Tuesday, October 22, 2013

In the new volume of Tolkien Studies …

My apologies for the extended fermata here at Lingwë. I never intended this to become a full hiatus, and the lengthiest one in the six-year history of the blog. Those of you who know me personally will know some of the reasons for it, and for those who doesn’t, suffice it to say it’s been an eventful summer.

For the occasion of my return to blogging, and at the risk of immodesty, I wanted to crow about some appearances in the most recent issue of Tolkien Studies, something I’ve done before (here, for example).

I’ll start with a few appearances in the “Bibliography (In English) for 2011”, compiled by Epstein, Bratman, and DeTardo. Here, my book, Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays, appears, along with each of the contributors’ essays, each listed under his or her own name. In addition, three reviews of my book are noted, those by Alan Turner in Hither Shore, Mike Foster in Mythlore, and Nancy Martsch in Beyond Bree. And lastly, one of my own book reviews, of the late Dinah Hazell’s Plants of Middle-earth, published in the Journal of Inklings Studies.

Next, Merlin DeTardo offers a few choice comments in “The Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies 2010”, which I’ll quote in full. The first:
Jason Fisher offers two winning source studies. He shows how “Horns of Dawn: The Tradition of Alliterative Verse in Rohan” (Eden 7–25) further strengthen that country’s likeness to medieval England and specifically the Kingdom of Mercia. In addition to various musical relations (including Béma—the name in Rohan for the Vala, Oromë—from the Mercian word for “horn” or “trumpet”), Fisher mentionsother parallels like the dikes of Helm and Offa, respectively, guarding against invaders from the west. Presumably because it doesn’t support a connection to Rohan, Fisher doesn’t note that the law of Wihtræd he cites, requiring strangers to sound a horn or be considered a thief (ðeóf), is suggestive of Boromir’s reasons for winding his horn before departing Rivendell. Fisher also tries his hand at “Sourcing Tolkien’s ‘Circles of the World’: Speculations on the Heimskringla, the Latin Vulgate Bible, and the Hereford Mappa Mundi” (Dubs and Kaščáková 1–18) by seeking the inspiration for Aragorn’s dying description of the worldly limitations that he expects soon to transcend. Fisher identifies these in the Norse term kringla heimsins used in Ynglinga Saga, the Latin term orbis terrarum—particularly as found in Jerome’s translation of the Book of Wisdom—and medieval T-O maps, like the famous West Midlands example Fisher considers, whose border with the letters M, O, R, and S spells out “death.” Paul H. Vigor echoes Fisher in noting that the Hereford Mappa Mundi is arranged with east at the top like “Thror’s Map: Decoration or Examination?” (Mallorn 50: 50). Vigor hints vaguely at hidden meanings in Tolkien’s maps. (275–6)
And here is the second:
Jason Fisher also considers double meanings in “Dwarves, Spiders, and Murky Woods: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Wonderful Web of Words” (Mythlore 29 nos. 1–2: 5–15), an expansion of two posts made to his blog in 2009 about words in The Hobbit, particularly “attercop,” “lob,” and “Mirkwood,” with analysis of etymology in Old English, Old Norse, Swedish, Finnish (particularly the word myrkky “poison”; Fisher presumably has since noticed Tolkien’s “mirklands” in “The Story of Kullervo” [230]), and Tolkien’s invented Mágo (or Mágol). (283)
In addition to these bibliographic and review comments, it turns out that some of the contributors to the volume found reasons to cite my work, something which is always gratifying to see. Thomas Honegger, in his essay “My Most Precious Riddle: Eggs and Rings Revisited”, pointed readers to my entry on “Riddles” in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (which will very shortly, and finally, be appearing in softcover). He also suggested my essay, “Three Rings for—Whom Exactly? And Why? Justifying the Disposition of the Three Elven Rings” (published in Tolkien Studies 5). For those of you who read Lembas, this same essays appears in the new issue, translated into Dutch by Cécile van Zon.

Next, Benjamin Saxton cites me in his paper on “Tolkien and Bakhtin on Authorship, Literary Freedom, and Alterity”, where he observes: “Jason Fisher puts the matter very well when he writes that ‘Melkor is free to move his pieces in the great game that is the struggle for dominion over Middle-earth, but Ilúvatar made—and can change, if he wishes—the rules of the game’ (166)” (171). I’m very happy to see that somebody else appreciated my metaphor for the way free will works in Arda. Saxton goes on to say in a footnote that “Verlyn Flieger, Brian Rosebury, Matthew Dickerson, Thomas Fornet-Ponse, and Jason Fisher offer excellent discussions of the philosophical, theological, and political dimensions of fate and free will in Tolkien’s fiction” (179). The essay to which he is referring is “‘Man does as he is when he may do as he wishes’: The Perennial Modernity of Free Will”, which appears in Tolkien and Modernity, Vol. 1 (edited by Frank Weinreich and Thomas Honegger, Walking Tree Publishers, 2006).

Last of the three essayists, Claudio A. Testi makes references to chapters in my book in his essay, “Tolkien’s Work: Is it Christian or Pagan? A Proposal for a ‘Synthetic’ Approach”. The papers he makes use of are Thomas Honegger’s and John Rateliff’s. It’s a genuine pleasure to see that people are reading and even beginning to use and cite my book. I’ve stumbled on a few others of these, but I’ll save that for another day.

And finally, and certainly most obviously, there is a contribution in this year’s volume written by me. It’s a combined review of two books: Corey Olsen’s Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Mark Atherton’s There and Back Again: J.R.R. Tolkien and the Origins of The Hobbit. Spoiler alert … I had quite a few complaints about them both, but especially about Olsen’s book, which I found very disappointing. I am sorry to say I really wouldn’t recommend it to anybody who is already serious about Tolkien. It strikes me as a crib for high school or undergraduate students, I’m afraid. The space afforded me for reviewing the two books was generous (some ten pages, about 4,300 words), so I was able to dig into a lot of detail to support my impressions, and I welcome feedback — even if you disagree. I won’t try to summarize my thoughts here (any such attempt would rapidly become too lengthy, losing all sense of “summary”). But I would certainly be very interested in hearing from people who have read either book and/or my review of them. I’ve had quite a few private conversations about these two books — Olsen’s especially — and here too, I would welcome discussion of either overall impressions or of specific points. If nothing else, this is the kind of thing that books — and reviewsshould do: lead to long conversations!

52 comments:

  1. Congrats on the citations!

    I read Corey's book (haven't gotten ahold of Atherton yet...I think...right now about half my Tolkien Studies shelf is at home, and half is at school), but do not share your disappointment. While I agree, it's not a book for Tolkien experts (i.e. not original scholarship for Tolkien experts), I do not agree that it's a "crib" -- Corey does more than crib books does. He makes it very clear it's developed from trhe course he teaches, but both Judy and I enjoyed it for some of his insights and observations, and I have declared that I will not teach a class on _The Hobbit)_ again without assigning this book. As far as I'm concerned, all a crib book does is summarize the plot and a few other elements, with very flat/neutral style (and often, in the badly done ones, some masked interpretive claims that are presented as facts when they are in fact very debatable claims about the meaning of the text). Corey's book is a very well written and developed exploration--yes, it definitely is written for readers not familiar with the text--of the complexitities of Tolkien's work. I'd always discounted TH somewhat (I read it before LOTR, and disliked it--I was about seven then). I recently taught TH both in an undergraduate course, and then in a graduate course, and learned so much more about it by working through it with students--and then learned even more about Tolkien's craft and technique by reading Corey's work--especially with many of the things my students struggled to understand fresh in my mind (and not just the undergraduate students). I think at times that the reputation of the work as a "children's story" (plus the fact that some of the traditional age students read it first in third grade, or fairly soon after) works against careful analytical readings of it.

    The number of careful close readings that Corey does throughout, as well as situating the commentary in the context of the work as a whole and Tolkien's Legendarium, are my favorite features of the work.

    And it's not just students who could benefit from it: one of my grad students in my Hobbit course was in Education (she was getting her master's in education, and taking 18 hours in English so she could teach AP/dual credit courses, something many teachers are now doing in Texas these days), and she was a working teacher in grade school. Her first introduction to TH was when the third grade English read teachers voted to teach it in their courses--it was a large school, so there were multiple sections of third grade reading. She hated it. (Why did she take my class, you might ask--well, she needed the credits, and was advised to take it by her advisor, and the class was online, a great help for full time teachers who are trying to continue their education). By the end of the term, she had a bit more appreciation for the work, and at least didn't hate it any more, but I think that had she been able to read Corey's book, she would have approached her teaching of Tolkien very differently.

    Teachers in the K-12 system do not always get to choose what they teach, and so having good resources to draw on is immensely helpful (and knowing just how bad the actual crib sources like Spark's and Cliff's notes and such are, from seeing the use students make of them is the reason why I see Corey's book differently).

