Episode 207 – Magic Mirror: On J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Fellowship of the Ring'

This is the first of three episodes on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to be released in the course of the next several months. Focusing here on The Fellowship of the Ring, our hosts discuss the first leg of Frodo's journey into darkness, paying special attention to Tolkien's prose style, his modernism, his commitment to a truly magical realism, and his penchant for the weird and the tragic.

Image: "Lothlorien" by Tessa Bronsky, via Wikimedia Commons.

References

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring  

Algernon Blackwood, English writer  

Weird Studies, Episode 204 on “On Fairy Stories” 

Peter Jackson (dir.), The Lord of the Rings 

Ursula K. LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea 

Friedrich Nietzsche, History in the Service and Disservice of Life  

Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel

Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives 

Carl Jung, The Red Book  

Lord Dunsaney, The King of Elfland’s Daughter  

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto  

David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram”  

Steven Chow (dir.), Kung Fu Hustle 

Donna Tartt, The Secret History  

Lost Lakes, YouTube Channel 

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