The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien created a new mythology

By Tom Shippey

The definitive guide to the origin of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, from The Hobbit to The History of Middle-earth series – includes unpublished Tolkien extracts and poetry.

The Road to Middle-Earth is a fascinating and accessible exploration of J.R.R.Tolkien’s creativity and the sources of his inspiration. Tom Shippey shows in detail how Tolkien’s professional background led him to write The Hobbit and how he created a work of timeless charm for millions of readers. He discusses the contribution of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales to Tolkien’s great myth-cycle, showing how Tolkien’s more ‘complex’ works can be read enjoyably and seriously by readers of his earlier books, and goes on to examine the remarkable 12-volume History of Middle-earth by Tolkien’s son and literary heir Christopher Tolkien, which traces the creative and technical processes through which Middle-earth evolved. The core of the book, however, concentrates on The Lord of the Rings as a linguistic and cultural map, as a twisted web of a story, and as a response to the inner meaning of myth and poetry.

By following the routes of Tolkien’s own obsessions – the poetry of languages and myth – The Road to Middle-earth shows how Beowulf, The Lord of the Rings, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the Elder Edda and many other works form part of a live and continuing tradition of literature. It takes issue with many basic premises of orthodox criticism and offers a new approach to Tolkien, to fantasy, and to the importance of language in literature.

This new edition is revised and expanded, and includes a previously unpublished lengthy analysis of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations and their effect on Tolkien’s work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Mar 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9780007445189

Tom Shippey

Professor Tom Shippey taught at Oxford, overlapping chronologically with Professor Tolkien and teaching the same syllabus, giving him an intimate familiarity with the poems and the languages which formed the main stimulus to Tolkien’s imagination. He subsequently held the same Chair of English Language and Medieval Literature at Leeds University which Tolkien held early in his career, and currently holds the Walter J. Ong Chair of Humanities at Saint Louis University, USA.

Reviews for The Road to Middle-earth

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If you're going to study Tolkien, you probably can't avoid Shippey. Fortunately, his work is reasonably readable -- although long-winded: for the size of the book it took me surprisingly long to get through it -- and he has a good grasp of Tolkien's 'sources'. Not that Tolkien would have liked that term, as Shippey quite rightly points out in the appropriate places: better say, then, that Shippey knew what influenced Tolkien, through being a medievalist as well, and through teaching Tolkien's own curriculum at Leeds.

I realise now, though, that not much of this sunk in. I'll have to reread any relevant sections to effectively write my essay, I think. It's not a precisely relaxing read, going into the depth of detail it does, and referring to works of Tolkien's which I haven't read or which were themselves difficult to digest.

Still, it's a good place to start, and it's probably more enjoyable if you don't have an essay deadline looming up behind you, tapping pointedly on your shoulder.

[clicksclan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Being the huge Lord of the Rings fan that I am, I've taken it upon myself to read more about Tolkien and his influences. Quite conveniently, I already have a vast collection of books about Tolkien and his influences, most of which I've dipped into over the years, but never actually sat down to read from cover to cover.At the end of last year I read Tolkien's biography and his Letters. Book 6 of this year was The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien created a new mythology by T.A. Shippey. It's one of the several that I'd dipped into in the past, but it's always seemed a bit too academic to just sit and read for fun.I found it much more interesting that I was expecting it to. At first glance it had looked a little bit dry and dusty, but it was really interesting. In fact, there were bits of it, dealing with old languages and Tolkien's influences in that respect, which seemed quite relevant to the linguistics course that I'm doing. I wish I'd marked the pages while I was reading it because I think some of them could be used in future essays.I did struggle to get into it a little at the beginning. The end, too, was a little heavy going and I did find myself scanning ahead to later pages to see whether it was going to continue in the same vein for a long time. The middle bit was wonderful though. I got through it really quickly, mainly because I didn't want to put it down.My main complaint with this book, perhaps other editions are better (mine is different to the one pictured above), is that it needs some serious editing. There were some pretty obvious typos that should have been caught, not just minor things either, some really bad things like half a sentence being printed twice at the end of a paragraph.Shippey makes really valid and interesting points, but he has a very round-about way of saying things. He's clearly really knowledgeable about what he's writing about but some paragraphs and sentences sound rather clumsy. I know I'm hardly one to talk, but as I was reading, I was mentally correcting some sentences to make them sound 'right' in my head.Despite this, it was a really worthwhile read, one which I would recommend to anyone interested in Tolkien's influences and how The Lord of the Rings came into being.

