Tolkien lecture

[pegkerr]

Dang, I'd love to be able to attend this lecture:

Noted J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Ralph Wood, University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University, will deliver the department of religion's annual lecture at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, in Miller Chapel. Wood's lecture, "Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: A Book for Our Time of Terror," is free and open to the public. Read more.

Alas, it is in Texas and I'm in Minnesota.

Comments

[darkthirty.livejournal.com]

The main, in my mind only, shortcoming of Peter Jackson's movies was the simplification of the ethical dimension in everyday life. About this Tolkien was clear, while being subtle and complex. The films, however, turned human action into, well, something that could be expressed in plain moralistic, simplistic terms - while removing from the narrative a kind of Calvanistic (almost secular) sense of fate, history (Hegelian style history too, which is reflected in Tolkien in the vast rising and falling of civilizations based on certain social "choices" that echo philosophical approaches to existence - the fall of Numenor, for example, as the ultimate price for arrogance) and something racial, which can be transcended, but in extrordinary circumstances, not as routine.

This aspect of the films makes them far less immediately relevant than Tolkien's books. I wonder how big movie studios would handle Nienor and Turin and Glaurung...

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Most of my university lectures are recorded. I'll bet that this one will be, too.

B