Lord of the Rings college course podcast.

I know LOTR has basically gotten to the point of over-saturation in book, movie, and now game culture where it's typical to find people who enjoy bashing it, or who are at least burned out on it. I can understand where they're coming from.

Regardless, I've been listening to a lecture series on Tolkien given by a prof. named Corey Olsen out of Washington College in Maryland. Pretty interesting stuff, if you're a Tolkien fan, or used to be one. He starts with some short story material and then dives in to the Silmarillion, then The Hobbit, and finishes up with LOTR Trilogy. If you're interested, here's the link. He's on iTunes as well under The Tolkien Professor.

www.tolkienprofessor.com/

Figured it was somewhat relevant considering the amount of games based on the Tolkien mythos and also because of the amount of sci-fi/fantasy readers around here.

Anybody else check this guy out?

I listened to a few episodes on The Hobbit. They were pretty good, but it gets REALLY academic in places. Take that how you will.

Sounds like something I should check out.

SanIlDefanso wrote:

They were pretty good, but it gets REALLY academic in places.

That's kind of why I like 'em. Not that I'm an academic type, but it's cool to hear all of the background stuff on Tolkien, his experiences, his work as a linguist and medievalist and how that affected his writings. It shows that regardless of how cliche many of the ideas are that got popularized in large part by LOTR, a lot of care and thought and meaning went into what he wrote.

SanIlDefanso wrote:

They were pretty good, but it gets REALLY academic in places. Take that how you will.

Sounds like Tolkien to me...

Awesometown. I have a LoTR half sleeve so I don't think I can ever get burnt out on Tolkien. Plus The Hobbit was possibly the most important thing in my childhood.

As an English major I was BLESSED to be a senior looking for a seminar when our school's fantasy/sci fi professor offered a Tolkein seminar. Definiately a favorite class of mine.

I just started listening to these, and they're really good. For the longest time I've wanted to hear or read some in-depth critique of Tolkein that isn't intimately tied up with extreme lets-all-speak-Quenya geekery, but this guy seems to hit just the right balance.

I will say, these podcasts are nice because they take Tolkien seriously as a literary icon. That's been an uphill battle for Tolkien fans in the last 20-30 years.

interesting, but not as entertaining as this:

www.myspace.com/lordsoftherhymes