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Okay, I'm being a little facetious with that thread title, as Cleese wasn't specifically referencing Tolkien at all. Still, this observation he makes, in conversation with Iain McGilchrist at a recent How to Academy talk, resonates so much with discussions we've had that I must share it. If...

Catching up on recent class recordings, I was struck by the discussion in Session 213 of the meaning behind Bilbo's farewell poem, and specifically Bilbo's Estel-infused contemplation of future springs and different greens. @JoshTheLeft invoked Hurin's famous declaration, "Day shall come...

In the latest recording session, Corey opined the word "ranger" as applied to the Dunedain is most comparable to the "g" often used for Romani peoples and frequently considered a slur, and that were the people of Bree to be transported to present day Earth, their use of the word "ranger" would...

A Youtuber I'm familiar with on another Discord server recently read Lord of the Rings for the first time, and has added the series to his ongoing collection of 10/13-minute "Fantastic Fiction" video essays. As someone who grew up on the trilogy from when I was just a wee nipper, I find his...

A conversation with Ambrosius Aurelianus during last night's episode recording (Session 138) led me to a realization about the Aragorn poem. I hope you'll indulge me recapping the thought process that brought me to this new understanding. We were discussing the final line, "The crownless again...

When explaining why Frodo has a place of honor in the house of Elrond, Gandalf jokingly says he himself is one reason; his endorsement alone is sufficient cause to hold a person in high regard. (I can't find my copy of the book right now, so I can't quote the text directly, but that's the gist.)...

This is just a humorous little observation, but I thought I'd share it: In last week's class, we wondered a bit why, given how effective the Tale of Beren and Luthien was in fending off the Ring-wraiths' spiritual attack on the Hobbits, Strider didn't immediately launch into his second best...

In the discussion for last week's episode - i.e., the first one to dissect the Beren and Luthien poem in detail - Tarlonniel made the fascinating suggestion that Luthien knows all along that Beren can't catch her unless she lets him, and Beren knows it, too. This was an idea which hadn't...

Last week - explaining why the poem gives us so much of Beren's perspective and little to none of Luthien's - Corey disabused my long-held notion that its an Elvish poem. On the contrary, he said, it's a human poem, and quoted Tolkien's On Fairy Stories, talking about how such stories are always...

I flagged this snippet from Strider in the last class; after all, he's one of the longer-limbed Big People, and apart from the wood elves, probably the greatest living woodsperson in Middle-earth, and he thinks the addition of four town-dwelling Hobbits might add as little as two days to the...

This is a follow-up to a discussion we had in Episode 62 "Breaking and Entering." I wanted to post it in time for this week's class, Episode 63, but the Signum U website did this thing occasionally does where it refuses to let me log on, and shoots me back to the visitor's version of the...

I was late getting on the Shakespeare bandwagon, and I only read "MacBeth" a for the first time a few months ago. Recently, I found myself thinking about an incident from the play in relation to Frodo's conversation with Strider in this chapter. One of the less famous elements from the play...

For some reason, I always found it deeply heartwarming the way the Underhills of Bree are described "[taking] Frodo into their hearts as a long-lost cousin." It's not just a (mistaken) recognition of distant relatedness, it's an instant welcoming and embracing based solely on this supposed...

Just an amusing little anecdote I thought I would share with everyone. Some years ago, while I was studying for my Master's degree, my mother and sisters came to visit me in London for a week. During their visit, we made a day trip into Oxford, having lunch at the Bird and Baby, and then took a...

About a year ago, I was I thinking about Bree, and it occurred to me that this is actually the most cosmopolitan society we see in all of Tolkiens’ Middle-earth. Everywhere else is decidedly monoracial, bar some very special exceptional cases such as a human like Turin or Tuor living among the...

This, to me, is one of the most moving passages in the trilogy. I'm sure I'm not the only reader who interprets hobbits as a stand-in for people like myself and the folks I know. Little people who don't lead larger-than-life lives, and aren't named in the history books. Much of our culture is...

In last night's discussion, we spent a good chunk of time discussing the scene where Tom looks through the Ring and makes it disappear, and how, by ridiculing the Ring and the evil it stands for, he's trying to impart a message to Frodo. But I think this sequence also sets up the conversation...

To start, I apologize for getting tetchy in the comments during last Tuesday's session recording. I actually reread the dream section a day or two before the class to prepare myself for the recording, and was struck by the ending of Frodo's dream. It's been a while since I read the book, and...

A couple months ago, I had an idea about Tom Bombadil and his status as "Master," which I've been waiting to share until we reached the relevant section in the book. However, in the last recording, Corey expressed confusion at the distinction of Tom Bombadil being "Master of wood, water, and...

This is a technical question related to the podcast, not a question about anything in-story. I'm sorry if this is the wrong venue, but I couldn't find where else I should pose it (I would tweet the question, but I'm not on Twitter). Episode 28 of the podcast appeared in my iTunes feed earlier...