs Satan. And that is echoed in the speech styles of the characters. “Taken to the house of lamentations” vs “handsome is as handsome does” The Prof rules ok?
There's a fair number of "normal people" in The Odyssey, and even a few in The Iliad. Same thing with the Bible and Shakespeare, and Chaucer. Being able to vary your tone and appeal to different moods, and different audience members, was a big skill of literary artists of the past. And yes, it also works now. Tolkien just did a lot more of it, in a more noticeable way, because he designed his story to use that technique.
At first I struggled and didn’t understand the first 100 pages of the silmarilion, I scrapped that, I then restarted and concentrated on what I was reading creating a vivid world in my mind using my mind I understood the book and as each page went on I got addicted and the pictures that depicted were truly beautiful. I then read children of hurin in a couple days, then I read the beautiful sad story of the fall of gondolin, which I wish was explored more by the man himself. I wish there was more, I really do.
_".. and concentrated on what I was reading creating a vivid world in my mind using my mind.. "_ The most salient and important part. So glad that you were able to experience that. That's what moviegoers miss on regretfully, instead of demiurgical collaboration between ahe author's writing and reader's reading, they get other man's vision quite literally imprinted/implanted in the syst, most often in permanence, their own imagination completely trampled by the sensory onslaught. I shall end by agreeing with your longing for more, but sadly, wasn't meant to be. Reasons are varied and numerous, but as the most important one I'll single out a quote attributed to Raymond Chandler: "When you start talking about your stories, you stop writing them." (You have a real-time living example of this in G. R. R. Martin, just take a look at his current modus operandi, regardless of whether or not you're a fan)
I’ll be honest: I’m more of a fan of the movies. All the same, I acknowledge that if it weren’t for Tolkien, I’d never have heard of the Lord of the Rings. In fact, Peter Jackson, the director of the movies, sought to make his movies as a love letter to Tolkien. And to say that everyone involved had worked hard to pay tribute to Lord of the Rings would be a gross understatement.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning." Wait, wrong book
Elf friend Beren HAD been introduced before Elrond mentioned him. Aragorn told the hobbits some of the Lay of Luthien in the camp just prior to the Black Rider attack at Weathertop. So, not a broken reference, at least for that one.
I picked up on that too, but I think it counts for the purpose of the sense of a broken reference as Aragorn gives only a brief overview, like if you only had a Reader's Digest excerpt of a translation of The Odyssey when someone made a reference to Penelope reversing her stitches at night.
If you are interested in looking deeper into Lord of the Rings and some of the literature concepts behind the book, I recommend you to check out the Coursera course "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative." It is worth it! www.coursera.org/course/onlinegames Our kinship "Course of the Ring" on Laurelin accompanies the in-game content (not a must to play the game for the course) facebook.com/pages/Course-of-the-Ring-Coursera-kinship-on-Laurelin-LOTRO/1392607987712154?sk=timeline
When you are young, you read Tolkien with a sense of wonder, at the complexity of the world he created and its discovery. When you are older you read Tolkien with the sense of understanding, marvel at the complexity of the world mirroring this one and how it follows familiar and comfortable and uncomfortable paths.
Worth every second. Reading Tolkien transformed my life in a way that nothing ever did. Because, as he said, it is not a simple fairy tale, its an experience. And Tolkien for sure poured himself into his work, a part of his soul, and his suffering and the hope and nostalgia, the innocence preserved in the hearts of the unknowing (the hobbits) by sacrifice of those 5 hobbits, the goodness people are still capable of, even after so much pain and heartache. Selflessness, duty, honour. And he put in a happy ending, which we all know thats the real escapist part of it, in real life, this happy ending hardly ever come.
Oh mein Gott.
Es sind nur Buchstaben.
@@pepestanley1994 "nur" Es kommt ja wohl auf die Kombination dieser Wörter und Buchstaben an. Warum schaust du dir das Video an, wenn HDR für dich nur Buchstaben ist?
Yes I often liken reading Tolkien for the first time to being struck by lightning. I was forever changed.
Reading Tolkien is worth every second. This speaker is not worth one. Funnier than any of his jokes would be if a little kid ran up and sprayed him in the crotch with a super soaker.
There are bittersweet endings with loss and partings as the Fourth Age begins. Life is never one or the other. That was Sauuron's (and Morgoth's) biggest mistake.
Quite possibly one of the best lectures on Tolkien I've ever had the fortune of listening.
