Richard C. West

Richard C. West (født 13. august 1944 i USA, død 29. november 2020 i Madison i Wisconsin i USA) var en av de første Tolkien-forskerne. Han er best kjent for sitt  essay Interlacing in The Lord of the Rings.

Biografi
Richard Carroll West ble født 13. august 1944. Han ble utdannet ved University of Wisconsin-Madison. Han begynte å studere J. R. R. Tolkiens Middle-earth-legendarium i 1968, med besøk til Tolkien-arkivene ved Marquette University i Milwaukee i Wisconsin mange ganger fra da og i rundt 45 år. Han redigerte Orcrist, University of Wisconsins Tolkien Society; han hadde selv grunnlagt dette selskapet i 1966. Han arbeidet i mange år som bibliotekarspesialist for serier og tekniske tjenester ved University of Wisconsin-Madison, ved siden av sin Tolkien-forskning.

Han døde 29. november 2020 i Madison i Wisconsin av COVID-19.

Utmerkelser
 1976 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies
 2014 Scholar Guest of Honor at Mythcon 45

Verker

Bøker 
 Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist (Kent State University Press, first edition 1970, updated second edition 1981)

Bokkapitler, artikler
 "The Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings" i The Tolkien Compass (Open Court, 1975, ed. Jared Lobdell) 
 "Setting the Rocket Off in Story: The Kalevala as the Germ of Tolkien's Legendarium" i Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader (University Press of Kentucky, 2004)
 "A Tolkien Checklist: Selected Criticism 1981-2004", Modern Fiction Studies 40:4 (2004)
 "'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)

West bidro med kapitler i de følgende akademiske verker:
"Túrin's Ofermod: An Old English Theme in the Development of the Story of Túrin" i Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth (Greenwood Press, 2000)
"Real-World Myth in a Secondary World: Mythological Aspects in the Story of Beren and Lúthien" i 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" i Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey (McFarland & Company, 2014)
"Canute and Beorhtnoth" i A Wilderness of Dragons: Essays in Honor of Verlyn Flieger (The Gabbro Head Press, 2018)

Referanser 

Bibliotekarer
Forskere fra USA
Litteraturvitere fra USA
Dødsfall relatert til covid-19 i USA
Forfattere ofre for covidpandemien