J.R.R. Tolkien's Arda illustrates how he incorporated and built on aesthetics, ideals, and philosophies that were, during his lifetime, associated with the Romantics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien is a celebration of Romanticism's multiplicity, offering fresh perspectives on Tolkien's relationship with English, Scottish, German, transatlantic, musical and artistic Romanticisms, working in concert to open up our discussions of Tolkien's Romantic Spirit.

By embracing this approach, the volume avoids generalisations or vague definitions of Romanticism and the Romantic, paving the way for future scholarship that seeks to understand Tolkien's stylistic and thematic connections with Romanticism.

The contributions to this volume by Elliott Greene, Valentina P. Aparicio, Lynn-Forest Hill, Sharin Schroeder, Mariana Rios Maldonado, Verlyn Flieger, Chiara Bertioglo, Annise Rogers, David Smith, Kacie Wills, Christopher Hagen, Adam Neikirk, John R. Holmes, Austin Freeman, Brandon Wernette, Eva Lippold and Nick Groom by no means exhaust the discussion on Tolkien's Romanticism. Rather, they aim to ignite further exploration by embracing Romanticism's ever-growing cast of voices and spirits.

The theory of Northern Courage was J.R.R. Tolkien's designation for the heroic ethos found in 'Germanic' or Northern heroic lays and epics. Tolkien admired the nobility of the old heroes, such as Beowulf, but wrestled with the inherent cruelty of the Welands, Ingelds, and Gunnars that is also expressed within this heroic framework. This volume explores the means in which this conflict of nobility and cruelty, virtue and vice, expresses itself in Tolkien's narrative fiction. Such means include the use of secondary-world chroniclers narrating a secondary-world history and tales to a secondary-world audience through illustrative narratives that dramatize the moral and ideological views of the narrators themselves. The narratives are often tragic, but they serve to highlight the different aspects of Northern courage through the examples of the Fingolfians, Fëanorians, and subsequently the Edain and Dúnedain. The moral and ideological views expressed by these secondary-world narrators parallel Tolkien's own personal correspondence and academic essays, which also criticized the vices and praised the virtues of Northern courage.

It has been just over fifty years since the death of J.R.R. Tolkien. This collection of essays by Nancy Bunting, Seamus Hamill-Keays, and Toby Widdicombe celebrates his achievement by looking at two aspects of the legacy of the founder of modern fantasy. First, Tolkien's own history in relation to his fiction and, second, the likely future direction of Tolkien studies. It reassesses his achievement; suggests some fruitful ways forward in scholarship; and examines the complex history of Tolkien's relation to the genres of fiction and epic.

The first section, Biographical Explorations, focuses on the milieu in which Tolkien grew up. It consists of seven essays. The first essay looks at the importance of a likely 1904 excursion by the Tolkien brothers to Kinver. The second discusses the parallels between Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and Tolkien's description of Bilbo Baggins's long-expected party in The Lord of the Rings. The third introduces the life of Tolkien's aunt, Edith Mary May Incledon (née Suffield), immortalized as one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took in The Hobbit. The fourth argues for an important connection between Tolkien's having been ambidextrous and his distinctive imagination and rare command of languages. The next essay looks at how attempts to document Tolkien's life have run an obstacle course beginning with Tolkien's own attitude to biography. The Tolkien family and the unstinting efforts to guard their father's extraordinary achievement complicate the situation. The essay then offers possible remedies for the accidents of history and circumstance that have so far dominated how Tolkien is remembered. Chapter Six homes in on the last year in the life of Tolkien's mother, Mabel Tolkien. The last chapter in the first section offers a deeply biographical interpretation of Smith of Wootton Major. People important to Tolkien's life appear in the story along with those lifelong themes of exile and loss, but these latter appear without the blessing of eucatastrophe.

The second, New Directions, consists of two essays. The first proposes, first, that in the process of developing his mythology, Tolkien created a number of pocket eutopias and dystopias-communities of betterment or deterioration--within a larger, even epic, landscape. It then goes on to argue that such a utopian vision can be traced throughout the sixty-year life of the legendarium. The second ponders how Christopher Tolkien, the literary executor of his father's estate, was caught among the conflicting demands and duties of editor, guardian of his father's reputation, and custodian of his family's estate. The essay chronologically traces Christopher's changing editorial choices and the results of those choices that have produced a range of problems-not the least of these being the Tolkien Estate's tight control over the scholarly study and publication of Tolkien's Middle-earth manuscripts. This control is something about which most Tolkien readers are likely wholly unaware.

This collection of essays comes at an important time. With the death of Priscilla Tolkien in 2022, all of Tolkien's children have passed on. Scholars now have an opportunity to recast discussion of Tolkien's achievement in a new era even as they are aware of how much that achievement must be viewed in light of its increasingly obvious and increasingly inaccurate cinematic and televisual re-presentation. Primacy should necessarily belong to Tolkien's written achievement and, hence, to the sort of scholarship this celebratory collection represents.

To celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (16 October 1950), the editors of this volume have invited contributions that aim at critically reflecting upon the similarities and, no less importantly, the differences in the two writers' approaches to the works that came to impregnate their vivid imaginations. The thematic axis of the papers is, therefore, Lewis's best-known work of fiction, The Chronicles of Narnia, either as a whole or as a selection of individual volumes and/or episodes set in the World Beyond the Wardrobe, always, however, in connection with Tolkien's own (sub)creative projects and deal with such diverse fields of academic research as literature, theology, philosophy etc.

While scholars have often cited the influence of medieval texts and society on J.R.R. Tolkien's seminal fantasy creations, the role of the classical world - the literature and thought of ancient Greece and Rome - has received far less attention. This volume of essays explores various ways in which Tolkien's literary creations were shaped by classical epic, myth, poetry, history, philosophy, drama, and language. In making such connections, the contributors to this volume are interested not simply in source-hunting but in how a reception of the classical world can shape the meaning we derive from Tolkien's masterworks.

The contributions to this volume by Philip Burton, Lukasz Neubauer, Giuseppe Pezzini, Benjamin Eldon Stevens, Graham Shipley, and several other scholars should pave the way for further discussions between classical studies and fantasy studies.

Something has gone crack, Tolkien wrote about the first death among his tight-knit fellowship of friends in 1916, and the impact of the war haunted his writing for the rest of his life. In Tolkien's body of work, the Great War serves as a source of imagery, motifs, and examples of military operations and strategy; of central themes about conflict, comradeship, duty, and the destruction of the environment; and of personal trauma which he worked out in meaningful symbolic form throughout his life.

In this volume, we collect a variety of perspectives on the war's impact on Tolkien's writing, building upon earlier work in this area by filling in gaps in the scholarship and incorporating new material. We trace major themes in Tolkien's legendarium that had their roots in, or were heavily influenced by, his war experiences. It is essential to any study of the Great War not to assume that only the most frequently heard voices are important; the experiences and viewpoints of participants outside of the mainstream are also necessary to give us a full picture of the impact of war, and were not neglected by Tolkien. We therefore also explore issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

At this point in the study of J.R.R. Tolkien's life and works, the centrally important topic of his Great War experience is by no means exhausted. Our hope is that this collection is not the last word on the topic, but instead sparks new ideas and future scholarship.

It is precisely against the darkness of the world that comedy arises, and it is best when that is not hidden.

With these words Tolkien replied to Rayner Unwin's comments upon first reading Book 1 of Lord of the Rings. Rayner had not commented on the comedy of Book 1 but on the overpowering effect of the struggle between darkness and light, as he put it, and that omission disappointed Tolkien. If this was the response of Tolkien's famous first reviewer, it is not surprising that academic studies have also tended to overlook or disregard both the presence of humour in Tolkien's work and the effect of his work to inspire humour in readers' and artists' responses.

Laughter in Middle-earth: Humour in and around the Works of JRR Tolkien more than compensates for this critical oversight. From onomastic studies and parody, to historical, literary, and social contexts, a history of illustrations, textual interpretations, heroic forms of defiant laughter, and then to a reminiscence of the Inklings' tastes in humour, these scholarly articles analyse the broad range of comedy which arises against the darkness of the world in Tolkien's narratives. As well, interspersed between these studies are numerous comic illustrations, some of which appear in print for the first time, from well-known Tolkien illustrators.

As Eru is reported saying, in a typically egregious internet appropriation of Tolkien, There is no joke that hath not its uttermost source in me. This book demonstrates that humour is truly a significant aspect of Middle-earth and its influences. Eru, like Tolkien himself, could, indeed laugh.

Tolkien's portrayal of nature in Middle-earth has been interpreted in a variety of ways, often depending on the context of the reading. Some have seen Middle-earth and its potential destroyer, the Ring, as an allegory of the European continent under the threat of the atomic bomb, while others have embraced it as an artistic expression of the Green movement's agenda in the face of industrial abuse. Some have read nature in Tolkien's work in terms of myth and religion; yet others take the exhaustive descriptions of the physical environment as a sign that Middle-earth itself is the central protagonist of the stories. All in all, nature in Middle-earth plays a crucial role not only in the creation of atmospheres and settings that enhance the realism as well as the emotional appeal of the secondary world; it also acts as an active agent of change within the setting and the story. This collection of essays explores Middle-earth as an ecological entity, a scene for metaphysical speculation, an arboreal depository of cultural memory and a reflection of real-world natural and imperialistic processes.