Exploring Lord of the Rings - course duration??

mas0764

New Member
Please excuse me if this question has been addressed before. I found out about this amazing podcast/course a few months back and given that I love LOTR it was an instant follow! I have actually previously listened to the Silmarillion Seminar and was hoping for a LOTR-related one, but I never knew this one existed.

Once I started looking into it, I saw that it was still "ongoing" and I thought to myself that I would prefer to wait until the course is done, and then start listening from the beginning, my reasoning being, I didn't want to "get caught up" and then have to wait week after week for more content, that I'd just wait until it was over and then blitz through it all quickly!

Seeing as the course has been going on for 2 years now, and apparently we are only partially through Fellowship of the Ring, that strategy of mine seems like maybe a bad idea. :)

Has Corey ever mentioned or suggested how long he foresees this course going on? I'm in it for as long as it takes, but I sincerely hope we do reach an end someday! I'd like to be able to save these podcasts for posterity with a complete analysis of the entire saga. Is there any danger that this will take so long that eventually the podcast ceases somewhere in the middle?

It just seems like at this pace the podcast will take till around 2029 or 2030 to finish :)
 
It just seems like at this pace the podcast will take till around 2029 or 2030 to finish :)
That's pretty much it, unless something happens. I think someone has some graphs of progress so far which predict our progress in future, but I don't think anybody reckons to finish any time soon.
 
It was always supposed to be open-ended, but as we went on, the joy of being able to dig as deep as we want without working on deadline has extended the projected length out quite a bit. 2030 is not unreasonable, as it took us 2 1/2 years to cover book 1 of 6. We'll also need to do the appendices and the hobbit prologue after that.
 
While I would say that Corey Olsen is committed to continuing until reaching the end (barring disaster or unforeseeable life events), the biggest threat to the project would be the lifespan of LOTRO. Again, not like they're planning to close up shop any time soon, but who knows what the situation there will be in a decade?

I would not suggest that anyone wait until it is finished to take part, though. No rush to get caught up, but when you do, you have the option to participate live, rather than simply listen, which can be fun, too.
 
While I would say that Corey Olsen is committed to continuing until reaching the end (barring disaster or unforeseeable life events), the biggest threat to the project would be the lifespan of LOTRO. Again, not like they're planning to close up shop any time soon, but who knows what the situation there will be in a decade?
I don't think that would be a problem, we would simply migrate to the ArdaCraft project, there's enough there to keep us going for decades more :D
 
Please excuse me if this question has been addressed before. I found out about this amazing podcast/course a few months back and given that I love LOTR it was an instant follow! I have actually previously listened to the Silmarillion Seminar and was hoping for a LOTR-related one, but I never knew this one existed.

Once I started looking into it, I saw that it was still "ongoing" and I thought to myself that I would prefer to wait until the course is done, and then start listening from the beginning, my reasoning being, I didn't want to "get caught up" and then have to wait week after week for more content, that I'd just wait until it was over and then blitz through it all quickly!

Seeing as the course has been going on for 2 years now, and apparently we are only partially through Fellowship of the Ring, that strategy of mine seems like maybe a bad idea. :)

Has Corey ever mentioned or suggested how long he foresees this course going on? I'm in it for as long as it takes, but I sincerely hope we do reach an end someday! I'd like to be able to save these podcasts for posterity with a complete analysis of the entire saga. Is there any danger that this will take so long that eventually the podcast ceases somewhere in the middle?

It just seems like at this pace the podcast will take till around 2029 or 2030 to finish :)
Hi,
Take a look at the Mythgard Academy page, https://mythgard.org/academy/
Corey taught the LOTR (and many other books) in a shorter time frame. I think they are all available as podcasts and video.
 
As a builder on Ardacraft i can fully support this, many of us are big fans of Etlotrs and build our version of middle earth with "Digital archeology" in mind.
I've actually been considering recording a walking tour of Ardacraft, tracking down the Fellowship step by step from Bag End. You guys do an amazing job of integrating minute details from the text.
 
A rough hack of a calculation based on word count (3801 words 'covered' of 16310) shows us 23.3% of the way through the Council of Elrond after 10 sessions; however we have only covered the structure of the first poem, not the content, and the paragraph following the poem.

So, assuming the next class only covers the content of the poem, that would be 11 classes to cover 23.3%.
Or, if we manage to get as far as the reveal of Isildur's Bane - a truly ambitious target - that would be 11 classes to cover 24.9%.

Extrapolating, that leads to an estimate of between 44 and 47 classes total to cover the Council of Elrond.

I note that there is another poem to cover which is one we've seen before, but as we will have new context and a new audience for the poem to consider, that only reduces the discussion time, it doesn't eliminate it.

In short, don't wait for this series to be over before you begin; Just join the discussions on the forum for the wait between sessions.
 
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