Reception of Non-fiction Works
Tolkien was an accomplished philologist of Anglo-Saxon, but has left a comparatively meagre output of academic publications. His works on Anglo-Saxon philology which have received the most recognition are Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, a 1936 lecture on the interpretation of the Beowulf epic, and his identification of what he termed the "AB language", an early Middle English literary register of the West Midlands. Outside Anglo-Saxon philology, his 1939 lecture On Fairy Stories is of some importance to the literary genres of fantasy or mythopoeia. His 1930 lecture A Secret Vice addressed artistic languages at a time when the topic was of very limited visibility compared to the utilitarian projects of auxiliary languages. His 1955 valedictory lecture English and Welsh expounds his philosophy of language, notably his notion of native language and his views on linguistic aesthetics (c.f. cellar door). Smith (2007) is a monograph on Tolkien's philosophy of language.
Read more about this topic: Reception Of J. R. R. Tolkien
Famous quotes containing the words reception of, reception and/or works:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)