I clicked the play button, expecting to simply watch a minute or two just to see what this was about but was wholly unaware of how profusely I would be drawn into this video. If you are a fan of Tolkien's works I greatly suggest watching the entire thing. It was, to say in the very least, quite interesting
@Johnny Rep ? it starts when you press the play button dumbass
@@vaahtobileet Lol, some people...
Agreed, Agreed!!
many thanks! i was hop/clicking through the first part of this clip trying to gauge whether it was worth listening to and just as i was deciding to give up, glanced down thru the replies.
your comment made me persist and the clip got really interesting. there's some very good insights.
to return the favour (if you havent already come across it) give this book a go; isbn 978-1137269447
@@danjackson4149 Thank you! I'll check it out!
What a thoroughly enjoyable lecture. Being a reader of Tolkien since 1974 and having also read a few very interesting and engaging critiques of his work, it was really refreshing to hear a truly expansive and focused academic appraisal of Tolkien which brought a hitherto unknown perspective to my understanding of this tremendous mythology.
I strongly believe that Sam's simple line "Well, I'm back" fully encapsulates everything that is great about LotR, and here's Dr. Drout giving an hour-long presentation to make that point.
it's a literal way to point out the hero of the story is sam and he has made a full circle in the monomythic hero journey.
@@silverdragon710 I don't htink that he is THE hero of the story. He surely is A hero within the story, but in this context he is simply the last character in the book remaining, the final author of the "Red Book". The sense of textual tradition is not just a stylistic element, but a key feature of the whole tale (or, to be more precise, "epos"). Inside the main narrative frame, the story is written by Frodo after he returns to the Shire, before leaving Middle Earth. Thus, it primarily focusses on Frodo's perspective (when he is present) as well as the perspectives of the other characters. They told their parts of the story to Frodo and he combined all of that into the "Red Book", which is then finished by Sam. All four Hobbits have their own "hero's journey", but Sam's journey is the last one to end in the frame of the text, since Frodo has sailed to Aman and Merry and Pippin did not take part in the writing of the main text (although they are responsible for gathering part of the information that became the Appendix of TLotR). This is importanrt to understand: The "present" of the main narrative frame is Frodo sitting in his home and writing down the whole story. This is why there are frequent references to later events and the eventual fate of characters and places all over the text.
@@untruelie2640 JRR Tolkien literally said Sam is the hero of the LotR.
@@silverdragon710 Sorry, I didn't know that. However, what I said isn't necessarily wrong, just my conclusion was. My bad.
Pretentious fucks.
I like his reading but he tries to entertain a little too much for me. Still, he did really well and made it a cohesive reading. Also it's kind of funny that he works at Mellon university. (In middle-Earth Mellon is elvish for friend)
I'm willing to bet that every person who watches this already knows mellon means friend in elvish :p
I hope so ;)
+Dovahkiin Dragonborn (theblackpixel1) Mellon (Μέλλον) also means "future" in Greek.
The lead skater in Alduin on ice andthenI
Wait this dude or Tolkien
Table of Content
>Learning by Knowledge Construction (LKC) [12:19]
>>Zusammenhang of pseudo references/broken reference[25:14]
>Philologists are the tribologists of text [42:22]
>>Transcendental references[46:23]
>Summary[53:04]
I must of read Lord of the Rings 20 times. Silmarillion even more than that. And the funny thing is, my English teacher in 9th grade suggested that I might like The Hobbit it from a poem I wrote at the time for her class. And from there I was hooked.
She was a most amazing teacher. When we were studying Macbeth, she read each line and explained them in their context and then she did the whole play in a one woman show. Just brilliant of her the way she embodied each character and changed her voice and mannerisms accordingly.
Wow, some teacher ...😮
I don't think you did. Have, not of. Strewth!
very easy. Tolkien was motivated by love. not money or fame or pursuit of intellectual or artistic excellence. his work has a soul and reader with a soul can feel it.
One reason he wrote LOTR was because of the success of The Hobbit and to capitalize on that success. So money is one of the main reasons why we have LOTR.
If The Hobbit wasn't successful, we wouldn't have LOTR today. Tolkien's interest in language and the publication of these stories are two different things. Money has been the catalyst for many great works of art. Thinking that art requires pure motivations is just silly.
Tom Dean Perhaps we wouldn’t have Lord of the Rings, but who’s to say he wouldn’t have written them anyway if only to read them to his children? He’s written stories for his kids before. Perhaps if the Hobbit wasn’t successful, only his family would have Lord of the Rings.
