A new book has just been released by Walking Tree Publishers:
Tolkien's Shorter Works. It has a chapter on this topic; even the title is identical to that of this thread, though it's not a plagiarism - the author has my permission!
I heard most of the papers it contains as lectures at last year's Tolkien Seminar here in Germany, and they are well worth reading - highly recommended!
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth..
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