    Disclaimer though: I've written two books that would fall into this same category as "cribs" for Greenwood Press: the critical theory books I did on Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke. Plus, I was invited by HM to give a talk on teaching Tolkien with Corey at the 2012 NCTE, and had an incredibly enjoyable time. So personal bias may be driving part of my response here!

    Robin Reid

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  2. I haven't read Olsen's book yet, but at Kalamazoo in 2012, Douglas Anderson read an excerpt from Olsen's analysis of the riddles. As I mentioned to you at Mythcon later that year, that section struck me as quite impressive.

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  3. His analysis of the riddles is the best part of the book. Elsewhere though, he tends to repeat himself a lot, as Jason says.

    I don't doubt that the book could serve as a useful introduction to those just coming to Tolkien studies, but what bugs me most about it is that he more or less fails to acknowledge any scholarship on the Hobbit. There is no discussion of Flieger, Shippey, Chance, etc, let alone pieces from essay collections.

    Popular books need to cater to certain expectations, I understand that - but as a scholar I think it's a duty to at least acknowledge the contributions of others.

    It also bugs me that Olsen has a kind of fandom attached to him now. As it was originally conceived, Olsen's Tolkien Professor site was really good - there was a Hobbit lecture series, a Silmarillion seminar, etc. Now it is essentially a fan site for Tolkien (and Jackson) fans, not to mention Olsen himself. Most of the content is related to movie apologetics, and Olsen produces no more lecture content.

    His "mythgard" venture is a nice idea in theory - but his original idea, to bring free Tolkien scholarship to the wider community - has now been sacrificed. Moreover, the same "students" tend to sign up to Olsen's classes, and so a kind of "Olsen fandom" has developed which, I think, has encouraged group-think and closed-mindedness. The same people take the same classes, usually agree with Olsen's positions, and have a tendency to react with a degree of hostility to people who don't share their views.

    It's sad, but Olsen's original project has just gone downhill.

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  4. Replying to Robin (1/2):

    While I agree, it’s not a book for Tolkien experts (i.e. not original scholarship for Tolkien experts), I do not agree that it’s a “crib” — Corey does more than crib books does.

    What are some things you think Corey’s book does that a crib does not do? And what of the book’s promise of a “thorough and original new reading” of The Hobbit? Do you think Corey delivered on that?

    He makes it very clear it’s developed from the course he teaches, but both Judy and I enjoyed it for some of his insights and observations […]

    Would you mind giving us a couple of examples of insights and observations you especially enjoyed? There were a small number I enjoyed myself (see my review), but they were unfortunately sporadic.

    I have declared that I will not teach a class on The Hobbit) again without assigning this book.

    That seems reasonable enough, because I think the book’s audience is definitely students. But even taking that for granted, I feel the book spoon-feeds its readers. What else is left for students to see in the novel themselves after Corey has exhaustingly hit the same points again and again? Not that I’m saying there isn’t anything else — far from it! — but I think Corey’s approach tends to suppress further inquiry. It seems to present itself as having all the answers.

    I’d always discounted TH somewhat […] I think at times that the reputation of the work as a “children’s story” (plus the fact that some of the traditional age students read it first in third grade, or fairly soon after) works against careful analytical readings of it. […]And it’s not just students who could benefit from it: one of my grad students in my Hobbit course was in Education […]. She hated it. […]Teachers in the K-12 system do not always get to choose what they teach, and so having good resources to draw on is immensely helpful (and knowing just how bad the actual crib sources like Spark’s and Cliff’s notes and such are, from seeing the use students make of them is the reason why I see Corey’s book differently).

    So maybe this is a big part of Corey’s ideal audience: (1) people who don’t (or didn’t) take The Hobbit seriously; (2) teachers, some of whom don’t like it but have to teach it anyway; and (3) students, some of whom don’t like it but have to read it anyway. I agree these people would get a lot out of the book (I say so in my review). But that’s faint praise, isn’t it?

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  5. Replying to Robin (2/2):

    And worse, as I said above, the book really does all the work for them, teacher and student alike — just like a crib. Though I would certainly agree it’s not as bad a crib as Cliffs or Barrons, it’s really not profoundly different, either in content or arrangement. Its main differences are in style (it certainly is bouncy, not dry and neutral) and in length. But if you could imagine a Cliffs Notes for The Hobbit that was allowed to expand to four or five times the usual length for those study guides, then it seems very plausible to me that the result would be something very similar to Corey’s book (though still perhaps not as bouncily written). The Cliffs Notes for The Hobbit are online. See for yourself. And while those other cribs tend to be more superficial because of their length, even some of Corey’s close readings can become their own kind of crib: he cribs the plot of a chapter, then cribs a poem in the chapter, then cribs each line in the poem in the chapter. Ditto, riddles. Cliffs would do that too if they had the space, wouldn’t they?

    Still, I would say that Corey does depart from the typical crib format in his close readings, careful analysis of poems and riddles, and perhaps in a few other places, and these are the bright spots in the book, the places where he has the most interesting things to say (as I’ve also written in the review). But while the chapter on the riddles, for example, might have been a great essay on its own in an academic journal, when it stands as a rare bright spot in a long, obvious, repetitive, chapter-by-chapter treatment of an entire book, it suffers from its surroundings.

    The number of careful close readings that Corey does throughout, as well as situating the commentary in the context of the work as a whole and Tolkien’s Legendarium, are my favorite features of the work.

    Unless my memory is faulty, Corey doesn’t situate his commentary in the context of the legendarium, at least not very much. I recall very few references to the other parts of the legendarium (I remember one bit about Beren and Lúthien, but not a lot else besides). Not that I necessarily consider that a fault. His scope was The Hobbit and he kept to it. That’s a plus, actually.

    Plus, I was invited by HM to give a talk on teaching Tolkien with Corey at the 2012 NCTE, and had an incredibly enjoyable time. So personal bias may be driving part of my response here!

    Oh, he’s a very nice guy, no question. I’ve met him in person too (before he called himself The Tolkien Professor), and we’ve been in touch a number of times since. I’m sure his Tolkien classes are good (his students do say so), and he’s definitely amiable and enthusiastic. But I don’t think we can really call him a scholar. At least, he hasn’t shared much research and scholarship with the rest of the community, if he’s doing any. Corey has always been against academic publishing, and for good or ill, that reflects on him as anti-academic, full stop. He’s published very little work on Tolkien. Why is that? As a result, I think of him as a teacher and popularizer, and he’s been very successful there (kudos!), but not as a scholar or researcher. If he has aspirations to be the latter, then he needs to start doing the research and producing the resulting scholarship. I would welcome that. It’s what I hoped his book might be, before I read it.

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  6. Replying to N.E. Brigand:

    I haven’t read Olsen’s book yet, but at Kalamazoo in 2012, Douglas Anderson read an excerpt from Olsen’s analysis of the riddles. As I mentioned to you at Mythcon later that year, that section struck me as quite impressive.

    What impressed you? Can you elaborate on that? And I would really be interested in what you think of the rest of the book when you do read it. Also, speaking of riddles, there is Adam Roberts’s new book now, The Riddles of The Hobbit (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), nearly 200 pages on the subject! So if Corey’s single chapter was good, maybe this book will be even better. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve got a copy in my reading queue.

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  7. Replying to Benny:

    I don’t doubt that the book could serve as a useful introduction to those just coming to Tolkien studies, but what bugs me most about it is that he more or less fails to acknowledge any scholarship on the Hobbit. There is no discussion of Flieger, Shippey, Chance, etc, let alone pieces from essay collections.

    Yes, that’s one of the things that bothers me too. Of course, in a book meant for general audiences, you don’t necessarily intimidate readers with quotations, footnotes, jargon, etc., but as I said in my review, even just a bibliography at the end of the book would have done a lot to alleviate this problem. Consider John Garth’s masterful book. It’s intended for general audiences too, but John provides an abundance of resources, citations, and notes. He sweeps them all to the back of the book, though, to keep general audiences moving forward without the constant interruption of academic apparatus. An approach like that would have made Corey’s book better. As it is, I don’t even know whether Corey has read Flieger, Shippey, Chance, etc., himself! He may have; he may not have. You can’t tell from his book. And this all seems to be part of his anti-academic posture. Even Shippey’s two major books on Tolkien were for general audiences (one even more than the other), but he too “showed his work” throughout.

    Popular books need to cater to certain expectations, I understand that — but as a scholar I think it’s a duty to at least acknowledge the contributions of others.

    Agreed. And normally a popular book comes after doing the academic work to establish one’s bona fides. The footnotes might ordinarily be omitted from the popular book, but the author has published them somewhere before.

    It also bugs me that Olsen has a kind of fandom attached to him now. As it was originally conceived, Olsen’s Tolkien Professor site was really good — there was a Hobbit lecture series, a Silmarillion seminar, etc. Now it is essentially a fan site for Tolkien (and Jackson) fans, not to mention Olsen himself. Most of the content is related to movie apologetics, and Olsen produces no more lecture content.

