Professor
Walter J. Ong Chair of Humanities
shippey@slu.edu
Humanities 329
314.977.7196
EDUCATION
M.A. Cambridge University (1968)
Ph.D. Cambridge University (1990)
As his publication list show, Dr. Shippey has kept two interests
for many years: medieval literature, especially the earliest
literature of Anglo-Saxon England, and modern fantasy and science
fiction. These two interests come together in his two much-reprinted
and translated books on J.R.R. Tolkien. Dr. Shippey followed
in Tolkien's footsteps as schoolboy (both attended King Edward's
School, Birmingham), as rugby player (both played for Old Edwardians),
as Oxford teacher (Dr. Shippey taught Old English for seven
years at St. John's College, just overlapping with Tolkien's
last years of retirement), and as Professor of English Language
at Leeds (where he inherited Tolkien's chair and syllabus).
Dr. Shippey is currently President of the International Society for the Study
of Medievalism. His most recent publications are The Shadow-walkers (2005)
and Roots and Branches (2007), see below. His monograph on speech in early Germanic poetry,
How the Heroes Talk, is in preparation, as is an edited collection on Forging the Nation(al Epic).
He has also collaborated with Harry Harrison
on two science fiction trilogies, the "West of Eden"
sequence and the "Hammer and the Cross" sequence.
BOOKS
Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (Zurich and Berne: Walking Tree Press, 2007).
J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (London: Harper
Collins, 2000); Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2001.
The Road to Middle-earth (London: Allen & Unwin,
1982; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983). 2nd enlarged edition
(London: Harper Collins, 1993)
Beowulf. Arnold's Studies in English Literature series
(London, 1978). A section from this is reprinted in Modern
Critical Interpretations: Beowulf, ed. Harold Bloom (New
Haven: Chelseas House, 1988), pp. 33-49. The whole work was
translated into Japanese in 1992.
Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English, (Cambridge:
D.S. Brewer, Ltd., 1976; 2nd edition, 1977)
Old English Verse (London: Hutchinson's, 1972). A section
of this is reprinted in Interpretations of Beowulf, ed.
R.D. Fulk (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1991),
pp. 194-205
EDITIONS
Editor, The Shadow-walkers: Jacob Grimm's Mythology of the Monstrous (Tempe, AZ:
MRTS, and Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).
Correspondences: Medievalism in Scholarship and the Arts, Studies in Medievalism XIV
(Woodbridge, Boydell, and Brewer, 2005).
Co-editor, Film and Fiction: Reviewing the Middle Ages,
Studies in Medievalism XII, (Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer,
2002), co-edited with Martin Arnold
Co-editor, Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship, Politics,
Fraud, Studies in Medievalism XI, (Woodbridge: Boydell &
Brewer, 2001), co-edited with Martin Arnold
Co-editor, Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour
of Leslie Workman (Brepols: Turnhout, l998). Co-editor:
Richard Utz
Co-editor, The Critical Heritage: Beowulf (London:
Routledge, l998) Co-editor: Andreas Haarder
Editor, The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories (London
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Co-editor, Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative,
(Athens, GA, and London: University of Georgia Press, 1993).
Co-editor: George Slusser
Editor, The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories
(London and New York: Oxford University Press, l992)
Editor, Fictional Space: Essays on Contemporary Science
Fiction (Oxford: Blackwell, l991)
ARTICLES
"Afterword" to Beowulf and Lejre, ed. John D. Niles (Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2007), 469-79
"Fuqua’s King Arthur: More Myth-making in America," Exemplaria web-cluster on medieval movies
"History in Words: Tolkien’s Ruling Passion," in The Lord of the Rings 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor
of Richard E. Blackwelder, ed. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 2006), 25-39
"A Revolution Reconsidered: Mythography and Mythology in the Nineteenth Century", in The Shadow-walkers,
see Edited Books above, above, 1-28
Oves Habeo: the Elves as a Category Problem", in The Shadow-walkers, 157-88
"Afterword: A Chair, a Sock, and Language", in The Shadow-walkers, 379-88
"The Merov(ich)ingian Again: damnatio memoriae and the usus scholarum," in
Latin Learning and English Lore: essays in honor of Michael Lapidge, ed. Andy Orchard (Toronto: U Toronto Press, 2005), 389-406
"Hard Reading: the Challenges of Science Fiction," in David Seed, ed., A Companion to Science Fiction
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 11-26
"Germanen, Deutsche, Teutonen in englischsprachiger Geistesgeschichte," in Zur Geschichte der Gleichung
"germanisch / deutsch", ed Heinrich Beck et al (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2004), 325-41
"Tolkien and the Appeal of the Pagan: Edda and Kalevala," in Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, ed.
