First time I've ever read a literary study. It gave me a new appreciation for the study of literature, despite it not being a "science".

The quick read when over the history of the fantasy epic starting with the Greeks up until Tolkien's era. It also went into many of the origins for the names, concepts, and themes that abound in the Lord of the Rings.

Written just 12 years after LOTR was first published, it is a little outdated (he spends some pages speculating what will come in the Simairillion)

Lin Carter, Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings (Ballantine, 1969)
[originally posted 14Aug2000]

Forget the title. Carter's book has about as much to do with Lord of the Rings as Silence of the Lambs actually has to do with lambs. They get mentioned now and again, but are really quite unnecessary to what's going on.

Carter's interesting little tome is actually more of an encapsulated history of fantasy literature up to the time of Tolkien—the sources from which Tolkien got his ideas. LOTR serves as a convenient linchpin and a good jumping-off point, but Carter is truly in his own when he's discussing the Elder Edda or the epics of Homer and his contemporaries, and tracing how the stories got from the ancient texts into Tolkien's hands. It leaves behind a wealth of wonderful reading material for the interested fantasy reader to track down (assuming most of it can be found; Carter laments that many of the works of which he speaks have been lost to the ages), and this is its chief strength. As for weaknesses, Carter spends too much time summing up LOTR when he could be telling us about Egyptian legends, and he makes a number of guesses about things in LOTR, since The Silmarillion hadn't been published yet (and for all its annoyances, The Silmarillion did answer a whole lot of questions about the First Age), but it's impossible to count that against Carter and still remain fair. I'd just liked to have seen more of the old stuff, and less of the new. ***

This study in Tolkien was readable from the beginning to the very end. It is simple, yet serious. I learned a lot of interesting facts and ideas about Tolkien's work. I know there are many studies in Tolkien's work that are new, more expansive and detailed, but this work is really nice exactly because of its simplicity. Also the interesting fact is that Carter wrote and published this book before the publishing of Silmarillion and the death of J.R.R.T., so you can find many interesting ideas Carter had confirmed of disproved by time. Quite nice reading!

Nota: 2.5

Índice
Introducción
1. Vida y época del profesor Tolkien
2. Cómo se escribió "El señor de los anillos"
3. Tolkien después de "El señor de los anillos"
4. De la Tierra Media y el relato de "El Hobbit"
5. La historia de "La Comunidad del Anillo"
6. El relato de "Las dos torres"
7. El relato de "El retorno del rey"
8. La trilogía. ¿Sátira o alegoría?
9. LA teoría de Tolkien sobre el cuento de hadas
10. La fantasía en la épica clásica
11. La fantasía en el cantar de gesta
12. La fantasía en los libros de caballerías medievales
13. Los hombres que inventaron la fantasía
14.Las fuentes esenciales de Tolkien
15. Sobre la elección de los nombres
16. Personas, lugares y cosas
Posdata: después de Tolkien
Apéndice A: bibliografía crítica
Apéndice B: selección bibliográfica

«"El origen de 'El señor de los anillos'" es un docto y sumamente ameno análisis de la historia de la éopica, desde las antiguas sagas heroicas sumerias hasta la mitología griega y las leyendas nórdicas, pasando por "Beowulf" y el "Cantar de los nibelungos" hasta llegar a al historia de Sigfrido y Brunilda, haciendo especial hincapié, naturalmente, en el modo en que "El señor de los anillos" encaja en esta titánica tradición, así como en sus raíces y sus fuentes. El libro de Lin Carter constituye una lectura fascinante para los millones de seguidores del Anillo (se incluye una detallada sinopsis de la trilogía para los lectores no iniciados en Tolkien), una gozosa introducción a un mundo de prodigios».

