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The philologist and fantasy authorJ. R. R. Tolkien made use of multipleliterary devices inThe Lord of the Rings, from itsnarrative structure andits use of pseudotranslation andeditorial framing, tocharacter pairing and the deliberate cultivation of animpression of depth whileconstructing the novel. The narrative structure in particular has been seen as a pair of quests, a sequence oftableaux (static scenes), a complex edifice, multiple spirals, and amedieval-style interlacing. The first volume,The Fellowship of the Ring, on the other hand, has a single narrative thread, and repeated episodes of danger and recuperation in five "Homely Houses".His prose style, too, has been both criticised and defended.
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an EnglishRoman Catholic writer, poet,philologist, and academic, best known as the author of thehigh fantasy worksThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings.[2]
The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954–55; it was awarded theInternational Fantasy Award in 1957. The publication of theAce Books andBallantine paperbacks in the United States helped it to become immensely popular with a new generation in the 1960s. The book has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the twentieth century, judged by both sales and reader surveys.[3] In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by theBBC in the United Kingdom,The Lord of the Rings was found to be the "Nation's best-loved book." In similar 2004 polls both Germany[4] and Australia[5] also foundThe Lord of the Rings to be their favourite book. In a 1999 poll ofAmazon.com customers,The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium."[6] The popularity ofThe Lord of the Rings increased further whenPeter Jackson's film trilogy came out in 2001–2003.[7]
The first volume,The Fellowship of the Ring, has a different structure from the rest of the novel. It has attracted attention both for its sequence of five "Homely Houses", safe places where theHobbit protagonists may recuperate after a dangerous episode,[8][9] and for its arrangement as a single narrative thread focused on itsprotagonist,Frodo, interrupted by two long but critically importantflashback narrative chapters, "The Shadow of the Past" and "The Council of Elrond".[10][11]
Scholars have described the narrative structure ofThe Lord of the Rings in a variety of ways, including as a balanced pair of outer and innerquests;[12] a linear sequence of scenes ortableaux;[13] afractal arrangement of separate episodes;[14] aGothic cathedral-like edifice of many different elements;[14] multiple cycles or spirals;[15] or an elaboratemedieval-styleinterlacing of intersecting threads of story.[16] Also present is an elaborate symmetry between pairs of characters.[17]
The narrative interlacing inThe Lord of the Rings, also called by the French termentrelacement, is an unusual and complex narrative structure, known from medieval literature, that enabled Tolkien to achieve a variety of literary effects. These include maintaining suspense, keeping the reader uncertain of what will happen and even of what is happening to other characters at the same time in the story; creating surprise and an ongoing feeling of bewilderment and disorientation. More subtly, the leapfrogging of the timeline inThe Lord of the Rings by the different story threads allows Tolkien to make hidden connections that can only be grasped retrospectively, as the reader realises on reflection that certain events happened at the same time, and that these connections imply a contest of good and evil powers.[16][18]
The Tolkien scholarTom Shippey comments that it is curious that Tolkien used this literary device, as he favoured "northern" literature over French or later Italian epics likeAriosto'sOrlando Furioso.All the same, Shippey writes, Tolkien's use of the technique is far more tightly structured than that of the Medieval romances.[19]
Tolkien usedcharacter pairing to express some of themoral complexity of his major characters inThe Lord of the Rings.[20][21][22] Commentators have noted that the format of afantasy does not lend itself to subtlety of characterisation, but that pairing allows inner tensions to be expressed as linked opposites, including, in apsychoanalytic interpretation, those of Jungian archetypes. Major pairings include those between the HobbitsFrodo,Sam, andGollum, the three of them linked by the Ring, by friendship, and by bonds of loyalty and of oath. This enables Tolkien to portray the good and evil sides of Frodo's character.[21][23][24] Theunheroic Frodo is further contrasted with the plainly heroicAragorn. Among the kingly figures, the unhappySteward of Gondor,Denethor, is paired both with the future king Aragorn[25] and with the bold king ofRohan,Théoden.[26][27] Pairings operate, too, among supporting characters, such as that between the elf-queenGaladriel and the giant spiderShelob, light opposing darkness.[21] Patrick Grant, a scholar ofRenaissance literature, interpreted the interactions of the characters as fitting the oppositions and other pairwise relationships ofJungian archetypes, recurring psychological symbols proposed byCarl Jung.[28]
