User talk:Astraflame/Tolkien Bibliography

Requesting comments from others
I've asked Awadewit to comment here, as I think it is important to get the views of others on the right way to do this before going too far along the wrong track! Carcharoth (talk) 06:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I absolutely agree. The more the merrier, almost, for this sort of thing because there is such an immense amount of literature to go through, but I feel if we pool our resources, we can probably get them all covered at least in someone's library. I was just hesitant to put out invites myself because, since I'm still so new to all this and have so little intuition about it, I don't really have a sense of who are the major contributers who would be interested in working on this. So by all means, invite away! Astraflame (talk) 19:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Carcharoth's sources on Tolkien
I'm going to list here the sources I have access to. I may then help write and/or expand the summary on the front page, or add one here. Which would be best? To edit on the talk page, or edit the main page? One question I have is whether your current summaries are deliberately short, or whether the summaries should be expanded. Obviously we need to avoid writing too much on any one paper or book (though some will need far more than others), and we want to avoid copyright violations and plagiarism, but equally we don't want to oversimplify things either. Carcharoth (talk) 07:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm open to editing the summaries on the main page. However, I was deliberately short for two reasons a) I did not actually have access to the full articles of most of these, and b) I was not intending this for publication for publishing it as-is would be a direct plagiarizing of the Tolkien Studies review as I took many of their opinions on face value since I didn't have the actual sources. Not the best way to do things, but the most expedient, given my resources. So, I was definitely going for a more short summary so that the article could be properly situated within its topic area. In doing so, I did my best to avoid false categorization due to such simplification, but I could have over-simplified and got something wrong by accident. So, anyone that does have the sources or have read them, feel free to re-categorize or re-summarize at will. My sources on-hand, unfortunately, are much more modest. I have all of Shippey and Flieger's works, Zimbardo and Isaac's "Best of Tolkien Criticism" collection, and most of Tolkien's works. That, and I will only have library access for a few more weeks, but while I have it, I should be able to get practically anything else that we end up missing. Astraflame (talk) 19:53, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Major literature

 * All Tolkien's major works and most of his other works, including the posthumous works
 * All the volumes of The History of Middle-earth (Christopher Tolkien)
 * J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (Carpenter)
 * The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (Carpenter)
 * All issues of Tolkien Studies
 * Many recent issues of Mallorn (journal)
 * J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (ed. Drout)
 * The Annotated Hobbit (Douglas A. Anderson)
 * J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (Hammond and Scull)
 * The History of The Hobbit (volumes 1 and 2, Rateliff)
 * The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (two volumes, Hammond and Scull)
 * The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (Hammond and Scull)
 * The Road to Middle-earth (Tom Shippey)
 * J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Tom Shippey)
 * Tolkien and the Great War (John Garth)
 * The Inklings (Carpenter)
 * Tolkien's Legendarium (ed. Flieger and Hostetter)

Other literature
That's about it, though the list will expand over time as more are published and purchased. Obviously I haven't read them all, though as I said, I have read a fair number of them. If there are disputes over sources, or someone wants a reference checked, I can do that as well, though, obviously, others will have access to all the above and other books and journals that I don't have. The above list is only part of the available literature, mainly the "main" books and a selection of recent publications. The total above is around 60 publications. Carcharoth (talk) 08:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * War and the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien (Janet Brennan Croft)
 * The Origins of Tolkien's Middle-earth for Dummies
 * The Ring of Words (Tolkien and the OED)
 * Root and Branch (collection of Tom Shippey essays)
 * The Rough Guide to The Lord of the Rings
 * J. R. R. Tolkien in the 'Great Writers' series (Neil Heims)
 * J. R. R. Tolkien in the 'Library of Great Authors' series
 * Splintered Light (Flieger)
 * Interrupted Music (Flieger)
 * Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference
 * Tolkien and Shakespeare (Janet Brennan Croft)
 * C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Diana Paylac Glyer)
 * Tales Before Tolkien (the introductions by Anderson may be worth citing)
 * The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition (Simonson)
 * Myth and Magic - Art according to the Inklings (ed. Segura and Honegger)
 * The Silmarillion 30 Years On (ed. Turner)
 * Tolkien's Shorter Works (Jena Conference 2007, ed. Hiley and Weinreich)
 * How We Became Middle-earth (Russian essays)
 * A Question of Time (Flieger)
 * The Roots of Tolkien's Middle-earth (Blackham)
 * The Forsaken Realm of Tolkien (Lewis and Currie)
 * The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien (Lewis and Currie)
 * The Lord of the Rings 1954-2004 (Proceedings of the Richard E. Blackwelder conference)
 * The Lord of the Rings - the Films, the Books, the Radio Series
 * Translating Tolkien (Turner)
 * Root and Branch (collection of essays, not to be confused with the Shippey essay collection)
 * Inside Language - linguistic and aesthetic theory in Tolkien (Ross Smith)
 * The Atlas of Middle-earth (Karen Wynn Fonstad)
 * J. R. R. Tolkien - Architect of Middle-earth (the biography illustrated by The Brothers Hildebrandt)
 * Talking of Dragons - the children's books of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis (William Chad Newsom)
 * The Science of Middle-earth (Henry Gee)
 * Myth and Middle-earth (Leslie Ellen Jones)
 * Understanding Tolkien (Ready)
 * The Magical Worlds of The Lord of the Rings (David Colbert)
 * Tolkien - A Celebration (ed. Joseph Pearce)
 * Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings - A Guide to Middle-earth (Duriez)
 * The Tolkien Companion (J. E. A. Tyler)
 * A Closer Look at The Lord of the Rings (Mark Eddy Smith)
 * Various books about the films and the making of the films and the musical

