Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories-3 Copy Prepak

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Shippey, Tom

Science Fiction

Oxford University Press

Shippey's classic work, now revised in paperback, explores J.R.R. Tolkien's creativity and the sources of his inspiration. Shippey shows in detail how Tolkien's professional background led him to write "The Hobbit" and how he created a timeless charm for millions of readers.

The Road To Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

William Morrow

Recent polls have consistently declared that J.R.R. Tolkien is "the most influential author of the century," and The Lord of the Rings is "the book of the century." In support of these claims, the prominent medievalist and scholar of fantasy Professor Tom Shippey now presents us with a fascinating companion to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, focusing in particular on The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. The core of the book examines The Lord of the Rings as a linguistic and cultural map and as a response to the meaning of myth. It presents a unique argument to explain the nature of evil and also gives the reader a compelling insight into the unparalleled level of skill necessary to construct such a rich and complex story. Shippey also examines The Hobbit, explaining the hobbits' anachronistic relationship to the heroic world of Middle-earth, and shows the fundamental importance of The Silmarillion to the canon of Tolkien's work. He offers as well an illuminating look at other, lesser-known works in their connection to Tolkien's life.

J.r.r. Tolkien: Author of the Century

Reference

The Road to Middle-earth, Tom Shippey’s classic work, now revised in paperback, explores J.R.R. Tolkien’s creativity and the sources of his inspiration. Shippey shows in detail how Tolkien’s professional background led him to write The Hobbit and how he created a timeless charm for millions of readers. Examining the foundation of Tolkien’s most popular work, The Lord of the Rings, Shippey also discusses the contribution of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales to Tolkien’s great myth cycle, showing how Tolkien’s more “difficult” books can be fully appreciated. He goes on to examine the remarkable twelve-volume History of Middle-earth, written by Tolkien’s son and literary heir Christopher Tolkien, which traces the creative and technical processes by which Middle-earth evolved.

The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology

British & Irish

Mariner Books

Laughing Shall I Die explores the Viking fascination with scenes of heroic death. The literature of the Vikings is dominated by famous last stands, famous last words, death songs, and defiant gestures, all presented with grim humor. Much of this mindset is markedly alien to modern sentiment, and academics have accordingly shunned it. And yet, it is this same worldview that has always powered the popular public image of the Vikings—with their berserkers, valkyries, and cults of Valhalla and Ragnarok—and has also been surprisingly corroborated by archaeological discoveries such as the Ridgeway massacre site in Dorset. Was it this mindset that powered the sudden eruption of the Vikings onto the European scene? Was it a belief in heroic death that made them so lastingly successful against so many bellicose opponents? Weighing the evidence of sagas and poems against the accounts of the Vikings’ victims, Tom Shippey considers these questions as he plumbs the complexities of Viking psychology. Along the way, he recounts many of the great bravura scenes of Old Norse literature, including the Fall of the House of the Skjoldungs, the clash between the two great longships Ironbeard and Long Serpent, and the death of Thormod the skald. One of the most exciting books on Vikings for a generation, Laughing Shall I Die presents Vikings for what they were: not peaceful explorers and traders, but warriors, marauders, and storytellers.

Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings

History

Europe

Reaktion Books

The fifteen essays collected in Hard Reading argue, first, 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". Both ideals shun the facilior lectio, the "easy reading", but for different reasons and with different effects. The essays argue further that 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. Each essay is further prefaced by an autobiographical introduction. These explain how the essays came to be written and in what ways they (often) proved controversial. They, and the autobiographical introduction to the whole book, create between them 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.

Hard Reading: Learning from Science Fiction (Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, 53)