    Yes, the fandom around him bugs me too. Corey’s lectures are now reserved for Mythgard, and it’s evidently doing really well — so well that he quit his job as an English professor at a brick-and-mortar university. That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment in so short a time! But I am not at all convinced that online schools are better than traditional ones.

    His "mythgard" venture is a nice idea in theory — but his original idea, to bring free Tolkien scholarship to the wider community — has now been sacrificed.

    He’s now launched a new initiative, the Mythgard Academy (as opposed to / in addition to the Mythgard Institute), and there, he’s planning to continue with free content. He ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign and collected a lot of money for this. (Doesn’t that mean it’s actually not really free? Someone paid for it!) But this may be a good alternative and more in keeping with his original mission. Of course, his mission may also be evolving into something else as time goes on. I’m not guessing at that.

    Moreover, the same “students” tend to sign up to Olsen’s classes, and so a kind of “Olsen fandom” has developed which, I think, has encouraged group-think and closed-mindedness. The same people take the same classes, usually agree with Olsen’s positions, and have a tendency to react with a degree of hostility to people who don’t share their views.

    Yes, regrettably, I’ve seen signs of this too. I definitely wouldn’t want to paint all of his students with that brush, but you’re right, there are some who are defensive about questions and criticism, who rally around Corey to promote him and his new school and will not hear a word to the contrary. Meanwhile, Corey hasn’t been saying very much himself.

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  8. Re. Jason

    I agree, not all of his students are so quick to defend, and indeed many of them are smart and make useful and interesting contributions during discussions.

    I'm also pleased that the journal Tolkien Studies went with your review - 1. because it reflected something of my own thoughts and I was glad to see that I am not alone, and 2. because, with all the back-patting going on at Mythgard and on Olsen's facebook page, it is nice to see that the field of Tolkien studies more generally is able to sustain a critical and even "negative" perspective. A field that only ever allows "positive" thinking isn't going to make progress, so I'm glad that you were sincere and honest in your review, and I'm glad that Mike Drout and Verlyn Flieger were obviously okay to publish it.

    They have been involved with Mythgard somewhat, which did spice it up a bit, nevertheless I'm glad to see their personal association with Olsen obviously hasn't dimmed their critical faculties with regards to his 'scholarship'. By the way, I can't wait for Michael Drout's Tolkien book which he has apparently been working on for quite some time. From what he has said about it, it sounds awesome!

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  9. I’m also pleased that the journal Tolkien Studies went with your review […]. A field that only ever allows “positive” thinking isn’t going to make progress, so I’m glad that you were sincere and honest in your review, and I’m glad that Mike Drout and Verlyn Flieger were obviously okay to publish it.

    Yes, and don’t forget David Bratman, the third editor of Tolkien Studies, and the one explicitly in charge of the reviews section of the journal. He’s the one who gave me the assignment, though all three of them offered subsequent feedback on the review.

    I’m glad to see their personal association with Olsen obviously hasn’t dimmed their critical faculties

    There’s no way it would. These three are at the top of the field, in both their work and their integrity.

    By the way, I can’t wait for Michael Drout's Tolkien book

    Me too! :)

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    1. I'd be interested to know what Flieger, Drout and Bratman actually thought of the book ! ;-)

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    2. Obviously, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to share comments from our private conversation, but you could always ask them yourself. :)

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  10. I'd encourage everyone who is put off by the above criticism of the Mythgard Institute to look into the matter for themselves. Not sure why there is criticism of the effort to bring serious academic scholarship out of the ivory tower, but perhaps it is the success of Mythgard that raises suspicion that its aim is not "serious" or "academic" enough.

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  11. Hi, Laura. I certainly agree that anyone who is curious should look into Mythgard for themselves. That is good advice in most things! For what it's worth, I don't think the criticism above is of an "effort to bring serious academic scholarship out of the ivory tower". I don't think anyone here has said that. And conversely, isn't Mythgard still the ivory tower anyway? (Not that this is a bad thing; I like the ivory tower myself. :)

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  12. Laura - my criticism of Corey Olsen's endeavors is not that he has made an attempt to bring scholarship to more people. As I said above, I really liked his initial Tolkien Professor website, with the lecture series, which was well produced, and the Silmarillion seminar, which was instructive and interesting.

    What I object to is something that, in some ways, you've just exemplified. Instead of actually responding to any of the criticisms Jason made in his review, you have criticisms of Olsen arise from some kind of professional jealousy! Personally I find that rather insulting. Olsen is not infallible - Jason's criticisms for example of his book all spring from a thoughtful and considered reading. It is quite obvious that he wanted to like the book, and indeed he gives it some (limited) praise.

    The main criticism that I have is that Olsen doesn't engage with other Tolkien critics at all, especially in his book. This is not the same as criticizing his argument that academics should come out of their "ivory tower". One doesn't need to ignore one's academic colleagues in order to do this, as though you are forging the whole field anew. As Jason argued, Olsen's book on the Hobbit doesn't really say anything new about the Hobbit as its blurb claims. Much of what he argues has been said before, and, moreover, in popular fashion. For example, Shippey's discussion in the very popular work, The Road to Middle-earth, is excellent, and makes many similar points that Olsen does (although more cogently and less repetitively).

    So, my criticisms of Olsen are not motivated by any kind of strange jealousy. I just find flaw in his approach, especially with regards with scholarly due diligence.

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  13. Interestingly enough, this fall I am attending a course through the Mythgard Institute which is taught by Tom Shippey.

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    1. Yes, and isn't it great that Shippey et al. are engaging with Mythgard. Hopefully their input will vary the content a bit.

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  14. Part 1

    Jason: I am thinking the problems I had posting before, when I emailed you, were due to my being on campus—I'm back at home (which is where I was when I posted the first time), and we'll see how it works. But yep, your blog has joined the list of "write in word and then copy" category (the only other one there at the moment is my university's online class platform). So let's see if my sign in works this time! *crosses fingers while cutting and pasting*

    First, I think that you and I are approaching evaluating Olsen's book from two entirely different set of assumptions (I'm using his last name when I talk about the book because that's an academic convention, and helps me keep the focus on the book, rather than on him as a person—and I see some of the comments here shifting to commentary on him as a person in a way that makes me uncomfortable), and different definitions (especially of the term "crib books"). You are evaluating it against the conventions (of writing and reading) of peer-reviewed scholarship. But it's not meant to be peer-reviewed scholarship, and while it's all very well to talk about standards for popularized work, the for-profit general publishers who publish popular works by academics don't have any single set of standards or criteria, and an awful lot of junk can be published, especially in the area of social science work on gender, and, I gather from reading some science blogs, popular science. Note: I'm not saying Olsen's book is junk, by the way. Nor am I saying that all peer-reviewed work meets those standards (for one thing, there's a growing number of scam academic journals that we have to warn our graduate students and junior faculty about). I'm just saying that trying to say that there is a set of standards for a work written for a general audience (especially standards that mimic the peer-reviewed ones) that Olsen's work can be measured against is problematic—because that standard doesn't exist. Compared to peer-reviewed scholarship—yep, it's "bad." Compared to the books about Tolkien's work written for a general audience—it's not so bad (and while you mentioned Garth's and Shippey's work as also for a general audience, I can say that our students who've been assigned Garth and Shippey's work struggle with it mightily—I agree about the quality of Garth and Shippey's work—which we assign in graduate courses, but have had to cut down for undergraduates—but I'd say their work is yes, in fact, much closer to peer-reviewed scholarship). But neither of them do what Olsen does, which is present a discussion of the entirety of the HOBBIT. I'll be interested to see how my undergraduates react to Olsen (I should have specified in my earlier comment that I would not teach an *undergraduate* course without Olsen in the future—I would not assign it in a *graduate* course).

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    1. I didn't mean to attack Olsen personally at all - no doubt he is a great guy. From now on I'll use his surname. Nevertheless, where did any criticism become really personal? I've only ever criticised his book or academy.

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    2. Benny: You don't need to use his surname--I used it as a memory device for myself, for when I'm talking about the book. When I talk about him, I'll use his first name. I have some comments planned on on the areas of criticism in the comments (not at all sure it was just you!) that made me feel uncomfortable--I just got lost in commenting on the book. I'll try to get a reply up this morning before I dash in for meetings with students; if not I'll be back this evening.

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  15. Part 2!

