Narrative models in Tolkien's stories of middle-earth
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.84Abstract
In The Lord of the Rings (1954), there is an attempt to unite the two worlds which captivated Tolkien’s imagination: the fairy tale world of children’s stories which he was drawn to as a child, and the sagas and medieval myths that were the subject of his study and teaching at university. The hobbits are where these two narrative universes meet. In The Lord of the Rings, these two worlds, being difficult to reconcile, collide. On the one hand, we have the hobbits, those everymen with whom the reader can identify easily. They are characters created in The Hobbit (1937) that have a narrative world of their own, as in fairytales, and that are generated with a low mimetic mode. On the other hand, we have the chivalric heroes with a great literary tradition, who belong to the high mimetic mode. Tolkien’s fiction is less successful in those episodes in which the hobbits are absent.Downloads
References
Carpenter, H., ed., and C. Tolkien, assistant. 1981. The Letters of J. R .R. Tolkien. London: HarperCollins.
Carpenter, H. 1977. The Inklings. C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Colomer, T. 1998. La formació del lector literari. Barcelona: Barcanova.
Grotta, D. 1976. The Biography of J. R. R. Tolkien. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Running Press.
Kuznets, L. R. 1981. “Tolkien and the Rhetoric of Childhood”. Tolkien. New Critical Perspectives. Ed. N. D. Isaacs et al. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. 150-162.
Shippey, T. A. 1992. The Road to Middle Earth. London: HarperCollins Publishers.
Tolkien, C., ed. 2002. The History of Middle-earth. Thirteen volumes. New York: Ballantine Books.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1969 (1954). The Two Towers. New York: Ballantine Books.
Tolkien, J. R. R., 1973 (1937). The Hobbit. New York: Ballantine.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1973 (1954). The Return of the King. New York: Ballantine.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1979 (1954). The Fellowship of the Ring. New York: Ballantine.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1979 (1977). The Silmarillion. Ed. C. Tolkien. New York: Ballantine.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1997 (1947). “On Fairy Stories”. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Ed. C. Tolkien. London: HarperCollins. 109-161.
West, R. C. 1975. “The Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings”. A Tolkien Compass. Ed. J. Lobdell. New York: Ballantine. 82-102.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The authors retain copyright of articles and authorize Journal of English Studies the first publication. They are free to share, redistribute, and/or reprint the article without obtaining permission from the publisher as long as they give appropriate credit to the editor and the journal.
Self-archiving is allowed too. In fact, it is recommendable to deposit a PDF version of the paper in academic and/or institutional repositories.
It is recommended to include the DOI number.
This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