@FREEDOM LIGHTRIDER The sole reason he wrote LOTR was because his publisher wanted a sequel to The Hobbit rather than publish The Silmarillion. They wanted an another fairy tale for children, but while writing it, the story "revealed" itself to Tolkien as being much larger. Money was definitely a large reason why his most popular work got made. He didn't create the languages for the story, he created the story for the languages (which were created long before).
Absolutely!!
"...they need a building code more than they need a White Council."
Uber-nerd humor at its best!
Furthermore, it's nice that Jackson and his production design crew took the fact of numerous ruins in middle earth to heart. The movies (especially the extended cuts) are replete with beautiful, evocative ruins.
I agree!!!
I feel the opposite is true. While the ruins in itself look good, it just feels like they're out of place in a wide, undiscovered world that feels new. Like how we never see actual roads that lead to those ruins, like they stood in the middle of nowhere even when they were still in use. And only sporadically we get to see them.
In fact, this is true for the whole world in the films: every city feels out of place: great walled settlements just placed into an empty field. Just compare Minas Tirith and the description Tolkien gave of the Pelennor Fields - dotted with farmstead, barnes and byres - with the big green empty field we get to see in the film. It's like everyone lives in cities that don't even have a food supply. Tolkien managed to create a world that felt old, lowly populated and yet very organic, Jackson did almost the opposite imo.
until you notice that all the ruins look similar. they kept using the same faux columns and stones throughout the trilogy.
I thought the joke was going to go another way:
“… their infrastructure engineering was atrocious.”
There's a problem which Jackson and crew fell foul of, and which film and TV still haven't resolved, which is how to fill the world with the normal rural life of a medieval and/or iron age past when their only available locations are parkland and wilderness. So Jackson's ruins, or the castles in Vikings and The Last Kingdom, as always surrounded by empty waste devoid of the peasant farming and coppicing and abundant wildlife and domesticated livestock which were there in those periods and were all around Minas Tirith, Edoras and Pelargir. Until they start backfilling the human settlement in CGI or whatever, it will always be unimmersive.
I was studying computer science in University of Montréal (& Operational Research), filled with D&D culture around the 1990's. That's when I've discovered Tolkien's work and learned English by reading all his books (some more than once i.e. the Silmarillion), along a dictionary.
My sister, gave me the Hobbit when I was 7. When I was 8 I picked up LOTR. Took me a year to read. Then I read it every year until I had children. 17 times.
Wow!
Wow…I clicked in here wanting to hear a few LOTR names being pronounced; I was IMMEDIATELY sucked in and learned so much more! This is brilliant.
Wonderful. Enjoyed everything even tearing up at Sam's last words.
Never had a lecture make me tear up before. That ending. Wow.
His analysis is spot on, but his understanding of the true theme is impeccable: nostalgia.
I'm not a philologist, but even I know that Tolkien was the person that put the words precisely where they should be because languages were his speciality, and he was truly thorough when creating his world and its history - peoples, languages etc. This is what happens to people when no one reads them fairy tales of different peoples and cultures when they are kids, and they don't read books of different writers from different nations and historical backgrounds - they get narrow-minded and don't understand the usage of old fashioned words, archaisms and characteristics of protagonists and antagonists of the stories. It was nice listening to this lecture, but I don't need explanations of Tolkien's motivation or anything like that to enjoy his works... Nostalgia - yeah, may not be popular, but anyone who has felt deep nostalgia and longing for what has been and is gone, for the passing of time and seeing birds leave to go to the south in autumn - anyone will understand the feeling Tolkien has weaved into his writings...
That was incredible, beautiful even. The last ten minutes of the lecture really put a frame around what I've never been able to articulate, on why the books have impacted me and so much of my decision making, outlook, and the beauty of sadness, these past 40 years. From hiking the AT to see my own mountains and elves (naming myself ïrandir on the trail), to being an Old English Literature major and tasting what that was about. Good morning indeed! 🙂 Going to pick up his book on ruins.
The prof’s conclusion is why I majored in English in early 60’s. I’ve had to justify my degree for years saying Lit used to be taught without a party line. I’m glad such professors as he continue to explain the way of the human heart.
I came into contact with Michael Drout by way of an Old English course I took through Signum University. He's fanastic and I love his humour.
Bravo! An utterly erudite and eloquently delivered lecture. What a pleasure to listen to!
A little geeky, but fun, and very informative. I had never considered that errors or inconsistencies within the text might be indicative of translational or fragmentary issues with the "original" Quenya autographs, nonexistent by the time of the recording of the Lord of the Rings.
Aww no one is laughing at his jokes, but they are hilarious to me!
They laughed, but the mic didn't pick it up.
