Jared Lobdell
Jared Charles Lobdell (29 November 1937 – 22 March 2019) was an American author and one of the first Tolkien scholars. He is best known for some thirty academic books on American history and the Inklings including J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams.[1]
Biography
Jared Lobdell was born to Charles and Jane Elizabeth (Hopkins) Lobdell in New York. He was educated at Yale University. He wrote many books on aspects of American history, and on each of the three major Inklings, the Oxford literary society centred on C. S. Lewis, with his friends J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. He died at Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.[2][1]
Tolkien scholarship
Lobdell's 1975 edited collection, A Tolkien Compass, was one of the first books of Tolkien scholarship to be published. at a time when "in the United Kingdom at least, professing an interest in Tolkien was almost certain death for any hopeful candidate seeking entrance to a department of English".[3] Shippey described the essays as written in the "Age of Innocence" before Tolkien studies became professionalised, and as such offering "freshness, candor, and a sense of historical depth" that cannot be repeated.[3] He noted that some of the early predictions were wrong – for instance, Tolkien had not written much of The Lord of the Rings before the Second World War – but many others have been substantiated, such as Richard C. West's account of Tolkien's use of medieval-style interlacing as a narrative structure.[3]
Works
Books
Lobdell wrote some 30 non-fiction books, including:
- A Tolkien Compass (editor) (Open Court, 1975)
- England and Always: Tolkien's World of the Rings (Eerdmans, 1981)
- The Detective Fiction Reviews of Charles Williams, 1930-1935 (McFarland, 2003)
- The World of the Rings: Language, Religion, and Adventure in Tolkien (Open Court, 2004) — an expansion of England and Always
- The Scientifiction Novels of C. S. Lewis: Space and Time in the Ransom Stories (McFarland, 2004)
- The Rise of Tolkienian Fantasy (Open Court, 2005)
- Eight Children in Narnia: The Making of a Children's Story (Open Court, 2016)
Encyclopedia entries
Lobdell wrote 23 of the essays in the 2006 J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment.
Articles
Among Lobdell's many scholarly articles are:
- "Words That Sound like Castles" (Rally, August, 1966)
- "A Medieval Proverb in The Lord of the Rings" (American Notes and Queries Supplement I, 1978)
- "Mr. Bliss: Notes on the Manuscript and Story" (Selections from the Marquette J.R.R. Tolkien Collection, 1987)
- "C.S. Lewis's Ransom Stories and Their Eighteenth-Century Ancestry" (Word and Story in C.S. Lewis, 1991)
- "Ymagynatyf and J.R.R. Tolkien's Roman Catholicism, Catholic Theology, Religion in The Lord of the Rings" (Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien's Work, 2011)
- "Humour, Comedy, the Comic, Comicality, Puns, Wordplay, 'Fantastication', and 'English Humour' in and around Tolkien and His Work, and among the Inklings" (Laughter in Middle-earth, 2016)
References
- ^ a b West, Richard C. (October 2019). "In Memoriam: Jared Lobdell". Mythlore. 38 (1): Article 28.
- ^ "Dr. Jared Charles Lobdell". Boyer. 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ a b c Shippey, Tom (2003). "Foreword". A Tolkien Compass (Second ed.). Open Court. pp. vii–xi. ISBN 0-87548-303-8.
- v
- t
- e
and songs
- Songs for the Philologists (1936)
- The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (1953)
- "A Walking Song" (1954)
- The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962)
- "Errantry"
- "Fastitocalon"
- "The Sea-Bell"
- "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late"
- The Road Goes Ever On (1967)
- Bilbo's Last Song (1974)
- List of Tolkien's alliterative verse
- The Hobbit (1937)
- "Leaf by Niggle" (1947)
- The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1945)
- Farmer Giles of Ham (1949)
- The Lord of the Rings:
- The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
- The Two Towers (1954)
- The Return of the King (1955)
- Tree and Leaf (1964)
- The Tolkien Reader (1966)
- Smith of Wootton Major (1967)
fiction
- The Father Christmas Letters (1976)
- The Silmarillion (1977)
- Unfinished Tales (1980)
- Mr. Bliss (1982)
- The History of Middle-earth (1983–1996)
- Roverandom (1998)
- The Children of Húrin (2007)
- The History of The Hobbit (2007)
- The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (2009)
- The Fall of Arthur (2013)
- The Story of Kullervo (2015)
- Beren and Lúthien (2017)
- The Fall of Gondolin (2018)
- The Nature of Middle-earth (2021)
- The Fall of Númenor (2022)
works
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English text, 1925)
- "The Devil's Coach Horses" (1925)
- "Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad" (1929)
- "Sigelwara Land" (1932–34)
- "Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale" (1934)
- "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936)
- "On Fairy-Stories" (1939)
- "On Translating Beowulf" (1940)
- Sir Orfeo (1944)
- Ancrene Wisse (1962)
- "English and Welsh" (1963)
- Jerusalem Bible (as translator and lexicographer, 1966)
academic
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (translations, 1975)
- Exodus (1981)
- Finn and Hengest (1982)
- The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays (1983)
- Beowulf and the Critics (2002)
- Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary with "Sellic Spell" (2014)
- A Secret Vice (2016)
Writers |
|
---|---|
Christian | |
Literary critics |
|
Linguists | |
Medievalists |
- A Tolkien Compass
- Family
- Influences
- Artwork
- J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator
- Languages constructed by Tolkien
- The Inklings
- The Keys of Middle-earth
- Mythlore
- Mythopoeic Society
- Picturing Tolkien
- Tolkien and the Classical World
- Tolkien's impact on fantasy
- Tolkien and the modernists
- Tolkien Estate
- Tolkien fandom
- The Tolkien Society
- Tolkien Studies
- Memorials
- Reception
- Tolkien research
- Works inspired by Tolkien
- J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977, authorized biography)
- The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide
- Master of Middle-Earth
- Perilous Realms
- Tolkien and the Great War
- The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien
- Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth
- Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon
- Tolkien, Race and Cultural History
- Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England'
- Tolkien (biographical film)
- Poems and Songs of Middle Earth (album)
- Language and Human Nature
- The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary
- Understanding The Lord of the Rings