{"id":67962,"date":"2013-01-03T21:59:52","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T02:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=67962"},"modified":"2013-01-03T21:57:33","modified_gmt":"2013-01-04T02:57:33","slug":"the-tolkien-nerds-guide-to-the-hobbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2013\/01\/03\/67962-the-tolkien-nerds-guide-to-the-hobbit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tolkien nerd\u2019s guide to The Hobbit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> For readers of The Hobbit, which became an almost overnight classic following its 1937 debut, the new movie may elicit some puzzlement. Seemingly extraneous flourishes clog up what many remember as a simple fairy tale, and random characters appear at every twist and turn throughout Middle Earth.<\/p>\n

Yet those fans who went on to immerse themselves in J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s wider lore will find inspiration. For the most part, director Peter Jackson does not exercise an extra heaping of artistic license. Rather, Jackson\u2014reportedly something of a nerd himself\u2014borrows from the larger Tolkien literature to create a rich Hobbit tableau.<\/p>\n

\u201cJackson knows the lore pretty well and wanted to bring that larger material in there wherever he could,\u201d said Michael Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College who founded the academic journal Tolkien Studies and edited the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. It\u2019s this so-called textuality\u2014or texts behind texts behind other texts\u2014that lends Tolkien\u2019s work the air of reality, he said, and which Jackson seeks to capture in his films.<\/p>\n

Jackson isn\u2019t free to tap into any detail he wants from Tolkien\u2019s wider works, however. \u201cHe had a very difficult task in that the movie rights extend only to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings,\u201d said John Rateliff, an independent Tolkien scholar and author of The History of the Hobbit. \u201cHe\u2019s well aware that there\u2019s a great deal more material set in that world, but contractually not allowed to use that material in the movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Read More<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For readers of The Hobbit, which became an almost overnight classic following its 1937 debut, the new movie…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":60771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[238,7,4,153,35,6,74,98,148,149,152,154],"tags":[1836,1819],"class_list":["post-67962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christopher_tolkien","category-hobbit-book","category-hobbit-movie","category-tolkien-life","category-lotr-books","category-tolkbooks","category-jackson","category-silmarillion","category-hobbit","category-lotr","category-tolkien","category-tolkien-estate","tag-home-2","tag-unfinished-tales"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t