[Bill Ferny]

I feel honored to have inspired a rant. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] Now, I’m waiting for the illustrators to toss an apple in regards to dental hygiene.

Out of respect for forum policies, I feel compelled to actually post something relevant.

Child’s suggestions are very good. However, I thoroughly believe that Tolkien should be a spring board for further academic pursuits. That’s really were the relevance lies in such writers and thinkers as Shippey and Day (i.e. Tolkien’s Ring) (yeah, that whole irrelevant thing was tongue-in-cheek). They approach Tolkien from the perspective of what he says in regards to this Earth, what his works say about our real world and our real lives. A love for Tolkien can inspire one to pursue many different avenues, such as literature, mythology (very scanty, though, at the graduate level), psychology, philosophy, theology, archeology, cultural anthropology, or (like me) medieval studies, to name just a few. All of these fields are rich and diverse, and well worth thorough research and new breakthroughs, and Tolkien can be the vehicle that brings one to these realms.