Back From Middle Earth by Tyler Tingley

April 16, 2006

Tingley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Tingley surrounded by Exeter students

Principal Ty Tingley has returned to the Academy from a two-term sabbatical, his first in 37 years of working at schools.

Much of his leave focused on research into the lives and work of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. The first leg of his trip took him to Oxford University, where he was a visiting scholar.

Principal Tingley, an English teacher, told a recent Assembly that he had always been interested in the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien, who were colleagues at Oxford and members of a literary group called the “Inklings.” “They wrote in very different styles, but they were close friends. I wanted to spend a term in Oxford to study their work and talk to people who witnessed their friendship,” said Mr. Tingley.

In addition to his research, Mr. Tingley visited all the Exonians studying or teaching at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as a number of Exonians living in England.

Trips to New Zealand, where scenes of the “Lord of the Rings” were filmed, and then Australia rounded out his itinerary.

Mr. Tingley will draw on his studies next spring when he teaches a course in the English department entitled “Fellowship and Fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.”

After the lively Assembly talk and slide presentation focusing on Tolkien and his work, Mr. Tingley showed a slide of himself with a staff and Hobbit cape in one of the settings of the film of “Lord of the Rings.”  He left the students with one piece of advice: “If you should ever have a knock on your door and this Hobbit invites you on a quest, say, ‘No!’ ”

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