The key sources (tackle these first)
We should also aim to id entify the key sources and concentrate on those. Any ideas for what criteria to use? I would suggest starting with the books and journals that we have articles on. See Category:Tolkien studies. Carcharoth (talk) 07:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Based on Drout's article on the subject (I am sure that there are others, but this is the only one that I could find), one can put together what would look like a definitive list of Tolkien studies pre-2000 when the article was written. I'm moving my list of this to a different page because I think putting together this list is probably a critical first step towards deciding how we move forward with this information. Astraflame (talk) 20:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Reference templates
Have a look at Template:ME-ref and the associated templates. It is possible to add a book to that list (or set up a new template) if the book will be referenced a lot or in many articles. Is this worth considering? Carcharoth (talk) 07:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Having gone through a process of 'cleaning up' all the references on The Hobbit (with large amounts of help, I must say!), using Harvard-style cites for the multiple-useage books, I found the me-ref templates 'very difficult to deal with - as the required information isn't available at the point of use. I could start a list of all the books in an easily copy-paste-able cite-book format rather than templates, so all the information required to transform them to Harvard formats would be easy. Would that be welcome? --Davémon (talk) 09:29, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Other sources
Might not be any good, but sounds interesting: see here (Summaries of Secondary Literature about Tolkien and Lewis). Carcharoth (talk) 21:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I feel like these essays skirt the line between 'decent description' and 'mediocre essay', but since we don't actually need any phenomenal essays out of random college students, maybe their descriptions will save us some time when we go to review those articles. For our reference, I'd say the essays looking at the following works might be interesting (and feel free to edit any of my lists, by the way):


 * Sandner, David. "Joy between the walls of the world: The secondary world-making of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis."
 * Tom Shippey. ”Orcs, Wraiths, Wights: Tolkien’s Images of Evil.” J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances. Ed. George Clark and Daniel Timmons. Westport: Greenwood, 2000.183-196.
 * Pratchett, Terry. "Cult Classic"
 * Hooker, Mark. "Frodo's Batman"
 * Hargrove, Gene. Who Is Tom Bombadil?. 16 Jan. 2002.  18 Jan. 2006.    .
 * Martinez, Michael. “If I Only Had a Bombadil…”.  Understanding Middle-Earth: Essays on Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. New York: ViviSphere, 2003.  169-180.
 * Gracia, Jorge. "The Quests of Sam and Gollum for the Happy Life"
 * Petty, Anne C. Tolkien in the Land of Heroes
 * Flieger, Verlyn. Interrupted Music
 * Wood, Ralph. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth
 * Dickerson, Matthew. Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory
 * Burns, Marjorie. Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth
 * Davenport, John. "The Lord of the Rings as an Epic Fairy Tale"

The essay on Shippey's Road to Middle-earth looks awful, but the summary of Petty's work, among others, look rather promising. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Astraflame (talk • contribs) 00:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC) Well that was awful of me. Sorry! Astraflame (talk) 01:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have an old edition of Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings (1960s-1970s) by Lin Carter, though I've only browsed through it. More importantly, I can't promise I'll be able to help much (soon), due to restricted Internet access. And this review makes me doubt the book's usefulness. Still, its age makes it useful, if only for illustrating the infancy of Tolkien scholarship. Uthanc (talk) 08:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)