Some things just aren't laugh out loud funny.
His jokes made me smile and chuckle softly
Me too.
He has a good form of analysis. Very different, nearer to actual experience than most academic discourse (it's mostly just frustrating and you have to sort it out to make it more normal, so that's actually very advanced).
I picked this book up today to hopefully get better at English because reading apparently helps with that, so im gonna go start reading this now, wish me luck :)
Good luck.
3 years later... how’s it going?
How'd you get on?
Drout is a great scholar as well as a darned good Tolkien scholar, and I've never read anything by him that I didn't profit by. (Even when I disagree with him, I learn something.)
That said, Tolkien is something you read primarily to be entertained. The proper way to approach him is, "Tell me a story, please." All of the great authors and epic poets are master storytellers first and foremost, and you won't get anything else out of them if you think you're too good to get absorbed into a story.
I first read LOTR when I was in elementary school, and I get something new out of it every time I read. But mostly, I get drawn farther into the story.
If you've never read Tolkien before, please let go of your preconceptions and just read. Allow yourself to be surprised, and to wonder what the heck is going on. Don't be too awed to enjoy, and don't be put off by the oddities of the book. Just take it in, and make a judgment later.
Don't freak out because The Hobbit is so different from Lord of the Rings, but do read The Hobbit first, if you can.
And if thick books intimidate you, just listen to an unabridged audiobook in chunks.
And you're allowed not to like the book. Tolkien was the first to point out that people tended to love or be totally bored and disgusted by his books, with no inbetween.
Sadly, one of the Inklings who was a novelist (not Lewis, and not anybody anyone's heard of) felt the latter way, and not politely, and not in a "just let me disappear into the other room for a bit" way. He tried to get Tolkien to stop writing, and pretty much broke the Inklings apart.
There are writers I can't stand, and that other people love; and there are writers that I used to dislike and now love. Books can be slippery like that.
So where is this gentleman in all the fray of Amazon's nonsense?
Regarding the audiobooks Andy Serkis (Gollum) reads the new unabridged versions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - those versions are absolutely recommended, they're incredible. Next, Martin Shaw's audio version of Silmarillion is freaking brilliant if you want something heavier :D
@@PleaseNThankYou - did you hear what happened with Corey Olson and dwarf women's beards? He's an actual genuine Tolkien Scholar, and super knowledgeable, but in his recent IGN interview he said "dwarf women don't have beards, Tolkien _never_ said that, that's a fan theory because Aragorn made a joke about it in the two towers movie and everyone loved it" - but Tolkien strongly implied they have beards in the appendices when he said "dwarf men and women are so alike in voice and appearance that other people cannot tell them apart" and in Histories he said "the Naugrim (dwarves) have beards from the beginning of their lives, both men and women alike, and a shaven dwarf will die of shame" .. Olson then made a tweet and a further podcast episode reiterating that Tolkien never said dwarf women have beards. It's so freaking strange!!
@@Vexarax Yes! and I watched those. Late 2020 I started watching Olsen videos(Signum U.) and started noticing something that I did not like about his canon theory… that it was THEORY. He is very knowledgeable but since there are some empty spaces in the lore, Olsen tends to use conjecture often, and many times without clarifying such. Those who are just learning all the basic points will take his scholarship as gospel and be then tainted. When I was young I acquired the Lost Tales One and had tried very hard to grasp it’s odd literary style (I’d already read The Hobbit and LR back to back in 8th grade and so I had a bit of it down already. I didn’t get the Silmarillion for almost 10 years more and knew it’s place in the line up… I was SO confused. So, all that to say this- Olsen may have years of study and paperwork to prove it but he is still prone to inserting his own narrative to fill gaps. I feel this is disingenuous of him as he has full access to all writing (Nature of M.E. excluded as it’s new, so older speculation will receive a pass as long as it’s not a repeated offense). But you know that Olsen just got his Signum Univ. accredited , right!! I wonder if there are any sponsors that he is “ Beholden too”? Being a university in the 2020’s seems to carry the burden of Wokedom as a prerequisite for validation. Hmm🤔
A very very keen insight, surprisingly brilliant lecture.
I for one have read Lord of the Rings at least 3 times. Once when I was 10, 15 and 25. Picking up new things about it every time I read it.
Every lecture I’ve ever heard of Dr. Drout’s has been amazing
(1) This is an edifying and engrossing lecture. It validates something I have always appreciated but could not articulate about Tolkien's writing. Fabulous job.
(2) This guy should NEVER tell another joke EVER again.
He's a professor. That's how they lighten things up. If they were really funny, they'd be doing stand up, not teaching Chaucer.
