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A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Part 1[ Part three is the source notes as annotated in the article.  The appropriate source notes have instead been added to the end of the other two parts for consolidation]In 1996 the editor of the journal Arda asked me to contribute some of my research to a twelfth volume which has, to my knowledge, never been published. I chose the war of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men as my topic because no one had really ever done a full treatment of the subject.It remains, to my knowledge,...

A Tolkien Virgin: Of Aule and Yavannaby Mark-EdmondThe Journey ContinuesWow. So, the Elves and Men--for all their differences--are the Children of Illuvatar, but the Dwarves were made by Aule. This passage is short, but amazing. When Aule raised up his hammer to destroy the Dwarves he made, but Illuvatar gave them life instead, it actually caused me to get misty-eyed. This act of kindness and compassion is truly beautiful.In this section, we also have our first taste of dissention among the Valar (excluding Melkor). Yavanna fears that Aule's Dwarves will destroy her living things, and when she gets word from...

I wanted to write about the latest Lord of the Rings movie today. But as I scoured the Web reading what other people had to say, I realized I had nothing new to offer. I love Tolkien. It’s a good movie. A bit too long, I thought, but I will see it again, regardless. Anyway, while trying to figure out what to write, I kept stumbling on articles about how Tolkien was a racist and/or about how The Lord of the Rings is pro-war propaganda. Both of these ideas have dedicated adherents. For example, John Yatt says in the British...

If the Ainulindalë is the most primal story of ""the beginning,"" the Valaquenta is a quaint recap and cast of characters. The Valaquenta touches on the important events of the Ainulindalë, with further description of the four primary characters--Melkor, Manwe, Ulmo, and Aule--followed by the expanded cast of characters in Tolkien's cosmology. And I'll be honest, at first, I found these ""Powers"", the Valar--those of the Ainor who entered into Ea--flat, uninteresting, stereotypical rip-offs. I mean, really. Melkor is your typical evil deity. He loves fire and tries to undo anything good that the others create. Sadly, he's not even...

Kicking the HobbitChris Mooney When it comes to the fantasy novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, it is a truism that critics either love the books or hate them: Concerning Middle Earth, there is no middle ground. Such has been the case ever since Tolkien, an Oxford philologist, first published his epic novel The Lord of the Rings in three volumes (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) between 1954 and 1955. In 1956 W.H. Auden wrote in The New York Times that, in some respects, Tolkien's story of the hobbit Frodo's quest to destroy...

A Tolkien Virgin: Pre-amble and The Ainulindalë   The first in a seriesI haven’t read Tolkien. Well, okay, I think I started the Hobbit at one point, but didn’t get very far. And then I saw some animated TV or movie version of the Hobbit. But, that was all at least 10 years ago, I’m thinking, and a vague picture of an animated Bilbo taking a ring (that turns the bearer invisible) from the hideous Golem whose pet-name for the ring is "Precious," is all that I can remember.At any rate, some friends of mine-avid Tolkien fans-have created Tolkien Online...

The men who would be StewardGuardianship is the mark of the Stewards of Gondor. They are guardians, wardens, keeping an ancient trust placed in their hands by a family of kings which, at the end of the Third Age, no longer exists. Gondor's Ruling Stewards are a curious example of how authority combined with tradition can produce a subtle irony in power and position.The Elvish word for "steward" is Arandur, "King's servant". The name implies that the Stewards began their long career as something less than government officials. They may have been the personal servants of Gondor's early kings. At...

The Nature of Faramir? An analysis of Faramir, as it relates to the conversion from book to film Some notes on the introduction of Faramir (in the book -- not the movie)When Faramir and his men capture Frodo and Sam, Faramir declares his identity to the two Hobbits with the following words: "'I am Faramir, Captain of Gondor,' he said. 'But there are no travelers in this land: only the servants of the Dark Tower, or of the White.'" (A minor side-note by the way: one white use this passage for an argument that the two eponymous towers are those...

kevinm-4 Joplin, Missouri Date: 23 December 2002 Summary: Not like the book... I am a "Tolkien geek" who thinks Tolkien would hate Peter Jackson and his films were he alive today and watching them. I live and breathe Middle Earth and I cannot even begin to fathom the injustice that Jackson has done with his movies. For example, in the 89th minute of the film, Aragorn lifts his left arm and points off into the distance. When I saw this I thrashed about in my seat because EVERYBODY knows that in the book, Aragorn raises his "right" arm and points....

