Professor Thomas A. Shippey, the world's leading authority on J.R.R. Tolkien and THE LORD OF THE RINGS, will give a lecture open to the public in Mahan Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy on Thursday, Nov. 21, at 7:30 in the evening.
Professor Shippey was Tolkien's successor at Oxford University. He knew Tolkien and has made Tolkien's work his life's study. His two books on Tolkien--THE ROAD TO MIDDLE-EARTH and J.R.R. TOLKIEN: AUTHOR OF THE CENTURY--are definitive treatments of both the man and his mythology.
Prior to teaching with Tolkien at Oxford, Shippey held the Chair of English Language and Medieval Literature at Leeds University (which Tolkien also held early in his career). Professor Shippey currently holds the Walter J. Ong Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University in Missouri.
Professor Shippey says he feels very honored to come to the Academy because he, as an Englishman, is deeply grateful to America for her help during World War II and would like "to give something back."
In any number of recent polls, J.R.R. Tolkien has been declared "the greatest author of the Twentieth Century." Anyone interested in Tolkien's works (and even those who are mystified by the passionate response so many have had to them) should come to hear Professor Shippey and, with him, travel the Road to Middle-earth.