Tolkien For Beginners will introduce the reader to the
multilayered depth and breadth of Tolkien's tales of Middle-earth, what
critics, following Tolkien's lead, refer to collectively as his
legendarium.
J.R.R. Tolkien sweeps us away to a distant time and place that is at the
same time, our own time and place. He takes us to a world where
difficult choices must be made and are made, where character is defined
by those choices, and where redemption is possible though not always
embraced.
The Lord of the Rings taps a deep root in the human psyche. There is
much death, destruction, and defeat in Tolkien's world, but there is
even more friendship, courage, and hope. What one remembers when one
finishes reading The Lord of the Rings is not the vice of the
villains, as strong and as well drawn as it is, but the virtue that
empowers the heroes to resist it, even at the cost of their own lives.
It will be the goal of Tolkien For Beginners to introduce the
reader to the multilayered depth and breadth of Tolkien's tales of
Middle-earth. To do justice to the full dimensions of that legendarium,
author Louis Markos will speak in two voices: that of the storyteller
who loves the stories he tells and that of the critic who seeks to
identify and explicate key themes from those stories. In his telling and
analysis, he will treat the legendarium both as a collection of
secondary-world myths with their own integrity and as a reflection of
Tolkien's Catholic worldview.
