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This article examines the symbolism of Galadriel's hair in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and its relationship to Victorian culture. The author argues that Galadriel's hair represents the Victorian fascination with memory and preservation, similar to the preservation of relics during that time period. The article also discusses the influence of Norse mythology and the Romantic movement on Tolkien's portrayal of objects and characters. Overall, the analysis suggests that Tolkien's exploration of cultural and historical themes reflects wider concerns and a desire for continuity in the aftermath of World War II. [Extracted from the article]

On 15 April 1953, J. R. R. Tolkien was at the University of Glasgow to deliver the W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, later published in The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays (1983). Based on new archival research at Glasgow and Oxford, this article offers new information on Tolkien's appointment to deliver this lecture, his journey to and stay at Glasgow, and his relationship with Norman Davis (1913–1989), further illuminating the lecture's significance in the context of Tolkien's life as both an academic and creative writer, Tolkien's links to Glasgow, and his academic and literary reputation at the time. The article, therefore, provides additional biographical, intellectual, cultural, and historical details related to the lecture at the time Tolkien was ushering his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), to print. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trilogy The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien is appropriately called the fundamental writing of fantasy literature. The story of the battle between good and evil, which continues to amaze readers around the world almost 70 years after it was first published, has been translated into dozens of languages, including Chinese. The work is typical for its detailed description of the landscape. The high frequency of local names raises the question of how translators work with them when translating into foreign languages. In the case of Chinese, the applied procedures are even more interesting, as it is a language with a typologically different writing system. The paper presents the results of a lexicological analysis of place names, which led to identifying not only all applied loanword categories but also which of them was the most productive one for borrowing toponyms. Based on the analysis of 512 toponyms, the following types of loanwords have been recognized: phonetic loanwords, hybrid loanwords, calques, semantic loanwords and induced new creations. The most productive loanword categories are phonetic loanwords, calques, and hybrid loanwords. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vastly overscaled elements, lineaments and sculptures of a seemingly infinite house form the backdrop of Susanna Clarke's 2020 novel Piranesi. Head of Teaching and Learning at the Architectural Association, Mark Morris draws on his research into architectural models, paracosms and the representation of buildings in fiction, filtering this through the lens of an encyclopaedic knowledge of architectural history to investigate the book's narrative arc, its ghostly visitations and its beautiful if not overbearing architectural mise en scène. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has been a matter of study of numerous comparisons that have contributed to establish a relationship with mythological and cultural aspects that may have influenced its creation. While Norse mythology has been accepted even by Tolkien as one of the main references in the creation of his world, the functionality and symbology of Celtic culture have been disdained. This study aims to analyze those elements in The Lord of the Rings that are closely related to the Celtic Irish and Welsh otherworld and their connection to the elvish lands of Rivendell and Lothlórien. Among these supernatural phenomena are the temporal perception within elven territories, the efficacy and symbolic significance of water as a ward against malevolent forces, and the intricacies associated with navigating narrow passages, rivers, and bridges. The methodology used is the traditional scientific empirical method through the study of The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981) and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). The work of Thomas Lyman, "Celtic: Celtic Things and Things Celtic," has been utilized as a source to discuss whether Celtic elements appear in Tolkien's writing. Lyman pointed out several aspects of Tolkien's work that seem similar to Celtic themes, with the afterlife being one of the most noticeable. It is evident, therefore, that despite Tolkien's distaste' for Celtic things, and the uncertainty about the concept of "afterlives" in his work there are several aspects that, unconsciously or unintentionally, have been created and modeled as a possible explanation to the beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact that Tolkien's stories were primarily linguistically inspired is evidenced not only by his meticulous attention to anthroponyms and toponyms to ensure they fully described characters or places, but also by the musicality and connection between sound and the named object. The toponyms in The Lord of the Rings create a political and geographical world: the locations in the novel, reprised and quoted in the various languages of the peoples of Middle Earth, refer to a shared history and make the fictional world more vivid and