John R. R. Tolkien

English writer and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (Bloemfontein, today the Republic of South Africa, January 3, 1892 – Bournemouth, England, IX 2, 1973). Studied at the University of Oxford, where he intensively studied classical and Germanic languages; there he later taught Old English (1925–45) and Middle English (1945–59). He wrote fantastic stories and novels inspired by Germanic epics and Norse sagas. In them, he described an imaginary world, Middle-earth, inhabited by different beings: elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs, etc. As a passionate philologist, he also devised special languages ​​for them, mostly based on Finnish and Welsh. His works have been translated into dozens of languages ​​and published in millions of copies. He gained world fame with the three-part novel The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), which was adapted for the screen by director Peter Jackson (2001–03). His work The Hobbit (The Hobbit, 1937) is also extremely popular. Among the philological studies, Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics (1936) stands out. With his work, he had a significant impact on fantasy as a genre in literature, film and visual arts (comics).

Citation: Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. Croatian encyclopedia, online edition. Miroslav Krleža Lexicographic Institute, 2021. Accessed on November 17, 2023.