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I was recently reading through Chapter 1 of Fellowship again, which we obviously didn’t spend enough time on. I noticed that the way Bilbo is introduced is very interesting. Basically, the chapter introduces him by giving a brief overview of the fact that he went on an adventure that was written...

One of the things that struck me about Gandalf being described as kingly at Elrond's table is how this plays in to his nature as an embodied Maia. The Valar and Maiar took on bodies in Ea, which are described as them taking on forms that suited their current purpose, if I remember correctly, and...

As a Roman history nerd, I enjoyed reading Mallory's depiction of Rome, both for what it got right and wrong. (Note when I say Mallory here, I'm not excluding the poem this is based on.) First off, there's no contemporary Emperor Lucius (shocking, right?). There WAS an Emperor Lucius, Marcus...

I’ve been fascinated by our friendly neighborhood grave dude’s interactions with the Ring-bearer. In particular, the fact that so far as we have seen his motivations, I don’t think he knows that Frodo has the Ring. He isn’t targeting the Ring, and doesn’t react to it at all. He just seems to...

I looked in to the reigns of the two Túrin Stewards. The first had a pretty uneventful reign, as one of the Stewards in the middle of the Watchful Peace. The second, though: he was the son of Thorondir. During Thorondir’s reign was when the White Tree began to die. So that’s some apocalyptic...

I was wondering, when did Tom Bombadil get added to LOTR? He's such a strange figure (which I love about him) - he doesn't really fit with the Silmarillion characters at all and is just generally an odd figure in general. Did the Adventures of Tom Bombadil predate LOTR, and Tolkien added this...

So this isn't something in the text, but something that everyone envisions when they read the text - the idea that Elves have pointy ears. Where does this COME from? It just started occurring at some point, so much so that the LOTR movies had to have their elves have pointy ears. But why is...

One interesting thing I noticed was that LOTR has change the Wood Elves, probably to bring them into greater harmony with the way Elves worked in his larger legendarium, which he hadn't brought them into yet in the Hobbit. I'm not sure the Wood Elves in the Hobbit would have been said to have...

One thing I've started thinking about while listening to Silm Film stuff is this weird question about Tolkien's mythology: I started noticing that the youngest Elves . . . are really old. Is anyone younger than Arwen? And she's been around for a long time by LOTR. It sparks a couple of questions...