Paper #1: Beginnings and Endings

English 4643: The Worlds of Tolkien

Paper #1: Beginnings and Endings

 For your first ‘Tolkien’ paper, I want you to choose two poems from The Word Exchange that could function as a Preface and an Epilogue to The Hobbit. By this I mean that one poem could introduce and help readers understand some of the themes to look for as they read the book; and for the Epilogue, the poem should help us understand something deeper that we’ve read that might not be obvious from the story itself—something that only the poem can bring out (something allegorical, etc.). So imagine that each poem would be printed before and after the book so readers could experience them as a functional part of the book.

Your paper should introduce each poem and the explain how you see the poem working as an introduction and a summation of the book itself. Be sure to close read some aspects of each poem so we can understand how you read/understand the words, and of course, how they relate to themes and passages of The Hobbit. Quote from Tolkien’s book so we can see these connections, and understand how in some way he is ‘translating’ the ideas of the older poems into a modern fantasy novel. The connections don’t have to be exact or immediately obvious: your paper is merely suggesting that seeing these connections could help us appreciate the story and get more out of it (more than a children’s story, at least!).

REQUIREMENTS:

• Use of 2 poems to have a conversation with the novel
• Close reading of both poems and the novel
• MLA format throughout: cite and introduce sources and provide page numbers, as well as a Works Cited page
• Due Tuesday, February 22nd in class