{"id":54,"date":"2007-08-04T14:22:40","date_gmt":"2007-08-04T14:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/are-the-appendices-to-the-lord-of-the-rings-worth-reading"},"modified":"2016-10-02T09:55:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T16:55:00","slug":"are-the-appendices-to-the-lord-of-the-rings-worth-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/are-the-appendices-to-the-lord-of-the-rings-worth-reading","title":{"rendered":"Are the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings Worth Reading?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sylvia at Classical Bookworm<\/a> has just finished a second reading of The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/a>, and she asks about the appendices<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Does anyone read them? I’ve made a start and have gleaned one or two tidbits to fill in some gaps the story, but I’m not sure I can make it through the “Chronology of the Westlands” or “The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age.” I suppose I should read them once so I can feel that I’ve read the whole book, but it’s a bit painful. Has anyone else out there read them”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not only have I read them, but to me they’re one of the reasons I love Tolkien so much.\u00c2\u00a0 He was a world-builder, and he called his philosophy of writing “subcreation.”\u00c2\u00a0 He believed that when a writer created a text he was imitating God’s creative action in the universe.\u00c2\u00a0 For more on Tolkien’s beliefs about subcreating see his essay “On Fairy-Stories” and his beautiful but largely unknown story “Leaf by Niggle.”\u00c2\u00a0 Both can be found in The Tolkien Reader<\/em><\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 “Leaf by Niggle” is one of the most poignant and spiritual stories about artistry that I’ve ever read. Anyone who creates anything should read it: writers, painters, architects, and so on.<\/p>\n

So when Tolkien added the appendices to The Lord of the Rings<\/em> it was because there was so much more to his subcreated world than could fit in the narrative.\u00c2\u00a0 No other author in the world has created as believable a fictional backstory as Tolkien has.\u00c2\u00a0 Middle-earth is the most comprehensive imaginative world ever developed.\u00c2\u00a0 The appendices reveal more about that world and its inhabitants.<\/p>\n

To enjoy the appendices and Tolkien’s posthumous publications, one needs to approach them in a different manner than one approaches The Hobbit<\/em> or The Lord of the Rings<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 The reader needs to have the mind-set of a historian, or a student of Middle-earth anthropology.<\/p>\n

For those interested in reading the entire history of Middle-earth from beginning to end, I’ve put together this “Chronological Middle-earth Reading List<\/a>.”\u00c2\u00a0 I give this list out each year to my eighth graders when we read The Hobbit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, yes, the appendices are worth reading, but not in the same way the rest of The Lord of the Rings <\/em>is read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sylvia at Classical Bookworm has just finished a second reading of The Lord of the Rings, and she asks about the appendices: “Does anyone read them? I’ve made a start and have gleaned one...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[270,338,340,339,292],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","tag-classical-bookworm","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-leaf-by-niggle","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-middle-earth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPveS-S","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}