Understanding The Lord of the Rings : The Best of Tolkien Criticism

Rating:
Summary: Good reprint
Review: It is good that this old classic, which was really the first set of essays on Tolkien that would be useful in a college course, has finally been republished -- as I suggested to Notre Dame Press some time ago. But it is a shame that it does not seem to have been updated with any new essays, or revised versions of the old ones. This book is no longer the best Tolkien criticism available, but it is still highly relevant -- see the essays by Spacks, for instance. I will use it in my course on Fantasy and Philosophy this spring.