    And I'm going to talk a bit about "crib books" – and complicate what that means. Even the most blatant paper selling sites pretend that they are selling material for students to use as resources and models, and you're right about Cliff's and Spark's notes being fairly limited in space, and Olsen's work being different in style. But I also see it as different in the impact on the audience. My take on the Cliff/Spark's is that yes, they present their information and claims about the book as "fact." I don't see Olsen's work as even close to the Cliff and Spark notes, and not just because it's longer: the book opens up readings and opportunities for more readings (this comment is already nearly 1000 words long so I'll talk about that later!). I see it as similar to two books I wrote for Greenwood: Critical/Theoretical editions on Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke (http://www.abc-clio.com/search/SearchResults.aspx), and even the Encyclopedia on Women in SFF which I edited. These are written for students or general readers of the book. General readers can hopefully enjoy seeing layers of meaning they could not have seen on their own. Students can not only see the layers of meaning, but also models for developing their own interpretations (which may not be radically different/strikingly original—but I don't expect undergraduates to be able to do anything strikingly original—for a number of reasons. Even graduate students cannot do anything strikingly original until after years of training, research, and practice.)
    Can students use them to plagiarize, i.e. can students crib from them? Sure—but students who plagiarize (and I say this from 25 plus years of teaching experience) can and do use everything, from other students' papers, the teacher's lecture notes and handouts, Wikipedia, to peer-reviewed academic journals. Do you remember the lectures I sent you on the essays from your anthology I assigned in my undergraduate class—do you consider those "crib" materials, or spoon-feeding students? Because I was doing in those lectures what I did in my Greenwood books and what I think Olsen is doing in his work (on the HOBBIT in his case): explicating, explaining, translating, teasing out some of the important aspects of the work and explaining how it's possible to see and understand those aspects, trying to give them a foundation for their own reading which (in my dreams) will carry over to other courses and reading experiences. But in terms of the claim that it's doing all the work—again, could somebody read Olsen's book and avoid reading THE HOBBIT (in teaching or taking a class). Perhaps, but again, that person could read all sorts of other things to avoid doing the work. I'm not sure why this claim (or what I am understanding of this )claim is being presented as a criticism of the book.
    And in typing this comment up, I've realized that perhaps I'm feeling defensive because I feel a lot of the work I do as a teacher both in class and in the Greenwood books is similar to what Olsen does in the book—and that sort of work is being criticized in ways that feel unfair to me (and thus to Olsen). My job as a teacher when I assign readings (and I do tend to assign readings and give lectures on the work we're reading) is to create assignments that push students beyond simply regurgitating what they've read.

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  16. Jason, you asked me above what insights and observations I enjoyed--here's a multi-part answer to that question (and I may have to dash out to do grocery shopping without finishing all the parts, so it will be noted as "to be continued" (tbc).

    Part 1:

    What I like about Olsen's book (that I am fairly sure students would not get from reading the published scholarship that exists, which explains why I'd use it in my undergraduate course on TH in future—if I get to teach one!).

    Notice that what comes is not "original new never before said" material—that's not what I would expect to find in a book of this sort. It is "useful and valuable to me as a teacher, having taught TH to undergraduates and some graduates who are not fulltime English/literary studies majors and/or whom had never read TH).

    Background: For 2013, I talked my department into celebrating the "Year of the Hobbit," given the 75th anniversary, and the release of the Jackson films (and despite what criticisms anybody might have of the film—I adore it, and the medieval historian I have worked with and co-written with are already writing on it—one result is a whole lot of interest in the book). One of the things I was allowed to do is teach an undergraduate and a graduate course on the book. During the course of those courses, both of them, I spent a lot of time reviewing the published scholarship (mostly journal articles, because I've learned it's hard to expect students to deal with monographs in a semester long class, even on the graduate level), and was rather disappointed in the majority of the work on TH (compared to the publications on LOTR). So that's my background to reading Olsen's book. (Jason I have an 18 page chronological bibliography of all the material in MLA that my grad students and I assembled—it's out of date now, of course, but if you'd like to publish it, let me know and I'll send it your way).

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  17. Part 2: what I liked about Olsen's book

    The Introduction: Reader response is an area of literary studies/theory that has been around a while, is given lip service, and yet not always valued on the university level where the ability to analyze the structural elements of the work within different theoretical approaches is privileged. But a good reader response commentary can be immensely valuable for students, especially when it foregrounds enjoyment. And Olsen's introduction does just that—and as for his critique of academic scholarship, which I actually enjoy and value, I also have to agree with what he says on page 3. His commentary on why many people don't like hearing "literary critics" discussing works they love is also spot on, and his footnote on page 4 about attributing to narrator rather than Tolkien is something that students need to have constantly reinforced. They also need the "slowing down" discussion on page 5. The listing of the central ideas on page 6-7 is also useful: students need to learn that you can identify different themes in a text to work with (and also it's a good idea to tell your reader what you're doing!). Are those themes/ideas "original" to Olsen? Nope. But he isn't presenting any of the various arguments made in the earlier scholarship on, say, Bilbo's characterization—he's simply pointing to the elements of the text that any close attentive reader would see operating to construct Bilbo's Baggins/Tookish sides, the key moments of choices, the choice of "burglar" by Gandalf , and his luck. There is a range (not infinite! of course) of interpretations that can be based on those elements of the novel, but students often don't realize they have to start with close, careful, attentive reading of those aspects (and that they have to take the context into account—i.e. they cannot focus solely on how Bilbo is presented at the start of the novel and not take into account how he changes over the course of the narrative). I also like his discussion of the stages of the writing/revision of TH (and he credits both Rateliff and Anderson in the "Further Reading" at the end of the Introduction, but I don't think he's taking credit for their work). The information he presents on the stages is fairly descriptive and publicly known—he's organizing them into stages that are presented fairly clearly (I've given lectures just like this—without using his terms!—and haven't felt the need to 'credit' anybody for the basic publishing history that can be gleaned from careful reading of the appendices, prologues, and Unfinished Tales). I really like Olsen's careful distinction of what he is, and is not, discussing in this work (and yep, focus on TH, but I still remembered some key elements that contextualized it—or did for me—but then I probably read more into them because I know the other works).

    And yes, I guess one could call this spoon-feeding, but then much of what I do in undergraduate classrooms (and some graduate classes!) would be called spoon-feeding. LOTS of people read LOTR without having read the appendices (or poetry), assuming they're not that important.

    Olsen covers information that the academic writing peer-reviewed scholarship would never do—in that other context, you take it for granted that your academic reader is familiar with the work, and a lot of the "basic" information about it.
    ~tbc~

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  18. What else I like about Olsen's work:

    His section on the Dwarves!

    A few years ago, I was doing a comparative stylistic analysis around excerpts from LOTR that related to mythic and historical discourses in the novel, I started looking into the scholarship on Dwarves (since one of my three scenes was the Mirrormere). The resulting article was published in STYLE ("Mythology and History: A Stylistic Analysis of The Lord of the Rings." Style Volume 43, Number 4. Winter 2009. 517-538.). Since that will be hard to track down for anybody who doesn't work at a university, with access to the quite expensive subscription databases, I had a pdf copy I can send to anybody who is interested. I was quite disappointed with the lack of well developed, peer-reviewed scholarship (Tolkien scholarship began in fan periodicals, some of which have morphed into peer-reviewed journals, and I appreciate the early stuff, but a 2-page piece on the "Durable Durins" wasn't that much use to me, though I cited it, and discussed it in an endnote).

    Jason, your essay on the "Web of Words" is excellent, and there are others on the Norse roots for Dwarves, etc. but learning the sources for the Dwarves doesn't actually help students in reading and understanding what the narratives does with the Dwarves (ditto the material on anti-Semitism!). Olsen's discussion of the characterization of the Dwarves in TH was excellent—I especially like (and will be citing in an essay I'm working on with my medieval history colleague!) his discussion of the construction of Thorin at the start, and the dwarves' unpreparedness overall (page 47-49). Most of the 15 or so sources (not all peer-reviewed) in the MLA Bibliography that deal with Tolkien's Dwarves are about medieval and/or linguistic roots and influences (very important work—but we've had about 50 years of medieval scholarship on Tolkien—as someone who is not a medievalist, I'm interested in other approaches, building on the valuable work done by medievalists. I collaborate with a medievalist on some work we write, but I also do my own independent scholarship from a much different period/theoretical perspective).

    There aren't any specific, sustained, discussions of the characterization of Dwarves in TH that I'm familiar with—if you know of any I'd love to get the reference because I'm going to be writing more about the film adaptation, and the way Jackson's handling of the Dwarves, I think, is the opposite of Tolkien who apparently felt his presentation of the Dwarves in TH was rather weak, and he "corrected" that by creating a much more epic and fascinating story for them (their own origin myth, their own Vala, their own histories) in LOTR. I think Jackson's use of Gimli as comic relief in LOTR was unfortunate (possibly necessary), and he's "correcting" that in TH. (The differences in Thorin at the start are amazing). Erm, anyway, so yep, Olsen on Dwarves! I think it's excellent, and in fact, I don't think I know of any other scholarship that does what he does here.

    Now I really must off to grocery shop (or the pantry will be as bare as if Dwarves had gone through it, and that would not be good). I'll probably be checking back here later (at the moment I'm avoiding grading, heh).

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  19. Some more stuff I like, including contextualizing in Legendarium!

