Some good info on the origin or sources of Tolkien ideas. Ideas and elements that come into frutition on the Lord of the Rings.

Nice read

Carter--famous for his own series of sword-&-sorcery works largely steps away from his own ego-driven talks to offer an historical overview of sources from ancient to modern which largely fed the Tolkien universe. (And that slam about his ego is hardly mine alone; he does in fact, close the book with a few sentences about how his own upcoming works--never completed--will echo Tolkien.)

The only real critique I have of this thin book is that about 1/3 of it is relatively useless. He spends four fairly lengthy chapters simply summarizing the four main books for us; does he presume that some of his audience are interested in Tolkien without having read a thing about him? I skimmed these, finding nothing original there.

What is valuable, though, is that historical tracing. While the real Tolkien nerd may find interest in the origins of names like Gandalf and Thorin, places like Numenor or Mirkwood, broken swords and eternal trees--all of this requiring no small amount of digging in pre-internet 1969--what I found most interesting is the tracing of the historical hero and fantasy epic across ages and regions. This makes itself for a great reading/source list for those seeking early incarnations of literary imagination. More, Carter is not afraid to share which are most valuable to today's readers and which may be skipped over for their tedium or poor translation.

So while Tolkien's work stands as a pillar dividing fantasy into Before and After JRR in the 20th century, it hardly exists in isolation. Linguist and scholar Tolkien intentionally worked to modernize regional mythology (much as Wagner did), but more, Tolkien inherited a centuries-old tradition or infrastructure of epic works which, appropriately, his Lord of the Rings sits atop. Everything which follows (A.JRR) are efforts to recapture his genius or to make their own space alongside.

Lin Carter provides a fascinating, thoroughly-researched, and incredibly well-written analysis of Tolkien's epic fantasy. This includes a brief history of the "epic" and the fantasy genre, and (the part that impressed me the most) an exploration of the sources for Tolkien's names--the etymologies and original manuscripts from which a surprising amount of familiar titles are found. I haven't read many works on Tolkien and his publications, but this one taught me a lot about the background of my favorite story.

Finished it just after watching the movie version of The Hobbit. Almost forgot that I had this book if not for some holiday cleaning around the house.

Highly recommended for lovers of Professor Tolkien's work or for those who are just starting to acquaint themselves with his vast mythology. Here we are treated to the different and possible as well as confirmed references that the professor read in order to construct his vast world of Middle Earth.

While it may be true to a certain extent and paraphrasing what I think George Lucas said, "There are no original stories, just original storytelling." There are just some aspects of Tolkien's mythology copied and lifted from the Norse, Celtic and Greek myths and it is to his credit as a lover of languages that he is able to give us an story that depicts the endless struggle between good and evil and the journey that goes along with it, in order to discover at the end who we really are.

Wouldn't mind reading this again. Then again, it's mine...so literally I could. :)

This book reconnected me to my earliest roots in fantasy, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Lin Carter has a way of exploring the background to Tolkien’s work that compelled me, especially given the amount of other material I’ve read on Tolkien. Perhaps the greatest value in this book was some of the irony in reading it. The book was published in the late 60s, when Tolkien’s sequel to LOTR was still looming, so Carter’s speculation on what secrets Tolkien will reveal about the Eldar and the Noldor and the Valar, for instance, was amusing given our present knowledge of The Silmarillion and the direction Tolkien later took. This book also served as a kind of indirect biography of Tolkien, in the sense of Carter being a journalist chasing the story of who this new Tolkien guy is. In this vein, the richest part of the book near the end was Carter’s exploration of the epic from the Odyssey and Iliad all the way through to the sequels (Homerica), then the later roots in Amadis of Gaul and the romances, then the Viking sagas (esp The Elder Edda and Voluspa). Gandalf, for instance, was a Norse king. And Frodo makes an appearance, more or less. And if you wonder where Tolkien might have gotten Tom Bombadil, there’s another gem in this book that I’ll leave for you to discover.

If you are a fantasy writer and you want to trace your Tolkien influences right to the roots so as to drop some derivative lines, this book is the source. Highly recommended, especially for fantasy writers influenced by Tolkien or Tolkien-esquire fantasy.

Obviously outdated and much of the speculation within has been superseded (even within five after its publication, by The Silmarillion), this book spends more than half its pages on ancient myths and early fantasy writings that may or may not have influenced LOTR. But in itself, the book is now an historical artifact, having been written in 1969 while JRR Tolkien was still alive and at the very beginning of LOTR mania in the US. Lin Carter, as is well known, frequently referred to his own work, and this book is no exception. At many times, the book comes across as an extended college term paper in which the author shows off his erudition while referring to his own “research” and while the writing style is easy to read, it comes across as pompous in the extreme (much like his fiction, most of which is unreadable). A “must have” for die-hard LOTR fans, but as everything in the book has been written about extensively by better (and more informed) writer since, this can be safely ignored by casual fans.

Found this book quite interesting in the beginning although it was saying a lot that has been said before (in a better and more concise way).

Found it hard to take it seriously after it called Eowyn Theoden's daughter (twice) - it also confused the finding of the ring by Smeagol.

A lot of the information about historical texts seemed out of place - didn't really add to my understanding of how Tolkien was influenced.

Could also see quite clearly where the updated revisions were added.

Covers a couple topics - first a couple chapters on Tolkien, his biography, writing process, academic history. A couple chapters summarizing the events of the books. Then a couple chapters analyzing what genre the lord of the rings is, but really just naming a lot of old books that the author thinks are similar, or led to it. Then a couple chapters talking about specific comparisons of names and events in the books to older mythological events.

So it covers a lot of topics, and my interest changed a lot depending on them. The history of tolkien is moderately interesting, the main interest to me was the Inklings, the group of writers he originally read the story to. The summary of the books is completely superfluous and unneeded. The genre history isn't really interesting on its own, but might be useful as an appendix. I might go through this list to pick out other books I'd want to read.

The actual finding of similarities between LOTR and other mythological stories was fairly interesting, and I'd be willing to read a whole book of just this - but it was a pretty short part of this one. This book also suffered by coming out almost a decade before the Silmarillion, as several times the author surmises things which are ultimately inaccurate, though they could not have known.

Basically this book might be a good gateway for someone transitioning from 'Into Tolkien' into 'REALLY into Tolkien', into longer and deeper critical analysis and history.

http://girlreads.blogspot.com/2013/02...

Pretty informative on what genres and books had an influence on Tolkien and what may have sparked and fed his imagination at different parts of his life.