However, in the meantime, something of profound significance had occurred, which estranged Mabel and her children from both sides of the family: in , together with her sister May, she was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
From then on, both Ronald and Hilary were brought up in the faith of Pio Nono, and remained devout Catholics throughout their lives. The parish priest who visited the family regularly was the half-Spanish half-Welsh Father Francis Morgan. Tolkien family life was generally lived on the genteel side of poverty. However, the situation worsened in , when Mabel Tolkien was diagnosed as having diabetes, usually fatal in those pre-insulin days.
She died on 14 November of that year leaving the two orphaned boys effectively destitute. By this time Ronald was already showing remarkable linguistic gifts. He had mastered the Latin and Greek which was the staple fare of an arts education at that time, and was becoming more than competent in a number of other languages, both modern and ancient, notably Gothic, and later Finnish.
He was already busy making up his own languages, purely for fun. However, another complication had arisen. When Ronald was 16, and she 19, they struck up a friendship, which gradually deepened. Eventually Father Francis took a hand, and forbade Ronald to see or even correspond with Edith for three years, until he was Ronald stoically obeyed this injunction to the letter. In the summer of , he was invited to join a party on a walking holiday in Switzerland, which may have inspired his descriptions of the Misty Mountains, and of Rivendell.
In the autumn of that year he went up to Exeter College, Oxford where he stayed, immersing himself in the Classics, Old English, the Germanic languages especially Gothic , Welsh and Finnish, until , when he swiftly though not without difficulty picked up the threads of his relationship with Edith. As a result of this he changed his school from Classics to the more congenial English Language and Literature.
One of the poems he discovered in the course of his Old English studies was the Crist of Cynewulf — he was amazed especially by the cryptic couplet:. This inspired some of his very early and inchoate attempts at realising a world of ancient beauty in his versifying. In the summer of he took a job as tutor and escort to two Mexican boys in Dinard, France, a job which ended in tragedy.
Meanwhile the relationship with Edith was going more smoothly. She converted to Catholicism and moved to Warwick, which with its spectacular castle and beautiful surrounding countryside made a great impression on Ronald. However, as the pair were becoming ever closer, the nations were striving ever more furiously together, and war eventually broke out in August Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Tolkien did not rush to join up immediately on the outbreak of war, but returned to Oxford, where he worked hard and finally achieved a first-class degree in June At this time he was also working on various poetic attempts, and on his invented languages, especially one that he came to call Qenya [ sic ], which was heavily influenced by Finnish — but he still felt the lack of a connecting thread to bring his vivid but disparate imaginings together.
Tolkien finally enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers whilst working on ideas of Earendel [ sic ] the Mariner, who became a star, and his journeyings. For many months Tolkien was kept in boring suspense in England, mainly in Staffordshire. Finally it appeared that he must soon embark for France, and he and Edith married in Warwick on 22 March Eventually he was indeed sent to active duty on the Western Front, just in time for the Somme offensive.
Deep Elves, the later Noldor , with their languages Qenya and Goldogrin. Throughout and his illness kept recurring, although periods of remission enabled him to do home service at various camps sufficiently well to be promoted to lieutenant.
It was when he was stationed in the Hull area that he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos, and there in a grove thick with hemlock Edith danced for him. However, Tolkien did not stay in this job for long. In the summer of he applied for the quite senior post of Reader approximately, Associate Professor in English Language at the University of Leeds, and to his surprise was appointed.
At Leeds as well as teaching he collaborated with E. It was for this club that he and Gordon originally wrote their Songs for the Philologists , a mixture of traditional songs and original verses translated into Old English, Old Norse and Gothic to fit traditional English tunes.
In a sense, in returning to Oxford as a Professor, Tolkien had come home. In fact, his academic publication record is very sparse, something that would have been frowned upon in these days of quantitative personnel evaluation. His academic life was otherwise largely unremarkable. In he changed his chair to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he retained until his retirement in Apart from all the above, he taught undergraduates, and played an important but unexceptional part in academic politics and administration.
He fought in the Battle of the Somme, in which there were severe casualties, and was eventually released from duty due to illness. In the midst of his military service, he married Edith Bratt in Continuing his linguistic studies, Tolkien joined the faculty of the University of Leeds in and a few years later became a professor at Oxford University. While there he started a writing group called The Inklings, which counted among its members C.
Lewis and Owen Barfield. It was also at Oxford, while grading a paper, that he spontaneously wrote a short line about "a hobbit. He also created more than drawings to support the narrative. Over the years, while working on scholarly publications, Tolkien developed the work that would come to be regarded as his masterpiece — The Lord of the Rings series, partially inspired by ancient European myths, with its own sets of maps, lore and languages. The books gave readers a rich literary trove populated by elves, goblins, talking trees and all manner of fantastic creatures, including characters like the wizard Gandalf and the dwarf Gimli.
Tolkien retired from professorial duties in , going on to publish an essay and poetry collection, Tree and Leaf , and the fantasy tale Smith of Wootton Major. His wife Edith died in , and Tolkien died on September 2, , at the age of He was survived by four children.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series are grouped among the most popular books in the world, having sold tens of millions of copies. Parallel to Tolkien's professional work as a philologist, and sometimes overshadowing this work, to the effect that his academic output remained rather thin, was his affection for the construction of artificial languages.
The best developed of these are Quenya and Sindarin , the etymological connection between which are at the core of much of Tolkien's legendarium. Language and grammar for Tolkien were a matter of aesthetics and euphony, and Quenya in particular were designed from "phonaesthetic" considerations; it was intended as an "Elvenlatin": phonologically based on Latin with ingredients from Finnish and Greek.
A year old J. Tolkien is portrayed in the biographical film Tolkien by English actor Nicholas Hoult , marking the first time Tolkien has been represented by an actor on-screen. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? View source. History Talk Do you like this video?
Play Sound. Tolkien and his wife Edith in Bournemouth Contents. JRR Tolkien Biography. Life of Tolkien. Retrieved on The Inklings. War, Lost Tales And Academia. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch. UK Telegraph. Language and Prehistory of the Elves. New York Times. The Unity of Beowulf: Tolkien and the Critics. Wisdom's Children. Tolkien and Beowulf- Warriors of Middle-Earth.
Amon Hen. Go, Go, Gandalf. Tolkien's Ring. New York: Barnes and Noble. ISBN Lord of the Rings Inspired by an Ancient Epic. National Geographic News. The World of Tolkien. The Prevalance of Hobbits. Leaf by Niggle - a symbolic story about a small painter.
Leaf by Niggle. Oxford Calling. Middle-Earth Revised, Again. USA Today. Epic trilogy tops favorite film poll. ABC News Online. Archived from the original on The book of the century. A lord for Germany. The Sydney Morning Herald. Tolkien Collection. Middle Earth Revisited. Fan Feed 1 Sauron 2 Melkor 3 Gandalf. Universal Conquest Wiki.
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