    "In the Lone-Lands," the end of the chapter, page 53:

    "Tolkien takes the terror out of the troll encounter, but we should notice that even through the comical touches he manages to make a serious point. The trolls are not defeated or destroyed by their enemies. Gandalf tricks them, but he does not overcome them. The Trolls are victims of their greed and their own quarrelsomeness; Gandalf has only to stir it up and then led the trolls bring about their own destruction. In short, they are undone by their own evil. This is a general principle in Tolkien's works, and we will find examples of it everywhere. What is true of the trolls will be true of Smaug later on, and we will also find it true of Sauron and Gollum and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings."

    Footnote: Gloss on Bilbo saying "It smells like elves!"—a reference to another work by Tolkien that contextualizes what elves might smell like—Olsen notes that at the time J.R.R.T was writing TH, he was also working on The Lay Of Leithian, the story of Beren and Luthien: Olsen notes that this connects to the SILM, to Strider's song in "A Knife in the Dark," and that the LoL describes Lúthien as always being "accompanied everywhere by a remarkable fragrance, the 'odour of immortal flowers/in everlasting spring' (Canto XII, 3794-95). That, I suspect, is more or less what elves smell like, and what Bilbo was getting a whiff of on the breeze near Rivendell" (61-2). In the main text, Olsen also builds on the way in which the narrative complicates this one (possibly rather comic) line: that Bilbo is moved, and that right after he says that, "'He looked up at the starts. They were burning bright and blue' (45). The scene of the elves seems to stimulate him to contemplate high and lovely things, to become sensitive to beauty that he might have taken for granted otherwise. Bilbo's remark is comical, but it also points to an idea that is very difficult to grasp and an experience that is very hard to describe, just like the elves' song." (62).

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  20. Like some other commenters, I like Olsen's discussion of the riddle-game: I've read Tom Shippey and others on all the medieval roots of the riddles, but I don't think they spend much time analyzing the ways in which the choice of riddles represent the two characters' world views – how the riddles are not just adapted from medieval sources but how they are crafted and developed in ways that make them autobiographical (it's been a while, so I may be forgetting the details of some of the medieval source studies).

    More that I liked: his discussion of the eagles, Beorn, and the "moral complexity of the wild." This section resonates with me even more on re-reading because I remember a student project from my undergrad course (before I'd read Olsen's work)—she wanted to write her paper on the sentient creatures in TH (mostly wargs and eagles), and she had a heck of a time finding any sort of scholarship that dealt with them in any way (and since I oversee the review process, guide them to databases, and help them out after they've done their best, I think the lack of scholarship on eagles was not just her inexperience (checking MLA database quickly confirmed my memory—there are four sources listed: one a rather confusing one on Ulster Scots Culture and Music (which lists Tolkien as a primary author), two short pieces (one page each) from Amon Hen, one from 1993, one from 1998, and Olsen Olsen's book. So while it's possible that some of the other major scholars/academic scholarship on Tolkien has dealt with the eagles in passing, it wasn't enough to get picked up in MLA (the fact that Olsen's titles reference major elements of his chapters helps—Chapter 7 is "The Friends of Bears and the Guests of Eagles"). I can say from years of teaching Tolkien's various works that students are very eager to see a black/white good/evil world in his Legendarium (as Verlyn Flieger has pointed out, so too are some scholars!), and Olsen's discussion of the complexity of the Wild, of the eagles, and Beorn is one that could definitely be useful to my students (and which could be built on!). The same might be said about the first half of Chapter 7, Olsen's discussion of Beorn (again, not as lengthy as an academic essay would be—but given that the four MLA sources (two articles, two book chapters) I can find on Beorn (Paul Lewis, Douglas Anderson, Marjorie Burns, and a Polish author) tend to focus on the Norse, Icelandic, Beowulf sources, I think that Olsen's reading of Beorn, and the argument about the impact of Bilbo's experiences with the Wild on his character is very good.

    I could go on but I suspect I'm going on a bit much.

    There is more though—and I enjoyed taking the book down and working through it to remind myself of some of the specifics I so enjoyed.

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  21. Jason: I wanted to directly respond to one point you made.

    So maybe this is a big part of Olsen’s ideal audience: (1) people who don’t (or didn’t) take The Hobbit seriously; (2) teachers, some of whom don’t like it but have to teach it anyway; and (3) students, some of whom don’t like it but have to read it anyway. I agree these people would get a lot out of the book (I say so in my review). But that’s faint praise, isn’t it?

    I don't consider it faint praise, because I think these groups are an important audience who are not always well served by the other material that's out there—i.e. neither the Cribbs/Sparks material, nor the peer-reviewed scholarship. It's hard to write prose that combines both explication and literary analysis with an engaging and readable style for a general audience. Many academics aren't very good at it, and since writing for that audience is not rewarded with tenure and promotion at most universities (including, increasingly, my own), and may in fact be the basis for dismissing/devaluing an academic who finds those audiences important, I think it's vital to push back against that attitude that groups outside the specialized academics aren't worth writing academically informed material for (that's why I continue to accept opportunities to write for that audience—I just turned in a chapter for a collection on Ray Bradbury's F451 that covers the critical and popular reception of the novel since it was published. I worked a lot harder on that chapter than I have on some of my peer-reviewed articles because I had to translate my prose into something that could be understood by a more general audience, define my terms, and generally "shift" from writing for people who are knowledgeable about Bradbury, dystopias, and that novel to people who aren't. And it won't count very much toward my merit pay since it's not in a peer-reviewed journal (I do the peer-reviewed stuff as well, and write grants).

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  22. Jason: A quick reply to your observation above, that I neglected to answer in my other posts!

    I think Corey’s approach tends to suppress further inquiry. It seems to present itself as having all the answers.

    You are reading any Tolkien scholarship as a scholar--your immediate response in many cases, I suspect, is to engage in dialogue.

    However about 99% of my students (and here I mean both undergraduate and graduate students) tend to react to *any and every* piece of criticism (and not just the academic stuff) in one of two ways: either, "wow, that's the right answer!" or, "wow that's totally wrong." Although the responses are polar opposites, both are the "wrong" answer for what I'm teaching--i.e. that critical responses to a text are an ongoing dialogue.

    Every single piece of criticism I present to students, or that they find on their own, tends to get treated one of two ways (well, three, there's the "I don't understand that at all"!), and to "suppress further inquiry."

    That's not a feature of the work--that's a feature of inexperienced writers--and I have to push very hard (even into my doctoral students' dissertation drafts) to get them into a dialogic mode. There are lots of reasons for this response (and I do not at all say this feature is one that only current students fall into and in the good old days blah blah blah blah, we went uphill in the snow in cardboard shoes and started arguing immediately).

    So, I might agree that students reading Olsen's book might feel they cannot add anything to his points.

    But I know that the same can be said of students reading the essays in your anthology (which, as you know, I adore, and used to teach in an undergraduate course--and which did not turn out as well as I'd hoped due to MY errors in the teaching and assignment process).

    Critical writing has a voice of authority--and inexperienced critical and analytical thinkers respond to that authority (even when they disagree with the authority, they have difficulty dealing with that disagreement, or explaining why and how).

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  23. Reply to Benny: 1. he tends to repeat himself a lot, as Jason says.

    2. he more or less fails to acknowledge any scholarship on the Hobbit. There is no discussion of Flieger, Shippey, Chance, etc., let alone pieces from essay collections.

    Benny: here are some of your criticisms of Olsen's work that I think are correct in essence without being particularly valid. There is repetition (but there is repetition in all book-length works—even in essays—and in works for a more general audience there is more repetition because it's necessary for the readers to "get it." It's the "say what you're going to say, say it, tell them what you said" model of rhetoric that's recommended for speeches, lectures, and an awful lot of writing). And there's no discussion of Flieger, Shippey, Chance, or essay collections: I'd go even further to note something that neither you nor Jason noted—neither is there any discussion of the peer-reviewed journal articles that have been published on Tolkien's work. This is all true.

    But as I said in other comments, I wouldn't expect to see any of that because the purpose of the work is not to analyze and respond to the scholarship. (Olsen does cite Rateliff and Anderson, and some of Tolkien's earlier works, and at one point, the OED). He may not have read them, as Jason notes, but I do not see that as a flaw in a work that presents itself as a reader response, explication/close reading/analysis for an audience that can best be described as those who love the work and might enjoy learning more about it but who are not academic scholars. It's like saying Bill the pony is a bad animal because he's not an oliphaunt.

    I can disagree with your larger points here, but they don't make me feel uncomfortable—i.e. it's not personal. See next comment for one that did seem to me to risk slipping into a sort of criticism of Corey that made me uncomfortable.

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    1. I understand the purpose of the book was not to respond to scholarship. The point is that he fails to acknowledge that many of the points he makes (and this book is marketed as a "fresh new reading" or whatever) have been made elsewhere, and nowhere does he acknowledge that.

