Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Thag You Very Buch x
Introduction: Never Laugh at Live Philosophers 1 Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson
PART ONE DISCOVER YOUR INNER TOOK
1 The Adventurous Hobbit 7 Gregory Bassham
2 “The Road Goes Ever On and On”: A Hobbit’s Tao 20 Michael C. Brannigan
3 Big Hairy Feet: A Hobbit’s Guide to Enlightenment 32 Eric Bronson
4 Bilbo Baggins: The Cosmopolitan Hobbit 45 Dennis Knepp
PART TWO THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SLIMY
5 The Glory of Bilbo Baggins 61 Charles Taliaferro and Craig Lindahl-Urben
6 Pride and Humility in The Hobbit 74 Laura Garcia
7 “My Precious”: Tolkien on the Perils of Possessiveness 90 Anna Minore and Gregory Bassham
8 Tolkien’s Just War 103 David Kyle Johnson
9 “Pretty Fair Nonsense”: Art and Beauty in The Hobbit 118 Philip Tallon
10 Hobbitus Ludens: Why Hobbits Like to Play and Why We Should, Too 129 David L. O’Hara
PART THREE RIDDLES AND RINGS
11 “The Lord of Magic and Machines”: Tolkien on Magic and Technology 147 W. Christopher Stewart
12 Inside The Hobbit: Bilbo Baggins and the Paradox of Fiction 161 Amy Kind
13 Philosophy in the Dark: The Hobbit and Hermeneutics 176 Tom Grimwood
PART FOUR BEING THERE AND BACK AGAIN
14 Some Hobbits Have All the Luck 193 Randall M. Jensen
15 The Consolation of Bilbo: Providence and Free Will in Middle-Earth 206 Grant Sterling
16 Out of the Frying Pan: Courage and Decision Making in Wilderland 218 Jamie Carlin Watson
17 There and Back Again: A Song of Innocence and Experience 235 Joe Kraus
CONTRIBUTORS: Our Most Excellent and Audacious Contributors 251
INDEX: The Moon Letters 257