The changes to Tolkien's cosmology introduced in "Myths Transformed" were not well received. Certainly their realism is a 180% turn for the man who declared unequivocally that "Fantasy remains a ...human right" (72). Have Tolkien's revisions, radical as they are, been "a fearful weapon" against his own creation? And if they have, how has the perception of that creation changed since the publication of Morgoth's Ring in 1993? Has Tolkien's weapon destroyed his imaginary world?
The paper predicates the prospects of mythopoeia in the mythical tradition. An authorial construction of mythopoeia, when internalized into the collective consciousness can evolve into mythos. This ...mythopoeia turned mythos in the course of time and space may regress into myth. The fragments of the myth may then result in the making of another mythopoeia. Mythopoeia to mythos to myth is a cyclical process in mythical tradition. The paper establishes this argument with J. R. R. Tolkien's conception of mythopoeia. It explores similarities between mythopoeia and conlang. It contends that just as conlang can evolve as language, mythopoeia can also evolve into mythos. It further corroborates that if every mythos was mythopoeic in its conception, then every mythopoeia can advance into mythos.
This previously‐unpublished essay by the late Charles W. Mills (1951–2021) seeks to demonstrate the racially‐structured character of the universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit and The ...Lord of the Rings. Written long before the popular film series, the essay critically examines Tolkien's novels and comments on the nature of fictional creation. Mills argues that Tolkien designs a racial hierarchy in the novels that recapitulates the central racist myth of European thought.
This article examines the treatment of the literary pastoral in The Lord of the Rings in order to demonstrate that Tolkien's pastoral, often considered a vestige of authorial nostalgia, is as ...forwardlooking as it is wistful. Through Samwise Gamgee and his connection to the Shire, Tolkien presents a pastoral that, though rooted in memory, is as mutable as nature itself - one that orients the reader forward and conveys that change is not only something to be accepted, but also embraced.
There is a broad stream of Christian interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fiction, especially The Lord of the Rings, which views it as the intentionally, essentially Christian work of an intentionally, ...essentially Christian author. This reductive, exclusivist approach does not do justice to the complex, generative interactivity between Tolkien's faith, the faith of his readers (or lack thereof), and the text itself. Building on work by Veryln Flieger, Michael Drout, and Robin A. Reid, this paper interrogates how Christian Tolkien scholarship drafts Tolkien the human sub-creator to perform Foucault's author-function by suppressing his contradictions and painting a figure whose life and works speak with a single, authoritative voice. Then, drawing on progressive Christian and Jewish hermeneutics and Tolkien's own writings on intent and the freedom of the reader, it proposes a hermeneutics of Tolkienian inspiration that honors Tolkien's Roman Catholic foundations, the sub-creative integrity of his secondary world, and the religious diversity of the readers who draw such deep wells of meaning from it. In so doing, it intervenes in ongoing conflict in the field of Tolkien Studies and Tolkien fandom more broadly over diverse interpretations of his fiction and the control of Tolkienian meaning.
J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings accurately portrayed the signs and symptoms of what is currently labeled Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Frodo's condition logically follows his experiences of ...less than a year in the War of the Ring. Tolkien did not have access to a diagnostic manual but apparently used his keen observations from both World Wars to inform his narrative. No fantasy is employed to describe Frodo condition after the Ring is destroyed. His condition is that of a vet with PTSD. Evidence from the History of Middle-earth demonstrates the deliberate steps taken to show Frodo as broken by his sacrifice.
Critics, and even the general public, have noted the absence of women in The Lord of the Rings, an absence so glaring that it could hardly be overlooked. Many feminist scholars have, as a result of ...this deficiency, denounced J.R.R. Tolkien, interpreting this lack of female characters as indicative of repressed misogyny. Others, however, have defended the author, pointing out that the female characters that do exist could be considered role models. This essay offers an alternative interpretation and contends that the absence of women in the novel, though potentially reducing its appeal to modern readers, reinforces one of its central motifs: the barrenness and infertility of Middle-earth. Overawed by Tolkien's landscape descriptions and the extent of his worldbuilding, readers have overlooked just how empty this world is, how rarely the Fellowship encounters settled districts or even lonely habitations. Replacing the farms, villages, and markets a reader would expect to encounter are vast stretches of wilderness and the ruins of forgotten nations. The almost total absence of women, of wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers, reinforces this sense of desolation, suggesting to the reader that Middle-earth has no future. The novel's few women actually contribute to this impression, for they are all, for different reasons, childless. Compared to the infertile and declining populations of elves, humans, and dwarves, Tolkien's orcs display a shocking and unnatural fecundity, reproducing-in a manner only hinted at-in enormous numbers. The novel's conclusion, which begins with Aragorn's long-desired wedding and ends with Sam's return to Rosie Cotton, generates a flurry of contented relationships, suggesting not misogyny on the author's part, but a veneration for sex, romance, and family life. That Frodo is unable to partake in any of these makes his sacrifice all the more poignant.
