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A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages
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A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages Hardcover - 2016

by J. R. Tolkien; Dimitra Fimi (Editor); Andrew Higgins (Editor)


From the publisher

First ever critical study of Tolkien s little-known essay, which reveals how language invention shaped the creation of Middle-earth and beyond, to George R R Martin s Game of Thrones.

This is an annotated edition of Tolkien s seminal 1930s essay A Secret Vice, in which he first revealed his vice of inventing languages in his fantasy fiction.

Tolkien s linguistic invention was a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a home and peoples to speak them. As Tolkien puts it in A Secret Vice, the making of language and mythology are related functions, in fact coeval and congenital .

In the 1930s Tolkien composed and delivered two lectures in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology. In 1931 he gave a talk to a philological society entitled A Hobby for the Home . In this talk, later published as A Secret Vice, Tolkien unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art which he had both himself encountered and been involved with since his earliest childhood: the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement . A Secret Vice would be edited by Christopher Tolkien for inclusion in The Monsters and the Critics and serves as the principal exposition of Tolkien s art of inventing languages. But it has often been neglected by critics and this new critical edition will go some way towards re-opening the debate on the importance of linguistic invention in Tolkien s mythology and the role of imaginary languages in fantasy literature.

In addition to all previously unpublished notes and essays by Tolkien connected with the essay, the book discusses the subject of Tolkien s languages in the wider context of modern fantasy, including the Peter Jackson Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films and Game of Thrones."

Details

  • Title A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages
  • Author J. R. Tolkien; Dimitra Fimi (Editor); Andrew Higgins (Editor)
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition 1st edition. Fir
  • Pages 224
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher HarperCollins, United Kingdom
  • Date 2016
  • ISBN 9780008131395 / 0008131392
  • Library of Congress subjects Imaginary languages in literature, Tolkien, J. R. R - Language
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2017416343
  • Dewey Decimal Code 824.912

About the author

Dimitra Fimi, BA (Hons), MA, PhD is one of the foremost experts on Celtic Studies and English Literature. Her published work includes Tolkien, Race and Cultural History, which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies for 2010. She is currently Lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Andrew Higgins, PhD is an acclaimed Tolkien scholar with a specialty in Tolkien s language invention, and who was written on The Genesis of J.R.R. Tolkien s Mythology . He is also Director of Development at Glyndebourne."

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A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages

A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages

by Tolkien, J. R. R.

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A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages. Edited by Dimitra Fimi & Andrew Higgins
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by TOLKIEN, J. R. R.

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A Secret Vice
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A Secret Vice

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