Free Sample Essays > European Literature

Page: 1 2

J.R.R Tolkien

the knowledge of different languages by his mother. He was both amazed and excited at knowing different methods of saying the exact same thing. He began piecing together a language of his own at the age of 7 and is joyous to understand words that no one else knows. This was the beginning of the elfish language.

The work of Tolkien and some of his colleagues at Oxford returned the concepts of myth and fantasy to modern literature. Tolkien and his colleagues formed a group known as the Coal-biters (also known as the Oxford Inklings), which included other noted writers of fantasy such as C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. Although his work was respected by his peers, it took two female students who had studied with Tolkien to finally persuade him to publish The Hobbit. It took him another seventeen years to bring out The Lord of the Rings; by then he already had a dedicated audience. A much larger audience was yet to grow, especially in the United States.