I can't believe Flieger, one of the most insightful commentators on Tolkien's works, isn't actually top of the list - maybe she could fight it out with Shippey!. As to Michael Drout, I have to put in a word for him, having just yesterday finished reading vol 1 of Tolkien Studies, the new annual journal. His essay, Tolkien's Prose Style, is one of the best analyses I've read on the subject, & contains a deeply insightful exploration of the nature of power & kingship, focussing on Eowyn, Theoden, Denethor & the Lord of the Nazgul,drawing comparisons between the events on the Pelennor Fields & King Lear - which Drout shows to have been a major influence on Tolkien's thinking there.
Drought's exploration of the similarities between Denethor & the Witch King - both Numenorean, both driven to 'wanhope' by despair, & ultimately to surrender to evil, had never occurred to me.Tolkien, in the contrast between the events on the field & in the city, is depicting the conflict of hope held onto in the most extreme circumstances - Eowyn, Theoden, & the despair, the wanhope, which is its opposite. Denethor would become like the Lord of the Nazgul if he continued down the road he was on (incidentally, he makes some nice points about Tolkien's supposed overuse of archaic language - call me stupid, but it had never occurred to me that Eowyn's response to the Witch King was not simply a use of 'archaic language' from an Anglo Saxon speaker, but also a ballsy attempt at mockery:
Quote:
'No living man may hinder me'
'No living man am I'
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Which also perhaps explains why some of the impact of the scene is lost in the movie version, where Eowyn turns uber-feminist & smugly responds ''I am no
man!)
Anyway, how's that for straying off topic!
As to Jackson, et al. They've brought some people to the books - amazingly, as the movies have so little real connection to them - but for that reason I'll put up with them being on the list, but surely not at the top.