I really enjoyed his humor.
"Well, I'm back." - You got me already.
And then I watched it, and I have to admit... I welled up a little, here and there. Glad you came back, glad you spoke, glad I heard.
I used to be scared to read Lord of the Rings but ever since then I read all of the published Game of Thrones books (well, the main ones not the novellas) and I am hoping that it will be my next successful read-through. Starting with the Hobbit. :)
Never fear books, or assume they are "above your level", it's simply by reading them, even if it takes many readings, that you consume them and make them part of you- much like food, nourishment for the brain/soul
The late (and much-missed) Ursula Le Guin wrote a couple of really, really useful and perceptive essays on Tolkien - please if you enjoy this kind of thing, look them up. Also can recommend a book by Randall Helms called "Master of Middle-Earth" published BEFORE the Silmarillion, amazingly perceptive and useful if you want to understand more about Tolkien's work.
I can't find them, I assume you mean the lady that wrote Tales from Earthsea?
Interesting lecture even if you're not that interested in how to read JRR Tolkien. But the brilliant speaker makes it interesting and relevant. And he preserved his youthful humour which is super likable.
I think Tolkien was one of Britain's greatest writers. I wish he'd written many more Middle Earth stories.
I wish he'd FINISHED more Middle-Earth stories.
@@silverdragon710 Part of my joy of reading Tolkien is that he leaves plenty of room for the imagination.
I don't really know why I'm watching this on a Sunday morning in 2022, except that I'm a Tolkien fan who happens to have been at Carnegie-Mellon at roughly the same time as the lecturer, and his anecdotes of life at Carnegie-Mellon in those days amuse me.
Only, I can't actually relate that much to his trials concerning course registration, since I was in Department of Drama, where one did not really have choices over courses, so much as one had a full slate of required courses. I think I maybe had one elective slot per semester, and otherwise, classes from 0800 to 2300 Monday through Friday, with a one hour break for lunch and a 2.5 hour break for dinner (from 1700 to 1930), then back to class from 1930 to 2300, plus 3.5 hours of class on Saturday.
Also, there was no "Dietrich College" in the late 1980s-early 1990s. Strange that I don't remember Jim Kempf, even though we were apparently in the same program, and there weren't very many people in that program. I think he was a year behind me.
Great lecture, it really makes you appreciate the difference between good writers (George Martin, Frank Herbert) and great Writers (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis).
martin is not even a good writer
He is pretty good. He just doesn't know when to stop.
@@CoolAsianGuy , "martin is not "even" a good writer shows you are not an "expert" in English.
@@ccahill2322 Well alright. he's good. but that's it. his strength is in making plots. not in prose.
@@CoolAsianGuy Honestly i think that making a good story is more important than prose, way more
This guy is brilliant. How can it be not to hear laughs with his jokes, i found them hilarious.
My boss answered that question. He said "it's smart people humor" i said, "that's what i said, well, i said it in the opposite as, you're stupid but basically the same" he got a kick out of it but im too passionate to say i was wholly kidding. . .
Aweful comedic timing. That's the whole problem. The jokes are fine, but he totally fails to build momentum and rapport with the audience. The fact that he is basically reading it from paper doomed his chances of the jokes having a successful delivery.
The jokes aren’t funny.
3:30 Is my personnel favourite.
The other thing that Tolkien did an extraordinary job of was "delivering" his love of nature right onto those pages. As I read the descriptions of the settings and so on, first of all I felt like I was "there," but even more I felt that it was BEAUTIFUL and wholesome and very much a place that it would be pleasant to live in - a place that I could "feel love for." That's good writing.
I love Drout. Hes brilliant. I listened to his lectures from the Modern Scholar.
I have been told that when "The West Side Story" film was released in India, the audience jeered because there is singing in it! That is, in their experience, singing in a film meant it was low end, like a Bollywood movie, for example. Interesting that some critics assumed that the high language, "messiness," etc., is a "flaw in LOTR, whereas it is a subtle form of being a very different kind of text.
The Cats of Queen Beruthiel were explained in Unfinished Tales. Queen Beruthiel was the wife of Tarannon Falastur, 12th king of Gondor. She was a witch, who trained her ten cats to act as her spies. Her husband eventually banished her from his kingdom and she was last seen in a boat, sailing south, accompanied only by her cats.
In short, Beruthiel was the prototypical cat lady.
probro9898, she was, one might say, a "migrant" in reverse.
He wrote it like a professor lives his life. When students ask questions, the professor tells some of what they need to know, but if he told them all he knew, they would be his age by the end of the telling.
