UD’s Favorite Nerdy Obsession
There are a lot of ways to celebrate your love for J.R.R. Tolkien, (whose national day was Sept. 22) such as gathering with your friends for good food, taking long walks, or enjoying a smoke. Here at UD, you can even take a class on Tolkien and the German mythology that inspired him.
Dr. Jacob-Ivan Eidt is a specialist in 19th century German literature and music and a lifelong “Lord of the Rings” fan. His “Tolkien and German Myth” class focuses on the Germanic mythology that inspired Tolkien’s own writing of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
Eidt said, “Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ takes ideas from all sorts of things. In one of his essays, he calls it a kind of a soup. And so what we’re basically doing is kind of looking at the ingredients, the dramatic ingredients.”
If you think that you understand everything about Tolkien because you’ve read the “Silmarillion”, think again. Take the time to read the core texts here at UD and embrace Beowulf, the Arthurian legends, and Greek tragedy, most notably the “Oresteia”. Wagner and Tolkien both take inspiration from these sources.
It may come as a shock to UD students and any lover of LOTR knows that Tolkien’s works have not always been popular in the academic community. Eidt has even heard LOTR referred to as “Wagnerian Winnie the Pooh.” But fear not: the academic interest in Tolkien is on the rise. Eidt said “Scholars are warming up then realizing how innovative and how actually important [Tolkien is], because he’s also commenting in many ways about the modern world through this mythical comparison.”
A memorable aspect of Tolkien’s writing is the fantasy setting. While some see it as a reason to discredit his work, Eidt sees it as a benefit. Eidt said, “You can’t read Tolkien the way you would read Jane Austen or the way you would read Shakespeare. There’s this whole world building that he does.”
“Lord of the Rings” can also appeal specifically to UD students because of the book’s Catholic perspectives. Eidt said, “Without him ever mentioning specifically or directly, not only Catholicism, but God or Jesus, Tolkien manages to create a world in which the underpinnings of Catholic culture are very much palpable. You can feel them in everything, the characters in the world, and even in the presence of evil.”
Edit said another reason why LOTR is so popular at UD is “the fact that UD students are a lot of nerds, and professors are nerds, and that it’s a nerdy thing to get involved. Tolkien builds this entire world, and he makes it very appealing to nerds, because nerds like to concentrate on minutia and details of things. And Tolkien is this fantastic smorgasbord of detail and minutia that you can explore forever and ever and ever. You can learn the Elvish language, and you can wear Hobbit capes , and you can know the entire ‘Silmarillion’.”
Eidt said that one of his favorite moments of the LOTR trilogy is the mercy Frodo shows towards Gollum in sparing his life. Eidt said, “Tolkien is kind of showing that maybe you don’t even understand God’s world. You’re just a little person, like a hobbit, you don’t know, or grace or mercy works, but you trust in the end.”
Lastly, Eidt said, “They [hobbits] don’t have these super, you know, badass powers like the elves, or anything like that. Their reliance on virtues is what makes them heroic. Anyone can aspire to do what a hobbit does.”