Beren And LÚthien
Pages: 288
Edition: Hardcover
List Price: $30
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9781328791825
First entered: 3rd, Jun 2017
Number of weeks: 2
Book Summary
The tale of Beren and Lúthien was, or became, an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of the First Age of the World conceived by J.R.R. Tolkien. Returning from France and the battle of the Somme at the end of 1916, he wrote the tale in the following year.
Essential to the story, and never changed, is the fate that shadowed the love of Beren and Lúthien: for Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal elf. Her father, a great elvish lord, in deep opposition to Beren, imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. This is the kernel of the legend; and it leads to the supremely heroic attempt of Beren and Lúthien together to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril.
In this book Christopher Tolkien has attempted to extract the story of Beren and Lúthien from the comprehensive work in which it was embedded; but that story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history. To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, he has told the story in his father's own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed. Presented together for the first time, they reveal aspects of the story, both in event and in narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost.
Published on the tenth anniversary of the last Middle-earth book, the international bestseller The Children of Húrin, this new volume will similarly include drawings and color plates by Alan Lee, who also illustrated The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and went on to win Academy Awards for his work on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
Authors
Name: J.R.R. Tolkien
Hometown: Bloemfontein, Mangaung, Free State
Born: Jan, 1892
Died: Sep, 1973
About the author:
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, was an English writer, poet, WWI veteran (a First Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers, British Army), philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the high fantasy classic works
The Hobbit
and
The Lord of the Rings
.
Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and Merton Professor of English language and literature from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C.S. Lewis.
Christopher Tolkien published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including
The Silmarillion
. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about an imagined world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the word "legendarium" to the larger part of these writings.
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or more precisely, high fantasy. Tolkien's writings have inspired many other works of fantasy and have had a lasting effect on the entire field.
In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Forbes ranked him the 5th top-earning dead celebrity in 2009.
Religious influences
J.R.R. Tolkien, was born in South Africa in 1892, but his family moved to Britain when he was about 3 years old. When Tolkien was 8 years old, his mother converted to Catholicism, and he remained a Catholic throughout his life. In his last interview, two years before his death, he unhesitatingly testified, “I’m a devout Roman Catholic.”
Tolkien married his childhood sweetheart, Edith, and they had four children. He wrote them letters each year as if from Santa Claus, and a selection of these was published in 1976 as
The Father Christmas Letters
. One of Tolkien’s sons became a Catholic priest. Tolkien was an advisor for the translation of the
Jerusalem Bible
.
Tolkien once described The Lord of the Rings to his friend Robert Murray, an English Jesuit priest, as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." There are many theological themes underlying the narrative including the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace. In addition the saga includes themes which incorporate death and immortality, mercy and pity, resurrection, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing. In addition The Lord's Prayer "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" was reportedly present in Tolkien's mind as he described Frodo's struggles against the power of the "One Ring.''
Name: Christopher Tolkien
Hometown: Leeds, West Yorkshire
Born: Nov, 1924
About the author:
Christopher Reuel Tolkien is the youngest son of the author J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973), and is best known as the editor of much of his father's posthumously published work. He drew the original maps for his father's The Lord of the Rings, which he signed C. J. R. T. The J. stands for John, a baptismal name that he does not ordinarily use.
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a great deal of material connected to the Middle-earth mythos that was not published in his lifetime. Although he had originally intended to publish The Silmarillion along with The Lord of the Rings, and parts of it were in a finished state, he died in 1973 with the project unfinished.
After his father's death, Christopher Tolkien embarked on organizing the masses of his father's notes, some of them written on odd scraps of paper a half-century earlier. Much of the material was handwritten; frequently a fair draft was written over a half-erased first draft, and names of characters routinely changed between the beginning and end of the same draft. Deciphering this was an arduous task, and perhaps only someone with personal experience of J.R.R. Tolkien and the evolution of his stories could have made any sense of it. Christopher Tolkien has admitted to having to occasionally guess at what his father intended.
Name: Alan Lee
Hometown: Middlesex
Born: Aug, 1947
About the author:
Alan Lee is an English book illustrator and movie conceptual designer. He was born on 20 August 1947 in Middlesex, England and studied at the Ealing School of Art, specialising in illustration, and has illustrated a wide range of books, including Faeries (with Brian Froud), The Mabinogion, Castles, Merlin Dreams, The Black Ships of Troy and The Wanderings of Oysseus.
He is best known for his award winning work on The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien - having done illustration work for both the books and the Peter Jackson directed movies. As of 2011, he is working on The Hobbit movies, based on Tolkien's book, again directed by Peter Jackson.
Tolkien's work has inspired him ever since he read his books at an early age. Alan Lee is also inspired by nature, myth, legends and Folklore.
Alan Lee draws a lot of inspiration from nature around in which he lives - he lives and works on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon, England.
Recommended articles:
* http://www.endicott-studio.com/gal/ga....
* http://gaytonvanryn.blogspot.com/2011... and http://gaytonvanryn.blogspot.com/2011....
His artistic influences include:
"I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators — Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists — Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion." - Alan Lee
fan homepage:
http://alan-lee.narod.ru/Bio.htm