History & Criticism

Liverpool University Press

Product Description Laughing Shall I Die explores the Viking fascination with scenes of heroic death. The literature of the Vikings is dominated by famous last stands, famous last words, death songs, and defiant gestures, all presented with grim humor. Much of this mindset is markedly alien to modern sentiment, and academics have accordingly shunned it. And yet, it is this same worldview that has always powered the popular public image of the Vikings—with their berserkers, valkyries, and cults of Valhalla and Ragnarok—and has also been surprisingly corroborated by archaeological discoveries such as the Ridgeway massacre site in Dorset. Was it this mindset that powered the sudden eruption of the Vikings onto the European scene? Was it a belief in heroic death that made them so lastingly successful against so many bellicose opponents? Weighing the evidence of sagas and poems against the accounts of the Vikings’ victims, Tom Shippey considers these questions as he plumbs the complexities of Viking psychology. Along the way, he recounts many of the great bravura scenes of Old Norse literature, including the Fall of the House of the Skjoldungs, the clash between the two great longships Ironbeard and Long Serpent, and the death of Thormod the skald. One of the most exciting books on Vikings for a generation, Laughing Shall I Die presents Vikings for what they were: not peaceful explorers and traders, but warriors, marauders, and storytellers. Review "Magnificent. . . . Lively, friendly and occasionally barbed. . . . Shippey's magnum opus provides not only an exhilarating, mind-expanding appraisal and retelling of Viking history but also an invitation to discover the cold-iron poetry and prose of the medieval North. Take up that invitation." -- Michael Dirda ― Washington Post“Shippey sails gallantly between the skerries of faculty-room ‘comfort zones,’ defiantly portraying the Vikings ‘in their own terms.’ . . . He shows us that both literary and archaeological evidence can help to bring us closer to the Old Norse mindset, providing fascinating proof of the Vikings’ own intellectual examination of their place in the world.” -- Karin Altenberg ― Wall Street Journal"A lively retelling of some great stories." -- Judith Jesch ― Times Literary Supplement"Today, much of the popular discourse on the Vikings tends to be directed towards the rehabilitation of medieval Europe’s northerly inhabitants as respectable people. In Laughing Shall I Die, Shippey blows this longship out of the water with a thought-provoking and entertaining exploration of the Viking mind-set, which he describes variously as ‘psychopathic’ and a ‘death cult’. . . . Throughout, Shippey’s distinctive voice comes across loud and clear: conversational, intelligent, irreverent, darkly comic—not unlike the Old Norse sagas and poems he explores. Psychopathic death cult or otherwise, I suspect the Vikings themselves would have approved of both the tone and the content." -- Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough ― Literary Review"Fascinating . . . Spirited, engaging, and frequently very funny, this book is as memorable and enjoyable as the medieval stories it explores—an unmissable read for anyone interested in the Vikings." ― BBC History Magazine"Shippey's irresistible new book Laughing Shall I Die is a densely-detailed excavation of the lives, battles, and deaths of the towering figures from the Norse sagas and poems. . . . Flinty, argumentative, bristling with energy—Laughing Shall I Die is not only entertaining and challenging . . . it's also the most Viking Viking book we'll likely see all year." -- Steve Donoghue ― Open Letters Review"Here are two take-aways from Shippey’s latest book: One, 'Viking' was a job description, not a racial or ethnic designation; and two, a quality demanded of those Vikings was a finely honed, mordant sense of humor that perhaps we modern nine-to-five cubicle-dwellers would find difficult to understand. That sense of humor includes composin

Ever since Tolkien’s famous lecture in 1936, it has been generally accepted that the poem Beowulf is a fantasy, and of no use as a witness to real history. This book challenges that view, and argues that the poem provides a plausible, detailed, and consistent vision of pre-Viking history which is most unlikely to have been the poet’s invention, and which has moreover received strong corroboration from archaeology in recent years. Using the poem as a starting point, historical, archaeological, and legendary sources are combined to form a picture of events in the North in the fifth and sixth centuries: at once a Dark and a Heroic Age, and the time of the formation of nations. Among other things, this helps answer two long-unasked questions: why did the Vikings come as such a shock? And what caused the previous 250 years of security from raiders from the sea?

Beowulf and the North before the Vikings (Past Imperfect)

Religion & Spirituality

Arc Humanities Press

Beowulf: Translation and Commentary

Beowulf, composed around 700 A.D., is the first great epic poem in the English language. It tells the timeless story of a hero’s fight against monsters and sets it against a complex background of political intrigue and tribal warfare. Situated in sixth-century Scandinavia, the poem brings to life a magnificent world that fuses history with fantasy.\nTom Shippey’s new translation of Beowulf, reflecting a lifetime of engagement with the poem,makes its story clearer and more compelling than it has ever been. The original Old English text of Beowulf is included along with an extensive and innovative commentary, which guides the reader passage-by-passage through the poem and its criticism.\nIn addition to the text, translation, and commentary, this volume contains an extensive bibliography, a translator’s preface, and an appended essay by Tom Shippey on “Tolkien and Beowulf—A Lifelong Involvement.”

Neidorf, Leonard

Poetry

Uppsala Books

Beowulf, composed around 700 A.D., is the first great epic poem in the English language. It tells the timeless story of a hero's fight against monsters and sets it against a complex background of political intrigue and tribal warfare. Situated in sixth-century Scandinavia, the poem brings to life a magnificent world that fuses history with fantasy. Tom Shippey's new translation of Beowulf, reflecting a lifetime of engagement with the poem, makes its story clearer and more compelling than it has ever been. The original Old English text of Beowulf is included along with an extensive and innovative commentary, which guides the reader passage-by-passage through the poem and its criticism. In addition to the text, translation, and commentary, this volume contains an extensive bibliography, a translator's preface, and an appended essay by Tom Shippey on "Tolkien and Beowulf-A Lifelong Involvement."

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shippey, Tom. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Shippey, Tom

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shippey, Tom. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories-3 Copy Prepak

The Road To Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology

J.r.r. Tolkien: Author of the Century

The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology

Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings

Hard Reading: Learning from Science Fiction (Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, 53)

Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings

Beowulf and the North before the Vikings (Past Imperfect)

Beowulf: Translation and Commentary

Beowulf: Translation and Commentary