The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun: Together With the Corrigan Poems - Hardcover

Tolkien, J. R. R.

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9781328834546: The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun: Together With the Corrigan Poems

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1328834549 ISBN 13: 9781328834546

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017

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Unavailable for more than seventy years, this early but important work is published for the first time with Tolkien's "Corrigan" poems and other supporting material, including a prefatory note by Christopher Tolkien.

Set 'In Britain's land beyond the seas' during the Age of Chivalry, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun tells of a childless Breton Lord and Lady (the 'Aotrou' and 'Itroun' of the title) and the tragedy that befalls them when Aotrou seeks to remedy their situation with the aid of a magic potion obtained from a corrigan, or malevolent fairy. When the potion succeeds and Itroun bears twins, the corrigan returns seeking her fee, and Aotrou is forced to choose between betraying his marriage and losing his life.

Coming from the darker side of J.R.R. Tolkien's imagination, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, together with the two shorter 'Corrigan' poems (which lead up to it and are also included in this volume), were the outcome of a comparatively short but intense period in Tolkien's life when he was deeply engaged with Celtic, and particularly Breton, myth and legend.

Originally written in 1930 and long out of print, this early but seminal work is an important addition to the non-Middle-earth portion of his canon and should be set alongside The Legend of Sigurd and Gudr�n, The Fall of Arthur and The Story of Kullervo. Like these works, it belongs to a small but important corpus of his ventures into 'real-world' mythologies, each of which in its own way would be a formative influence on his own legendarium.

Edited with notes and commentary by Verlyn Flieger and a prefatory note on the text by Christopher Tolkien.

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Review:

‘The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun is a poem in the tradition of the medieval "lay", also illustrated by the Lay of the Children of H�rin, and in the Lay of Leithian. This 556-verse-long poem tells the tragic story of a lord who sacrifices his life by love: in order to have a child with his wife, then to remain faithful to his spouse, he gives his life to a witch.’ The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate website

‘The language is as time-worn as a Runic engraving yet clear as a bell ... The holy and the unholy imbue everything. It is a world captured in stained glass.’ Daily Telegraph

About the Author:

J.R.R. TOLKIEN (1892-1973) is the creator of Middle-earth and the author of such classic and extraordinary works of fiction as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

VERLYN FLIEGER, PhD, is retired from the University of Maryland as professor emerita in the Department of English, where her specialties were the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and comparative mythology.

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