real. For Tolkien, anthroponyms and toponyms were so crucial to the correct experience of his universe that he devised a guide for translators. Given its status as a literary classic, The Lord of the Rings has undergone numerous retranslations. This contribution aims to investigate the retranslation of place names by examining the two Italian versions: the first by Vittoria Alliata and Quirino Principe, published in 1970; the second by Ottavio Fatica, published between 2019 and 2022. The contrastive analysis of this contribution aims to: 1) explore the different interpretation introduced by the retranslated toponyms; and 2) understand how toponyms reflect the translation strategies of the two translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings shows a remarkable tendency to withhold information from its readers, apparently as a deliberate narrative strategy that aims to reflect the limited point-of-view of primary characters and thereby heighten the realism of its presentation. This paper discusses four examples of this strategy, beginning with one that (uniquely) cannot be verified by external confirmation: the suggestion that Aragorn secretly witnesses the coming of the Ent-wood to Helm's Deep. The second case concerns the true identity of Gandalf as an incarnate angel, a detail hidden from most of the characters, and hence from the narrative. The remaining examples concern the treatment of erotic relationships: the long engagement of Arwen and Aragorn, a private family matter from which most characters (and consequently the reader) are excluded, and Sam's courting of Rosie, revealed only in the closing chapter despite its direct influence on the way Sam behaves when first introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As much as J. R. R. Tolkien valued the heroism expressed in “The Battle of Maldon,” with its record of warriors who died to maintain their oath, he challenged the notion of utter adherence to a sworn oath in The Silmarillion. The over-arching narrative of The Silmarillion tells of Fëanor and his seven sons who swear an oath to reclaim the three Silmarils from any “Vala, Demon, Elf or Man as yet unborn, or any creature, great or small, good or evil, that time should bring forth unto the end of days, whoso should hold or take or keep a Silmaril from their possession” (Silmarillion 83). The extended story ultimately highlights the bitter regret that can come from seeking to fulfill an oath that, the more it is pursued, the more harm is done. As such, we can better understand the perspective of Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, as Elrond saw first-hand the ultimate end of the oath of Fëanor: in language reminiscent of the Old English poem “The Wanderer,” Elrond observes that efforts not to break an oath can break one’s heart instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the influences of Mediterranean heritage on the shaping of the culture of Gondor and more specifically on the appearance of its capital, Minas Tirith, as described by J. R. R. Tolkien, and portrayed in Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings. By tracing the similarities between Númenor and Gondor and the ancient and mediaeval civilisations they resemble, and by analysing the sources from the history of art which inspired the designs of Minas Tirith's architecture, the paper aims to demonstrate the interplay and transfer of meanings and cultural connotations from real to fictional places and cultures.

This paper was a continuation of the methodological approach and an extension to the interpretational interest and strategy from its predecessor published in the journal Context no. 26/2022 that focused on vol. 2 of The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien. The main accent in this paper was put on various paremiological forms, namely on forms that have the function of advices and wisdom utterances in vol. 3 od the trilogy (The Return of the King). By exploring and by interpreting these types of paremiological forms, we tried to grasp the worldview of the different characters, in the attempt to show that certain utterances are typical, but not exclusive, for and to certain characters. For an example, even in the Two Towers we encountered wisdom utterances by Sam, Frodo's friend, a character who is not exactly an epitome, nor a representation of exceptional intelligence, unmatched providence or intellectual cunningness. But, the notion that he atypically uses utterances that are not characteristic for him, makes these utterances even greater in meaning and proves that the reader and the interpreter cannot always guess what type of an utterance this or similar character might use, keeping the element of surprise alive and active. The point was to show that every character has a unique worldview which is described through the types of utterances he or she makes but that wisdom also can be uttered by atypical characters who are not necessarily presented as being particularly wise, like Sam for instance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dating back to ancient times, Gnosticism stands as an esoteric sect of belief that envisages the common human as the battleground between two forces namely the light and the dark. The dispute results from an archetypal divergence that takes place between two divinities. While the transcendental god holds the holy wisdom under his dominion that manifests itself as the holy spark, a lesser deity named ‘Demiurge’ labours darkness into a material prison for the purpose of captivating and strangling the holy light. The radical dual division in the human condition delineates each