🌳 Ep. 213: J.R.R. Tolkien – Top 2 Books & 3 Volumes Memory Mnemonic
👋 Intro
Hello and welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Memory", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.
I’m Jans, your Mnemonic Man, and today's episode will be on the English writer, who is renowned as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
Born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and raised in England, Tolkien showed early talent in languages and mythology. Following the death of both parents at an early age, he and his brother were left as wards of a priest.
He attended King Edward’s school in Birmingham and later Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours in English language and literature. While at college, he fell in love with Edith Bratt, who was three years his senior.
He served as a soldier in World War I, where his experiences influenced his later writing. After the war, Tolkien became a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University and contributed significantly to the study of Old English and medieval literature.
His first published book was The Hobbit, which was published in 1937. Success with The Hobbit led to his later work on The Lord of the Rings, which was an epic tale of good versus evil, which would eventually be one of the most influential works of modern fantasy literature.
His books have inspired countless adaptations, including films, games, and music. Tolkien has also had many books published posthumously, many with the help of his son Christopher Tolkien. Some of these books include The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, The History of Middle Earth, and The Fall of Gondolin.
Today’s mnemonic will be on J.R.R. Tolkien’s top two books and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings.
So, with that being said, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.
📖 Wikipedia Summary
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (/ˈruːl ˈtɒlkiːn/,[a] 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
From 1925 to 1945 Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. He then moved within the same university to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, and held these positions from 1945 until his retirement in 1959.
Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
After Tolkien's death his son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion.
These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda and, within it, Middle-earth. Between 1951 and 1955 Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings.
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the tremendous success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings ignited a profound interest in the fantasy genre and ultimately precipitated an avalanche of new fantasy books and authors.
As a result, he has been popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature and is widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of all time.
Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien]
🧠 Memory Mnemonic
J.R.R. Tolkien – Top 2 Books & 3 Volumes Memory Mnemonic – Lord FRoTH
(Picture a fictional Lord Froth, who is responsible for keeping the volcano of Mount Doom all frothed up, ready to accept the ring)
1. The Lord of the Rings (1955)
a. The Fellowship of the Ring – first volume (1954)
b. The Return of the King – third volume (1955)
c. The Two Towers – second volume (1954)
2. The Hobbit (1937)
🔎 Five Fun Facts
1. Tolkien was born in South Africa in Bloemfontein to Arthur and Mabel Tolkien. He lost both parents early in his life. His father died of rheumatic fever in 1896 and his mother of diabetes in 1904, but not before she ignited Tolkien’s interest in languages and botany.
2. Tolkien was an Oxford professor. He specialised in Anglo-Saxon and English literature. This love of linguistics was one of the main inspirations behind his stories. He created more than a dozen languages for his fictional worlds, including Elvish tongues like Quenya and Sindarin. He developed full grammar systems, vocabularies, and even alphabets for them.
3. Tolkien fought in World War I and witnessed the horrors of the Battle of the Somme. He was a signalling officer who experienced the horrific conditions of trench warfare and suffered the loss of two close friends. It is believed these experiences deeply influenced his writing, and along with the death and destruction, it also reflected the friendships and courage of ordinary soldiers.
4. Following the war, Tolkien briefly worked on the Oxford English Dictionary. He worked as an assistant editor and was responsible for researching the etymologies of words and composing dictionary entries. His first task was to research the etymology of the words warm, wasp, water, wick, and winter. He left in 1920 to pursue his academic career.
5. Tolkien and his wife Edith had a beautiful love story. He met her when he was 16 and she was 19. However, Tolkien’s guardian at the time, Father Francis, disapproved of the relationship and forbade him from seeing her until he came of age. When he did come of age, he sought Edith out and asked her to marry him. Edith did agree to marry him, but firstly had to break off an engagement.
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🎓 Three-Question Quiz
Q.1. Which fictional world did Tolkien create for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?
Q.2. What do the initials “J.R.R” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s name stand for?
Q.3. What famous author and friend of Tolkien wrote The Chronicles of Narnia?
Bonus Q. What was the name of the group of writers Tolkien belonged to at Oxford?
Bonus Q. Why did the Lord of the Rings author get kicked out of the movie theatre?
🧠 Memory Mnemonic Recap
J.R.R. Tolkien – Top 2 Books & 3 Volumes Memory Mnemonic – Lord FRoTH
(Picture a fictional Lord Froth, who is responsible for keeping the volcano of Mount Doom all frothed up, ready to accept the ring)
1. The Lord of the Rings (1955)
a. The Fellowship of the Ring – first volume (1954)
b. The Return of the King – third volume (1955)
c. The Two Towers – second volume (1954)
2. The Hobbit (1937)
🎓 Three-Question Quiz Answers
Q.1. Which fictional world did Tolkien create for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?
A. Middle-earth
Q.2. What do the initials “J.R.R.” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s name stand for?
A. John Ronald Reuel
Q.3. What famous author and friend of Tolkien wrote The Chronicles of Narnia?
A. C.S. Lewis
Bonus Q. What was the name of the group of writers Tolkien belonged to at Oxford?
A. The Inklings
Bonus Q. Why did the Lord of the Rings author get kicked out of the movie theatre?
A. Because he was Tolkien all the way through! People also often ask me if I think Daniel Radcliffe could have ever played a hobbit? My answer is always no, but Elijah would!
🔤 Word of the Week
esoteric
[es-uh-ter-ik]
adjective
understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest; recondite.
Example
J.R.R. Tolkien’s deep knowledge of ancient languages and mythologies often gave his writing an esoteric quality, appreciated mostly by readers familiar with linguistics.
Extracted from: [https://www.dictionary.com/]
💡 Memory Tip
For our memory tip today, we will be talking about categorisation mnemonics.
A categorization mnemonic is a mnemonic where information is grouped by related items into meaningful categories. This makes recall easier and more organised.
Instead of memorizing long, unrelated lists, the brain stores information in clusters based on shared features or themes. For example, animals could be categorised by what they eat (herbivore, carnivore, omnivore), or by their habitat (forest, desert, ocean.)
A simple example could be remembering the planets. We firstly group them into terrestrial planets, gas giants, and ice giants. The Terrestrial planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars; while the Gas giants are: Jupiter, Saturn; and the Ice giants are: Uranus and Neptune.
By categorizing them, recall becomes faster and more accurate, rather than remembering them as a single list. See you next week
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🔗 References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien
https://chatgpt.com/c/6901517b-7208-8324-8d0f-81004df4337a
https://bookriot.com/facts-about-j-r-r-tolkien/
https://www.beano.com/jokes/film-and-tv/lord-of-the-rings-jokes