Deep Roots in a Time of Frost (2014) by Patrick Curry

Book review

Tolkien and the \u3ci\u3eGawain\u3c/i\u3e-poet

One of Tolkien’s major academic works was the edition he prepared, with E.V. Gordon, of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Yet this poem is only one of four in identical dialect (an important point to Tolkien) and in the same manuscript. This paper considers the philological issues these poems raise, and shows how the theories, eccentricities and linguistics of the Gawain-poet were read and used by Tolkien

Tolkien as a Post-War Writer

The Lord of the Rings, though unique in many ways, is only one of a series of fantasies published by English authors before, during, and just after World War II, works united in their deep concern with the nature of evil and their authors’ belief that politics had given them a novel understanding of this ancient concept. This paper sets Tolkien in this contemporary context and considers what has been unique in his understanding of the modern world

Hard Reading

The fifteen essays collected in Hard Reading argue that science fiction has its own internal rhetoric, relying on devices such as neologism, dialogism, semantic shifts, the use of unreliable narrators. It is a “high-information” genre which does not follow the Flaubertian ideal of le mot juste, “the right word”, preferring le mot imprévisible, “the unpredictable word”. Science fiction derives much of its energy from engagement with vital intellectual issues in the “soft sciences”, especially history, anthropology, the study of different cultures, with a strong bearing on politics. Both the rhetoric and the issues deserve to be taken much more seriously than they have been in academia, and in the wider world. Hard Reading is also a memoir of what it was like to be a committed fan, from teenage years, and also an academic struggling to find a place, at a time when a declared interest in science fiction and fantasy was the kiss of death for a career in the humanities

Riflessioni su alcune scelte traduttive in lingua inglese (Morris, Tinker, Tolkien, Heaney e Porter)

This essay takes into account some English translations of the Old English poem Beowulf. Matter of specific investigation is the passage of the coming of Grendel to the Danes' court Heorot. As the translations of Beowulf are countless, only specific and emblematic cases – both in prose and verse – are analysed. Then, the translations by William Morris, Chancey Brewster Tinker, J.R.R. Tolkien, Seamus Heaney and John Porter are compared trying to ascertain the approach of those translators to the Old English text and furthermore the intentions they had in rendering the poem into Modern English. The big problem that all the translators consciously tackled was the chronological and linguistic distance of Beowulf that had to be solved in some way. Choices and strategies differ from one version to another, but every solution demonstrates a specific attention to the musicalness of the original together with a deep awareness for the tradition that the Old English poem embodies

Hard Reading

The fifteen essays collected in Hard Reading argue that science fiction has its own internal rhetoric, relying on devices such as neologism, dialogism, semantic shifts, the use of unreliable narrators. It is a “high-information” genre which does not follow the Flaubertian ideal of le mot juste, “the right word”, preferring le mot imprévisible, “the unpredictable word”. Science fiction derives much of its energy from engagement with vital intellectual issues in the “soft sciences”, especially history, anthropology, the study of different cultures, with a strong bearing on politics. Both the rhetoric and the issues deserve to be taken much more seriously than they have been in academia, and in the wider world. Hard Reading is also a memoir of what it was like to be a committed fan, from teenage years, and also an academic struggling to find a place, at a time when a declared interest in science fiction and fantasy was the kiss of death for a career in the humanities