New Tolkien book
Fans of JRR Tolkien already know that his love of language led him to seek the roots of his native English in Anglo Saxon verse and Norse saga. Many of his scholarly investigations were published. As someone who loves ancient history, works like Tolkien’s ‘Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment‘ 1940, and ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics’, 1939 are of special interest to me. Tolkien was known to be a perfectionist who would constantly tweak and rewrite sections of whatever he was working on (a publishers nightmare), and as a result, a considerable amount of work remained scattered about his office in an unfinished state at the time of his death in 1973.
Tolkien’s son Christopher has spent many years editing and releasing some of his father’s unfinished projects posthumously. If you share my interests, you might be happy to learn of his latest effort entitled ‘The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun’ which is described as “a thorough reworking in verse of old Norse epics”. The “new” book is scheduled for release through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in May with an introduction by JRR Tolkien himself.
This is not a story in the style of the Lord of the Rings, this is a tale told in the ancient Viking verse form; A modern tale told in the old style.
Comment posted on 7-12-2009
The problem with Christopher Tolkien is that he can’t resist filling the books he edits with footnotes and commentary.
Comment posted on 7-12-2009
Have you read The Children of Hurin?