Lesson Plans for Secondary School Educators Unit Three: There
and Back Again "The Water of Life" Jacob of the Brothers Grimm
inspired Tolkien in several ways. Beyond his interest in
traditional stories, Jacob was a pioneering comparative
philologist and the author of "Grimm's Law," which describes how
consonant sounds change in a predictable manner from one
language to another an insight that enabled Tolkien and his
fellow philologists to recover words from long-lost languages.
The class may wish to use the Auden paradigm not only in
analyzing "The Water of Life" but also two stories from Unit
One, "The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs" and "The Charmed
Ring." What similarities and differences do students notice
among these three quest adventures? The Slaying of Fafnir
(Excerpts from "Reginsmol" and "Fafnismol" in the Elder Edda)
The Old Norse poems that constitute the Elder Edda represent
just one facet of a far-ranging oral tradition celebrating the
dragonslayer Sigurd (Sigurth) and the accursed treasure i