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The Formula Reformulated: Sellic Spell and The Hobbit

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Following the Formula in Beowulf, Örvar-Odds saga, and Tolkien

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Abstract

J. R. R. Tolkien was aware (and addresses in his scholarship) most of the aspects of the compositional formula of Beowulf: formulas, themes, structural patterns, digressions and episodes, and story-patterns. Sellic Spell and The Hobbit provide two separate glimpses into Tolkien’s view of the overall formula. Sellic Spell is his conception of the folktale that is part of the larger formula that generates the poem, and The Hobbit is what results when Tolkien works through the formula as a whole. The Hobbit has been long been recognized to draw on Beowulf, but what has not been recognized is that, like Grettis saga and Örvar-Odds saga, the novel is the product of one author’s use of the same generative system that gives us the poem.

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  1. Western University, London, ON, Canada

    Michael Fox

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Fox, M. (2020). The Formula Reformulated: Sellic Spell and The Hobbit. In: Following the Formula in Beowulf, Örvar-Odds saga, and Tolkien. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48134-6_6

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