La obra de Lin Carter es un extraño equilibrio entre lo académico y lo divulgativo, con un público potencial algo irreal: tiene capítulos dirigidos a lectores que no hayan leído nunca a Tolkien, como los cuatro que resumen literalmente los libros (bastante innecesarios), y otros que exigen ciertos conocimiento de la obra para poder ver toda la red de influencias mitológicas y literarias que va uniendo. Por lo tanto se queda en tierra de nadie. Además fue escrita en 1969 y en algunos apartado se ha quedado un poco obsoleta. No obstante sigue cumpliendo como introducción breve a la vida y obra de Tolkien.

It has been so long since I have read this book that I forgot it was on my shelf. This seems like a great time to re-read it, I'm sure it's been probably 20 years since I last touched it.

Buenísimo complemento para después de leer la trilogía. Si en realidad te fascina el universo tolkeniano creo que puedes disfrutar libro. No está escrito tan académicamente y viene muchísima información acerca de cómo ha ido evolucionando la literatura épica y fantástica, desde los mitos griegos hasta mediados del siglo XX. Nunca me hubiera imaginado las similitudes de ESDLA con la Odisea. Lo que más disfruté fue el repasó de la fantasía en la Edad Media: los cantares de gesta y los libros se caballerías medievales

It was alright

Story behind the making of "The Lord of the Rings" and a look at the fantasy genre.

This is a historical curiosity, really: a book about the Lord of the Rings and its background and inspirations from the era before the internet, when many fans would have had access to little information about Tolkien, his influences, or the wider fantasy genre. There are some interesting nuggets in here, and I suppose in its time it was a work of considerable erudition (Carter clearly went to the trouble of reading much of the literary sources Tolkien drew from), but it is only of value to the modern reader as an insight into what people were saying about fantasy fiction in the 1960s.

As much as I have enjoyed Lin Carter's fiction, I can't say that I enjoyed much of this book. Maybe this is the book that my college profs read when it came out, when all their students had read Tolkien but the teachers hadn't yet and needed to know what all the fuss was about. Now, this book is a period piece. Think Woodstock.

The first 7 chapters of this book are just a summary of The Lord of the Rings. If you have read The Lord of the Rings, you can skip the first 7 chapters. If you haven't read The Lord of the Rings, you should be reading that, not this.

Most of the rest of the book talks about every myth and piece of folklore that could possibly have influenced Tolkien and Carter has apparently studied all of them - in depth. At one point I almost forgot that the book was supposed to be about The Lord of the Rings because the last time it was mentioned was so many pages in the past.

Published in 1969, the short book is an interesting read because it offers a peek into Tolkien analysis while the man himself was still alive, and before the Silmarillion was finished. That means that the references in the analysis are more from Tolkien’s contemporaries and less from Tolkien experts that arose the next half-century. It also means that the analysis is unburdened by the lens of Peter Jackson’s trilogy, which, although wonderfully executed, has undeniably changed the understanding of Tolkien’s work.

Another point in its favor is providing some analysis from Lin Carter. While Carter is not a memorable author, he was instrumental in bringing fantasy to the popular eye in his work with Ballantine Books (the US paperback publisher of Tolkien). Through his curation of fantasy tales after Tolkien, he helped enliven the fantasy genre in a time when it was under appreciated. Many of the titles Carter lists as inspiration to Tolkien are also books he helped get published again in the US.

The downside of the publishing timing is that the analysis is much less comprehensive than any of the later analyses. The inspirations, naming, real world sources, and so on have likely all been heard by a modern Tolkien fan before. And with how short the book is, it feels much more like an extended introduction than a full-fledged analysis (excepting the summarization of the Hobbit and LOTR, which seems needless for anyone reading an analysis of the tale).

Some time is spent on theories on things that today are known, such as looking at evidence to suggest that Gandalf was an Odin archetype, king of the gods, and that we would find him to be a Valar when the Silmarillion eventually came out. To me, this added to the charm due to publication timing, but it is rather meaningless analysis nowadays as we know precisely what Gandalf is.

One final thing that I feel is a missed opportunity: any time with Tolkien while he was alive to confirm any of the theories proposed here. While Tolkien was known to be crotchety to anyone he presumed to be too big a fan, the biggest advantage of the timing was hearing more while he was alive, and mostly that chance was missed.