Theimpression of depth inThe Lord of the Rings is an aesthetic effect deliberately sought by its author,J. R. R. Tolkien. It was intended to give the reader the feeling that the work had "deep roots in the past", and hence that it was attractively authentic.

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.

Scholars have noted some ofTolkien's medieval antecedents in the effect, such asBeowulf andSir Gawain and the Green Knight.Fantasy authors such asUrsula K. Le Guin andJ. K. Rowling have to an extent followed Tolkien in using the technique.

In an essay,Tolkien praised the 14th-century Englishchivalric romanceSir Gawain and the Green Knight for its "deep roots in the past, deeper even than its author was aware".^{[T 1]} In his opinion, this enabled it to survive even the severe test of being a set text for students; it deserved "close and detailed attention, and after that ... careful consideration, and re-consideration".^{[T 1]} In an aside, he went on to discuss what that meant:^[1]

It is an interesting question: what is this flavour, this atmosphere, this virtue that suchrooted works have, and which compensates for the inevitable flaws and imperfect adjustments that must appear, when plots, motives, symbols, are rehandled and pressed into the service of the changed minds of a later time, used for the expression of ideas quite different from those which produced them.^{[T 1]}

In a letter, Tolkien provided at least part of his own view of the impression of depth inThe Lord of the Rings, namely that^{[T 2][2]}

Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist.^{[T 2]}

Tolkien noted further that this effect would be difficult to attain in thelegendarium that lay behindThe Lord of the Rings, "unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed".^{[T 2]} He added that "many of the older legends are purely 'mythological', and nearly all are grim and tragic".^{[T 2]}

The scholar of English literature Katarzyna Ferdynus comments that^[3]

the pseudo-mediaeval reality ofThe Lord of the Rings is full of dim echoes of the ancient past, the old glorious days remembered and praised by many of the inhabitants ... theFellowship constantly encounters the relics of the past, as they travel through long–forgotten countries, the ruins of old cities, fortresses and watchtowers, forests and rivers that once witnessed important historical events. In their dialogues they constantly refer to legends, theysing or recite old ballads and poems, and they narrate stories whenever there is an opportunity. 'As night f[alls] and the light of the fire beg[ins] to shine out brightly' they listen to the 'histories and legends of long ago, ofElves andMen and the good and evil deeds of the Elder Days'.^{[T 3]} Those numerous references create the striking impression of the depth of time".^[3]

Tom Shippey, a Tolkien scholar, writes that depth is "the one literary quality, to say no more, which most certainly distinguishes Tolkien from his many imitators"in fantasy,^[4] and that behind the visible text lay "a coherent, consistent, deeply fascinating world about which he had no time [then] to speak".^[2][5]

This quality of depth, that Tolkien valued highly, he found especially inBeowulf, but also in other works that he admired, such asVirgil'sAeneid,Shakespeare'sMacbeth,Sir Orfeo, andGrimms' Fairy Tales.^[2] Scholars such asGergely Nagy have identified other texts well known to Tolkien that provide a strong impression of depth, includingThomas Malory'sLe Morte d'Arthur andGeoffrey Chaucer'sTroilus and Criseyde.Beowulf contains numerous digressions into other stories which have functions other than advancing the story, in Adrien Bonjour's words rendering "the background of the poem extraordinarily alive",^[6][a] and providing contrasts and examples that repeatedly illuminate the key points of the main story.^[6] Tolkien stated inThe Monsters and the Critics thatBeowulf^{[T 4]}

must have succeeded admirably in creating in the minds of the poet's contemporaries the illusion of surveying a past, pagan but noble and fraught with a deep significance - a past that itself had depth and reached backward into a dark antiquity of sorrow. This impression of depth is an effect and a justification of the use of episodes and allusions to old tales, mostly darker, more pagan, and desperate than the foreground".^{[T 4]}

Scholars have identified four factors that help to build the impression of depth:^[5]

1. the enormous scale and detail of Tolkien'sMiddle-earth background^[5]
2. the apparently casual and incomplete mentions of this background in the text, as if it were something taken for granted^[5]
3. the multiple accounts, containing gaps and inconsistencies, as if it were a real body ofhistorical documents^[5]
4. the multiple styles in which the various texts are written, as if by different hands.^[5]

Tolkien alluded to the first factor with the phrase "vast backcloths":^{[T 5]}

once upon a time I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story—the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths—which I could dedicate simply to:to England; to my country.^{[T 5]}

The Tolkien scholarMichael Drout, with colleagues, notes that the vastness was not an exaggeration, given that it encompassedThe Silmarillion and much of the multi-volumelegendarium edited by Tolkien's sonChristopher, not to mention the many "further drafts, partially edited copies, riders, cancelled pages, and even lost texts"^[5] behind even those lengthy works.^[5] Shippey adds thatTolkien's maps, too, lend an "air of solidity and extent" to the work, providing "repeated implicit assurances of the existence of the things they label, and of course of their nature and history too".^[8]

I remember well the splendour of their banners ... It recalled to me the glory of the Elder Days and the hosts ofBeleriand, so many great princes and captains were assembled. And yet not so many, nor so fair, as whenThangorodrim was broken...

