Hobbit festivities here in the Ozarks...
I hope to have a Hobbity sort of weekend, or at least, a Hobbity afternoon tomorrow, if it works out. There's a speaker coming to our local library tomorrow afternoon, Justin Noetzel, who teaches British Lit and composition at St. Louis University. As a student, he sat under Tom Shippey when he taught there, so I'm very much looking forward to what he has to say about Tolkien and his life and influences. There's another session in the evening, mostly about the movies, but with my mom's health being what it is, I won't be able to attend that one. Still, I'm very much looking forward to the afternoon one. Living where I do, and with the situation with my mom's health, there's not exactly a plethora of opportunities to listen to Tolkien scholars, so I really hope it works out for me to slip away for a few hours to hear him.
Mr. Noetzel is a member of the Woode-walkers, the Grad Student Medievel Reading Group at the university, and they have a blog that occasionally deals with Tolkien, and today's post has a lot of links to articles and symposiums about The Hobbit. I've not had the time to look into all of them, but I'm sure they're very interesting. He even mentions Emil Johansson's LOTRProject, which is an outstanding "family tree" of all the Tolkien characters (and an App I really must download now that I have a better phone that actually lets me use apps).
If I get to attend, I'll post a review of sorts. I'm terrible at synopsising anything (which is a new word, by the way), so it won't exactly be exhaustive, but I'm going to take notes and hope I can put together something coherent.
Mr. Noetzel is a member of the Woode-walkers, the Grad Student Medievel Reading Group at the university, and they have a blog that occasionally deals with Tolkien, and today's post has a lot of links to articles and symposiums about The Hobbit. I've not had the time to look into all of them, but I'm sure they're very interesting. He even mentions Emil Johansson's LOTRProject, which is an outstanding "family tree" of all the Tolkien characters (and an App I really must download now that I have a better phone that actually lets me use apps).
If I get to attend, I'll post a review of sorts. I'm terrible at synopsising anything (which is a new word, by the way), so it won't exactly be exhaustive, but I'm going to take notes and hope I can put together something coherent.