Fall 2005
MGe5350.01
Though
offered by the Department of Modern Languages under a German number, the readings,
lectures, and discussions will be in English (one of the Germanic branch of
Indo-European languages). The
course may not be used to satisfy any language requirement, whether on the
undergraduate or graduate level.
Instructor:
Steve Maddux, C207, x5248, maddux@udallas.edu
Books you must purchase (if you don t already own
them):
J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings. Houghton-Mifflin, c1987. Any edition; for a used one-volume ppb, see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618343997/
idem. The Silmarillion.
ed. C.
Tolkien. Ballantine,
c1977/1999. isbn 0345325818
idem. The Tolkien Reader.
Ballantine, c1966/1976.
isbn 0345345061
Karen Wynn Fonstad. The Atlas of Middle-Earth (Revised
Edition). Houghton
Mifflin, 2001. ISBN: 0618126996
You will need all the above
books, though for the first three the edition is not important.
A number of additional
required texts will be available on line.
Highly recommended:
J.R.R. Tolkien. The Monsters and the Critics: the essays of J.R.R. Tolkien. isbn 026110263X
idem. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Selected and Edited by Humphrey
Carpenter. Houghton Mifflin, isbn 0618056998
idem. Unfinished Tales. Del Rey, isbn 0618056998
idem. Various volumes in The History of
Middle-Earth, all edited by Christopher Tolkien: particularly vols 1 and 2 (The Book of Lost Tales), vol 5 (The Lost
Road),
vol 9 (Sauron Defeated), and vol 10 (MorgothÕs Ring). All are available in paperback.
Humphrey Carpenter. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. Houghton-Mifflin, isbn 0618057021
Tom
Shippey. The Road to
Middle-Earth. Revised and expanded
edition. Houghton-Mifflin,
isbn 0618257608
Scope
and goals of the course: One of the principal
notions underpinning this course is that the two sides of Prof Tolkien s life,
his scholarship and his imaginative writing, really form a whole. In his scholarship, as a philologist,
he studied literary works of the Middle Ages; in writing the LotR and related
texts, he was mightily inspired by these same works. More than simply being inspired, he wanted to renew,
prolong, and indeed complete what certain authors of the medieval were in his
opinion striving, imperfectly, to do.
To put the same duality another way: we are interested both in how Tolkien s projet is rooted in various narrative
traditions of Western Europe and in how he attempted to perfect and transcend
what his predecessors in these traditions had achieved.
Students
who take the course should already have read the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.
Your
contribution: 1) read and reflect
on the assigned texts; 2) attend class regularly and contribute to discussions;
3) write one-page commentaries on readings when asked to, usually every week;
4) elect either to write a term paper (10-12 pages typed) or take a final exam
(take-home, essay-style, minimum eight pages typed in all).
If
you choose to write a term paper, you must tell me your topic by the 8th
week. Here are a few ideas (in no
case, with regard to what you say of Tolkien s oeuvre, may you speak of the LotR alone):
Modalities of the heroic in Tolkien (and his models)
Sigurd, Beowulf, and Tolkien
the Volsungasaga, the Nibelungenlied, Wagner, and
Tolkien
William Morris and Tolkien (or Tolkien and any of his
19th-century predecessors and models)
the fusion of genres in Tolkien (tale, novel, romance,
epic)
Tolkien and the ancients (especially Vergil)
the fusion of the Celtic and Germanic in Tolkien
the Finnish element in Tolkien
a study of some part of the Silmarillion
...
List of required readings:
By Tolkien:
the essay On Fairy-Stories (and other selections from The
Tolkien Reader)
the essay Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics
the Silmarillion
selections from Unfinished Tales
selections from the History of Middle Earth (12 volumes in all)
Letters (selections)
reread as needed in The Hobbit and the LotR
TolkienÕs antecendents and models:
Vergil, AEneid
Beowulf
the Song of Roland
Mabinogion (selected tales)
Volsungasaga
Elder Edda
Prose Edda
Irish texts
Calendar:
|
|
topic: |
to do: |
|
Week 1 |
Introduction |
|
|
Week 2 |
Initial notions: Fairy-stories in theory and practice |
Read, in the TR[1],
ÒOn Fairy-StoriesÓ; selected tales |
|
Week 3 |
Biographical issues; loss and
longing |
Read on line: selections
from; Carpenter, Biography, Shippey, R to M-E; |
|
Week 4 |
Beowulf: gods, heroes, monsters |
Read: Beowulf |
|
Week 5 |
The Beowulf poem: Tolkien s
Tower |
Read: Tolkien, Beowulf: the
Monsters & the Critics |
|
Week 6 |
Language Trees and Geography |
Read: first half or so of the
Volsungasaga |
|
Week 7 |
The Norse Model I: heroes & monsters |
Finish the Volsungasaga |
|
Week 8 |
The Norse Model 2: gods, elves, dwarves (and monsters) |
Read: Prologue & Part I of the Prose
Edda (Gylfaginning); selected poems of the Elder Edda |
|
Week 9 |
The Celtic Other World |
Voyage of St Brendan and
other readings |
|
Week 10 |
The Silmarillion I: the Gods, Creation, and Evil |
Silmarillion and additional
readings |
|
Week 11 |
Silmarillion II: Critique of
the Northern Ideal |
Silmarillion and additional
readings |
|
Week 12 |
Silmarillion III: Theology, Theodicy, Eschatology, etc. |
Silmarillion and additional
readings |
|
Week 13 |
The Northwestern Bias: What Tolkien disavows or dissimulates |
Read passages from AEneid,
Song of Roland |
|
Week 14 |
Other Intermediaries (Besides
Hobbits) or, Another Fall |
Read passages from HoME[2]: the Lost Road, the Notion Club
Papers; also, the Akallabeth (in the Silmarillion) |
|
Week 15 |
Post-LotR: the Meaning of It All |
Readings from the HoME |