Frodo, for those who have never heard tales from beyond the hedges, is the most famous Hobbit who ever lived.

According to Tolkien, the author of the three-volume "Ring" trilogy, "Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people more numerous formerly than they are today. " They are quick of hearing and sharp-eyed, and though they are inclined to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily, they are nonetheless nimble and deft in their movements."

Oh, and they have large feet, and a well-groomed Hobbit combs his toes.

Frodo Baggins, a Hobbit from the Shire, is the hero of Tolkien's epic-like fantasy about the struggle between good and evil. Some critics consider Tolkien's works to be children's literature and trivial. In part, that is because of the popularity of the "Ring" trilogy, which sold more than 3 million copies in the United States between 1965 and 1968. Some even view Tolkien, the South-African-born writer who died in 1973, as something of a cult figure who cannot be taken seriously.

Not so, says Jane Chance, professor of English and a medievalist, who teaches English 318, a course devoted to studying the works and influences of Tolkien.

"Tolkien raises many ethical and moral dilemmas that are similar to Joseph Conrad's `Heart of Darkness' or those in a Graham Greene novel or any modern novel that involves characters grappling with difficult questions," Chance said. "You can see Tolkien writing out of response to World War II, Hitler and Nazis trying to take over the free world."

One of the driving forces behind Tolkien's writings was the horror of modern, industrialized warfare, which he experienced firsthand in 1916 as a first lieutenant during the first battle of the Somme, during which 20,000 British soldiers died the first day of the four-month battle.

Along with Tolkien, war veterans such as C.S. Lewis, George Orwell and later Joseph Heller in "Catch-22," all in their own way tried to make sense of the most pressing dilemma of their time-war or evil, said Thomas Shippey, the Walter J. Ong Chair of Humanities at St. Louis University.

"When we talk about escapism and the ivory tower, it is not the fantasy writers who are in the ivory tower," Shippey said, "it is the literary critics."

Tolkien was a serious scholar, Shippey said, "and the most influential philologists of his time, and the most efficient transmitter of ancient stories to the modern world."

Chance's students quickly learn about that serious scholar. They read a lot more than "Rings," which is about 1,400 pages long. The class reading list includes titles such as Tolkien's letters, "Beowulf," T.S. Eliot's "Waste Land," and excerpts from George Orwell's "1984."

Chance has been teaching Tolkien at Rice since 1975. She is the author of numerous books including two on Tolkien: "Tolkien's Art: A `Mythology for England'" (Macmillan Ltd., 1979; reprinted by St. Martin's Press, 1980) and "The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power" (Maxwell Macmillan Press, 1992).

Chance first read Tolkien at the urging of a colleague at the University of Saskatchewan.

"I decided to read it myself and couldn't put it down," she said. "I thought, `This is really great stuff.' I had always denigrated it as so many people do. They think it is children's literature and not worthy of any kind of study."

When Chance's first began teaching Tolkien as a course for Lovett College, she discovered the dearth of scholarship on Tolkien.

"When I began teaching this, I went to the library to check out all the books I could find on Tolkien, of which there were maybe four, and three of them were poorly written," Chance said. "To do the course I wanted to do, I had to write lectures and do the research."

One of her books, "The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power," was written for Twayne's Masterwork Studies, a series of scholarly books on 150 of the greatest works in English and American literature.

When offered that opportunity to write the book, Chance recalled thinking, "Great, I have a chance to put Tolkien in the canon. This will be my chance to show that Tolkien really does deserve canonical status. This is an answer to the critics who say he is a children's author and not worth extended study."

Chance points out that Tolkien's fiction deals with modern dilemmas such as feelings of isolation, the nature of good and evil and the singularity of the individual. He also wrote against a backdrop of war in Europe when individuals seemed to be swallowed up in the modern industrial society.

In her second book, rather than writing about Tolkien in a medieval context, as she had in her first book, she explored the modern influences upon the English scholar-his origins in South Africa, the early death of his parents, his Catholic upbringing in Great Britain where the Church of England held sway, and World War I and World War II.

During class discussion, the students have a good grasp of those modern influences on Tolkien. They point to comparisons between Frodo, the Hobbit, and Tolkien, both of whom were orphaned while young. They recall letters Tolkien wrote to his son, who was fighting in North Africa with the Royal Air Force.

Tolkien is also widely recognized for his use of language, a feat that is not lost to the students and figures in their course discussions.

Tolkien created about 14 languages for his trilogy, said Frank Garcia, a Lovett senior and member of the class.

"When I first read `Lord of the Rings,' I hadn't really realized how detailed and real the languages are," he said. "I've rather enjoyed looking at it from a more scholarly perspective, because it forces you to think about the story in a different way than if you are reading for pleasure."

Tolkien's use of language is also causing the academic community to take notice.

"The direction of recent scholarly articles has been to the genius of those created languages as a means of discerning the nature of the created species [such as dwarves or elves] who speak them and thereby interpreting Tolkien's fictive masterpiece," Chance said in "The Mythology of Power." "At last [Tolkien] is being studied as important in himself as one of the world's greatest writers "."

For this class, Chance has added another dimension besides Tolkien's writings and critical writings. She's included the Internet as a tool.

This year for the first time Chance has created an electronic Tolkien class complete with a web site containing photos, syllabus, additional readings and Tolkien links and a help button, which leads to Internet search engines. In addition, there is an E-mail list that allows students to participate in discussion out of the classroom. Since students are graded on participation, the E-mail list offers some people an alternative form of discussion.

"The mailing list is funny," Garcia said. "We may go a week or two and no E-mail, then overnight there might be a flurry of activity."

One thread of E-mail that sparked response was the debate over the depiction of good versus evil in Tolkien's "The Silmarillion," in which he constructs his fantasy world. Students debated if the author's created world really contained evil or whether evil arose from selfishness and desire.

Tolkien would probably like that debate.