- HOME PAGE
- About JRR Tolkien
- About The Tolkien Society
- F.A.Q.
- Events
- Education
- Resources
- Tolkien Park
- Guestbook
- Birthday Toast
- Tolkien 2005
- Contacts
- Links
- Mathoms
- Media News
- TS Trading
- Members Only
In this Section:
06/03/2013 - This page updated with Finnish Summer Moot and Medieval Germanic Sources of Tolkien's Mythoogy events information.
31/01/2013 - This page updated with Oxford Tolkien Spring School link.
08/09/2012 - Hall of Fire updated.
03/08/2012 - Links Page updated to include a link to the Southfarthing Papers 2005.
20/06/2012 - Links Page updated to include an online Anglo-Saxon course pack.
1/03/2012 - The Hobbit - An Introduction new study pack updated.
29/01/2012 - 75 Years of The Hobbit new reading day pack added.
29/01/2012 - Tolkien Reading Day 2012 new page added.
21/01/2012 - The Hobbit - An Introduction new study pack added.
Oxford Tolkien Spring School has announced their timetable. See the Oxford University Faculty of English website for more details.
Information from Anna Jääskeläinen
We are holding the annual Summer Moot event again in the Finnish Tolkien Society Kontu, but this time people from outside Finland are also welcome to participate in it. The moot will be held on 18th-21st July 2013 in eastern Finland. Most of the event will just be about having good time with other Tolkien fans, but there are some programmed items as well. We only have a limited number for reserved registration slots for people from outside Finland so in order to guarantee a place in the event you should register quickly. More information and registration instructions: http://suomentolkienseura.fi/in-english/events/summer-moot-2013/
Wuffings Education (Suffolk) are including among their many educational events:
June 15th Medieval Germanic Sources of Tolkien's Mythology Dr Elizabeth Solopova (University of Oxford). This study-day will introduce a range of languages and texts which influenced Tolkien's fiction. Students will learn about ancient Germanic culture and mythology and will gain insights into Tolkien's linguistic and literary scholarship. In bringing these strands together, the course will demonstrate how creative Tolkien's approach, as a writer, was to the earlier literature which he admired.
Contact: Cliff Hoppitt http://www.wuffingeducation.co.uk/
This section of the Tolkien Society site is for teachers, lecturers and other facilitators of learning.
It's not just about 'teaching Tolkien', or even about teaching reading, or English Literature in general. It's for teachers of mathematics, geography, religious education - or anything else. It is also for those who use Tolkien when facilitating personal development.
The Education section is being developed by the Tolkien Society's Education team - a small group of volunteers from the membership who want to help their colleagues (and learn more themselves) about using Tolkien in the classroom, gallery, lecture-hall, www and other educational settings.
See the Library Events page for information on National Poetry Day (8th October) and National Bookstart Day (9th October).
The contents list of the excellent Tolkien Studies Journals can be accessed online easily and is a valuable research tool in itself. Writers hoping to submit essays for consideration by the journal should, however, be aware that Tolkien Studies has a rather rigorous set of Conventions and Abbreviations, and that these need to be accessed via http://jrrtolkien.wheatoncollege.edu They can be freely copied, re-posted, and disseminated so long as the journal is credited.
There have been a number of attempts to film the story told in the Old English poem Beowulf. The most recent Beowulf film created as a 'cartoon' in the graphic novel style provoked some interesting responses. Some people loved it, some didn't. The screen writers may have taken a few liberties in their adaptation, but at all points they really knew their Old English background and wove this into the visual and plot 'developments'. For instance, there is no sign in the original that Unferth is Christian, and yet this adaptation to the character picks up the complex problem of the Christian elements in the text.
Of course, without Tolkien's groundbreaking essay on the poem the relationship between the Christian elements and the rest of the story with its blend of mythic and historic episodes would still not be understood. A great deal of the work done in the later 20thC by scholars like John Niles and Andy Orchard has drawn on Tolkien's brilliant analysis of the essential role of the monsters. They are not weird intrusions, any more than the Christian references are. They demonstrate important points about the changing of Anglo-Saxon society at the time when the poem was written down.
If you have seen the film, why not also read the poem, in translation of course. Michael Alexander does a great job in the Penguin version, lots of people like Seamus Heaney's 'translation', and there are plenty of other versions but please, make sure that if you choose a poetic translation that it retains the proper alliterative form, otherwise it won't have the powerful effect that is so special about the original. Oh, and be warned, there is no glamorous watery bint
(Ref. Monty Python's Holy Grail) in it, she's a very angry troll-wife!
If you are interested in the original Old English, Michael M. C. Drout, the renowned Tolkien scholar, created a recording of the poem in Old English. It is a wonderful experience to hear the sound of this powerful poetic language.
The courses have now moved to a new page, 'Courses'.
If you have a lesson plan using Tolkien, would you like to share it with us? The lesson plan could be for any age of students (from pre-school to post-compulsory education) and be for any subject (we would especially welcome plans for Science and Mathematics). We welcome plans from anywhere in the world (but please let us know the student age range, and any range/system such as 'KS2/English system' or 'Grade 7/US system').
We would also like images of your student's working/their work, to liven up the page. By submitting your lesson plan or image to us, you give us the non- exclusive right to reproduce it. If we display your plan or image on the website, or use it as an example of good practice in a teacher's pack we will credit you and your school (if you wish) and send you a mouse-mat (illustrated with Pauline Bayne's Oliphaunt).
You may translate these pages into other languages, or other educational systems, if you make your translations freely available (e.g. on a free-to-view web page, or at the cost of photocopying), and credit the Tolkien Society as the copyright owner of these pages, and obtain the copyright permission of others, where applicable.
We would very much like to host, or link to, your translations here: please
let us know!
Please suggest other links!
Want to help more?
If you are a Tolkien Society member, and a teacher or other person interested in education, and would like to join the Education Team, please contact the education officer.