pole with definitive terms, yet these highly discrepant antipodes are convoluted closely together by birth so that each person stands a mystery box in which crafted darkness forges the materialized body that encapsulates a spark of holy light. According to the belief system, every person is destined to grant the ultimate and total victory for either force over the other with corresponding outcomes. If a soul proves his merit by letting the holy spark shine and wash away the darkness, he reaches a divine state of blessed salvation that is called gnosis, however those who surrender to darkness are forced to undergo life and death cycles until they achieve their pure spiritual rebirth. To achieve the holy salvation, total asceticism and relinquishing from the earthly appeals are stated as the indispensable requisites. In light of the ancient esoteric teaching, Tolkien’s notoriously famous Ring promises much compatibility with the gnostic assumption of the diabolic matter, the destruction of which enables the hero to sail for an allegoric expedition in which both the destination and the rebirth of the hero pieces together the complete the divine godhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium represents different archetypal myths that constitute a diverse treasury of literary genres. Tragedy in variegated forms also appears in many of his mythological tales and characters. Gollum in The Lord of the Rings experiences a unique instance of tragedy when it is compared with Tolkien’s earlier sketches of the genre. We demonstrate that the character Gollum sustains a twofold type of tragedy that originates from Tolkien’s perception of medieval and modern spirits of thought. Raymond Williams in Modern Tragedy draws upon historical traditions of tragedy to survey different characteristics of “modern tragedy”. According to him, the cornerstones through which modern tragedy, and in particular liberal tragedy, digresses from prior traditions are as follows: “order and accident”, “the destruction of hero,” “the irreparable action,” and “the emphasis of evil”. Williams also describes the medieval tragedy in view of the “feudal rank” and “the wheel of Fortune”. This paper argues that Gollum’s tragic experience reverberates with both liberal and medieval definitions of tragedy. To this end, the elements of the two traditions are scrutinized with respect to the character’s actions and mental status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy1 is remarkable for its depth and groundedness, and this has established The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as classics, although their place is still being defined. Tolkien's work continues to offer new pleasures as it is re-read. Things that give me special pleasure range from individual phrases to the intertextual engagement of Tolkien's fantasy with older motifs: these idiosyncratic pleasures appear to derive from the text itself and its participation in a tradition of textual influence, so that, for me, the pleasure is independent of where one reads Tolkien.2 University teaching of English literature should equip students to cope with literature that is not of their own place and time. Within the South African academy, we should not be seduced into reading only contemporary literature from Africa, or reading only according to the tenets of postcolonialism. Twentieth-century fantasy should be accessible to students independently of their background, because it is inherently and deliberately different from ordinary reality. However, when I have had the pleasure and privilege of guiding students writing on Tolkien's work, I have found that their responses to it are enriched if they are equipped to read works that are older or in some way other. Tolkien's classic fantasy is a source of pleasure in many ways, and this delight and discovery is not and should not be limited to readers from certain backgrounds only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of world globalization, a person is constantly influenced by modern media, a powerful means of suggestion, mind control. The media do not simply describe the reality and objectively record the events taking place around them. They are directly or indirectly in overt or covert form processes in society. The article analyzes the functioning of precedent phenomena from the novel “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien. The wide popularity of the plots and names of the main characters of the novel allows us to say that they entered and were entrenched in the cognitive base of representatives of our linguistic culture, since the novel raises such eternal topics as the struggle between good and evil, the meaning of power, the role of man in the life of society, the problem of preservation nature and many others. Since in the political media many situations are presented as a confrontation between good and evil, the struggle for power, the precedent phenomena from “The Lord of the Rings” are good means of representing the subjects of political events. The precedent phenomenon of “lord of the rings” in media texts actualized when describing political, social problems, issues of science and sports. Modeling of images occurs by means of the key units “lord” and “ring”, making up a single integral structure, referring to the well-known novel by J.R.R. Tolkien. The analysis of the functioning features of the precedent units included in “The Lord of the Rings” allows us to establish the linguistic mechanisms of their “deployment” in the media discourse and come to the conclusion about the specifics of the fragment of the worldview, fixed in precedent phenomena.