That was incredible. I teared up toward the end.
Read The Lost Road (vol IV of the History of Middle Earth) and you will see that all these features are there explicit. It’s a strange book, perhaps the strangest in Tolkien’s morphology, but considering it was written just before he started writing the lord of the rings it contains his vision, his Weltanschauung that led him to write eventually his masterpiece.
Is weltanschauung really a German word used in English? Didn't knew that.
@@moritzbenner4190 in German means something similar to “worldview”. It’s used in other languages because there is not an exact translation in English, so you keep it like that.
@@maxroma2799 Yeah German is my native language, but I never had heard it in English...
This was one of the best talks I’ve ever heard.
I was profoundly puzzled by the title of the lecture. Who needs a tutorial on how to "read" Tolkien? Surely the books are fairly straightforward - in their essence, that is. But he truly strikes us all with wildly interesting analysis on how Tolkien has gone beyond just "Here's an epic battle in Chapter 1, followed by this world's ontology in Chapter 2." Marvelous lecture, it's always a delight to draw connections that were hidden in plain sight!
I think he gave it that title as to not scare people away and let them know it wasn't going to be a dry or intimidating lecture where you had to already be a medieval or Tolkien scholar. Since this is a visiting alumni lecture from a professor in a field that many people find daunting or not always applicable or relatable. I think he didn't want the title to come off too academic.
My parents read me the Hobbit as a young child, and at age 10 I was deemed old enough to read my father's leather-bound copy of The Lord of the Rings. It was a massive red tome with all of the books in one, as Tolkien intended. The experience meant so much to me, that I have repeated it at least once every year for the past 38 years. It has literally guided my life and formed my character in endless ways. I learn something new about the story and about myself each time I reread it. I transferred my love in the same way to my 5 children, and I expect them to do the same.
You are a good Father/Mother and i am glad that there are still parents who read books to their children.
@@aleksander3978 Many thanks. It continues into the next generation with my oldest daughter and her children.
My Daughter went to Keuka College and they have a yearly event. The Library has a book sale and I bought all the books for super cheap. One of the best purchases ever.
It's the richness of his world, which is ours, and so operates according to all the natural laws we already know. So we immediately feel comfortable. Finally there are the hobbits who are quaint and rustic, but relatable people who unlike the other races are modern people (or at least modern period form the perspective of Tolkien's youth and so familiar.
This bases the reader in a mundane reality in the midst of a magical world, from whence they venture. For example, when the hobbits are leaving the shire, they pass near the village of Stock, where Pippin (i think) wants to to stop because they have a pub with really good beer. Frodo rules against it figuring Pippin in a pub means a long delay. It is just a homey little detail, one of the last bits of normality before nothing will be normal.
The solidity makes it so easy for the reader to enter the reasonably familiar world of the Shire, and then learn with the hobbits about the magical world outside of the Shire, which allows the reader to experience the magical world as if they were there.
I first read the Hobbit and LOTR when I was 12, and then read them every 2 years since then. I read them to my kids too. These books are part of my life.
Those complaining about his humor have clearly never taken an engineering class. I find barely social humor charming.
I doubt it is the taking of an engineering class that molds a person's humour type. Most likely the humour type of people who end up taking engineering classes is already a set type of engineering mind humour, that in fact is likely how it occurs that these people are even interested in engineering classes and able to excel in such classes.
Great lecture. Was nice to listen to while folding laundry. It gave me chills and I loved the ruins subliminal messaging he described.
Fantastic lecture. Illuminating for any Tolkien fan who wants to know why the books are so powerful.
What a wonderfully enriching lecture from one of the foremost scholars on Tolkien. My only complaint and point of disagreement is when Drout remarks that Tolkien is not literature but pop culture. I agree that he's a pop culture phenomenon but I think that hi work is nevertheless literature. In fact, Drout's entire presentation demonstrates ever more deeply that Tolkien is and should be studied as literature.
I think Prof. Drout was being ironic when he referred to LOTR as "pop culture."
Remarkably beautiful ending invoking nostalgia.
*sees beginning* *pauses video* Did I read that right? Did I... Carnegie MELLON university???? oh my goodness. MAE GOVANNEN, WHOEVER NAMED THAT, WHETHER IT WAS INTENTIONAL OR NOT.
Nice catch there, "friend."
stvbrsn ^u^
when is the book The Tower And The Ruin to be published ?
also, i love the 'standing in two moments at once' portion at 58:26
i always thought it would be great for the custodians of stonehenge to replace the missing uprights with solid glass replicas, so that you could see both the present and how it was in the past, but this etched glass panel is the next best thing to it.
