"Something Has Gone Crack": New Perspectives on J.R.R.Tolkien in the Great War

Janet Brennan Croft & Annika Röttinger (editors)

Cormarë Series No. 41

"Something has gone crack," Tolkien wrote about the first death among his tight-knit fellowship of friends in 1916, and the impact of the war haunted his writing for the rest of his life. In Tolkien's body of work, the Great War serves as a source of imagery, motifs, and examples of military operations and strategy; of central themes about conflict, comradeship, duty, and the destruction of the environment; and of personal trauma which he worked out in meaningful symbolic form throughout his life.

In this volume, we collect a variety of perspectives on the war's impact on Tolkien's writing, building upon earlier work in this area by filling in gaps in the scholarship and incorporating new material. We trace major themes in Tolkien's legendarium that had their roots in, or were heavily influenced by, his war experiences. It is essential to any study of the Great War not to assume that only the most frequently heard voices are important; the experiences and viewpoints of participants outside of the mainstream are also necessary to give us a full picture of the impact of war, and were not neglected by Tolkien. We therefore also explore issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

At this point in the study of J.R.R. Tolkien's life and works, the centrally important topic of his Great War experience is by no means exhausted. Our hope is that this collection is not the last word on the topic, but instead sparks new ideas and future scholarship.

 
table of contents | cover | announcements | more

Table of contents

Janet Brennan Croft
Introduction

Annika Röttinger
Chronology

 
SECTION I:
THE CONDUCT OF WAR:
READING THE GREAT WAR IN MIDDLE-EARTH'S WARS

Tom Shippey and John Bourne
A Steep Learning Curve:
Tolkien and the British Army on the Somme

Glenn E. Peterson
Strategic Blunders in the First Age Great Battles:
Tolkien's Commentary on World War I

Annika Röttinger
The Great War in Middle-earth – or:
Where to Find Modern Warfare in The Lord of the Rings

Tal Tovy
Aspects of Total War in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

 
SECTION II:
BIOGRAPHY: THE PERSONAL BECOMES ART

John Rosegrant
Fault Lines Beneath the Crack

Michael Flowers
Tolkien in East Yorkshire, 1917-18:
A Hemlock Glade, Two Towers, The Houses of Healing and a Beacon

Wilhelm Kuehs
Two Poets at War: J.R.R. Tolkien and Ernst Jünger in the Battle of the Somme, a Semiotic Approach

 
SECTION III:
ROOTS OF MAJOR THEMES OF THRE LEGENDARIUM IN THE GREAT WAR

John Garth
Revenants and Angels: Tolkien, Machen, and Mons

Łukasz Neubauer
"Worried by Silence": Some Possible Resonances of Combat-related Stress in The Lord of the Rings

Victoria Holtz Wodzak
Tolkien Underground: The "Troglodyte War" in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

Molly Volanth Hall
Narrating the Missed Encounter with the Loss of a World:
The Lord of the Rings' Testimony to Modern Ecology

Anna Smol
Bodies in War: Medieval and Modern Tensions in "The Homecoming"

 
SECTION IV:
ALTERITY: RACE, CLASS , GENDER, AND SEXUALITY IN WAR

Lynn Schlesinger
Angels of Care and Houses of Healing in World War I:
Their Possible Influence on Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

Felicity Gilbert
Mighty Men of War: The Impact of Gender and War in the Work of J.R.R. Tolkien

Alicia Fox-Lenz
Contemporary Reflections of War: Soldier-Servant Relationships in The Lord of the Rings and Downton Abbey

Giovanni Costabile
'No Englander May Hinder Me':
Éowyn the Highland Pipe Major and Other Highlights of Tolkien's Awareness of Sexual, Class and Ethnic Divisions in Wartime

About the Authors

 
table of contents | cover | announcements | more

Cover

(click to enlarge)

Cover illustration by Matthias Fechner

 
table of contents | cover | announcements | more

Announcements

Eight book reviews (4th July 2023)
Book reviews in Fafnir (6th April 2023)
Book reviews in Mallorn (6th February 2023)
Review of Something has Gone Crack inMythprint (12th November 2021)
Many reviews (17th July 2020)
New publication, "Something Has Gone Crack": New Perspectives on J.R.R.Tolkien in the Great War (23rd September 2019)
Call for papers (19th December 2017)

 
383 pages, Walking Tree Publishers 2019, Cormarë Series No. 41, Editors: Janet Brennan Croft & Annika Röttinger , ISBN: 978-3-905703-41-2.
 

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