This paper highlights the pivotal role played by proper names in fantasy literature and examines the techniques employed by the Italian translators of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in the translation of anthroponyms. Notwithstanding the vast number of neologisms found in fantasy literature and the challenges they pose to translators, fictional names typical of such genre still play a marginal role in Translation Studies. The aim of this paper is to identify problems and trends relating to the translation procedures adopted in the Italian translations of one of the most representative works of the aforementioned genre. The second and latest Italian translation of The Lord of the Rings (2019-2020), published fifty years after the first one (1970), was the prompt for this investigation focusing on a sample of translatable anthroponyms. Source and target names were analysed and classified in order to identify translation trends characterising the two Italian translations. The results of the investigation show a higher tendency towards adaptation in the previous translation and a preference for more source-oriented techniques in the newest one.

One of the most significant instances of renaming in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Frodo's use of Underhill as a traveling name, has not been the subject of scholarly analysis. This article argues that Tolkien may have chosen the name Underhill for his central protagonist due to the specific inspiration of Fr Albert Plunket 'Underhill' (1744–1814), the English Dominican priest who founded the eighteenth-century Catholic mission at Leeds and who, alone, prevented the abandonment of the English province by the Dominican moment. Like Frodo, in his quest to destroy the Ring, it was Fr Albert alone who refused to give up hope and persevere whatever the odds. Moreover, like Frodo, Fr Albert and his wider family adopted the use of Underhill as an alias to avoid danger and persecution. This article analyses these and other parallels between the life of Fr Albert 'Underhill' in the primary world and Frodo 'Underhill' in the secondary, situates Fr Albert's life in its wider historical contexts, and demonstrates the occasions and routes by which Tolkien could have been made aware of Fr Albert and his pivotal role in the re-evangelization of Protestant England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was highly influential in shaping modern fantasy literature and popularising medievalism. Scholarship has examined various aspects of Tolkien's literary imagination in The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955); however, to date, there has been no thorough scrutiny of the significance of aesthetics in his creative works. This paper contends that Tolkien's magnum opus as part of his long‐life myth‐making project was shaped profoundly by the late 18th‐century aesthetics of the sublime. It draws on Burkean physiological sublime to argue that contrary to Kantian rationality, certain Tolkienian landscapes demonstrate the qualities of the natural sublime and generate physical experiences on the observer that accentuates the primacy of emotions over reason. The article proposes a new direction in Tolkien studies by highlighting the aesthetic overtones of Tolkien's engagement with the sublime, which played a significant role in constructing his English mythology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to show the influence that the Latin poet Virgil had on Tolkien’s work, especially in one of his heroines. This will be demonstrated through the analysis and comparison between the two most influential female characters in their respective works: Dido and Éowyn. This comparison will be made from the perspective of their own histories, as well as their relationship with the male protagonists: Aeneas and Aragorn. Thus, throughout this journey, we will be able to study the similarities and differences between them as well as their individual evolution.

J. R. R. Tolkien dedicated much of his academic thought to Beowulf, producing what still is the major innovative and ground-breaking essay on it - 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics', a 1936 text which utterly changed the understanding of the poem, which he also translated into Modern English. Beowulf was likewise a main source of inspiration for his own legendarium, shaping many episodes and characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In this essay, we do not want to speak about specific episodes from The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings influenced by Beowulf. Instead, we would like to focus how The Lord of the Rings parallels the Anglo-Saxon text in terms of what we consider one of its major themes: the cycle of life and the inevitability of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A place of desolation where blood-red flames stand out against pitch-black darkness. A barren land where the grass does not grow. The dwelling of a big fiery eye, without lids, threatening to spread its power throughout Middle-earth... Mordor is indeed the epitome of a biblical locus infernalis. The characteristics of this hellish scenery become climactic with the eruption of Mount Doom, when the One Ring is finally destroyed. Yet, the looming presence of evil does not end with the annihilation of the Dark Lord Sauron. It survives with his minion, Saruman, who has expanded his deleterious influence from Isengard to the Shire, a now distorted locus amoenus, picture of a Garden of Eden, and, to a certain extent, symbol of the author’s beloved rural England. The present article analyses this threefold apocalypse in The Lord of the Rings.

