A Tolkien Compass

Fans of Tolkien and his fantasy will thrill to A Tolkien Compass, a handbook which provides reflections on his political, religious, and psychological principles. Ten writers explore these concepts, offering very different backgrounds of expertise and approaches to Tolkien's art. The result is a literary analysis excellent in its scope.

Reviewer la solinas complains that the new edition fails to include Tolkien's "Notes on Nomenclature," which the 1975 edition offered. A glance at page 157 would have explained why. The Tolkien Estate would not permit its reprinting, because the Estate plans to republish it another book. "A Tolkien Compass" is a splendid book. Jared Lobdell appreciated the depth of Tolkien's genius long before most Americans.

. . .including the first version of Bilbo's finding of the Ring!By now, all hobbits know that the original story which Bilbo told his friends (and set down in the Red Book) about the finding of the One Ring was, shall we say, a unusual departure from the truth on the part of a very honest hobbit. What most hobbits probably don't realize, however, is that Bilbo's original story is once again available. Bonniejean Christenson presents an excellent essay detailing the original story of the Riddle Game -- and the subsequent changes over the years.This essay is one of several in this worthy volume, written by lovers of Middle Earth and compiled by Professor Jared Lobdel. Of further note is an excellent guide to names from "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". Considering the hobbitish interest in geneaologies, nomenclature and familiy trees, this index is indispensible.This hobbit highly endorses this book.

Published in 1975, this is a good collection of essays about Tolkien's fiction given that the essays are ostensibly written by "fans" rather than scholars. A few of the essays are, it must be conceded, naive in style and scope-- like the one which makes the rather obvious claim that the main theme of the Lord of the Rings is that "power corrupts". Quite a few others, however, are quite insightful, particular Charles Huttar's article on "Hell and the City", Robert Plink's analysis of the "Scouring of the Shire" chapter, and Richard West's analysis of the 'interlace' structure of The Lord of the Rings. Also Bonniejean Christiansen's article on the characterological differences between Gollum that were produced by the *major* revisions of the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter of the Hobbit is extremely valuable-- both for what she has to say about Gollum and for the fact that she offers side-by-side quotations from both the first and second editions of that chapter so the reader can see what has changed from one to the other. Quite surprisingly, these essays aren't nearly as dated as a lot of other Tolkien criticism that came out at the same time or earlier. (The publication of Carpenter's biography of Tolkien in 1977, as well as the posthumous publication of the _Silmarillion_ and then later of Tolkien's letters has rendered a lot of older Tolkien criticism out-of-date or irrelevant). In fact, these essays are just as good and insightful as a lot of Tolkien criticism being written now (in fact, they're better than a lot of it!). The main reason for their continued relevance, I think, is tha they are clearly focused on Tolkien's fictional *texts* as texts that can be analyzed on their own terms. Rather than delving into lots of biographical details, into questions of authorial intention, trying to place The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the context of _The Silmarillion_, or connecting them to Tolkien's alleged goal of creating a 'mythology for England', these articles focus on specific chapters, images, themes, and structures from The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, this gives them a kind of 'permanence' that other earlier Tolkien criticism has lacked. (Also, I think the emphasis upon Tolkien's texts themselves leads to more insightful analysis than the biographically-oriented authorial-intention-minded criticism that's still dominant among Tolkien criticism). It's a real shame this has gone out of print...

Professor Jared Lobdell has, in this volume, collected a number of excellent critical essays relating to the writing of JRR Tolkien, one of the most interesting being Bonniejean Christenson's excellent work "Gollum's Character Transformation in 'The Hobbit'" (Note: not every essay is necessarily worthy of 5 stars!).Professor Lobdell has also provided an informative introduction, and a Guide to Names which will prove helpful to Tolkien scholars.It's a shame that this volume is out of print. Serious Tolkien scholars will wish to find a used copy.