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Northern Courage In Middle-earth
The medievalist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Among these are Norse mythology, which depicts a reckless bravery that Tolkien named Northern courage. For Tolkien, this was exemplified by the way the gods of Norse mythology knew they would die in the last battle, , but they went to fight anyway. He was influenced, too, by the Old English poems ''Beowulf'' and '' The Battle of Maldon'', which both praise heroic courage. He hoped to construct a mythology for England, as little had survived from its pre-Christian mythology. Arguing that there had been a "fundamentally similar heroic temper" in England and Scandinavia, he fused elements from other northern European regions, both Norse and Celtic, with what he could find from England itself. Northern courage features in Tolkien's world of Middle-earth as a central virtue, closely connected to luck and fate. The protagonists of '' The ...
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Medievalist
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in ''the A* search algorithm'' or '' C*-algebra''). In English, an asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in sans-serif typefaces, six-pointed in serif typefaces, and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words. In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication. History The asterisk has already been used as a symbol in ice age cave paintings. There is also a two thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the , , which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen i ...
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Pietas
''Pietas'' (), translated variously as "duty", "religiosity" or "religious behavior", "loyalty", "devotion", or "filial piety In Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism, and Daoist ethics, filial piety (, ''xiào'') (Latin: pietas) is a virtue of respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors. The Confucian '' Classic of Filial Piety'', thought to be written around the lat ..." (English "piety" derives from the Latin), was one of the chief virtues among the ancient Romans. It was the distinguishing virtue of the Founding of Rome, founding hero Aeneas, who is often given the adjective, adjectival epithet ''pius'' ("religious") throughout Virgil's epic ''Aeneid''. The sacred nature of ''pietas'' was embodied by the divine personification Pietas, a goddess often pictured on Roman coins. The Greek equivalent is ''eusebeia'' (εὐσέβεια). Cicero defined ''pietas'' as the virtue "which admonishes us to do our duty to our country or our parents or other blood relations." The man ...
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The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as ''The Daily Telegraph & Courier''. Considered a newspaper of record over ''The Times'' in the UK in the years up to 1997, ''The Telegraph'' generally has a reputation for high-quality journalism, and has been described as being "one of the world's great titles". The paper's motto, "Was, is, and will be", appears in the editorial pages and has featured in every edition of the newspaper since 19 April 1858. The paper had a circulation of 363,183 in December 2018, descending further until it withdrew from newspaper circulation audits in 2019, having declined almost 80%, from 1.4 million in 1980.United Newspapers PLC and Fleet Holdings PLC', Monopolies and Mergers Commission (1985), pp. 5–16. Its ...
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Jane Chance
Jane Chance (born 1945), also known as Jane Chance Nitzsche, is an American scholar specializing in medieval English literature, gender studies, and J. R. R. Tolkien. She spent most of her career at Rice University, where since her retirement she has been the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor Emerita in English. Education and career Chance earned her BA from Purdue University in 1967 and her MA (1968) and PhD (1971) from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She taught at the University of Saskatchewan and then moved to Rice University in 1973 to teach Old English literature; she was the first woman appointed to a tenure-track position in the English department there. She was appointed to the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in 2008 and became emerita upon her retirement in 2011. She is founder president of the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages. At Rice, Chance established what became the Medieval Studies Program and also headed the first Women ...
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Marjorie Burns
Marjorie Burns is a scholar of English literature, best known for her studies of J. R. R. Tolkien. Biography Marjorie Jean Burns was born in 1940. She gained her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an emeritus professor of English at Portland State University, having worked on the faculty there for over thirty years. She lectured on English literature and Tolkien, writing many papers on these topics. She married the geologist Scott Burns, also at Portland State University, and Don S. Wilner. She has four children. She co-edited the ''J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia'', and contributed four articles to it on topics including Old Norse literature and the giant spider Shelob. Reception C. W. Sullivan III, reviewing her 2005 book ''Perilous Realms'' for the '' Journal of Folklore Research'', found it both praiseworthy and problematic. He liked Burns's discussion of the English prejudice against the Celts, and of Tolkien's dislike of frivolous post-Shakespeare f ...
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High Fantasy
High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot. Brian Stableford, ''The A to Z of Fantasy Literature'', (p. 198), Scarecrow Press, Plymouth. 2005. The term "high fantasy" was coined by Lloyd Alexander in a 1971 essay, "High Fantasy and Heroic Romance", which was originally given at the New England Round Table of Children's Librarians in October 1969. Characteristics High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the "real" or "primary" world. This secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set on Earth, the primary or real world, or a rational and familiar fictional world with the inclusion of magical elements. The romances of William Morris, such as '' The Well at the World's End'', set in an imaginary medieval wor ...
