LIT 81L: Lord of the Rings

University of California, Santa Cruz

Discover the imaginative world and literary form of Tolkien’s 1100-page Lord of the Rings. Get to know the species, landscapes, languages, mythologies, songs, legends, rituals, customs, alliances, animosities, and more. Learn how to connect the book’s form and style to earlier literary traditions and explore why Tolkien’s mid-20th century medieval fantasy still speaks so powerfully to us now. What can Middle-Earth teach us about our own cultural stories, our fraught relationship to nature and technology, the dangers of power, the practice of hope, and the living of a good life?