Description
This is a summary of "The Monsters and the Critics: J.R.R. Tolkien's Essays", a new paperback edition of which includes two essays on Beowulf and one on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The book also includes the lecture "English and Welsh", the Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford, and a paper on Invented Languages.
The seven 'essays' by J.R.R. Tolkien assembled in this new paperback edition were with one exception delivered as general lectures on particular occasions; and while they mostly arose out of Tolkien's work in medieval literature, they are accessible to all. Two of them are concerned with
Beowulf, including the well-known lecture whose title is taken for this book, and one with
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, given in the University of Glasgow in 1953. Also included in this volume is the lecture
English and Welsh; the Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford in 1959; and a paper on Invented Languages delivered in 1931, with exemplification from poems in the Elvish tongues. Most famous of all is
On Fairy-Stories, a discussion of the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy, which gives insight into Tolkien's approach to the whole genre. The pieces in this collection cover a period of nearly thirty years, beginning six years before the publication of
The Hobbit, with a unique 'academic' lecture on his invention (calling it
A Secret Vice) and concluding with his farewell to professorship, five years after the publication of
The Lord of the Rings.
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