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A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie is a book by Verlyn Flieger on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, published by The Kent State University Press in 1997, in which meanings behind Tolkien's main works of fiction are explored, as are the eras of thought that had predominant influence on him.
The book is available in paperback and hardback, and is Flieger's second scholarly book concerning Tolkien - following Splintered Light, released in 1983.
Note on the title[]
The term "faërie" is a word of archaic English meaning simply 'fairyland', or 'fantastical'. In circles of fantasy literature, it can be an adjective or a proper noun.
From the publisher[]
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion have long been recognized as among the most popular fiction of the twentieth century, and most critical analysis of Tolkien has centered on these novels. Granted access by the Tolkien Estate and the Bodleian Library in Oxford to Tolkien's unpublished writings, Verlyn Flieger uses them here to shed new light on his betterknown works, revealing a new dimension of his fictive vision and giving added depth of meaning to his writing.
Tolkien's concern with time—past and present, real and "faerie"—captures the wonder and peril of travel into other worlds, other times, other modes of consciousness. Reading his work, we "fall wide asleep" into a dream more real than ordinary waking experience and emerge with a new perception of the waking world. Flieger explores Tolkien's use of dream as time-travel in his unfinished stories "The Lost Road" and "The Notion Club Papers" as well as in The Lord of the Rings and his shorter fiction and poetry. Analyzing Tolkien's treatment of time and time- travel, Flieger shows that he was not just a myth-maker and writer of escapist fantasy but a man whose relationship to his own century was troubled and critical. He achieved in his fiction a double perspective of time that enabled him to see in the mirror of the past the clouded reflection of the present.
A Question of Time places J.R.R. Tolkien firmly in the mainstream of modern writers and will appeal to anyone interested in imaginative fiction.
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