The Riddles of The Hobbit [Hardcover]

Riddles are threaded through The Hobbit , and are key to Tolkien's creative imagination. The Riddles of The Hobbit situates this novel and the rest of Tolkien's writing in the context of Old English riddling culture, and more modern day examples; it sets out to solve the many riddles of the novel in original and often surprising ways.List of Illustrations Preface 1. The Anglo-Saxon Riddleworld 2. Cynewulf and the Exeter Book 3. Riddles in the Dark 4. The Riddles of the All-Wise 5. The Puzzle of the two Hobbits 6. The Riddle of Bilbo's Pocket 7. The Riddle of the Ring 8. The Lord of the Rings and the Riddle of Writing 9. The Volsung Riddle: Character in Tolkien 10. The Enigma of Genre Fantasy 11. ...And Back Again. Bibliography Index

A riddling book about a riddling writer, a philological exercise concerning the works of a philologist. I wish there were more books like this. & The book offers much more sober insights into Tolkiens tale-telling and language-playing habits, too, but it always wears its critical hat at a rakish angle. I loved it and felt that it did more to get me thinking tolkienially (to coin a term) than almost anything Ive read about old JRRT & . (Professor Alan Jacobs, The New Atlantis Text Patterns, thenewatlantis.com, January, 2017)

Robertss The Riddles of The Hobbit displays a great deal of erudition in the knotty tradition of Anglo-Saxon riddle lore, and effectively brings to bear Old Norse and Old Icelandic riddling texts as well & . specialists will want a copy for their shelves, and libraries will do well to make this available to advanced students. (Don Riggs, The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 26 (1), 2015)

He's known as an SF writer of no mean skill, but Adam Roberts is also a professor. Here he applies his mighty mind to a dissection of The Hobbit. Roberts is keen to emphasise the subjectivity of interpretation, stating that there are many ways to read rl/