I can’t believe when talking about pseudo references, in literature, he didn’t mention Don Quixote.
That aside this, was a great presentation!
this guy's lectures are fuckin' great
Really brilliant. A couple new concepts, a fresh application of an existing one, and interwoven with many other fields and disciplines.
1. Open the book
2. Read
I watched this just after the 80th anniversary of the publishing of "The Hobbit". Make sure you have the hour to commit to this program. It is very insightful and added a new level of my understanding of the Sage of Middle Earth.
While I found a lot of this to be padded and overlong, he does raise some interesting points (which I will keep an eye out for during my next reading of Tolkien). I would say that the two things that make Tolkien so appealing to me as a reader are 1) that his style strikes just the right level of formality to give the story a sense of seriousness without being stuffy, and 2) the stories. After all, if the story isn't good, all the fancy writing tricks in the world aren't going to keep my attention. That said, he did have a good grasp on advanced writing techniques, which certainly elevate his books.
I liked in the hobbit where there were breaks in the story where a narrator would jump in to explain something. Like as if Bilbo was reading his own work to the hobbits by the fire.
I wonder why he didnt use that technique in lotr.
This is wonderful. I'm going to read it again right away !
amazing lecture sir....the last bit was emotional
A brilliant lecture, thanks for uploading
Sebsantional - I could not stop watching -vert enlightening. Thanks for uploading.
"Himself" doesn't alliterate with "Hador and Hurin", it actually alliterates with "assembled". The Old Norse verse, which I assume is what Tolkien was referencing with that poem, only ever alliterated on the stressed syllables, not the unstressed ones. The stressed syllables in both "himself" and "assembled" are the second ones, which both start with an S-sound.
This actually makes the poem work better: Hador and Hurin are connected through alliteration, while Hurin and Turin are connected through rhyme, but the line with Beren breaks the pattern and starts a new alliterating couplet. This reinforces the feeling that "Beren himself" is somehow set apart from and stands above the three people mentioned before him.
The poem from the lecture I'm referring to, for reference:
elf-friends of old,
Hador
and Hurin,
and Turin,
and Beren himself
were assembled
Well...the sound popping is annoying.
Like some other commenters, I was surprised that his jokes weren't getting laughs from the audience. I think it's possible that they were laughing but his lavalier microphone was very directional and didn't pick up other sounds from the lecture hall.
Exactly. I think people are expecting a sitcom style laugh track. I think, know, in person people respond very favorably to his humor. His humor also lends itself to nods and chuckles than outbursts and guffaws.
Oh my god, what a great talk. So, The Tower And The Ruins book is apparently not out yet?
1. Learn the alphabet
2. Learn how to read
3. Read and try to remember what is being said in the text
4. Success
Great speaker. I laughed many times. Very enjoyable to listen to. Thank you.
heh. erm...Treebeard can be the oldest living thing, and Bombadil can be "oldest and fatherless", without there being a contradiction. Bombadil just has to be a different order of being to Treebeard.
Solid lesson. It is from Carnegie Friend university, after all.
Drout is the MAN!!!
Excellent presentation, which I will share with my Adolescent Literature students as we discuss The Hobbit. Thank you for sharing.
Okay I know its a stupid detail, and over all I really enjoined what he had to say, But the birds in the Barbara Remington Tolkien illustrations are Crowned Cranes not Emu.
The description of 'emus' and 'bulbous fruit' was from Tolkien's own response to the cover (Letters #2771)
@@majkus That cover scared the crud out of me, as a kid. Something really horrible about that particular shade of red-violet.
And that makes it OK? Just kidding. I've always liked her cover illustrations; they were the covers on the paper back addition of LOTR that I first read and I have the large poster where they all make one big picture.
Actually, i feel that Dr Drout is pitching way above the cognitive ability of the audience. He deserves much more than the feedback he gets back from his audience - not even close to if he had pitched a responsive audience - try Oxbridge please. Indeed this lecture would've been best pitched to Prof Tolkien's college...
ireachy - Drout reminds me of self important politicians/bureaucrats who advance agendas exclusively to justify their needless existence.
@@geezer652 if that's how you feel, that's a shame, you're missing some great insightful observations due to prejudice
Why because the audience isn't micced? So you can't hear there laugh track like a sitcom? As this was a visiting alumni lecture, I am sure the people who were there all wanted to be and were greatly enjoying and appreciating Dr. Drout albeit in an academic, heads nodding reserved sort of way.
