Richard West

Richard C. West in 2013, working in Marquette University's Tolkien Archive Richard Carroll West (August 13, 1944 – November 29, 2020) was an American librarian and one of the first Tolkien scholars. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He co-founded the University of Wisconsin Tolkien Society in 1966, and served as editor for its journal, Orcrist. He worked for many years as serials and technical services librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, alongside his Tolkien studies.

Awards and distinctions 1976 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies 2014 Scholar Guest of Honor at Mythcon 45

Reception

Jared Lobdell, in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, wrote that "at least one observer has suggested that the best single essay in Tolkien criticism is Richard C. West's 1975 "The Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings". He noted that at the time West was studying under "the expert in entrelacement", Eugène Vinaver. Lobdell describes the essay as scholarly form-criticism, so useful that it does not belong to the category of [negative] "criticism" as commonly understood. The Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi similarly described West's article on interlacing as a "key article" in Tolkien scholarship. Librarian and Tolkien scholar David Bratman described it as "one of the pioneering studies in Tolkien's use of medieval literary techniques".

Another well-known Tolkien scholar, John D. Rateliff, called him "one of the best of the best of Tolkien scholars." "'And She Named Her Own Name': Being True To One's Word in Tolkien's Middle-earth", Tolkien Studies 2 (2005) "Her Choice Was Made and Her Doom Appointed" in The Lord of the Rings, 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder (Marquette University Press, 2006) "Neither the Shadow nor the Twilight: The Love Story of Aragorn and Arwen in Literature and Film" in Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy (McFarland & Company, 2011) "Where Fantasy Fits: The Importance of Being Tolkien", Mythlore 33:1, article 2 (2014) "Real-World Myth in a Secondary World: Mythological Aspects in the Story of Beren and Lúthien" in Tolkien the Medievalist (Routledge, 2003) "'Lack of Counsel Not of Courage': J.R.R. Tolkien's Critique of the Heroic Ethos in The Children of Húrin" in Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey (McFarland & Company, 2014) "Canute and Beorhtnoth" in A Wilderness of Dragons: Essays in Honor of Verlyn Flieger (The Gabbro Head Press, 2018)