Presentation on the theme of the lord of the rings. Lord of the Rings
Topic: “Fairytale narration by R. Tolkien“ The Hobbit, or There and Back Again ”(Textbook: Literature Grade 8. Lanin B. A.)
Purpose: To characterize the characters of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, to determine the idea and problem posed by the author in the work
Teacher's word. Today our lesson is devoted to a fairy tale written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, an English professor of literature, a specialist in medieval folklore and mythology.
The magical country invented by him, called Middle-earth, is inhabited by magical creatures: gnomes, elves, goblins, orcs, trolls, wizards, fairy-tale creatures. In his fairy tale, Tolkien showed us a model of the world, "humanity" with its own history, with peoples speaking different languages, with their own laws and moral values.
What peoples inhabit Middle-earth, and how does the author describe them?
Gnomes are small creatures endowed with supernatural power, living in the bowels of the earth and storing their treasures there. They are skilled artisans, able to forge magic rings and swords.
Elves are spirits of the air, living on trees, with the gift of healing and clairvoyance. Their magical music enchants even inanimate nature. Skillful and fearless wars. They speak the Elvish language, Sindarin.
Hobbits are a small people living in "burrows", peaceful and hospitable, lovers of good food and pipe smoking. They have large, brown-furred feet with leather soles, so they never wear shoes. The main characters of the story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" and "The Lord of the Rings" Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins belong to this people.
Goblins are tall, evil and strong creatures that live in underground tunnels. Their dwellings are full of stolen treasures. They are ugly and cruel.
Trolls are ugly, strong, but stupid cannibal giants that live inside the mountain.
Orcs are creatures created from clay by the wizard Saruman. They are strong and cruel, ugly and soulless.
Who are the main characters of the story?
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who went on a long journey to retrieve the dwarven treasure Arkinston.
Wizard Gandalf - an old man with a staff, helping the dwarves.
Thorin Oakenshield is the leader of the Dwarves, fearless and just.
Gollum is a hobbit who has lost his appearance.
Supreme Goblin.
Dragon Smaug.
What problem does Tolkien raise in his tale?
R. Tolkien raises the eternal problem of Good and Evil in his story.
What is the idea of the piece?
Good conquers evil, no matter how hard the struggle is, and no matter what the cost.
Which of the heroes of the story represents the side of Good, and who is on the side of Evil?
Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Thorin Oakenshield and other dwarves perform feats in the name of Good, they are helped by elves, giant eagles, the forest wizard Radagast, Beorn the man-bear.
On the side of evil - goblins, trolls, orcs.
Characterize the characters of "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again"
Bilbo Baggins is a benevolent, homely hobbit who loves home coziness and comfort. He is somewhat cowardly, does not want to go camping for no one knows where and why. But, having gone on a journey against his will, he changes. It reveals unexpected courage and courage, ingenuity and resourcefulness of mind. Bilbo saved the dwarves more than once, he earned the respect and recognition of Thorin Oakenshield, who at first opposed his participation in the campaign. It is he who returns to the dwarves their treasures and the priceless Arkinston diamond. Absolutely not heroic by nature, he was able to accomplish a feat, and not alone.
Gandalf is a wise wizard who took on the difficult mission of the leader of the forces of Good in the fight against Evil. With his wisdom, courage and desire to achieve victory even at the cost of his life, Gandalf rightfully becomes one of the most striking images in the story. It is Gandalf who collects and unites such conflicting heroes.
Thorin Oakenshield is the leader of the twelve dwarfs, the heir to the throne of the kingdom of the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain. A brave, courageous, true leader who earned the respect and devotion of his subjects for his commitment to the idea of returning the dwarves to the Lonely Mountain, which was captured by the dragon Smaug. At the end of the story, Thorin succumbed to the greed inherent in the dwarves, the greed of possessing countless treasures, but atoned for his guilt by death. It seems to me that one cannot blame him for this weakness.
Lesson summary: We met the heroes of John Ronald Rowell Tolkien's story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again"
We learned about the world of Middle-earth, created by the imagination of the author of the fairy tale, about the peoples inhabiting this world.
Identified the problem and the idea of the work.
"The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" "Welcome to Middle-earth!"
(grade 5)
Anokhina S.V.,
teacher of Russian language and literature
MBOU secondary school No. 17 Reftinskiy
Lesson Objectives:
1. educational - arouse interest in the personality of J.R.R. Tolkien, to determine the level of students' perception of the read work, to introduce them into a special emotional world, to create a "presence effect", to cultivate a sense of beauty;
2. developing - the development of imagination and memory, the formation of interpersonal communication skills;
3. educational improvement of reading skills; familiarization of students with individual facts of the biography of the writer, stimulating the independence of students in the search for answers to the questions posed on the topic.
Lesson type: Literature lesson using interdisciplinary connections (English and music).
Types of learning activities: student performance, expressive reading of passages, independent work.
Equipment: a map of a magical country, audio recordings, an exhibition of Tolkien's books, Russian and English names of fairy-tale creatures on a board, drawings, computer presentations.
* lesson includes 2 lessons
Epigraph to the lesson:
“... In essence, I am a hobbit (in everything but size). I love gardens, trees, rural landscape not spoiled by cars, I smoke a pipe, I love simple hearty food ... I'm crazy about mushrooms, my humor is not intricate, I go to bed early and get up late. And I don't travel much...
J.R.R. Tolkien
During the classes
1. Organizational moment.
2. Introductory speech of the teacher. (1 slide presentation)
Teacher: Tolkien is the most popular English writer. His books are read all over the world, and after the release of the film trilogy "The Lord of the Rings", interest in the writer's work increased. The beginning of numerous adventures of his heroes was a small fairy tale "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again". You recently read this fairy tale and let's analyze the history of its creation and discover the secret of its popularity.
Working with a writer's biography
Student's personal message. Sample text.
Tolkien was born in Africa. The name given to him at birth sounded luxurious: John Ronald Reuel. Little is left of South Africa in children's memory: a tarantula has bitten, snakes live in a barn and you can’t go there as a child, monkeys jump along the fence, jackals howl at night and lions roar. Perhaps nothing more. From the Orange Republic they moved to England. The father died suddenly when the future writer was 4 years old. When he was 12 years old, he also lost his mother. At the age of 18, Tolkien became a scholarship holder at Oxford University (scholarships then, unlike our current universities, were given only to those students who passed the entrance exams not just for “five”, but brilliantly). At 21, he got married, and two months after the wedding, he volunteered for the front. The First World War was on. Tolkien spent 4 months on the front lines in the midst of the bloodiest battle: he walked or crawled under fire through the mud and dead bodies side by side with others, and the soldiers considered him theirs. Then - typhus. That was the end of Tolkien's troubles. The remaining half century passed quietly. He became a respected professor, a connoisseur of many languages, a brilliant specialist in the Middle Ages. In family life, Tolkien was a homebody, a loving husband and father. But in literature, Tolkien earned the title of one of the most widely read authors of the second half of the twentieth century.
- Okay, now let's listen to a message about the history of the creation of The Hobbit
Student's personal message. Approximate text of the message about the history of the creation of The Hobbit.
The fate of Tolkien's books is amazing, incredible, fantastic. His works have been translated into dozens of languages around the world. The total circulation of "The Hobbit" in the American publishing house "Ballantyne" is already approaching 15 million. The total circulation of Tolkien's works today is eight figures. And it all started like this. Tolkien claimed that he wrote the book that brought him worldwide fame by accident. I was checking my exam essay one night (he was already a professor at Oxford University) and came across a blank sheet. On it, he wrote: “There was a hole in the ground, and in the hole there lived and there was a hobbit.” And I thought, "what would not hurt, would find out what kind of hobbit."
Tolkien's family grew up three sons and a daughter. For them, the story about the travels and adventures of the hobbit Bilbo was invented. The book appeared in 1937. Since then, The Hobbit has been released every year in America and the UK. The book was translated into Russian in 1976.
- Let's read Tolkien's book, how does it begin. (Reading of the beginning by the teacher and students, you can turn on the audio recording.)
- Well, let's see how you know English, because Tolkien is an English writer. The board contains the names of fairy-tale creatures from the book in Russian, your task is to find the corresponding names in English. (On the board with magnets attached in one column - Russian words, in the second their English equivalents, and the English words are given mixed up, you need to move the English words to the Russian ones. The students work in a chain. It is possible to use an interactive whiteboard, if there is one in the class.)
The result on the board after the work of schoolchildren:
THE HOBBIT HOBBIT
ELF ELF
GNOME DWARF
WARG WARG
BEORN
TROLL TROLL
GOLLUM GOLLUM
WIZARD WIZARD
EAGLES EAGLES
DRAGON DRAGON
GOBLIN GOBLIN
SPIDER SPIDER
(Comment: it is possible to use more names of creatures, then pictures of these creatures are shown)
Demonstration of presentations of images of northern mythology
(presentation slide)
Gnomes - in the mythology of the peoples of Europe, small creatures similar to people living underground, in the mountains or in the forest. They are the size of a child or a finger, but are endowed with supernatural strength, wear long beards, and live much longer than humans. In the bowels of the earth, the gnomes keep treasures - precious stones and metals; they are skilled artisans, they can forge magic rings, swords.
Goblins are tall, strong and evil mythical creatures that look like humans, but are ugly and cruel. Goblins live in dungeons, caves, underground tunnels, exploit slaves, steal other people's treasures.
Dragon - a winged (flying) serpent, a mythological creature, often with several heads and the body of a snake, lizard or crocodile and the wings of a bird. He is considered the patron of treasures, which could only be obtained after killing the dragon.
Spider - in mythopoetic traditions, cold cruelty, greed, malice, cunning are associated with the image of spiders.
A werewolf - in the beliefs of many peoples, a creature that can change human appearance and turn into an animal, an object.
The eagle is a symbol of heavenly (solar) power, fire and immortality; one of the most common deified creatures - symbols of the gods and their messenger.
Trolls are giants in Norse mythology. They live inside the mountains, where they keep their treasures. They are ugly, have great power, but are stupid. In folklore, trolls, as a rule, harm people, kidnap them and livestock, and turn out to be cannibals.
Elves are spirits of the air, beautiful little people about an inch tall, like Andersen's Thumbelina, in hats made of flowers. They can live in trees, which in this case cannot be cut down. They like to dance in moonlight; their music enchants listeners, makes even inanimate nature dance. In a number of beliefs, elves have their own kings, wage wars.
(Demonstration of an excerpt from the Lord of the Rings trilogy to compare the characters in the film and the heroes of the Explorers presentations.)
- And now, let's look at the etymology of the word "hobbit" (student's individual message)
Student: The word “hobbit”, according to Tolkien himself, is an abbreviated form of the word “Holbytlan”, that is, “Holedwellers” - “denizens of holes”. Tolkien begins his story like this: “Once upon a time there was a hobbit in a hole under the ground. Not in some vile dirty damp water, where worm tails stick out on all sides and a disgusting smell of mold, but also not in a dry sandy bare hole, where there is nothing to sit on and nothing to eat. No, the hole was a hobbit, which means it was well-maintained.” And then a detailed description of a cozy hole, on the page. The author attached such importance to the dwelling of the hobbit. There is another version. The word "hobbit" combines the word "rabbit" (rabbit) with the Middle English word "hob". This word was called small magical creatures in English folklore. The similarity of a hobbit with a rabbit was repeatedly pointed out by the writer himself in the text of a fairy tale. When Bilbo fell into the clutches of the trolls, one of them, looking at the shaggy legs of the hobbit, said: "You are an unfortunate rabbit." And the eagle, carrying the hobbit on its back, says to him displeasedly: “Why are you cowardly like a rabbit? Although you do look like a rabbit.” It is the shaggy rabbit legs of the hobbit that help him move silently. No wonder the dwarf Thorin wishes that the wool on the hobbit's feet never falls out.
- Listen to music, pieces by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg "Procession of the Dwarves" ("In the cave of the mountain king") and M.P. Mussorgsky "Dwarf". Listen to them carefully and try to remember the appropriate episodes from the films "The Lord of the Rings", "The Hobbit". (after listening to music, children recall episodes from films that the music evoked in their memory). Can you tell me what the musical compositions are like? How are the gnomes at Grieg? (marching). And now, let's listen to the song of the dwarves, which was performed in the first film about the adventures of Bilbo (listening to either the audio recording of the song, or watching the corresponding fragment from the film). Let's turn to this song in the book (work with the text).
Journey through the map of Middle-earth. (presentation slide)
- Let's try to trace the route of travelers there, to a lonely mountain and back. (Those who wish go to the map and show the route of the travelers, recalling the content of the tale.)
(The maps of Middle-earth are not only displayed on the screen, but also lie on the desks of each student.)
Work with text
Pupils retell their favorite episodes of the story.
An exhibition of Tolkien's books is being held.
Summary of the lesson. Reflection
Conversation with students about what they liked in the lesson, what worked or did not work. Did you like Tolkien's book? Will those who have not yet read it, or have not read it to the end, read it?
Homework.
Draw illustrations for the story or write a short essay (example topics are “The World of Middle-earth”, “Hobbits - who are they?”, “The image of Bilbo Baggins in the story”, “The theme of the struggle between good and evil in the story is eternal”, “The Hobbit” is my favorite book ").
List of sources used
1. Vaysman A.I., Lysenko L.L. Tale of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. 5th grade // Literature at school. 1998. No. 2. S. 149–155.
2. Gakov V. Age of Tolkien // Tolkien J.R.R. Hobbit. Minsk: Higher School, 1992.
3. Myths of the peoples of the world. Encyclopedia: In 2 vols. M., 1991.
4. Muravyov V. Background // Tolkien J.R.R. Keepers. M.: Raduga, 1991. S. 5–27.
5. Sverdlov M. J. R.R. Tolkien and his hero the hobbit // Literature. 1998. No. 32. S. 8–9.
6. Tolkien J.R.R. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. Fairy story. / Translation from English by N. Rakhmanova. Rice. M. Belomlinsky. - L .: Children's literature, 1976.
7. audiobooks-online.com
8. http://tolkienists.ru/
9.muzofon.com
10. en.wikipedia.org
Content:
Introduction
Domestic literary critics about "The Lord of the Rings"
Traditions of the English fairy tale in Tolkien's trilogy
Book language
Bibliography
Introduction.
Tolkien himself that his work is a magical story, wrote in a completely open text, but for some reason this is ignored with persistence worthy of better use. In the essay "On Fairy Stories", Tolkien actually defined the genre in which he worked - faeries - but did not try to define it, saying that the main property of faeries is "indescribability". Nevertheless, Tolkien lists what faerie cannot be, and the properties that this genre must have in order to be itself. Fairy is a story about the supernatural. But the supernatural must be understood here in a special way: “The supernatural can be applied to fairies, if only the prefix “super” is considered as a purely grammatical expression of the superlative degree ... Faeris are simply natural, and they are much closer to the nature of the world than people. Faeris are by no means diminutive, tiny creatures; on the contrary, they are mighty ancient heroes. There is always magic in fairies, and this magic can only exist if there are two conditions, it should never become the subject of ridicule and "should not allow any explanation - no props and crutches suggesting that the story is the figment of the imagination of a dream or dream" 8. Any magical story should be presented as “an indisputable truth, there should not be any mysticism in it, it should not be a dream, a vision, or the fruit of an inflamed imagination. This is how Tolkien defines the fairy genre.
Western authors prefer to talk about the quest genre, that is, about the genre of a special journey. Quest is an ambiguous word. This is at the same time a feat, a path, a search, a task, a goal, and all this taken together. However, in H. Auden's interpretation, the quest genre is very close to the fairy tale genre, as Propp defines it. Auden's The Hero of the Quest enumerates all the same basic elements of his structure as Propp does for the fairy tale.
Domestic literary critics about "The Lord of the Rings".
Nevertheless, before proceeding to consider Tolkien's main book precisely as a fairy tale, a magical story, let's see what Russian literary critics see in The Lord of the Rings.
Professional philologists surprisingly unanimously ignore the existence of Tolkien's work. Two authors who wrote articles on this topic - E. M. Apenko and S. Likhacheva - only fix the fact that it is based on myth and epic, and above all European myth. The reasoning is correct, but too superficial. Researchers are stubbornly trying to find elements of mysticism in Tolkien's work, up to comparing his philosophy with the philosophy of D. Andreev (T. Antonyan). Other authors seem to have set themselves the main goal - to impress the reader with the originality of their thinking: Tolkien is compared with Brecht (K. Kobrin), in The Lord of the Rings they see criticism of technogenic civilization (S. Koshelev), finally, Tolkien is criticized for the lack of realism and serious issues (E. Ivanitskaya). It seems that the only ones who managed to understand Tolkien are his admirers and organizers of Tolkien's games (B. Zhukov, N. Zhukova, Yu. Rubinshtein, N. Prokhorova). They do not pretend to a deep philosophical, philological or cultural analysis of the text, but they do not try to see in it what is not there. A successful attempt to analyze Tolkien's work can also be considered the article by V. Kuritsyn "Weakness will save the world"10. It is curious that Kuritsyn practically repeated what Tolkien's friend, Clive Staples Lewis, said about the trilogy. In his article, which, by the way, is titled “Debunking Power” (almost the same as Kuritsyn’s), he emphasizes that hobbits turn out to be heroes precisely because they are not heroes: “On the one hand, the whole world rushes into battle: the book rings from the roar of hooves, the singing of trumpets, the gnashing of steel that crossed steel. On the other hand, far, far away, two tiny pitiful figures make their way (like mice on a pile of slag) through the twilight of Mordor. And we are constantly aware that the fate of this world depends much more on these small steps than on gigantic movements. This is an invention of a higher order structure. It extraordinarily enhances the pathos, irony and grandeur of history.
The desire of even serious philologists to attribute Tolkien's work to the fantasy genre is striking. Undoubtedly, Tolkien is the creator of this genre, but he does not belong to it in any way. This statement is not at all paradoxical. Of course, Dostoevsky wrote the first Russian detective story, and Gogol was the father of science fiction. Nevertheless, to define Crime and Punishment as a detective story, and Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka as a fantasy, is to reveal one's profound literary ignorance. Knowledge of the above facts gives a lot for the analysis of the features of the genre of detective and fantasy, but it is hardly possible to analyze the work of Dostoevsky and Gogol only as a detective or only as a mystic. Of course, the temptation to read "Dead Souls" according to Jung or according to Freud (or even according to the Lenormand girl) is very great, and very interesting things can be found in this. However, it is hardly reasonable to completely ignore the literary situation of the 19th century when analyzing the work of these authors. The successor of Kenneth Graham's books, William Horwood, quite reasonably remarked: “Graham himself ... was least of all inclined to fill his text with some kind of hidden meaning, but this does not mean that there are no such allusions and associations in it at all ... I was worried about that special inner meaning , those hidden allusions that can be found in the Willow stories, or can be dissolved in them "12, and thanks to the fact that Horwood decided to see hidden allusions in the classic literary fairy tale, his "willow stories" arose, and thanks to the fact that "Alice ' Carroll was read by an adult, Gardner's Annotated Alice arose. It is senseless to reproach these critics for going against the will of the author, and one cannot address such a reproach to the researchers of Tolkien's work. They have the right to find mysticism, fantasy, hidden allusions, prophecies and even a new religion in his works. Moreover, not only domestic, but also English-language criticism is engaged in this (it is enough to read the works of T. Shippi, R. Zimbard, V. Makhnach). Even more often, English-language criticism prefers to deal not with Tolkien's work itself, but with the geography, history, mythology and linguistics of his artistic world.
We would like to dwell on the most traditional moment - on the origins of his work. For the British, these origins are obvious enough, but for us, apparently not. We manage not even to notice the obvious similarity between The Jungle Book by R. Kipling and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. Tolkien. But the parallels suggest themselves. In both cases, we have an epic narrative based on an ancient myth (moreover, a European myth, since Kipling does not rely on the Hindu tradition in any way, but rather on Homer). The similarity of the heroes, initially alien to this world, but nevertheless called upon to save it, is also quite obvious. It is surprising why, while admiring the world of Tolkien, no one tries to compare it with the world of Pamela Travers: her "Mary Poppins" is downright sublimation of the mythological. In general, comparing The Jungle Books and The Lord of the Rings is an interesting and very rewarding task, just like comparing the books of Tolkien and Travers, Tolkien and Barry.
Traditions of the English fairy tale in Tolkien's trilogy.
In order to talk about Tolkien's work in line with the traditions of the English literary fairy tale, one must first describe these traditions. (A detailed analysis of the genre of a literary fairy tale in relation to its English incarnation was given by us in the work “Stars burn in the sky brighter than diamonds” (on the genre specifics of an English literary fairy tale) “13, we will dwell on its main provisions here.)
How was the English fairy tale created? It was a classic story, because it was just told, told to the audience. Horwood describes this process very well: “Had I been born before the first books appeared, I would be one of those who, emerging from behind the palisade, entered the circle of light cast by the communal fire, sat down on the ground and began the story, thus earning for themselves the right to food, drink, and a safe place to sleep. If you were born that way, then you still won’t be able to live differently. The authors of English fairy tales were “born” as such people, and all fairy tales were primarily told as fairy stories. Their listeners, as a rule, were children. Carroll told the story of Alice Lindell, Lofting retold the story of Dr. Doolittle in letters to his children, their sons became the first listeners of Graham and Milne's tales, and Barry composed Peter Pan for the young Davises. Tolkien also told some of the plots from his books to his three children, and the first critic of The Hobbit was the son of the editor of the Allen and Unwin publishing house. It was his rave reviews that prompted the editor to publish such an unusual work.
In great literature and official literary criticism, it has long been believed that the heroes of great literature behave independently of the will of their creators. We will not quote here Pushkin's well-known statement about the behavior of his Tatyana, nor will we quote the critics of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. It is quite obvious that a truly full-fledged literary work that lives its own life and its characters do not particularly consider the will of the author. The heroes of the English literary fairy tale, in this sense, completely unrestrained themselves, they not only gained independence on the pages of the book, but themselves quite arbitrarily appeared to those people who described them. Even the writers themselves zealously denied their authorship. Carroll, in a letter to one of his young addressees, wrote: “Please never praise me. I am just a confidant, nothing more. Barry responded to his critics: “I don't remember writing this play… I never doubted that I created Peter by rubbing the five of you together…”16. Tolkien claimed that he only retold the Scarlet Book of the Westfall by Frodo and Bilbo Baggins.
A fairy tale is always quite naturally connected with a myth. As a matter of fact, this is a myth, only simplified, coarsened, having forgotten about its roots. The literary fairy tale, being a derivative of the folk tale, it would seem, should go even further away from the myth. If we turn to the fairy tales of Voltaire, Hoffmann, Andersen, Perrault, then we will just discover this. They are trying to "literate" the folk tale in accordance with the literary traditions of their time, with the tastes of the Enlightenment, Romanticism or Rococo. The English fairy tale, on the contrary, returns to its origins, to myth. Without exception, critics admire the full-bloodedness and vitality of the myth created by Tolkien, saying that before this world literature did not know anything like it. World literature - perhaps. But English literature knew all this very well and made excellent use of it. The Jungle Books is undeniably epic. It is enough to listen to the speech of the characters. However, all the other signs of an epic poem are evident in Kipling's work; it is not for nothing that the book is half written in verse, because the quivering fabric of myth cannot withstand prose language for a long time. A complete description of the adventures of Mary Poppins is, in general, an extensive excursion through European myths, which the young Banks make with their mentor. (By the way, Pamela Travers was a well-known expert on mythology and traveled all over the world to lecture on this topic.)
Ancient gods and heroes inhabit the pages of books and other writers. At the same time, the most favorite character is the god, personifying the life-giving force of nature, acting either as Pan, or directly as Dionysus-Bacchus-Bacchus. In fairy tales, he appears under different names. Barry's is Peter Pan, Kipling's is Puck, Graham's is He who played the flute. Entire strings of Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian gods and gods travel through the pages of Nesbit's books. These examples can be continued. We list them in such detail simply because most of our readers do not know these authors or do not associate them with any single tradition.
Tolkien didn't invent anything new. He just took not particularly old and not particularly forgotten and ingeniously embodied it. Perhaps the Tolkien myth is described more fully and in more detail than the myth of Kipling or Barry, but the idea itself was by no means revolutionary. And we know Tolkien's mythology in such detail only because The Silmarillion was published, a draft that was never intended for the public. Drafts by Kipling or Travers are simply not available to us. Therefore, there is no material for comparison, at least if you work within our country. The Internet does not publish such things either. Tolkien's myth is carefully crafted, but it's also carefully crafted by other writers. We have no doubt that Gandalf is acquainting the hobbits with the actual history of Middle-earth, with events that actually took place; but in the same way, we have no doubt that Hathi is really recounting an ancient myth, telling how fear came to the jungle. In fact, this “realness” is the main feature of the quest. The quest will turn into a second reality only if there are no inexplicable voids and logical contradictions in it, if laws, not desires, rule in it. These laws may not coincide with the laws of our world, but they must be equally understandable and immutable. The history of such a world may be unusual, but it should not contradict our understanding of history. Finally, nothing in this world should be contrary to our moral experience. This is exactly the world of the English fairy tale, and, in particular, the world of Tolkien.
Perhaps Nesbit's retellings look more didactic against this background, but this is understandable, the fascination with archaic myths in connection with the excavations that the British were actively conducting in the East is quite understandable, this is a tribute to the fashion of that time, and fashion always has a bad effect on literary creativity. And even when we are talking about, it would seem, the most everyday things, we still find traces of some other world, parallel to ours, with its own geography and history, with its own myths and legends. Just look at how Barry describes the Kensington garden. For adults, this is just a small park in the center of London, but for a child, this is a whole country. No wonder all the toponyms of this country - Big Alley, Descent, Kids' Trail, Round Pond, Serpentine Lake - are written with a capital letter. It has its own magical places, such as the Secco Tree or the Well of the Holy Speech. This is where Mamie's magical house appears and disappears every night. Here the king and queen of the elves with their retinue and Peter Pan on a shaggy goat travel at night. Similarly, the geography of Mary Poppins Adventure Park is described in detail. In the same way, in the toy land where Winnie the Pooh and his friends live, where Christopher Robin lives up to a certain point, there is Pooh's Edge, The Enchanted Place, Six Pines, The Place Where Beeki and Byaka Wasn't, the North Pole discovered by Pooh, and etc.
Tolkien only changes orientation. Prior to this, borrowings came mainly from ancient mythology, which is traditionally a piggy bank of stories for European literature, starting with Virgil, as well as from Eastern mythology. Interest in the myths of India, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt was due to the very political history of England, and the history of its culture. To its national roots, to the mythology of the Celts and other peoples inhabiting the north-west of Europe, the English fairy tale turned less willingly. However, the desire for the exotic was quite justified, although here, too, Tolkien had his forerunners. In Pak's Tales, the ancient Germanic god Weland, Weland the blacksmith, the good little Robin, the English brownie act; elven kings and queens. So Tolkien was not an innovator in that sense. Another thing is that, being a professional philologist and researcher of the German-Scandinavian epic, he, of course, was deeper than Kipling, who did not have an academic education.
Let us now turn to the very plot and problems of Tolkien's trilogy. One of his Western critics noted, either admiring or, on the contrary, condemning him, that Tolkien in the 20th century managed to create a world "in which Good triumphs over Evil, and moral problems are taken seriously." I wonder what other world can exist in a myth? Moral issues are always taken seriously here, and good and evil are always fighting. At the same time, evil can often win (by the way, this happens in Tolkien), and the victory of good here is by no means universal and not absolute. Good must win, but in reality it does not always succeed. Sauron is repeatedly reborn from the ashes and, apparently, will be reborn again in the fourth age. Gandalf says: “Another evil will inevitably appear in the world, perhaps even more: for Sauron is only a servant, a preparer. But this is no longer our concern: we are not called to improve the world, and we are responsible only for the time in which we happened to live”17. He is echoed by the elven lord Celeborn the Wise, however, no longer Tolkien's hero, but the hero of the successors of the great trilogy. In Zhukov's story "Excursion" Celeborn says: "Thanks to you, I now know that evil is not increasing in the world. It’s just that it is not collected in one hand, but poured drop by drop into many creatures… Evil spirits have become more numerous, but safer”18. Sauron, like world evil in general, is indestructible. The most courageous heroes and the most intelligent sages can indulge in evil, and at the same time their fall can be final. Evil destroys many of those who are worthy of life and could live. But evil cannot win completely. This is a known law, and Tolkien simply follows it. Another thing is that this struggle between good and evil is being conducted in all seriousness. It would seem that seriousness is not what we can demand from a fairy tale. But after all, we are not talking about a fairy tale in the full sense of the word, but about a magical story, fairy, and everything is serious in it. This story, according to Tolkien, is supernatural precisely because it is truer and more real than any natural history. Everything here is real and serious, otherwise it simply cannot be. This is not a game, and death here is final and not subject to revision (even Gandalf is only released on bail), parting here takes place forever, and the past goes away forever. Such a depth of interpretation of the problem and the absence of frivolity, of course, require serious mental work from the reader.
In an English fairy tale, everything is always serious. Mowgli the Frog actually risks his life fighting Shere Khan; this is not a feat of a fabulous hero who is always obliged to win, this is a battle of a weak teenager with a ruthless lord of the jungle, and his outcome towards a happy ending is not predetermined. The same thing happens when Billy the King in Nesbit's story fights the dragon. The outcome of the fight between a little boy and a formidable chthonic monster is not determined until the very end. Billy, unlike the fairytale knight, is not at all sure of his victory, but he must go to this fight, because he, being a king, is responsible to his subjects. The burden that has fallen on Billy is similar to that which weighs down young Frodo Baggins. “What answers do you need? Why are you not chosen for valor? No, not for valor. You have no strength, no wisdom. However, you have been chosen, which means that you will have to become strong, wise and valiant.
The bitterness of parting that permeates us in the last pages of Tolkien's trilogy is always present in the English tale. Parting is always inevitable, Leaves the jungle that raised him Mowgli, leaves childhood from Barbara and John Banks, and then from Anabel, returns to real life, leaving the magical island of Netine to be Wendy. Farewell to the magical world is almost always a farewell to childhood. In Tolkien, this idea is not so clearly emphasized, but it can be traced. The world of a fairy tale is the world of childhood, and it is he who leaves the inhabitants of Middle-earth.
The hero of an English fairy tale is always a child. In this sense, there are no exceptions at all. No bogatyrs, knights, dexterous tailors, peasant sons who turn out to be heroes, mighty kings, etc. in the form of a little boy or girl. Peter Pan, of course, is a god, but he fights Captain Hook, being just a little boy with snow-white milk teeth. When the children of the Pevenzie family return to their country, their appearance is perceived as the appearance of the legendary rabbit Arthur and his knights, but Peter goes to the mortal battle, remaining only an English schoolboy. Billy the King, of course, is already invested with his high rank, but the frightened boy is still fighting the dragon. Who performs the feat in Tolkien? “There were people there, and forest ones, only these undersized people went around everyone - both kings and kings, because there were plenty to devour.”20 Compared to other peoples of Middle-earth, hobbits are the same children, and they appeared in this world relatively recently, and they are not included in any serious adult legends and traditions, and even they did not come out tall, the tall Gondorians perceive halflings as young squires. The hobbits have no wisdom, no military hardening, no experience, no special valor, not even a desire for exploits, and yet the main test falls precisely on their lot. And they deal with it.
Tolkien's hero is quite typical for an English fairy tale - this is a child who finds himself in a rather cruel world of adult trials and helps the inhabitants of this world to solve (and sometimes solves for them) their problems. The opposition of children and adults in the literary tradition, and in particular in works for children, is quite common. But in the English fairy tale this opposition is always very dramatic and sometimes tragic. Adults not only do not understand children, it would be quite natural and harmless enough. No, very often adults quite consciously oppose children and thus turn out to be precisely on the side of evil. Such, for example, are almost all the adults in the tetralogy of mining, such is Uncle Andrew in Lewis. But if all adults were bad and all children were good, it would be too simple and unworthy of an English fairy tale. Everything is much more complicated, and it is not always possible to determine on which side the truth is. Peter Pan, who does not want to grow up and become an adult, is right in his own way, purely reflexively starting from all the bad things that exist in this adult world. But his rightness turns into cruelty, selfishness and heartlessness. And it is precisely these qualities, "hardness of heart, frivolity and heartlessness" that allow him to become weightless in the literal sense of the word. It is quite obvious that the world of adults and the world of children are two completely different worlds. And the point is not that one of them is good and the other is evil, it's just that each of these worlds has its own truth, its own norms of behavior, its own customs and traditions; and in order to combine them, at least the figure of a magician or wizard is required - Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Aslan, Gandalf.
It is Gandalf who introduces the hobbits into the "adult" world of Middle-earth. The world of hobbits, like any world of a children's room, is cloudless and happy, "even the invasion of wolves from the north seemed like a grandmother's fairy tale." This is undoubtedly a toy world, which is attractive precisely because in it all problems can still be solved at the game level. The elves of Lorien live as if "evil had not yet been born." But if the elves begin to fight evil, they take it more seriously than perhaps even all the other inhabitants of Middle-earth. Hobbitania knows perfectly well that evil has already been born, but the evil that exists here is harmless enough and cannot seriously upset, humiliate, and even more so destroy anyone. The most terrible villain is a miserly relative, who, in general, is easy to get rid of through simple family politics. Hobbitania only faces real evil when she opens herself to the outside world. Perhaps Frodo and Sam are so successful in solving their problem because they are not involved in either the great Good or the great Evil. By the way, it is precisely this idea that V. Kuritsyn, as if by chance, expresses in his article on Tolkien already mentioned here (by the way, this is almost the only work in which some kind of original, fresh and at the same time organic view of creativity is expressed). Tolkien). Hobbits therefore turn out to be the saviors of the world, because they do not experience those temptations that the powerful of this world face. The ring has almost nothing to tempt them with. Sam, being a perfectly sane hobbit, understands that he does not need to turn the whole world into a flowering garden.
You can turn this idea a little differently. Great knights, sages and wizards can be either white or black. Therefore, the ring will invariably incline them either to universal evil, turning them into black rulers, or to total goodness, which is no less terrible than universal evil. Galadriel is not in danger of becoming a black mistress, she will still remain on the side of the forces of light, but this new mistress, “terrible, like a sudden storm; terrifying, like lightning in the night sky; dazzling and pitiless as the sun in a drought; dangerous as a flame; cold as a winter star"21 will cease to be itself. Perhaps Gandalf is the only one who manages even a little to cope with the ring, because he is Gandalf the Grey. Its color allows him to make compromises, to realize how dangerous both pure evil and distilled good are. By the way, Gandalf, becoming White, loses a number of his attractive features, paying for high wisdom and immortality with purely human affections.
Hobbits are not involved in either absolute good or absolute evil, neither high heroism nor base cowardice. Thanks to this, the ring cannot promise them either the crown of a martyr, or the scepter of the black ruler, or the crown of the savior of the world. They manage to overcome the temptation precisely because of their routine, mediocrity, invisibility. Paradoxical as it may sound, and even insulting, but the hero in the end turns out to be a bourgeois, precisely because he is a bourgeois, and romantic impulses are alien to him. He does not rush to extremes, he simply fulfills his duty, even if imposed on him by external circumstances. Here it is appropriate to recall again those statements of Lewis and Kuritsyn, which were mentioned above. It is the ability to renounce great deeds, love for trifles, for the inconspicuous, but irreplaceable charms of home comfort that Heroes do not appreciate, and help the hobbits to save themselves, not to despair, not to get lost in that heroic mess in which they fell. And Tolkien constantly emphasizes these worldly details, so beloved to the heart of the hobbits (and, apparently, the author himself). While the heroes are sharpening swords and pulling bows, Sam collects saucepans, salt, rope, and warm socks. Merry, having been in the clutches of the orcs and then fought the Black Rider, is most worried about the loss of his pipe. Aragorn remarks with irony: "Give the hobbits free rein, and in the middle of the battle they will sit down, smoke a pipe and talk about their deeds and about their relatives up to the tenth generation." Hobbits really are, but at the same time, Aragorn's words do not sound condemnation, but rather a slight regret. Such an uncomplicated enjoyment of the joys of everyday life is hardly available to him, just like Theoden, and Denater, and Boromir. This love for the combination of the magical and the purely prosaic is also characteristic of the English literary fairy tale. When Mary Poppins and her suitor decide to go on an excursion to any fictional world, they go to the jungle, but there they are waiting for a table laid for five o'clock tea with cakes, butter, jam and preserves.
Hobbitania, if you imagine Middle-earth as a large apartment, is a cozy nursery in which all dangers and fears can be overcome. And it is this belief that the worst adventure will eventually turn out to be a game with a happy ending that helps the hobbits. At the same time, the game turns out to be very serious, too serious. But the feeling that this is a myth, a fairy tale, the happy end of which in the end is a foregone conclusion, still supports the hobbits. In the hour of death on the slopes of the flaming Orodruin, Sam consoles himself and tries to console the owner with a saga that will certainly be told someday and will be called “About the nine-fingered Frode and the Ring of Omnipotence”.
If you try to superimpose a map of Middle-earth on a map of our real world, then Hobbitania, of course, will be in the place of England. Almost 20 years ago, in their preface to The Lord of the Rings, the first official translators, Muraviev and Kistyakovsky, wrote that for Tolkien, the events of the struggle for the ring of omnipotence are associated primarily with the Second World War, and Hobbitania personifies Russia. It is difficult to reproach professional translators and writers for this obvious stupidity. This stupidity was forced, and curtsey towards censorship in the translation of such a strange edition, of course, was necessary. If we talk about Russia, then, alas, Tolkien identifies it more with Mordor. Just look at the map of Middle-earth. Its outlines are somewhat reminiscent of the outlines of Europe, and all states hostile to the forces of light find themselves in the East. Tolkien does not deviate from the traditional cultural tradition of opposing West and East. However, Mordor may well be associated in its location with Germany. Only, alas, the description of the orcs is already very unflattering for us, these are their red banners with the image of a terrible Eye, and their heavy forged boots; other parallels can be found. Tolkien himself, however, categorically denied that the war and personal experience somehow influenced his work, but most critics were still sure of the opposite.
Hobbitania is, of course, England. This is evidenced even by the very name of the country of hobbits. In Tolkien, it is not called Hobbitania, but Shire (cf .: Devonshire, Yorkshire, etc.). What other state can be located on the shores of the Great Sea and in the most northwestern corner of the world? However, even a map is not needed here. It is enough to look at the comfortable comfortable life of the hobbits to understand that we are talking about the British. What is worth only the description of the famous meeting of the dwarves in Bilbo's house. Buttered scones, gooseberry pie, bacon, muffins, and cream were served on the table ... in general, the standard set that we always find in Victorian novels. Hobbits greatly appreciate their arranged life, their cozy minks (my home is my fortress), their pedigree, their legends and traditions. Bilbo tells the dwarves about his famous ancestor Bullroar with great pride, and remembers with pride his own map, in which his favorite paths were marked in red ink. It was the British, despite the tiny size of their country and their love for the hearth, who became the rulers of the world and to some extent still remain so. After all, it was English that became the international language and is spoken on three continents. It is the hobbits, despite their dislike for adventure and exploits, who become the saviors of the world, who have been in the very heart of darkness, where even the most courageous and wise have no access. The philistine is stronger than a shield, chain mail and armor, protected precisely by his philistine world. Memories of home, garden, simple joys of bachelor or family life often support hobbits much more effectively than Gandalf's magical drink or elven putlibs. And it is with this homely, cozy life that the element of humor in the book is connected. It would seem that in such a serious story there is no place for humor. But Tolkien has it. However, Tolkien never said that humor had no place in fairies, he made only one reservation that magic itself could not be his subject. The book contains many funny and frankly funny episodes, funny songs and jokes, which does not at all remove the seriousness of its problems. And this is also a characteristic feature of the English fairy tale. It is humor that helps the hero survive the most terrible and most dangerous adventures.
book language.
And the last thing to dwell on is the language of the book. Tolkien, being a professional linguist, managed to create a number of "dead" languages, the language of the gnomes, the language of the elves. The book contains only the names of individual toponyms in different languages of Middle-earth. But Tolkien's drafts retained both alphabets and dictionaries; several monographs on Tolkien's work analyze only the languages he created. Such an English fairy tale before Tolkien, of course, did not know. Although ... if you recall the mathematical language of Carroll's books, here, too, there is its own alphabet, its own rules of the game, its own movement subject to strict laws. But the laws of linguistics work for Tolkien, and the laws of mathematics work for Carroll, but logically impeccable clarity is present in both cases. From the point of view of language and The Jungle Book is almost as good as The Lord of the Rings. Of course, Kipling's language is not so rich and varied. He does not offer us the dialects of the peoples of the jungle in all their diversity. But the way the names of the inhabitants of the jungle sound, their ancient melodies and spells, the way they speak, the very rhythm of the Laws of the Jungle - all this speaks in favor of Kipling.
Tolkien truly managed to create a new mythology, which, as critics write with enthusiastic aspiration, took thousands of years for entire nations. Perhaps Tolkien succeeded precisely because he had the common sense to treat his activities with a certain amount of humor: “Once ... I decided to create a cycle of more or less interconnected legends - from legends of a global, cosmogonic scale to a romantic magical story ... I wanted these legends to carry the clear, cold spirit of Northwestern European legends ... so that they possessed a magical, elusive beauty, which is called Celtic ... I would present the most important of the legends in full, and many others I would outline only schematically and combine the cycles into some majestic whole… what an absurdity!“22. These considerations echo the equally lofty and equally unexpected thoughts of Merriadoc Brandyzike: “But here's the thing, Pin, we now know that these heights exist, and raise our eyes to them. It’s good, of course, to love what is already given to you, everything begins with something and you need to take root ... but in life, it turns out, there are heights and depths: some old gardener doesn’t know about them, but because and gardening that he is protected by higher powers and those who agree with them. I'm glad I understood this at least a little. I don’t understand one thing - why did this carry me?“23. Tolkien's book does not become obsessively didactic because it is saved by humor, although, perhaps, in the last part, the sense of proportion betrays the author somewhat.
Now that all the main features of the English literary tale and the features of Tolkien's trilogy have already been listed, it probably makes sense to resort to some purely formal generalizations. The author does not pretend to write a new morphology of the English literary tale, but he cannot resist the temptation to present a small comparative table.
Lastly, Tolkien's work is, of course, a classic "layer cake" in the sense that the number of readings of it approaches infinity. But the works of English storytellers have always had at least two layers - "adult" and "childish". If you read deeper into the text, other meanings and other interpretations will emerge. Of course, this cannot be 100% attributed to all works. Fairy tales by Norton or Nesbit are not particularly deep (although, if we recall some episodes ...), but in most of them this layering is still present. We have already talked about Carroll, and this example has long become a textbook, just like the phrase that you can find in Carroll's books quotes for literally all occasions, but you can read Travers, and Barry (especially Barry!), and Kipling, and Graham (it was not for nothing that Horwood wrote the sequel to Willow Tales, in Graham's fairy tale he felt some hidden unspoken hints , allusions that he tried to realize).Relatively recently, a book was published by a Russian author who is trying to read "Winnie the Pooh" from the standpoint of classical psychoanalysis.24 Some provisions of the book are shocking, but, no doubt but, this is an example of a wonderful intellectual game.
I think all of the above quite convincingly proves that Tolkien wrote precisely a magical story, a fairy, a quest, which, of course, does not prevent us from deducting some other meanings and interpretations from it. Interpretations are, of course, a useful and interesting thing (primarily for the interpreters themselves), but first, you should probably establish some basic, self-evident things, and then be original and interesting. But in our country, the philological-critical "Tolkieniad" went the other way.
Bibliography:
1) Propp V. Ya. Historical roots of a fairy tale. L., 1986; Morphology of a fairy tale. M., 1969.
2) Tolkien J. R. R. The Return of the Sovereign. M., 1992.
3) V. Muravyov. Background to The Lord of the Rings. Article. M ..: Rainbow,
4) J. R. R. Tolkien "On Fairy Tales". Article. M.: Reef, 1991.
Translation by S. Koshelev, edited by I. Togoeva.
Lesson topic: John Tolkien The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.
Lesson type: combined
Goals and objectives of the lesson:
introduce students to the biography of John Tolkien;
to introduce students to the history of writing the story "The Hobbit, or there and back";
show the differences between the fantasy genre and science fiction and teach to distinguish between these two literary genres;
introduce students to the fantasy genre and its specific features;
develop interest in the fantasy genre;
develop imaginative and logical thinking of students.
Equipment: textbook-reader “Literature. Grade 5". Author - Kurdyumova T.F.; presentation; methodological guide to the textbook.
During the classes.
Org. moment.
Hello guys. Sit down. We remove everything superfluous from the desks. Are there any absent today? We write down the number in a notebook - today is the eleventh of March, and our today's topic - John Tolkien. "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again"(the teacher writes the date and topic of the lesson on the board)
2. Setting the goal of the lesson.
So guys. In today's lesson, we should get acquainted with the writer John Tolkien and his work "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again", and with such a literary genre as fantasy, and also find out what is the difference between the fantasy genre and science fiction. For today's lesson, you should have read an excerpt from The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. I hope you have read it?
Well done. Today we will talk about this passage, but a little later. Now let's meet the writer.
3. Explanation of new material.
Teacher's work
Student work
Lesson plan:
Biography of John Tolkien.
The specificity of the fantasy genre. A Brief History of the Writing of Tolkien's The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. The meaning of the double title of the story.
A brief introduction to the history of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Biography of John Tolkien. (teacher's story)
John Tolkien (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) was an English science fiction writer who is considered the father of the fantasy genre as it exists today.(show a portrait of D. Tolkien at the presentation)
Full name - Tolkien John Ronald Reuel - Please write down the writer's full name in your notebook. He was born in southern Africa, in the city of Bloemfontein. His family did not live richly. When John was three years old, his father died and the family moved to live in England, almost without a livelihood. The mother tried her best to raise the children, gave lessons to feed the family, and took care of the children herself. She instilled in little Tolkien an interest in foreign languages. However, fate decreed that in 1904, when the children were teenagers, she died, and John Tolkien and his brother were practically alone. Mother's confessor, Father Francis Morgan took them under guardianship. Despite the fact that this man lived modestly, he managed to raise children. John Tolkien by this time knew Latin and Greek well and had a little command of Gothic, Old English and Old Norse, which later came in handy in his work. Also, John Tolkien was a highly educated person, he is a philologist and worked as a teacher at Oxford University.
The first writing experience came to Tolkien early. At the age of seven, he wrote his first story "about dragons", and already, as a professor at Oxford University, he began to write fairy tales. But all this was just a test of the pen. As for the writer himself, it must be said that his fate was not easy, he participated in the First World War.
In our modern Russian literature there are also many writers whose works are based on fantastic and mythological elements. One of these writers is Kir Bulychev. He is the author of the most interesting cycle, which is called "Girl from the Earth." In this cycle we are talking about one girl, Alice, who travels to different planets. This heroine, in her inner qualities, is very similar to Anya from Nabokov's fairy tale, which we studied in the last lesson. Therefore, if you want, you can find the works of Kir Bulychev and read them.
And now, let's get back to our story "The Hobbit, or there and back."
The specificity of the fantasy genre, the difference between fantasy and science fiction. A Brief History of the Writing of Tolkien's The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. The meaning of the double title of the story. (Conversation)
And now, let's open the textbooks on page 98. Before us is an excerpt from the story, which we will read with you. Reading in turn, I will rate both expressiveness of the reading, and your ability to listen, and the answers to the questions that I will ask you after we have read this passage. Therefore, I ask you to get together and listen carefully to each other. We start reading.(Commented reading)
Questions:
Retell the content of the passage. What is this passage about?
Who saved Bilbo from the goblins? Who helped him escape from them?
Well done, tell me, who are Bilbo and Gandalf in the story? Are they humans or some other creatures?
That's right, guys, these are unusual creatures for us, because in the real world they do not exist. And in our work there are such heroes. I think you have long been familiar with the fantasy genre, since now this genre is widely distributed not only in literature, but also in cinema. Let's look at genre definitionsfantasy And fiction , and let's see how these genres differ.(show slides)
Fantasy is a type of fantastic literature based on the use of mythological elements (gods, demons, wizards, mythological creatures).
Fantasy is a world of bizarre images born of the imagination based on the facts of real life.
The main difference between these two genres is that fantasy is based on mythological elements. That is, in the works of this genre, we can see mythological creatures - gods, demons, etc., which in fact do not exist in our lives. And in the works of the fantasy genre, we are faced with what is real in life. For example, aliens are alien creatures, but they are real, they exist, and this has long been proven. This is the main difference between fantasy and science fiction. Tolkien's story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" is a work of the fantasy genre.
Questions:
Tell me, what films or cartoons of the fantasy genre do you know?
Based on the works, films and cartoons of the fantasy genre known to you, what distinguishing features of this genre from other genres (story, adventure, action) can you name?
Tell me, what creatures besides people are found in the works of this genre?
And what human heroes of works of this genre can you name?
Okay. In simple terms, fantasy is your fantasy, on the basis of which the fantasy works that you love are created.
Let's get back to our work.
The story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" was rather unusually created. According to the author John Tolkien himself, one night he had a dream that he was taking an exam. He needed to check his essay. When he was watching it, one completely blank sheet of paper fell under his arm, on which he simply accidentally wrote the first words that came to mind: "There was a hole in the ground, and in it lived a Hobbit." Tolkien did not know why he wrote this particular phrase on the sheet, and this question is still a mystery. However, later, it was from this phrase that the famous story “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again” appeared, which was published on September 21, 1937.
Pay attention to the word "Hobbit" itself.(The teacher explains the origin of the name from the presentation) According to some versions, this name came from the abbreviation of two words: one word is Latin and sounds like "hommo"- which means "man" in translation, and another, the English word "rabbit"- translates as" rabbit. From the first wordho(mmo)" the first syllable was taken -ho , and from the second "( ra) bbit» last syllable -bbit . As a result of the combination of these two syllables, the word "hobbit » - i.e " hobbit ' which we see.Please write down both of these words in your notebook. . This is how the title of the story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" appears.
3. A brief introduction to the history of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Conversation)
By the way, guys, today we remembered the film trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" for a reason. It is a trilogy film because it consists of three parts - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The fact is that this film was created precisely based on the story "The Hobbit". So, many years after the writing of the story, the shooting of the famous film began on it.
Questions:
Guys, let's remember the plot of this movie. Who can say what this movie is about?
Why did this ring need to be destroyed?
That's right, guys, the ring brought evil to people, so the elves wanted to destroy it. This plot is the basis of John Tolkien's story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again". The story is very interesting, I advise you to read it. It describes the events so vividly that it is read in one breath. And I think you will enjoy reading this story, especially those who have not seen the film "The Lord of the Rings."
- The passage tells how Bilbo and Erlond went to the mountains, and were captured by evil goblins.
Gandalf helped him escape. As the captives were being led into the castle, he crept after them, and by one of his sorcery tricks freed Bilbo and Erlond.
- Bilbo is a dwarf, and Gandalf is a wizard or sorcerer.
- "Harry Potter", "The Lord of the Rings", the cartoon "The Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor", etc.
- In the works of the fantasy genre, there is always magic, fantastic events and supernatural phenomena, heroes that do not exist in real life.
- Dragons, Lizards, etc.
- Harry Potter, Tarzan, Aladdin, various fairies and wizards, sorcerers, etc.
« hobbit » - « hobbit».
- This film is about a boy who was assigned to carry the ring, only to destroy it later.
- Because it was magical and attracted evil forces to itself. A person with this ring could do a lot of evil. This ring brought evil.
Summing up the lesson.
So, guys, today we learned what fantasy is, got acquainted with this genre. We also started our acquaintance with John Tolkien's story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" and learned how the famous film "The Lord of the Rings" appeared.
Homework.
At home, you will have to read the story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again." This is a task for everyone. Guys, does anyone want to complete an individual task? I need people who can draw well. Volunteers will receive high marks. Your task is to take from the work of any hero of your choice, and, using the author's description from the story, draw a portrait of this hero.
"Welcome to Middle-earth!"
Literature lesson onfairy tale by J.R.R. Tolkien
"The Hobbit, or There and Back Again"
(grade 5)
Anokhina S.V.,
teacher of Russian language and literature
MBOU secondary school No. 17 Reftinskiy
Lesson Objectives:
educational- arouse interest in the personality of J.R.R. Tolkien, to determine the level of students' perception of the read work, to introduce them into a special emotional world, to create a "presence effect", to cultivate a sense of beauty;
developing- development of imagination and memory, the formation of interpersonal communication skills;
educational improving reading skills; familiarization of students with individual facts of the biography of the writer, stimulating the independence of students in the search for answers to the questions posed on the topic.
Lesson type: a lesson on literature using interdisciplinary connections (English and music).
Types of educational activities: student performance, expressive reading of passages, independent work.
Equipment: a map of a magical land, audio recordings, an exhibition of Tolkien's books, Russian and English names of fairy-tale creatures on a board, drawings, computer presentations.
* lesson includes 2 lessons
Epigraph to the lesson:
“... In essence, I am a hobbit (in everything but size). I love gardens, trees, rural landscape not spoiled by cars, I smoke a pipe, I love simple hearty food ... I'm crazy about mushrooms, my humor is not intricate, I go to bed early and get up late. And I don't travel much... J.R.R. Tolkien
During the classes
1. Organizational moment.
2. Introductory speech of the teacher. (1 slide presentation)
Teacher: Tolkien is the most popular English writer. His books are read all over the world, and after the release of the film trilogy "The Lord of the Rings", interest in the writer's work increased. The beginning of numerous adventures of his heroes was a small fairy tale "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again". You recently read this fairy tale and let's analyze the history of its creation and discover the secret of its popularity.
Working with a writer's biography
Student's personal message. Sample text.
Tolkien was born in Africa. The name given to him at birth sounded luxurious: John Ronald Reuel. Little is left of South Africa in children's memory: a tarantula has bitten, snakes live in a barn and you can’t go there as a child, monkeys jump along the fence, jackals howl at night and lions roar. Perhaps nothing more. From the Orange Republic they moved to England. The father died suddenly when the future writer was 4 years old. When he was 12 years old, he also lost his mother. At the age of 18, Tolkien became a scholarship holder at Oxford University (scholarships then, unlike our current universities, were given only to those students who passed the entrance exams not just for “five”, but brilliantly). At 21, he got married, and two months after the wedding, he volunteered for the front. The First World War was on. Tolkien spent 4 months on the front lines in the midst of the bloodiest battle: he walked or crawled under fire through the mud and dead bodies side by side with others, and the soldiers considered him theirs. Then - typhus. That was the end of Tolkien's troubles. The remaining half century passed quietly. He became a respected professor, a connoisseur of many languages, a brilliant specialist in the Middle Ages. In family life, Tolkien was a homebody, a loving husband and father. But in literature, Tolkien earned the title of one of the most widely read authors of the second half of the twentieth century.
