Exploring Tolkien's Middle-Earth

In a long letter to his publisher describing his Middle-earth writings, J.R.R.Tolkien once wrote, “I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fair-story—the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backclothes.” In this course we will explore how Tolkien achieved this, looking at the ideas and relationships running between his romantic fairy-story (The Hobbit), his heroic romance (The Lord of the Rings), and his cosmogonic myth (The Silmarillion).