If you’re one of the people avoiding the iTunes digital download option for the Extended Edition of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in favour of a Blu-ray or DVD you can hold in your hot little hand, here’s something to tide you over while you wait.
Courtesy of Warner Bros., io9 has this little clip (also embedded below) of Elrond and Gandalf talking about the pros and cons of clearing Smaug from Erebor which Bilbo and Thorin happen to overhear. I won’t say anymore because I know there are a bunch of people out there studiously avoiding EE spoilers.
Glaurung the dragon, one of the chief weapons Morogth used to defeat the Eldar in Beleriand. Artwork: John Howe. In this new TORn library piece, guest writer Dr Timothy Furnish explores dragons and dragon-slaying in the Tolkien-verse. Are there reasons why only Men slay dragons in the world of Arda, and not elves or dwarves? Read on and find out!
Why did Tolkien imagine only men killing dragons?
by Dr Timothy Furnish, PhD.
Dragons were very important to J.R.R. Tolkien, who acknowledged that his very first attempt at fiction-writing, when he was seven, centered around a “great green dragon.”[1]
In his seminal work Beowulf: the Monster and the Critics, Tolkien noted that in myth “there are… many heroes but very few good dragons.”[2] And in On Fairy Stories he confessed that he “desired dragons with a profound desire.”[3]Continue reading “Why did Tolkien imagine only Men killing dragons?”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
“I’m going on an adventure!” In our newest TORn Library feature, Gibbelins muses on the unwedded status of the Fellowship during the Quest to destroy the Ring in The Lord of the Rings. Could it be that Middle-earth adventures are only for bachelors? Continue reading “Are Middle-earth adventures only for bachelors?”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Thanks to our friends at Hobbitfilm.it, we have another seven new art images from The Desolation of Smaug.
Nothing dramatically revealing here, but we do like the moody shot of a swampy Mirkwood forest (is that the Company crossing a vast fallen tree?), and the RA army will undoubtedly appreciate what seems to be a new still of Thorin Oakenshield. Continue reading “Seven new images from the 2014 Desolation of Smaug Desk Diary!”
In this new TORn Library piece, our newest feature writer Gibbelins examines the difference between skill and knowledge and whether the former has an unjustly sullied reputation in Middle-earth as a result of the rash and self-seeking acts of craftsmen such as Saruman and Fëanor.
Two paths of Wisdom
by Gibbelins
The concepts I wish to discuss are best expressed with the Quenya roots ‘curu-‘ and ‘nolo-‘, but I will try not to subject you to the Elvish for the entire essay. Both of these roots have at times been translated as ‘wisdom’, and yet they represent different sides of wisdom and different inclinations. I’ll use the English glosses ‘skill’ and ‘knowledge’ as reasonable approximations. The contrast between the two ideas is, I think, fundamental to Tolkien’s understanding of how to live righteously. Continue reading “On Tolkien’s two paths of wisdom”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
If you’re one of the people avoiding the iTunes digital download option for the Extended Edition of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in favour of a Blu-ray or DVD you can hold in your hot little hand, here’s something to tide you over while you wait.
Thanks to our friends at 
In this new TORn Library piece, our newest feature writer Gibbelins examines the difference between skill and knowledge and whether the former has an unjustly sullied reputation in Middle-earth as a result of the rash and self-seeking acts of craftsmen such as Saruman and Fëanor.