Now that Hammond and Scull are releasing their magisterial “Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien,” the time is ripe for a dive into Tolkien’s poetic works. In this first module, we will begin with an orientation to Tolkien’s career as a poet, and then we will focus in on the poems of his earliest period as a writer — the poems he was writing when he still thought it might be as a poet that he would make his mark on the literary world.

The module will be structured as follows:

Week 1: Overview of the Poetic Corpus and Tolkien’s Career
Week 2: Introduction to the Early Poems
Week 3-4: Close look at 1-2 poems (in each session)