Jane Chance (Louisville: UP Kentucky, 2004), 145-61
"Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien’s Elvish Problem," in Tolkien Studies 1 (2004), 1-15
"Another Road to Middle-earth: Jackson’s Movie Trilogy," in Understanding the Lord of the Rings: the best of
Tolkien criticism, ed Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 233-54
"Rewriting the Core: Transformations of the Fairy-Tale in Modern Feminist Writing," in A Companion to the
Fairy-Tale, ed. Anna Chaudhri and Hilda Ellis-Davidson (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003), 249-73.
"Grimm's Law: how one man revolutionised the humanities," in Times Lit Supplement, Nov. 7th 2003, 14-15.
"Bilingualism and Betrayal in Chaucer's Summoner's Tale,"
in Speaking in the Medieval World, ed. Jean Godsall-Myers (Leiden
and Boston: Brill, 2003), 125-44
"Kingsley Amis's Science Fiction and the Problems of Genre,"
in Essays on Classic and Iconoclastic Alternate Science Fiction,
ed Edgar Chapman and Carl Yoke (Lewison, NY: Mellen)
"Wicked Queens and Cousin Strategies in Beowulf and Elsewhere,"
in electronic journal Heroic Age
"Literary Gatekeepers and the Fabril Tradition,"
in Science Fiction: Canonization, Marginalization and the Academy,
ed. Gary Westfahl and George Slusser, Greenwood Press, 2001,
7-23
"Allegory versus Bounce: Tolkien's Smith of Wootton Major,"
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 12/2 (2001), 186-200 [an
exchange with Verlyn Flieger: TAS section 191-200.]
"Starship Troopers, Galactic Heroes, Mercenary Princes:
the Military and its Discontents in Science Fiction, "
in Histories of the Future: Studies in Fact, Fantasy and
Science Fiction, ed. Alan Sandison and Robert Dingley, Palgrave
Press: NewYork, 2000, 168-83
"Fantasy," in Good Fiction Guide, ed. Jane Rogers,
OUP: Oxford and New York, 43-6 [+10-12 biographical entries]
"The Undeveloped Image: Anglo-Saxon in Popular Consciousness
from Turner to Tolkien," in Literary Appropriations
of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century,
ed. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), pp. 215-36
"`People are Plastic': Jack Vance and the Dilemma of Cultural
Relativism," in Jack Vance: Critical Appreciations and
a Bibliography, ed. Arthur Cunningham (London: British Library
Publications, 2000), pp. 71-88
"Grim Word-Play: Wisdom and Folly in Anglo-Saxon Humor,"
in Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. Jonathan Wilcox
(Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 33-48
"Grimm, Grundtwig, Tolkien: Nationalisms and the Invention
of Mythologies," in The Ways of Creative Mythologies:
Imagined Worlds and their Makers, ed. Maria Kuteeva (Telford:
The Tolkien Society, 2000), pp. 7-17
"Vorwort" [in German] to Anthony
Burgess, Clockwork Orange [a new German translation]
(Munich: Heyne Verlag, 2000), pp. 5-14
"The Tale of Gamelyn: Class
Conflict and the Embarrassments of Genre," in Essays
in Medieval Popular Romance, ed. Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert
(London: Longman, 2000), pp. 78-96
"BIbiliophobia: Hatred of the Book in the Middle Ages,"
Birbeck College, University of London. [The printed version
of the two Matthews lectures given in 1999. One is on Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, the other on poems from Harley MS
2253.]
"`The Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrog': A Study in Sensibilities"
in Medievalism in the Modern World, ed. Richard Utz and
T. A. Shippey (Brepols: Turnhout, l998), 155-72
"Medievalism in the Modern World: Introductory Perspectives,"
co-authored Richard Utz and T. A. Shippey, in Utz and Shippey
(preceding item), 1-13
"Alternate Historians: Newt, Kingers, Harry, and Me, "
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (1997), 15-33
"Skeptical Speculation and Back
to Methuselah in Shaw and Science Fiction, ed. Milton
T. Wolf [Shaw 17 (1997)], 199-213
"Beowulf: Structure and Unity"
in A Beowulf Handbook, ed. Robert Bjork and John D. Niles
(Lincoln, Neb., l997), 149-74
"Chaucer's Arithmetical Mentality and The Book of the
Duchess," Chaucer Review 31 (1996), 178-95
"Robin Hood: a Legend in
Text, Film and Popular Consciousness," ScriptOralia
84 (1996), 409-23 [also (Re)Oralisierung, ed. Hildegard
F. C. Tristram (Tuebingen)]
"Tolkien and the Gawain-poet"
in Proceedings of the J. R.R.Tolkien Centenary Conference,
l992 [simultaneously published as Mythlore 80 (1995)
and Mallorn 30 (1995)], ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen
H. Goodknight, Mythopoeic Press, l995, 213-20
"Speech and the Unspoken" in
Hamthismal." In Prosody and Poetics in the Early
Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of C.B. Hieatt, ed. M. S.