Tolkien deliberately sought to create the aesthetic effect of impression of depth inThe Lord of the Rings. It was intended to give the reader the feeling that the work had "deep roots in the past",[29] and hence that it was attractively authentic.[30] The effect was constructed on at least four factors, namely the enormous scale ofThe Lord of the Rings and the amount of background detail, includingmaps andgenealogies; the apparently casual and incomplete mentions of this background; multiple inconsistent accounts, as in real history; and writing different texts in varying styles.[31] Scholars have noted some ofTolkien's medieval antecedents in the effect, such asBeowulf andSir Gawain and the Green Knight, books which he had studied and translated.[32] Fantasy authors such asUrsula K. Le Guin andJ. K. Rowling have to an extentfollowed Tolkien in using the technique.[31][33]
Tolkien's prose style inThe Lord of the Rings is remarkably varied and "invitational" to the reader.[34] Commentators have noted that Tolkien selectedlinguistic registers to suit different peoples, such as simple and modern for Hobbits and more archaic forDwarves,Elves, andRiders of Rohan.[35] This allowed him to use the Hobbits to mediate between the modern reader and the heroic and archaic realm of fantasy.[36] TheOrcs, too, are depicted in different voices: the Orc-leaderGrishnákh speaks inbullying tones, while the minor functionaryGorbag uses grumbling modern speech.[1]
Brian Rosebury considers Tolkien's portrayal of Gollum his "most memorable success", sharply defining him with an "extraordinary idiolect", a unique way of speaking.[1] This encompasses "obsessive repetition", "undeveloped syntax and unstable sense of grammatical person, sufficient to implydissociative mental illness.[1] The language is, Rosebury suggests, partly modelled on "the playful, wheedling, sentimental argot of the nursery" with its frequent use of "nice" and "nasty" and phrases like "little hobbitses".[1] He comments that the effect is to depict Gollum as morally deformed "like ... an unregenerate child grown old, in whom the unattractive infant qualities of selfishness, cruelty and self-pitying are monstrously preserved and isolated."[1]
Tolkien's prose style was attacked by scholars of literature such asCatharine R. Stimpson[37] andBurton Raffel in the 20th century.[38] Raffel criticised the work's style, the embedded poetry, the characterisation, what he called the "manipulatory" use of incident, and the implied Christian morality.[38] It has more recently been analysed more favourably, both by other novelists such asUrsula Le Guin,[39] and by scholars such as Rosebury[40] and Shippey. Where Stimpson called Tolkien's diction needlessly complex, Rosebury argues that even in the example she chose, Tolkien was as plain and simple asErnest Hemingway.[40] He analyses a passage where Merry has just helped to kill theWitch-King.[1] Tolkien begins this in plain language, modulating into a higher register to deal with the echoes of ancient and magical history.[40] More recently, scholars have appliedcorpus linguistics to analyse his text quantitatively.[41]
Apseudotranslation is a text written as if it had been translated from a foreign language. Tolkien used it inThe Lord of the Rings for two reasons: to help resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using real-world languages within his legendarium,[42][43] and to lend realism by supporting afound manuscript conceitto frame his story.[44]
Effectively, Tolkien pretends to be an editor who has received an ancient manuscript, theRed Book of Westmarch, written inWestron, the Common Speech ofMiddle-earth, annotated and edited by many hands, which heundertakes to translate into English.[45] The manuscript supposedly contains names and words fromother languages, some of them related to Westron; he pretends he has translated those into languages related to English, namelyOld English andOld Norse.[43][46][47]
Tolkien then goes much further, constructing an elaborateeditorial framing of the entire book, constructing a prologue and multiple appendices that all collude to support the found manuscript conceit, and indeed to construct a secondary world that appears real and solid because of the interlocking evidence from many different technical points of view. These include genealogies, ancient annals complete with scribal footnotes and editorial comments, even a discussion "On Translation" about how it has proven best to handle the complexities of the translation into modern English.[48][49][50]
