ENG 358 Tolkien: Medievalist and Mythmaker

This course offers an in-depth study of JRR Tolkien's major fictional works in relation to his scholarly work as a medievalist. It begins with the seminal medieval works that influenced his creation of Middle Earth, and then examines how Tolkien responds to these works as both a literary scholar and as a creative writer. Our central task will be to understand his fictions as creative expressions of the complex ideas about myth, language, and history that he developed as a scholar. While the course emphasizes the historical roots of his fictions, it also addresses how Tolkien's works mediate between present and past, reinventing medieval texts in ways that speak powerfully to his troubled 20th-century context and to readers today.