December 18, 2002 9:00 a.m.Tolkien’s Clash of CivilizationsTwo Towers’s eerie relevance. f you think about it, making the connection between the obliterated Twin Towers and The Two Towers is a dime-store synchronicity. The World Trade Center was a morally neutral symbol of commercial dynamism (though Tolkien himself would have taken a darker view of those towers). In contrast, the towers of the film's title are twin projections of unambiguous evil. Still, the comparison is irresistible — even director Peter Jackson says he gets an "eerie" feeling thinking about it — because audiences see Jackson's first-rate film versions of the Tolkien...

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien has been denounced as "an epic rooted in racism" by a respected acadmic. Dr Stephen Shapiro, an expert in cultural studies, race and slavery, accused the author of using the novels to make racial prejudice innocent - by presenting bigotry through a fantasy world. Speaking just days before the film of The Two Towers, the second part of the classic series, opens across the UK, Dr Shapiro said the books represented anxieties about immigration in mid-1950s Britain. The academic claimed: "Put simply, Tolkien’s good guys are white and the bad guys...

Title: LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (WIDESCREEN EDITION) Studio: New Line Cinema Year: 2001 Region: 1 - USA Yesterday, the most amazing thing happened. My wife picked up the mail and walked over to me, a package in her hands. "There's something here for you," she said. I really wasn't expecting anything, but when I looked at the package, my heart started racing. I didn't know why, but I knew it was something special. Like a child who's overanxious on Christmas morning, I snatched it from her hands. My heart was pounding faster and faster as...

Welcome to The New Hobbit Hole Concerning Hobbits The New Hobbit Chronicles This is a continuation of the infamous thread New Zealander Builds Hobbit Hole originally posted on January 26, 2001 by John Farson, who at the time undoubtedly thought he had found a rather obscure article that would elicit a few replies and die out. Without knowing it, he became the founder of the Hobbit Hole. For reasons incomprehensible to some, the thread grew to over 4100 replies. It became the place for hobbits and friends of hobbits to chit chat and share LoTR news and views, hang out,...

Feb. 25, 2003 The professor is a terrorist By Daniel Pipes It was quiet in [Cooper Hall] 464 Thursday night, where [Sameeh] Hammoudeh's 6 p.m. Arabic IV class was scheduled to meet. Two students who hadn't heard of his arrest came to class, and a substitute was assigned to teach in Hammoudeh's place. Hammoudeh missed teaching his Arabic class last week due to a slight inconvenience: he had just been charged with racketeering and conspiracy to murder. In fact, he was one of eight men indicted at a US District Court in Florida as "material supporters of a foreign terrorist...

What Is Knopf Waiting For? By Jerome Sternstein Mr. Sternstein is Professor Emeritus of History, Brooklyn College, CUNY, and co-editor of The Encyclopedia of American Biography. Early in 2002, Jane Garrett, Michael Bellesiles's editor at Alfred A. Knopf, told Danny Postel of the Chronicle of Higher Education that the publisher "stands behind" Arming America despite everything the book's critics had to say about its scholarly failings. "I realize that he made some errors," Garrett admitted, "but they certainly were not made intentionally. They were the result of some over-quick research," she said, adding that Knopf was "satisfied" with what Bellesiles...

5-20-02 HISTORIAN ON THE HOT SEAT Could Bellesiles's Problems Undermine Gun Control? By Don Williams Mr. Williams lives near the Valley Forge Encampment and has a Masters in Computer Science. He frequently posts comments on H-OIEAHC. Emory University recently announced that an outside panel of scholars will examine Michael Bellesiles’s Arming America—with results to be announced this summer. If the investigation discredits Bellesiles then it could hurt the arguments filed by gun-control advocates in a major Second Amendment case ( US vs Emerson) that is coming before the Supreme Court.If the Supreme Court hears US vs Emerson, the Justices...

<p>Martinez -- Don't let her lilting voice and prim, schoolmarmish demeanor fool you. You mess with Betty Maffei, you dis her volunteer staff at Contra Costa Historical Society, you have the temerity to cast aspersions on their filing acumen, and you're in for a world of hurt, my friend.</p>