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Tolkien was famously pretty light on specific physical description, but he did push back against the notion that elves were slight, Legolas included. From the Book of Lost Tales, for instance: He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot...

The Professor taught on class on The Consolation of Philosophy. https://mythgard.org/academy/consolation-of-philosophy/

In Letter 211, Tolkien states: Needless to say, many readers do boggle at this, and will continue to do so. And how canonical you want to consider Tolkien's letters is, of course, up to you.

There are a few references to "Elder Days" before Weathertop: This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded it. It was begun soon after The Hobbit was written and before its...

I think it's also worth asking whether, even if we think that Gandalf is 'guilty' of breaching his assigned boundaries, we can also believe that he was ultimately right in doing so. If we conclude, for instance, that his Ring-interest was genuinely stepping on Saruman the White's toes, we need...

We even have a modern "translation": stick-at-naught = stop-at-nothing.

To go even a bit further afield, this blog does some fascinating exegesis on Tolkien's use of the term 'barrow-wight', and its association with wraiths.

Well, Elrond does state that the Nazgûl “keep” their rings, whatever contradiction is offered by Gandalf and Galadriel. Frankly this never bothered me. Why should they know for certain? And anyway, I find the physical evidence — or lack — more compelling. As you say, there is no indication that...

A few places. Letter 246: Sauron sent at once the Ringwraiths. They were naturally fully instructed, and in no way deceived as to the real lordship of the Ring. The wearer would not be invisible to them, but the reverse; and the more vulnerable to their weapons. But the situation was now...

When people critique Tolkien's treatment of race, I think it has much more to do with his use of 'swart', 'squint-eyed', and the now rather infamous lines about 'black men like half-trolls' and 'least lovely Mongol-types' from the text and a letter, respectively. Of course this is an endlessly...

I think first time readers now--and probably for the last couple decades--largely understand this in gamified terms, not unlike how the Professor explained it. Certainly, having grown up with video games, this is how I understood it upon my first reading: The Wraiths were dead, but not...

Yes. It was a translator's guide Tolkien had prepared, which they publish in their Reader's Companion.

Per Hammond and Scull: We aren't going to settle it. (My own gloss would be that Tolkien intended it as something of an Easter egg which might evoke certain mythic associations in readers, but would recoil from pressing the point directly, for the same reasons he found the Arthurian myths...

I know it's slightly tangential, but Moby Dick absolutely does this, especially in Chapter 32.

That's true, but - and again, we arrive at considerations of how canonical we consider certain writings - Lost Tales, The Etymologies, and The Silmarillion gives us a Quenya word for plough, and a constellation named the Valarcirca (Sickle of the Valar). Of course Tolkien would later rethink...

You’re right, of course. I’m not suggesting lembas is any grain specifically—I just think it’s an interesting data point that says some elves at least do plant and harvest a grain crop with labor.

If we want to treat The Peoples of Middle-earth as canonical, we get a very little about elvish farming practices: Since it came from Yavanna, the queen, or the highest among the elven-women of any people, great or small, had the keeping and gift of the lembas, for which reason she was called...

I'm not advocating for a sola scriptura approach to Tolkien, just noting that I suspect fewer than Flammifer's 1% have probably read The Silmarillion, however many purchased it.

I would venture to guess that a pretty small percent of the people who have purchased The Silmarillion actually read it all the way through, also. There are podcasts and internet threads galore dedicated to helping determined readers who have DNF'd, or otherwise might, because it's a book so...

These are good questions. The Tolkien Society hosts a 'map' that attempts to demonstrate which versions of the Silmarillion (in composition and chronology) we have published, here: https://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2017/01/the-later-quenta-silmarillion-a-readers-map/ I have always read...