«The Lord of the Rings» is surely the most important and influential epic work of the 20th Century. In addition to its intrinsic value, Tolkien's work set the generic parameters of the fantasy novel, inspiring the subsequent birth of various literary universes. In the Tolkien epic, as it is known, the basilar influence of Christianity is recognized. The recent audiovisual phenomenon «Game of Thrones», deeply rooted in postmodern cultural uses, proposes a radically opposite reading of the fantasy genre, of the axiology of the characters and political morality. However, both bodies converge in the multidimensional use of messianic narrative patterns. In this text, I intend to succinctly identify these guidelines and analyze them from and interdisciplinary perspective. In conclusion, I maintain the nuclear importance of the messianic narrative in the plot and historical-contextual configuration of the works of Tolkien and George R. R. Martin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tolkien's literary work recreates a complex fictional world inhabited by different peoples and ethnic groups with their own history and culture. Given his philological motivation, works such as The Lord of the Rings show the idiosyncrasies of each people through their history and traditions, their language and speech and even their names. Peter Jackson's film version, however, provides an additional element that contributes to the representation of these peoples and cultures: the soundtrack. Hence, Howard's Shore music plays a major role in the configuration of the identity of elves, men, hobbits or orcs, by means of different instruments, themes, modes and dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to provide an analysis of Tolkien's portrayal of feminine figures by emphasizing the roles of Ungoliant and Slielob, the monstrous spiders which Tolkien codes female, and finding how these sexual and procreative beings fit into Tolkien's theological and gender essentialist views of women, and then how this reflects on other women within Tolkien's legendarium, arguing that far from any of Tolkien's women being empowered, they are instead always subservient to his essentialist understandings of women, that they are biologically and intellectually usually inferior to men and have specific gendered roles in Tolkien's very Catholic gender binary, and so his literary women are in fact not empowered but fit into his restrictive sense of gender roles between men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tolkien's mythology of Middle-earth is a highly studied corpus in ecology and enviromnental studies. Due to the cosmogonie nature of this mythology, ecological patterns are both similar and different to our world. Especially in terms of biodiversity, the flora and fauna we encounter in the corpus are at the centre of ecological and enviromnental approaches. Plant biodiversity supports the unique habitat formation of many regions in the history of this mythology. Being interested in botany, Tolkien paid particular attention to plants' geographical distribution and location and broke new ground in terms of diversity. In this diversity, there are also some plants that he invented. The purpose of this paper is to compare some plants Tolkien invented - athelas, mallorn, elanor, niphredil, and simbelmynë - with their companion plants in Earth's current flora. In addition, these plants' geographic locations in Middle-earth will also be revealed in terms of climate and vegetation diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways in which fan archives, particularly physical archives of pre-internet fan artefacts, offer a limited perspective of fan participation based on conditions of access to fan community and production means. Using 1960s fan magazines dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy that emerged in the early days of US-based fandom, this research demonstrates that analysis of the content of these fanzines is most significant to fan studies when it considers factors of publication such as who had access to printing materials, funding and the social conditions of the 1960s that would have privileged specific fan voices over others. I argue that archives that fail to take factors such as these into account help to perpetuate notions of acceptable fandom as practised by White fans. The fandom presented in the pages of The Lord of the Rings fanzines, as presented by their political statements or lack of, shows how fandom interests change when fandoms move from heavily concentrated spaces, fanzines, to broader and more accessible spaces such as the internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este estudio pretende aplicar las perspectivas de las diversas corrientes ecocríticas para conformar nuevas lecturas y formas de aproximarnos a El Señor de los Anillos (en adelante, ESDLA). Para ello, se describen las mitologías de la Naturaleza presentes en ESDLA desde una perspectiva ecocrítica, subrayando los elementos concernientes a cada uno de elementos de la Naturaleza en relación con episodios y personajes de la obra. Finalmente, se proponen diversos criterios para una intervención didáctica a propósito del texto. This study deals with the perspectives of the various ecocritical currents to shape new readings and ways of approaching The Lord of the Rings. To do this, the mythologies of Nature present in The Lord of the Rings, are described from an ecocritical perspective, highlighting the elements concerning each element of Nature in relation to episodes and characters of the work. Finally, various criteria are proposed for a didactic intervention with regard to the text.