— Elrond alluding to the War of Wrath at the end of theFirst Age, and theLast Alliance of Elves and Men in theSecond Age, at "The Council of Elrond"^{[T 6]}

Mentions of background stories and events inThe Lord of the Rings take many forms. These includesongs and poems interspersed in the text, such as ofBeren and Lúthien sung byAragorn; mentions of objects like the prizedSilmarils, by the HobbitSam Gamgee; and people from past ages like theElven-smithCelebrimbor, described by the Elf-lordElrond.^[5][2] All these mentions made use of existing but at the time unpublished texts. Similarly, the lady ofRohan,Éowyn, does not just giveMerry Brandybuck a horn; she gives him an ancient silver horn "from the Hoard ofScatha the Worm". The mentions give the reader the feeling that Middle-earth is far larger than the parts described in the story, and that it had "a deep history" much older than the War of the Ring.^[5]

Nagy analyses the effect of such mentions in the case of Sam's fight with the giant spiderShelob during his andFrodo's dangerous struggle to enter the Dark LordSauron's evil land ofMordor.^[6] Sam desperately slashes at Shelob's underside after she has stung Frodo:

The blade scored it with a dreadful gash, but those hideous folds could not be pierced by any strength of men, not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the steel or the hand of Beren or of Túrin wield it.^{[T 7]}

The invocation of theFirst Age heroTúrin Turambar, Nagy writes, "becomes a reflection of Túrin slayingGlaurung" the dragon.^[6] He states that Glaurung's allegiance to the original Dark Lord,Morgoth, reinforces the link with evil already suggested by the descent of Shelob from the first and greatest of all the evil giant spiders,Ungoliant, who destroyed theTwo Trees of Valinor inThe Silmarillion,^{[T 8]} and that Túrin's feud with the dragon is mirrored by Sam's feud with the spider, begun by its attack on Sam's master, Frodo. Nagy comments that "the dimension of the scene is [thus] greatly increased".^[6]

Scholars such as Peri Sipahi note that the use of multiple accounts is introduced in the Prologue toThe Lord of the Rings, where the narrator explains that "many of their traditions, up to that time still mainlyoral, were collected and written down",^{[T 10][10]} and then details the various copies, redactions, and translations that were made of the fictiveRed Book of Westmarch.Beowulf is similarly written as if its audience knew of the historic characters already.^[10][5] ThePoetic Edda is a compilation of numerous older sources.^[10]

Apparent contradictions, Drout notes, tend to give readers the impression of a real and complex history, since they may assume that an omniscient author can make a fictional story wholly consistent. Among the examples he gives are that Tolkien stated that Elves rode without either asaddle or a harness, but the Elf-lordGlorfindel's horse is described as having bothbit andbridle, and Glorfindel says he will shorten his horse'sstirrups for the HobbitFrodo.^{[T 11][c]} In another case, Tolkien intentionally did not edit away the contradiction betweenTom Bombadil's claim that he was "Eldest ... here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn",^{[T 13]} and Gandalf's description of theEntTreebeard that "Treebeard is Fangorn, the guardian of the forest; he is the oldest of the Ents, the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth".^{[T 14][5]}

The characters from each part of Middle-earth speak and act in a way that is characteristic of that place, as with theRohirrim.^[10] Sipahi notes, too, that all four factors tend to occur together, again as seen in the account of the Rohirrim. In addition, their language and names—all taken fromOld English—lend further depth by linking back to themedieval period in the real primary world.^[10]

The critic and experimental novelistChristine Brooke-Rose attacked "the histories andgenealogies" as not "in the least necessary to the narrative",^[11] thus demonstrating in Shippey's view her ignorance of Tolkien's creation of depth. He notes that she guessed wrongly that Tolkien would have translated all the "runic and other messages inside the narrative",^[11] as, he suggests, almost all other authors would have done, but that Tolkien did not, as he sawa value in the sound of untranslated language.^[12]

Later fantasy authors such asUrsula K. Le Guin made use of the device of giving pseudo-references to create depth; in theEarthsea novels, she alluded to tales of Elfarran, Morred, and the Firelord, which she wrote many years later.^[5] The scholar Katherine Sas writes thatJ. K. Rowling scaled down Tolkien's impression of depth but applied all four factors involved to herHarry Potter bookThe Prisoner of Azkaban.^[13]

• Non-narrative elements inThe Lord of the Rings

• Literary devices in the Lord of the Rings

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