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Tolkien And The Norse
Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Among these are Norse mythology, seen in his Dwarves, Wargs, Trolls, Beorn and the barrow-wight, places such as Mirkwood, characters including the Wizards Gandalf and Saruman and the Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron derived from the Norse god Odin, magical artefacts like the One Ring and Aragorn's sword Andúril, and the quality that Tolkien called " Northern courage". The powerful Valar, too, somewhat resemble the pantheon of Norse gods, the Æsir. Places Middle-earth In ancient Germanic mythology, the world of Men is known by several names. The Old English ''middangeard'' is cognate with the Old Norse ''Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology, transliterated to modern English as '' Midgard''. The original meaning of the second element, from proto-Germanic ''gardaz'', was "enclosure", cognate with English terms for enclosed spaces "yard", "garden", and "garth". ''Middange ...
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History Of Middle-earth
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the history of Arda, also called the history of Middle-earth, began when the Ainu (Middle-earth), Ainur entered Arda (Middle-earth), Arda, following the creation events in the Ainulindalë and long ages of labour throughout Eä, the fictional universe. Time from that point was measured using Valian Years, though the subsequent history of Arda was divided into three time periods using different years, known as the Years of the Lamps, the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Sun. A separate, overlapping chronology divides the history into 'Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar'. The first such Age began with the Awakening of the Elves during the Years of the Trees and continued for the first six centuries of the Years of the Sun. All the subsequent Ages took place during the Years of the Sun. Most Middle-earth stories take place in the first three Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar. Major themes of the history are the divine creation of the world ...
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Middle-earth Peoples
The fictional races and peoples that appear in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth include the seven listed in Appendix F of ''The Lord of the Rings'': Elves, Men, Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents, Orcs and Trolls, as well as spirits such as the Valar and Maiar. Other beings of Middle-earth are of unclear nature such as Tom Bombadil and his wife Goldberry. Ainur The Ainur were angelic spirits created by Eru Ilúvatar at the Beginning. The Ainur who subsequently entered the physical world of Middle-earth were the Valar ("powers"), though that term came to refer primarily to the mightiest among them., " Ainulindale" Lesser spirits were called the Maiar. Most of the Valar and Maiar withdrew from Middle-earth to the Undying Lands of Valinor, though some of the Maiar assumed mortal forms to help or hinder the peoples of Middle-earth, such as the Istari (Wizards), Melian, Balrogs, and the Dark Lord Sauron., "Valaquenta", "Of the Maiar" and "Of the Enemies" Wizards ...
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Tolkien's Languages
The English philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien created a number of constructed languages, including languages devised for fictional settings. Inventing languages, something that he called ''glossopoeia'' (paralleling his idea of ''mythopoeia'' or myth-making), was a lifelong occupation for Tolkien, starting in his teens. An early project was the reconstruction of an unrecorded early Germanic language which might have been spoken by the people of ''Beowulf'' in the Germanic Heroic Age. The most developed of his glossopoeic projects was his family of Elvish languages. He first started constructing an ''Elvin tongue'' in while he was at King Edward's School, Birmingham. He later called it Quenya (), and he continued actively developing the history and grammar of his Elvish languages until his death in 1973. In 1931, he held a lecture about his passion for constructed languages, titled ''A Secret Vice''. Here he contrasts his project of artistic languages constructed for a ...
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Letters Of J
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabet, either as written or in a particular type font. * Rehearsal letter in an orchestral score Communication * Letter (message), a form of written communication ** Mail * Letters, the collected correspondence of a writer or historically significant person ** Maktubat (other), the Arabic word for collected letters **Pauline epistles, addressed by St. Paul to various communities or congregations, such as "Letters to the Galatians" or "Letters to the Corinthians", and part of the canonical books of the Bible * The letter as a form of second-person literature; see Epistle ** Epistulae (Pliny) ** Epistolary novel, a long-form fiction composed of letters (epistles) * Open letter, a public letter as distinguished from private correspond ...
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Beowulf In Middle-earth
J. R. R. Tolkien, a fantasy author and professional philologist, drew on the Old English poem ''Beowulf'' for multiple aspects of his Middle-earth legendarium, alongside other influences. He used elements such as names, monsters, and the structure of society in a heroic age. He emulated its style, creating an impression of depth and adopting an elegiac tone. Tolkien admired the way that ''Beowulf'', written by a Christian looking back at a pagan past, just as he was, embodied a "large symbolism" without ever becoming allegorical. He worked to echo the symbolism of life's road and individual heroism in ''The Lord of the Rings''. The names of races, including ents, orcs, and elves, and place names such as Orthanc and Meduseld, derive from ''Beowulf''. The werebear Beorn in ''The Hobbit'' has been likened to the hero Beowulf himself; both names mean "bear" and both characters have enormous strength. Scholars have compared some of Tolkien's monsters to those in ''Beowulf'' ...
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