Book: "The Road to Middle-Earth"

I've just read The Road to Middle-Earth by Tom Shipley, which is about the philological background behind Tolkien's writing. Philology, the book explains, was out of favour in Tolkien's day; "lit." in the ascendant and dismissive of "lang.". Tolkien came down thoroughly in the latter camp (as do I, rather).

Much of the book involves a picking apart the fine philological details of Tolkien's works, but the part that got me the most excited (though little to do with Tolkien per se) was the overview of philology and its achievements in the first two chapters:

( Read more... )