[lycomayflower · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Does what it says on the tin, really. An engaging discussion of Tolkien and his works, concentrating largely on how language and philology influenced Tolkien and contributed directly to many of his creations. Shippey is occasionally difficult to parse; The Road to Middle Earth leans heavily toward academic parlance, but should prove accessible enough for non-scholars sufficiently interested in the material.

[dirtpriest_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. The genius of Tolkien is herewith explained in this biography of the master's mind and thought processes by the professor who took over Tolkien's Chair at Oxford upon his retirement. The best way to explain this book is through examples, that being the origin of the names of Bree, Frodo, Baggins, and Sackville-Baggins. Mind that these are just a small few examples in a fairly large book filled with references to old sagas and poems of the middle ages. Bree is from the villiage of Brill, near Oxford, which is a shortening of Bree-Hill. Bree is Welsh for hill, hence Brill is a contraction of what technically translates as Hill-Hill, and was given life as the town of Bree on Bree-Hill (similar is the nearby town of Chetwode, wood-wood). Baggins comes from an archaic word for a four o'clock tea. Sackville-Baggins is probably the best example of his thought. Tolkien hated 'interloper' French words from after the Norman invasion corrupting his 'precious' Old English. Cul-de-sac is obviously french, but it is nonsense, coming from a time when anything that even sounded french must be better than English (1300's). So, to show his ire and displeasure, Bilbo's despised cousins are the Sac(k)ville-Bagginses. Even the -ville is french. Frodo is from an old Scandanavian saga about Fenja, Menja, and their mill that grinds out gold, peace and prosperity. The king of this time was Froda, apparently a pre-Christian Christ-like figure who reigned over a peaceful friendly time when there was no crime nor interest in crime. Eventually Fenja and Menja grew bored grinding out peace and created a war band to destroy Froda's realm. Destruction ensues, including that of the giantesses Fenja and Menja and their mill, which now sits in the mythic maelstrom at the bottom of the sea grinding out salt. As an aside, much has been written about this myth, from its first known telling in pre-civilization Iran (Ugartic? I don't feel like wandering to the basement to research so I'll trust my memory), through Europe to Norway, and even in Hamlet (derived from the older form Amlodhi or Amhlodi). If you dare, find a copy of the complex 'Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth' by Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. Also, he used the word pipe-weed instead of tobacco because tobacco is a spanish version of a native American word, like potato or tomato, and thus did not fit with his Old English etymology. Hence Sam Gamgee's talk about his Gaffer's 'taters' and not potatoes. Denethor's funeral is copied from the first few verses of Beowulf, Bilbo and Gollum's riddle contest is taken from this saga and Bilbo's interview with Smaug is from that one, etc., etc., etc., and so on. Unless you really enjoy language study or are curious as to the timeless appeal of middle-Earth, this would actually be some pretty dull reading. Luckily, I'm set on both counts.

[ex_ottoyuhr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There's a lot more to this than you'd think -- it's an unapologetic hagiography of Tolkien (the subtitle is "How J.R.R. Tolkien created a new mythology"), with unedifying moments where he says outright that Tolkien's critics are just wrong (although in fairness, some of them are, and very few of them can be accused of arguing in good faith), but there's a *lot* in here about the development of linguistics (formerly known as philology), and about the northern barbarians -- the Goths, the Huns, the Saxons, in addition to the obvious subject of the later Norse. And if you thought they were a boring, monotonous collection of Conan types (or worse, Beowulfs), read this book; they mostly were, though they had a fair sight more dignity, but the history of such peoples is fascinating nonetheless. (Particularly the fragment of an impossibly ancient text that points to Proto-Indo-Europeans, or some culture they interacted with, living near the Carpathians, which the Germanic peoples never came meaningfully close to. I don't know -- it felt poignant to me...)