      Shippey's book is an excellent contrast. For the most part it isn't about engaging with the scholarship directly (although there are some sections), but he works it in diligently throughout his work. There is no reason I can think of the precluded Olsen from doing the same.

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  24. Part 1: Benny: Where I became uncomfortable with your comments is with this one: 3. It also bugs me that Olsen has a kind of fandom attached to him now. As it was originally conceived, Olsen's Tolkien Professor site was really good - there was a Hobbit lecture series, a Silmarillion seminar, etc. Now it is essentially a fan site for Tolkien (and Jackson) fans, not to mention Olsen himself. Most of the content is related to movie apologetics, and Olsen produces no more lecture content.

    Jason agreed with you—but I'll be dealing with his comments in another comment, addressed to him. I don't know enough about how some of the students interact with others online to say anything—that is, I don't follow Corey's site (a lot of his stuff was done as podcasts, correct? I cannot stand watching podcasts – and I say this as a teacher who is now recording video lectures for her students, and can barely bring myself to watch my own stuff to review it before posting). I don't like content delivered in that way; I prefer to read it (so maybe I came to Corey's book as a fresher reader because I hadn't listened to all his earlier stuff). I have met some of the Mythgard students at some conventions where they're presenting—mostly Verlyn's students—and they adore her, they adore Mythgard, and they adore Corey. All true. That sort of intense attachment can be found around any popular teacher (I have a few "fans" myself in my department). The obverse is true—some students can dislike a teacher immensely! I suspect the majority of students are fairly neutral—we're talking about a minority on either end—judging from student evaluations. And you are focusing on some of the students, not Corey, but the way the paragraph above is structured, it seems to imply (I may be over-reading) a criticism of Corey for creating that—for creating that situation.

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    1. What I am primarily disappointed about is that the structure of Olsen's new 'academy' - the Mythgard Institute, has encouraged the creation of a core of students who return again and again and in my experience (I've taken a couple of the classes) dominate classes and discussions. Invariably these people "adore" him as you say.

      So in a sense I am criticizing Olsen for creating that situation. Against his original intent, which was to produce open access content and encourage people to join the discussion, his new Mythgard site with its expensive classes tends to favor students who are already invested in it.

      Olsen has done very little to mitigate this situation. As Jason points out, he did start the Academy recently, which is a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, it would be my contention that he has unknowingly created an echo chamber in Mythgard where diversity of opinion is stifled. As I said, however, he seems to prefer this situation, as dissenting voices are rarely heard in his classes or allowed to give voice to their opinions.

      In a real classroom, it is far less easy to control the responses of your students, but in the virtual classroom Olsen is under no obligation to enunciate what you write in the comments section. It has been my experience that he is heavily biased toward interpretations/ideas that accord with his own.

      His classes are faintly interesting, but rarely challenging or evocative. The contrast with Mike Drout could not have been more stark when he was invited to present a lecture in the Winter 2011 "Tolkien and the Epic" class which I attended.

      Drout's lecture had a core thesis, interesting discussion points, and contained abundant food for thought. Olsen's lectures are IMO invariably bland, preferring to avoid thematic or contextual readings and instead focusing in on individual scenes. Close reading is naturally important, but in a lecture context I would have thought a broader approach in general to be preferable.

      So my criticisms boil down to a few points:
      1. Mythgard creates an echo chamber where regularly returning students are often afforded deferential treatment.
      2. These regulars are Olsen fans - they defend him and put down criticism.
      3. They defend and put down alternative ways of looking at the works under question - Olsen's way is always correct.
      4. Olsen either doesn't recognize the problem or lets it slip.

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  25. I also feel uncomfortable because of the negative associations your and Jason's comments seem to associate with "fans" and "fandom" – although I'm sure you did not intend it. Since I identified as a fan before becoming an academic, and am currently in LOTR fandom—movie and book—and even do scholarship on fandom, I'm well aware of negative associations about fans that exist in academia. When Jackson's first film came out, I saw it 45 times in the theatre (OTOH, I read LOTR over 100 times between ages 10 and 17, documenting it all in a reading journal and nagging all my friends and family to read it as well). Some of my senior colleagues began to wonder if I was a bit mentally ill (by the questions they asked a friend of mine!). Once she and I got a grant, that discourse shifted: i.e. it's one thing to be a manic obsessive fan; it's another to be a manic obsessive fan with a federal grant!

    In fact, a lot of the earlier critical anthologies on Tolkien's work said very negative things about fans—more or less "once these silly fans stop making such a fuss, we can get some real academic work done!).). The tendency is so present that one of the things Drout says in his co-authored essay on Tolkien Criticism (Drout and Wynne) is that "[g]ood criticism will not waste time making fun of Tolkien fandom....Furthermore, the attack on fandom seems to be at its heart an appeal, by insecure critics, to the literary establishment" (125) ("Tom Shippey's J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and a Look Back at Tolkien Criticism since 1982"). (I might note that I agree passionately with about half of Drout and Wynne's criteria for good Tolkien scholarship, and disagree passionately with the other half, but that's another whole topic).

    Many fans of Tolkien's work are intensely anti-Jackson's film—I tend to be about as passionately fannish about the film(s) as I do the book(s), and to do adaptation scholarship. While I don't expect everybody to be a fan of the films, or even to like them, and I'm happy to discuss what I like and why, the term "movie apologetics" makes me sort of twitch. I'm not sure what you meant by that, but if, as you say, the site has become more movie oriented, that no doubt reflects Corey's interests. Some reader may not like that focus, and that's perfectly valid. Some of your language, and Jason's, seemed to carry implications of Corey sort of "selling out" (again, an accusation often leveled against academics who write popular books!).

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    1. Re. fans. I wrote a response to this but then lost it so this will be short.

      It's fine to be a fan. I'm a Tolkien fan, a Star Wars fan, I'm a fan of Cormac McCarthy, etc. However, I disagree with Drout and Wynne here. Far better I think is the opinion of Brian Rosebury when he writes (paraphrasing; I don't have my copy of his book "Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon" with me) that fannish bias in Tolkien Studies has sometimes stifled more critical approaches to his work. I agree with this assessment (it's getting much better now). Unfortunately, I contend that Olsen is a rather bad (good?) example of this tendency. Olsen's enthusiasm is great, but having a critical discussion shouldn't preclude enthusiasm as he seems to think, rather it should strengthen it by bringing out nuances of understanding in the text through considered and critical reading.

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    2. Re: movie apologetics.

      I do happen to think that Olsen's approach re. the films is unfortunate. If he wants his website to be a fan podcast, that's fine, but he shouldn't then market it as a place of sober academic discussion, because his movie podcasts are only ever Jackson praising sessions, and I'm not exaggerating when i say that. They incessantly praise Jackson and apologize for all his decision making. I find it nauseating. If you're "uncomfortable" with that then so be it - I'm "offended" by Olsen's constant Jackson love in sessions, and more importantly I'm disappointed that his original, laudable goal has been lost in the morass of fandom material that now dominates his website and the Mythgard place.

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  26. My goodness, Robin, that’s a spirited defense! It might interest you to know that you’ve now written far more about Corey Olsen’s book than I have, including the review in Tolkien Studies! Not that that’s a bad thing! :-) But it will take me a little time to digest all of this and reply. I do plan to respond to some of the points you raised, so stay tuned!

    One thing I’ll note right off: I normally refer to Corey Olsen by his surname (as I did in the post that started all of this, and in the review that prompted the post). I switched to his first name because that’s what you did in your comments. I was just going for consistency with you. I’m switching back henceforth. You’re right: it’s better that way.

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  27. HI Jason: a quick note (yes,I can write 'em) before getting my Facebook discussion ready for my zombies and werewolves class--I did start using his first name, in a somewhat informal response, so yep, that's all me. *heh* I was wondering if I should apologize for tl;dr! I'll be happy to continue the discussion at length--it's a fascinating topic, not only his work, but the larger issues around it.

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  28. HI, Robin! I agree completely: it is definitely a fascinating subject! By all means, let’s continue. I’ll certainly have further comments — just not quite yet. Busy work day ahead of me, and I need to carefully re-read all of your comments heretofore. No need to apologize for the length either! Even if some people are thinking TLDNR, I for one am not. :-)

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  29. Jason: he cribs the plot of a chapter, then cribs a poem in the chapter, then cribs each line in the poem in the chapter. Ditto, riddles. Cliffs would do that too if they had the space, wouldn’t they?
    This is one of the comments that made me most uncomfortable—in terms of commentary on Olsen's work that begins to slide into personal commentary. I went and looked at some sections of the Cliff's Notes on TH, and while I can see that both texts point out some similar structural elements, there are differences that make a huge difference to me—though maybe I pay too much attention to style and syntax, and the detail/depth in Olsen's work. For example: Olsen and the Cliff's article say some similar things about Bilbo (i.e. that he has a Took and a Baggins side that are in conflict), but the Cliff article is a string of mostly simple sentences, with diction that is fairly basic, and very short. Olsen's diction and syntax are notably different: there is a distinct voice in his writing, and he does more than a simple plot summary which is what the Cliff's article is, even when they call it "character analysis." You ask whether Cliff's would do the same as Olsen does "if they had the space"—but of course they wouldn't (and they do have the space, especially online). If their article(s) or note(s) were as long as Olsen's (300 pages) students wouldn't buy and use them: students like them because they're shorter and simpler than the original text. Reading Cliff's notes makes me think of a butterfly smashed flat for a collection. That's not the response I have to Olsen's work. I don't see him "cribbing" as a writer.