Toswell (University of Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1995), pp. 180-96
"The Critique of America in Contemporary
Science Fiction."Foundation 61 (1994): 36-49
"Local Patriotism and the Early
Interpretation of Beowulf." In Traditions and
Innovations: Papers Presented to Andreas Haader, ed. Flemming
Andersen and Lars Ole Sauerberg, (Odense: University of Odense
Press, 1994), pp. 303-19
"The Wanderer and The
Seafarer as Wisdom Poetry." In Companion to Old
English Poetry, ed. Henk Aertsen and Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr.
(Amsterdam: Vrije Universitet Press, 1994), pp. 145-58
"Miscomprehension and Re-Interpretation
in Old and Early Middle English Proverb Collections." In
ScriptOralia 58 (1994) 293-311.
"Recent Writing in Old English."
Aestel 1 (l993): 1-24
"Principles of Conversation in Beowulfian Speech."
In Techniques of Description: A Festschrift for Malcolm Coulthard,
ed. John M. Sinclair et al. (London and New York: Rutledge,
1993), pp. 109-26
"Old English Poetry: the Prospects
for Literary History." In Proceedings of the Second
International Conference of SELIM (Spanish Society for
English Medieval Language and Literature), ed. Antonio Leon
Sendra (Cordoba: SELIM, l993), pp. 16479. Translated into Spanish
by Patricia Villasenor Cuspinera as "Poesía en inglés
antiquo: prospectos de historia literaria," Acta Poetica
(Mexico) 16 (1995): 183-214
"Semiotic Ghosts and Ghostliness
in the Work of Bruce Sterling." In Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk
and the Future of Narrative (Athens, GA, and London: University
of Georgia Press, 1993), pp. 208-20
"Tolkien as a PostWar Writer."
In Scholarship and Fantasy: The Tolkien Phenomenon, ed.
Keither J. Battarbee (Finland: University of Turku, l993), pp.
217-36
"Winchester in the AngloSaxon Period
and After." In Winchester: History and Literature,
ed. Simon Barker (Winchester: King Alfred's College, l992),
pp. 121
"The Fall of America in Science
Fiction." In Fictional Space: Essays on Contemporary
Science Fiction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 96-127.
"Learning to Read Science Fiction."
In Fictional Space: Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 1-35. Translated into Danish
by Niels Dalgaard as "At laese science fiction," Proxima
57 (1992): 18-33
"Breton Lais and Modern Fantasies."
In Studies in Medieval English Romance, ed. D. S. Brewer (Cambridge: Brewer, 1988)
"Variations on Newspeak: the Open
Question of Nineteen Eighty-Four." In Storm Warnings,
ed. George Slusser et al. (Southern Illinois University Press,
1987), pp. 172-93
"Boar and Badger: an Old English
Heroic Antithesis?" Leeds Studies in English 16
(1985): 220-39
"A Missing Army: Some Doubts
About the Alfredian Chronicle." In Geardagum 4 (1982):
41-55
"Maxims in O.E. Narrative: Literary Art or Traditional
Wisdom?" In Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition: a Symposium,
ed. Andreas Haarder (Odense: University of Odense Press, 1982),
pp. 51-69.
"Goths and Huns: the Rediscovery
of the Northern Cultures in the Nineteenth Century." In
The Medieval Legacy: A Symposium, ed. Andreas Haarder
(Odense: University of Odense Press, 1982), pp. 51-69
"Approaches to Truth in Old English
Poetry." University of Leeds Review 25 (1982); 171-89
Introduction to William Morris, The Wood Beyond the World
(London: Oxford University Press, 1980)
"Wealth and Wisdom in King Alfred's
Preface to the Pastoral Care." English Historical Review
94 (1979): 346-55
"The Cold War in Science Fiction,
1940-60." In Science Fiction: a Critical Guide,
ed. P. Parrinder (London: Longman, 1979), pp. 90-109
"Creation from Philology in The
Lord of the Rings." In J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and
Story-Teller: Essays in Memoriam, ed. M. Salu and
R.T. Farrell (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp.
286-316.
"The Magic Art and the Evolution
of Words." Mosaic 10 (1977): 148-63
"The Golden Bough and the Incorporation of Magic."
Foundation 12 (1977): 119-34
"Science Fiction and the Idea of
History." Foundation 4 (1973): 4-20. Translated
into French as "L'Histoire dans la science fiction"
in Change, ed. Gerard Klein and Daniel Riche (Paris,
1981)
"Framing and Distancing in Kipling's
'The Man who would be King.'" Journal of Narrative Technique
2 (1972): 75-87. Co-author: M. Short
"Borrowing and Independence in Kipling's
'Muhammad Din.'" Modern Language Review 67 (1972):
264-70
"The Uses of Chivalry: Erec and
Gawain." Modern Language Review 66 (1971): 241-50
"Listening to the Nightingale."
Comparative Literature 22 (1970): 46-60
"The Fairy Tale Structure of Beowulf."
Notes and Queries 16 (1969): 2-11
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