Carnagie Mellon is one the best schools in the country. The students here may actually be smarter than Oxbridge students on average given the more explicit class considerations that come into play over there, i.e. attending Eton or being a viscount, etc.
Favorite psudo broken reference: original unedited volume of princess bride by s. Morganstern.
I did not expect this to be anything like this good.
Outstanding lecture.
Please do a whole lecture on the different speech styles. I was very interested to see that there is a whole graph worked out.
In my view the different speech modes is one of the most important aspects of LOTR. It seems to get too little attention.
I see Sam Gamgee taken from his garden as Joe Gargery taken from his smithy and dropped in the middle of the Bible and The Iliad. The whole contrast between a working class everyman and posh ancient folk is, I believe, the meat and potatoes of the LOTR.
Wow, a Tolkien fan who knows Dickens! This isn't sarcastic, I'm in that mould too, it's just we don't run across each other so often :)
MrPwmiles
LOTR is a tale of the ultimate underdog vs the ultimate villain. The garden boy vs Satan. And that is echoed in the speech styles of the characters. “Taken to the house of lamentations” vs “handsome is as handsome does”
The Prof rules ok?
There's a fair number of "normal people" in The Odyssey, and even a few in The Iliad. Same thing with the Bible and Shakespeare, and Chaucer. Being able to vary your tone and appeal to different moods, and different audience members, was a big skill of literary artists of the past. And yes, it also works now. Tolkien just did a lot more of it, in a more noticeable way, because he designed his story to use that technique.
At first I struggled and didn’t understand the first 100 pages of the silmarilion, I scrapped that, I then restarted and concentrated on what I was reading creating a vivid world in my mind using my mind I understood the book and as each page went on I got addicted and the pictures that depicted were truly beautiful. I then read children of hurin in a couple days, then I read the beautiful sad story of the fall of gondolin, which I wish was explored more by the man himself. I wish there was more, I really do.
_".. and concentrated on what I was reading creating a vivid world in my mind using my mind.. "_
The most salient and important part. So glad that you were able to experience that.
That's what moviegoers miss on regretfully, instead of demiurgical collaboration between ahe author's writing and reader's reading, they get other man's vision quite literally imprinted/implanted in the syst, most often in permanence, their own imagination completely trampled by the sensory onslaught.
I shall end by agreeing with your longing for more, but sadly, wasn't meant to be. Reasons are varied and numerous, but as the most important one I'll single out a quote attributed to Raymond Chandler: "When you start talking about your stories, you stop writing them."
(You have a real-time living example of this in G. R. R. Martin, just take a look at his current modus operandi, regardless of whether or not you're a fan)
I’ll be honest: I’m more of a fan of the movies. All the same, I acknowledge that if it weren’t for Tolkien, I’d never have heard of the Lord of the Rings. In fact, Peter Jackson, the director of the movies, sought to make his movies as a love letter to Tolkien. And to say that everyone involved had worked hard to pay tribute to Lord of the Rings would be a gross understatement.
A mellon at Mellon University ;)
This thing literally flies by for me, a guy who got through exactly 1 year of community college. Barely.
How to read Tolkien; start at the beginning...
How to get attention; be obvious...
obviously
Where the actual beginning is with Tolkien is a trick unto itself.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."
Wait,
wrong book
c0gsinc0gs [
I read LOTR for the first time when I was 9yo I saw it on the shelf at the book store.
Elf friend Beren HAD been introduced before Elrond mentioned him. Aragorn told the hobbits some of the Lay of Luthien in the camp just prior to the Black Rider attack at Weathertop. So, not a broken reference, at least for that one.
I picked up on that too, but I think it counts for the purpose of the sense of a broken reference as Aragorn gives only a brief overview, like if you only had a Reader's Digest excerpt of a translation of The Odyssey when someone made a reference to Penelope reversing her stitches at night.
Very interesting. Fantastic work!
I like this University because Mellon means "friend" in elvish
If you are interested in looking deeper into Lord of the Rings and some of the literature concepts behind the book, I recommend you to check out the Coursera course "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative." It is worth it!
www.coursera.org/course/onlinegames
Our kinship "Course of the Ring" on Laurelin accompanies the in-game content (not a must to play the game for the course) facebook.com/pages/Course-of-the-Ring-Coursera-kinship-on-Laurelin-LOTRO/1392607987712154?sk=timeline
This is so amazingly insightful!
I've read the 17 (so far) books of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher seven times (so far).
I finished lord of the rings today yay
What's the Elvish word for "friend" ?