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  30. Part A: Jason: As it is, I don’t even know whether Corey has read Flieger, Shippey, Chance, etc., himself! He may have; he may not have. You can’t tell from his book. And this all seems to be part of his anti-academic posture.

    I noted my response to this issue of the scholarship in my comments above, but I wanted to say something here about "anti-academic posturing"—language that seems strong and rather unfair. The word "posturing" implies fakery on some level, and that's what seems unfair. And you're implying that he's somehow not reading the major Tolkienists (which I tend to doubt) because of this "anti-academic bias"—I'm reading this phrase as you interpreting his anti-academic stance as against scholarship as scholarship. What I see him speaking out strongly against is the same thing that Douglas Anderson spoke strongly out against in his entry "Publishing Mordor-style" (http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/04/publishing-mordor-style.html). Look at what Doug said about his decision to leave TS, and then compare it to Corey's comment in the introduction: "as I advanced in my academic career, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the other half of my professorial duties: the world of scholarly publication. Professors, of course, must 'publish or perish,' as everyone knows, but I found the world of scholarly publications greatly limited....Typical academic books and journals circulate not to thousands, but to hundreds, or even to dozens, of people. They tend to be priced so high that only research libraries can afford to purchase them, and therefore, the general public has little or no access to the work that most scholars do. Increasingly, scholarly publication has become in practice a closed conversation among scholars and some of their students" (3).

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    1. Robin you seem to be responding to Jason and my tone as much as anything else. Once again this comes back to the cult of nonjudgementalism that I've seen on Jackson/movie fan message boards and other fannish places.

      Quite frankly criticism is going to be irritating. People use strong language to express their views sometimes and that should be okay.

      With regards to specifics. I hardly think Jason was meaning that Olsen has not read major critics, he simply pointed out that his attitude expressed in the book is ambiguous on the point: and that in itself is the problem. Producing a scholastically competent monograph does not require hideous footnote diversions and reams of appendices. Olsen could have shown his participation in the scholarly literature by citing others in places where points he makes in the book have been made before. Had he even done that, his work would read as a far more rigorous explanation of the Hobbit even for general readers.

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  31. Part b:

    That part of Olsen's introduction seems to be a fairly clear answer to your comment about whether or not he aspires to be a scholar or a researcher (as defined in certain ways). At least with what he says here, I'd say the answer is pretty clear—he's not interested in the kind of peer-reviewed scholarship written by experts for experts in the field. What he's doing is more related to teaching, and teaching in even a broader sense than for students who can afford to pay for (or end up in debt for) a university education.


    A single issue of TS costs $60.00 (for an individual), double that for a library or institution. And remember that nether the editors, the peer-reviewers, nor the authors who publish their work ever see a penny of that cost. Add to this fact the additional irony that Tolkien scholarship does not have that much status in the academy—I had to appeal a decision made a few years back not to renew my graduate faculty status (all that status gave me is the authorization to direct dissertations, there wasn't even any $ associated with it) because my scholarship was not deemed sufficiently 'academic' or in high enough status journals. As one administrator said despairingly to my dept. head, "if she just published on T. S. Eliot, we'd know it was worthwhile." (Said administrator's original disciplinary field was...waitforit....chemistry!).


    Another problem in current academic publishing is the stranglehold the subscription databases have on academic content: it's being criticized all around academia—especially since universities are supported by taxpayers, but the research we do is locked away from the taxpayers. Doug links to some excellent articles on this very problem (and I'll note that I'm on the editorial board of a new academic journal on Tolkien scholarship that Brad Eden is started—one that will be online and open-access, not locked away, because I agree with Corey and with Doug about the problems, and am on the side of open access although, of course, nothing on the internet is and can be free!). There are many valid criticisms to make of the corporatized world that academic publishing has become, and how it's negatively affecting academic culture (which is pretty invisible to anybody not working inside the culture).

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  32. My last comment for the night. Several people have commented about their disease with the idea of an "Olsen fandom."

    I want to share a problem that I see in academia that makes any "Olsen fandom" seem fairly small in comparison: and that's the extent to which universities seek out and hire big name "celebrity" faculty (paying them loads of money, giving them very light teaching loads, and underpaying the adjuncts and even fulltime faculty) in ways that are increasingly problematic, and show the bankruptcy (moral!) of the academic system in this day and age. And while I admire the heck out of Tom Shippey's scholarship, I'd bet that his stint at St. Louis University was exactly that--a celebrity hire. With what happens in academia, the idea that some of Corey Olsen's students being passionately supportive of him, and his endeavors, really is not going to bother me in the least.

    Some links to check out for information on the exploitation and damage that administrators who are "fans" of big-name academics have created.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/cuny-petraeus-150-000-mistake-article-1.1396557

    https://chroniclevitae.com/news/97-from-welfare-to-the-tenure-track

    http://www.neontommy.com/news/2013/10/tenure-system-and-celebrity-hires-hurt-quality-usc-faculty

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    1. Yes this is a problem, but you're shifting the goalposts. We're talking about Olsen specifically. If the larger academic hiring issue bothers you, that's fine. It doesn't however mean that there aren't legitimate criticisms to be made of Olsen and his 'fans'.;-)

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  33. Part one:

    I’m almost half-way through Olsen’s book (chapter 6), and I’ve also been listening to “The Tolkien Professor” podcasts on iTunes U while I walk to work. It’s only tonight that I realized that the book is almost a transcript of the podcasts – or, at least, to be accurate, Chapter 6 is, since I haven’t compared any other chapters with the podcasts. But if you look at Chapter 6, the section on “Goblins: Burn, Burn Tree and Fern” and “The Tolkien Professor” podcast “Into the Wild, By the Wild 2” you will find after a couple of minutes’ introduction that the podcast lecture is almost the same as the printed text. Clearly, the podcast lecture has been revised for the book, but it is still close enough to the book that you can follow along in the chapter while listening to the podcast. I wonder if the book’s genesis as podcast lectures (and here I’m assuming that the rest of the book is as close to the podcasts as in this chapter) might not account for some of the repetition that Jason has pointed out in his review. In the podcasts, Olsen has to remind listeners at the beginning of each episode where they are in the book, and he has to provide lengthy quotations from the poems so that listeners can hear what he’s analyzing. He’s just as careful in guiding his readers through, chapter by chapter of TH, in the printed book.

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  34. Part 2:
    Robin: I would not call Olsen’s approach reader-response theory. To me, his close readings of themes, images, and characters read like classic “New Criticism” -- a close reading of the formal qualities of a text as a self-enclosed entity. That accounts for both the strengths and weaknesses of his approach. I think the strength of his work is in his close readings, especially of poetry, and his complete focus on the text. I too heard his riddle chapter read out at Kalamazoo and thought that it presented a wonderful analysis of how the riddles relate to each other and to the characters. Elsewhere in the book, I find that he offers good analyses of how other poems work. (And the “New Critics” always preferred short poems for analysis). The weakness of this slowed-down close reading , though, is that Olsen hardly looks beyond the text of TH – but this is a weakness only if I’m thinking of my own research or that of my undergrad students. It’s not a weakness for general readers who are looking for a “companion volume” to TH, which is what the book jacket promises.

    I would recommend that my undergraduate students take a look at the book – although the central ideas summarized on pages 6-7 would probably be enough for them to get going on their own, and I would recommend the discussions of the poetry – though who knows; I’m only on Chapter 6, maybe I’ll recommend more. For undergraduate English lit. students—at least those beyond the first-year level -- I would think that the book serves best as a basic starting point. I would expect my students to build their analyses of the text on a close reading (and Olsen’s would serve as an excellent example of that), but I would also expect them to situate the book in broader contexts, depending on their interests: in relation to the genre of fantasy, or to the development of children’s literature (and related to Tolkien’s ideas about children in “On Fairy-Stories”); as an example of medievalism; in relation to his ideas about heroism and chivalry; in relation to the development of race and folklore theories in the 19th – 20th centuries; in relation to theories about orality and literacy; in a discussion of Tolkien’s illustrations in relation to his text; in relation to other illustrators/translators of the text; in relation to Tolkien’s views on the elements of fairy-stories; and so on. It’s the difference between a book club and a university course in English. The book club typically aims to discuss a text in detail and no further; a university course in English, in my opinion, starts with a close reading and builds in historical and theoretical knowledge from that starting point. But Olsen is not presenting the book as one for scholars; it claims to be for a general audience.

    The irony is that when I or my students will refer to Olsen’s readings in our own essays, we’ll take pains to cite him clearly as our source. I wonder if he would appreciate us absorbing his views of the riddles and repeating them without mentioning his book.

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  35. I have discussed Olsen's book at some length with Jason already. I will make a couple brief comments here.

    My main concern with the book (as others have expressed) is that Olsen cites almost no sources. I wholly disagree that just because an author writes for a general audience, this somehow excuses him from referencing those that have come before him. I wouldn't allow my undergraduate students to do this, so why is it okay in a published book? It is like entering into a conversation at a party without first listening to what is being discussed (I think this analogy is from Diana Glyer's book?).

    Devin Brown takes a similar approach to Olsen with his three books on The Chronicles of Narnia, going chapter by chapter and writing for a general audience, but he cites a lot of primary and secondary sources. I've read Brown's books on _The Lion_ and _Prince Caspian_, and I was hoping that Olsen's book would be similar. Unfortunately, it was not.

    I think everyone would agree that the book's greatest strength lies in Olsen's interpretation of the riddles. I was really impressed with this portion of the book. I just wish there was more like this in it.

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  36. Having done a bunch of grading, I'm rewarding myself by coming back to read a bit more--but before I get into some of the other great points, I want to raise the issue that makes me most uncomfortable: if you take a number of the comments above (I'm paraphrasing, rather than singling out any one person because it's the cumulative effect!), there seems to be some implication that Olsen is being accused of a form of plagiarism. Not, I hasten to add, the type where somebody copies large chunks of material to takes credit for it, but the more blurred boundary line where ideas are used without credit.

    Statements about Olsen's book not saying anything new or original; about how there's no citation of sources or bibliography; the issue of the "irony" of students citing Olsen's material rather than "absorbing and repeating." The seriousness of this (potential) accusation concerns me--all the more so in that it is veiled.

    When somebody writes an explication or close reading (which, as Anna points out above, is primarily associated with New Criticism, more often used in poetry, or short excerpts of prose), the focus is meant to be entirely on drawing out and explaining the structural elements of the chosen text and how those element(s) contribute to the overall meaning.

    Now, close reading often is used to generate evidence that is then included in a large project that might include historical, biographical, or other critical/theoretical approaches (in fact, nowadays, that's expected, since New Criticism has suffered something of a decline in recent decades). But, it need not be included in such a project. Olsen has been reading this work and Tolkien's other works since he was eight. I agree that much of what he says here might be said by anybody doing a basic explication--I am downright appalled that even unintentionally there might be potential accusations of plagiarism (I spend a lot of time teaching students the pitfalls here, especially of the taking original arguments and then repeating them without proper attribution).

    I don't think Olsen is doing that.

    I don't think any of you intend to accuse him of that, but am I over-reading/misreading the implications of the claims that are being made here, especially withi Josh Long's coming at the end?

    Anna made the very good point that the book is much like a book club discussion: nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition of Scholarship (or the bibliographic essay) to appear at book club discussions.

    I agree that it's unusual for a "close reading" to focus on an entire novel--but I think that's just what Olsen does, and that it is built on years of reading and discussing and teaching and thinking about the book. It is billed as a "companion" -- for readers who are not academics. He does cite the scholarship that influenced him (Rateliff, Anderson).

    For those of you who are not English teachers, some resources that I have on hand to recommend to my students (many of whom come from Texas English classes without ever having done more than a five-paragraph essay)

    Close Reading:

    Purdue OWL (one of the best Writing Center resources on the internet: I recommend to my students all the time): https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/751/01/

    https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/616/

    From a literature assignment:
    https://sites.google.com/site/ufaml2070/assignments/close-readings
    "Don’t use biography, history, or criticism, except at the edges. Focus on reading the text(s). Eventually—despite the New Critics—your fresh readings will open out to biographical, historical, and critical or theoretical approaches."

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  37. Hi Anna: I really liked your posts!

    Thanks for the information on the podcasts: I cannot stand listening to podcasts (or Skyping, or listening to videotaped lectures!--give me print any day), so while I noticed that Olsen talked about his podcasts, and I assumed that they played a role in the production of the book, I didn't know how close. I certainly found myself thinking that the book had a very "lecture" like feel, i.e. like introductory lectures I give my students, and I suspect podcasts are pretty much just that, recorded lectures.

    And after two plus decades of working with students, I also have learned the necessity for careful repetition and clear sign-posting guidance for less experienced readers (though I point out to my graduate students who complain about the repetition in peer-reviewed scholarship that there are important repetitions in the topic paragraph for the same reason that they're in Olsen's book--reading lengthy prose is easier when there are repetitions.

    I also liked your comment about expecting your students to put the work in a broader context--I would too--I mention that it's up to me to create assignments that push students beyond relying on any single secondary text they read. (That was in response to Jason's concern that reading the book would close further development for people. General readers don't really want/need to be pushed to create more original readings, but students do.).


    I would also expect them to situate the book in broader contexts, depending on their interests: in relation to the genre of fantasy, or to the development of children’s literature (and related to Tolkien’s ideas about children in “On Fairy-Stories”); as an example of medievalism; in relation to his ideas about heroism and chivalry; in relation to the development of race and folklore theories in the 19th – 20th centuries; in relation to theories about orality and literacy; in a discussion of Tolkien’s illustrations in relation to his text; in relation to other illustrators/translators of the text; in relation to Tolkien’s views on the elements of fairy-stories; and so on. It’s the difference between a book club and a university course in English.



    This is a great part of the comment--and you clearly give a lot of the same type of assignments as I do (in my graduate course, I had the students incorporating the material from Scull and Hammond's book on the illustrations into their analysis).



    I did find with my undergraduate Hobbit that a lot of students had trouble reading the critical essays in Jason's source anthology (of course, turned out a whole lot of the students were not English majors, and signed up for a Hobbit class thinking it would be fun and, apparently, like reading it in grade school!). I'm hoping the next time I teach the undergraduate class that having Olsen's book to read alongside Anderson's Annotated Hobbit will then help them be able to make better sense of the scholarship I assign (and some of the material they have to find and read on their own).


    I am a bit confused about what you mean by "irony" in your last paragraph--where's the irony?

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  38. Anna; one last quicky before I go make dinner.

    Olsen's work is mostly close reading--but the introduction is very much inclusive of his own experiences, in first person--which I consider reader response. He also goes beyond strict close reading/new criticism (as I was taught it in the late 1970s, when I got chastised for reading biographies)--there are references to Tolkien's letters, and to his other works, and the manuscript history and work done by Rateliff and Anderson. Those are not huge parts of the text, but they take it out of "pure" New Critical/Close Reading territory in my book--and also have the additional feature of making the book more likely to engage general readers, I suspect, as is the somewhat informal diction that comes in at times (I'm vaguely remembering "street cred" for BIlbo or the Dwarves?)!

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  39. A point of clarification, Robin, since (by a quick count) you’ve mentioned this four times now. I wasn’t keeping count, I promise, but it’s caught my eye enough that I had to go back to look. :)

    Yes, Olsen does refer his readers on to Douglas Anderson and John Rateliff for further reading, but he does not cite anything from Anderson at all. So far as I could remember — and I just checked again to be sure — he never mentions Anderson again. So he really only refers to the work of one scholar in his book. Even when he does cite pages in Rateliff’s book, what he is invariably citing is the manuscript text of The Hobbit. It doesn’t look to me as though Olsen ever cites or refers to any of Rateliff’s own opinions or conclusions. So I think you have to let the Anderson/Rateliff point go; it’s hardly a rebuttal to the complaint that Olsen doesn’t cite scholarship on The Hobbit. The fact is, he doesn’t. I think we can all just agree on that and move on to other interesting points! :)

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  40. I don't think Olsen plagiarized nor am I accusing him of it. That is not really the issue for me. I simply don't understand how an English professor could write a work of literary criticism and not reference other sources. I think this is an inherent part of modern literary criticism.

    From a practical standpoint, references help students and scholars in further investigation and study. For example, if someone wanted to learn more about the riddles in _The Hobbit_, simple footnotes/endnotes would have been helpful, such as see "Riddles" in _The Tolkien Encyclopedia_, Burns's _Perlious Realms_ (160), or even the article "Time and J. R. R. Tolkien's 'Riddles in the Dark'" in _Mythlore_ (2008). This is a missed opportunity--especially for students and educators (the supposed target audience of this book).

    Simply put, no one really benefits (Olsen included) from avoiding secondary sources.

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  41. In regard to the issue of locked-down vs. open-access scholarship, here's a link to a fantastic newly open access resource:

    http://ejournals.library.gatech.edu/medievalism/index.php/studies

    Edward Risden's The Year's Work in Medieval Studies

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