Epic and Romance in The Lord Of The Rings
Abstract In the field of comparative literature The Lord of the Rings has been most frequently studied within the contexts of romance and epic. This approach, however, leaves out important generic aspects of the global picture, such as the narrative’s strong adherence to the novel genre and to mythic traditions beyond romance and epic narratives. If we choose one particular genre as the yardstick against which to measure the work’s success in narrative terms, we tend to end up with the conclusion that The Lord of the Rings does not quite make sense within the given limits of the genre in question. In Tolkien’s work there is a narrative and stylistic exploration of the different genres’ constraints in which the Western narrative traditions – myth, epic, romance, the novel, and their respective subgenres – interact in a previously unknown but still very much coherent world that, because of the particular cohesion required by such a chronotope, exhibits a clear contextualization of references to the previous traditions. As opposed to many contemporary literary expressions, the ensuing absence of irony and parody creates a generic dialogue, in which the various narrative traditions explore and interrogate each other’s limits without rendering the others absurdly incompatible, ridiculous or superfluous.
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Battarbee, K. (Ed.). (1993). Scholarship and Fantasy: Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon. Anglicana Turkuensia 12. Turku: University of Turku.
Beer, G. (1977). The Romance (first edition 1970). London: Methuen.
Clark, G., Timmons, D. P. (Eds.). (2000). J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth. Westport (CT): Greenwood.
Curry, P. (1997). Defending Middle Earth. London: HarperCollins.
Fenwick, M. (1996). Breastplates of Silk: Homeric Women in The Lord of the Rings. Mythlore, 21, pp. 17-23.
Frye, N. (1971). Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (first edition 1957). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gilbert, H. (1998). Robin Hood (first published 1912). Here, Hertforeshire: Wordsworth.
Gilliver, P. et al. (2006). The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greenman, D. (1992). Aeneidic and Odyssean Patterns of Escape and Return in Tolkien’s «The Fall of Gondolin» and The Return of the King. Mythlore, 18, pp. 17-23.
Hainsworth, J. B. (1991). The Idea of Epic. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Honegger, T. (2006). The Passing of the Elves and the Arrival of Modernity: Tolkien’s «Mythical Method». In Honegger, T.,
Weinreich F. (Eds.), Tolkien and Modernity, vol. 2 (pp. 211-232). Zollikofen: Walking Tree Publishers,
Honegger, T. (2008). Preface. In Simonson, M. The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition (pp. 5-6). Zurich/Jena: Walking Tree Publishers.
Isaacs, N., Zimbardo, R. (Eds.). (2004). Understanding The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Jewers, C. (2000). Chivalric Fiction and the History of the Novel. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Lee, S., Solopova, E. (2006). The Keys of Middle-Earth: Discovering Mediaeval Literature through the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien. New York/Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lobdell, J. (2004). The World of the Rings: Language, Religion, and Adventure in Tolkien (revised edition, first edition 1981: England and Always: Tolkien’s World of the Rings). Chicago/La Salle (IL): Open Court.
Manlove, C. (1978). Modern Fantasy: Five Studies (first edition 1975). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, M. Y. (1991). «Of sum mayn meruayle, that he myyt trawe»: The Lord of the Rings and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Studies in Mediaevalism, 3, pp. 345-365.
Morse, R. (1986). The Evocation of Virgil in Tolkien’s Art: Geritol for the Classics. Oak Park: Bolchazy-Carducci.
Obertino, J. (1993). Moria and Hades: Underworld Journeys in Tolkien and Virgil. Comparative Literature Studies, 30, pp. 153-169.
Rateliff, J. (2009). «A Kind of Elvish Craft»: Tolkien as Literary Craftsman. Tolkien Studies, 6, pp. 1-21.
Reynolds, P., Goodknight, G. (Eds.). (1996). J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992. