A nice mention in the Tolkien Studies Bibliography

So, having just received my copy of Tolkien Studies, I dropped everything (as one does) and immediately starting reading "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2018", the year-end literature review of all things published on Tolkien during that calendar year. These literature reviews were a godsend to me as a graduate student, and they're absolutely vital for anyone hoping to keep up with the field.

Well, my essay on Verlyn Flieger's two YA novels published in A Wilderness of Dragons (ed. John Rateliff) as a Festschrift for Flieger, ended up getting some very nice coverage. Like, one-of-the-nicest-things-anyone's-ever-said-about-my-research coverage, which meant more both because it was so unexpected and because I assumed that this book chapter in particular would likely never be widely read. The review's worth quoting in full:

Dennis Wilson Wise drills deeper into Flieger's use of fantasy fiction to comment on her Tolkien scholarship in the most extensive essay of the four, "Identity, Time, and Faerie in Pig Tale and The Inn at Corbies' Caww: An Unexpected Convergence of Realms" (Rateliff 380-402). In a tour de force of analysis that begins by deprecating the value of critical interpretations of fairy-stories, Wise brings out the extremely intricate treatments of identity and Faerie in Flieger's paired titular novels. Taking Tolkien's Smith of Wootton Major as a starting point, he focuses almost entirely on Flieger's artistry in changing the relationships that Man can have with Faerie in ways that Tolkien never touched. She employs the time-travel and out-of-world theories of J. W. Dunne and contemporary themes of sex, identity, and universal selfhood, and concludes, Wise argues, with an attitude towards the possibilities of Man engaging with Faerie that is almost the opposite of Tolkien's. Be warned: as brilliant as it is to read, Wise's closely reasoned argument can be difficult to follow if one has not read the books themselves. (326-27).

Isn't that lovely? I immediately had to go re-read the book chapter, as it's been so long that I've half-forgotten the specific details of that piece. (As a sidenote, I'm now reminded of how much of my old philosophy of language classes have disappeared from memory.)

I feel like I should give the reviewer a gift basket, or something. :)

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