Tolkien's Lost Chaucer

John M. Bowers

Reveals the story of J. R. Tolkien's unpublished and previously unknown book hidden in the Oxford University Press archives
Explores Tolkien's annotated proofs and accompanying notes for the 'Clarendon Chaucer' edition that he abandoned in 1951 after almost 30 years of work
Draws upon a number of previously unpublished writings by Tolkien including unpublished letters and lectures
Shows Tolkien as a brilliant, insightful thinker about Chaucer's language and storytelling and shows the ways that his decades-long work on Chaucer inspired key episodes in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer

John M. Bowers

Description

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer uncovers the story of an unpublished and previously unknown book by the author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked between 1922 and 1928 on his Clarendon edition Selections from Chaucer's Poetry and Prose, and though never completed, its 160 pages of commentary reveals much of his thinking about language and storytelling when he was still at the threshold of his career as an epoch-making writer of fantasy literature. Drawing upon other new materials such as his edition of the Reeve's Tale and his Oxford lectures on the Pardoner's Tale, this book reveals Chaucer as a major influence upon Tolkien's literary imagination.

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer

John M. Bowers

1. Prologue: Concerning Chaucer
2. Unexpected Journeys
3. Four Chaucerians: Walter W. Skeat, Kenneth Sisam, George Gordon, and C.S. Lewis
4. Tolkien as Editor: Text and Glossary
5. The Chaucerian Incubus: The Notes
6. Tolkien as Chaucerian: The Reeve's Tale
7. Chaucer in Middle-Earth
Appendices
Works Cited

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer

John M. Bowers

Author Information

John M. Bowers, Professor of English, University of Nevada Las Vegas

John M. Bowers is an internationally known scholar of medieval English literature with books on Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain Poet. Educated at Duke, Virginia, and Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar, he taught at Caltech and Princeton before settling at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. His work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Great Courses released his lecture series The Western Literary Canon in Context.