Jul

31

Silmarillion Seminars 23 and 24 are released!

It’s a Silmarillion Seminar Double Header! In Seminar 23 we delve into the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, Chapter 20 of the Quenta Silmarillion, for “Dragon 1.0”. Seminar 24 covers Chapter 21 “Of Turin Turambar”, and dives into even more gloomy territory. This session is aptly named “Don’t Blame it on Turin, Blame it on the Boogie” You can listen to them here or subscribe to The Tolkien Professor feed on iTunes.

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Jul

28

Dr. Olsen’s Dust Jacket Revealed

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has just released the full dust jacket design for Dr. Olsen’s Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.  Get a jump on the September release date and view the full treatment – including blurbs from Tolkien scholars like John D. Rateliff, Michael Drout and Mythgard’s own Veryln Flieger.

Exploring The Hobbit Dust Jacket

To learn even more about Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, visit Mythgard’s Exclusives section where there is a whole page dedicated to this exciting book.

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Jul

27

Fellowship Short Course Now Available

Greetings!  A quick note here to let you know that The Tolkien Professor’s short course on The Fellowship of The Ring, “The Lord of The Rings I” has wrapped up at Mythgard Academy – and the recordings are available for purchase now as a Course Pack!  If you missed the class, you can now get all six lectures for just $45 at shop.signumuniversity.org.  And through July 31st, the Mythgard birthday discount will still take 5% off – just type in code “BIRTHDAY” during check out!

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Jul

25

Faerie and Fantasy 32

Ever wanted to know what it would be like to be loved by a tree? Listen to Faerie and Fantasy episode 32 to find out! The topic of discussion is mortality and immortality in Peter S. Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn”. Find the entire set of Faerie and Fantasy lectures here, or subscribe via iTunes.

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Jul

14

New Course on The Hobbit!

This Fall, The Tolkien Professor will be offering The Story of The Hobbit at Mythgard Institute!

This course will examine the life of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.  We will examine several important precursors of the book, works that helped establish the genre in which Tolkien was writing, or which influenced Tolkien’s own thinking.  We will then read not the final published version of The Hobbit, but the growth of the story in manuscript and typescript, examining carefully how the story developed and in what directions.  We will then turn to the publication and reception ofThe Hobbit, including its adaptation to film.  We’ll end the semester with a discussion of the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit and, after a brief delay, a discussion of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Professor Olsen will be joined in this class by two distinguished guest lecturers: John D. Rateliff, author of The History ofThe Hobbit, and Douglas A. Anderson, author of The Annotated Hobbit, two of the foremost scholars on The Hobbit in the world.

Learn more about The Story of The Hobbit at Mythgard Institute – and enroll today!

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Jul

09

Faerie and Fantasy 31

The Faerie and Fantasy course continues with Peter S. Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn”. You can listen to it on the Faerie and Fantasy main page (here) or subscribe to the Tolkien Professor’s iTunes feed for this and many other Tolkien podcasts.

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Jul

05

Faerie and Fantasy 30

Listen to the final episode on “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (or is it?). You can listen to it here, or subscribe to the Tolkien Professor feed through iTunes.

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Jul

04

First Review of Dr. Olsen’s Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit pronounces book illuminating, author enthusiastic

Good news for those of us waiting ever so patiently until the September release of “The Tolkien Professor” Dr. Corey Olsen’s new book, Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit!

Word from Professor Olsen himself is that blurbs from his fellow Tolkien scholars are coming in now and that the first review, courtesy of Publishers Weekly, is out.  Publishersweekly.com notes that fans of The Tolkien Professor site and podcasts “will be pleased to discover Olsen narrowing his focus here to The Hobbit…” and proclaims it a “work of love backed up by professional experience, this book is packed with information; the author’s infectious enthusiasm pervades his words, ensuring that what could have been a dry work in other hands will retain even a casual reader’s interest.”

Read the full Review here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-547-73946-5

To keep up to date on Reviews and news about Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, visit our Exploring press page: http://www.mythgard.org/exclusives/exploring-the-hobbit/press

You can pre-order copies of Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit on Amazon.com, and signed copies are available by contacting Shannon Wyble at [email protected].  International shipping available; credit card orders only, please.

And of course you can visit The Tolkien Professor website (http://tolkienprofessor.com) to listen to podcasts and learn more about his other endeavors, Signum University and The Mythgard Institute.

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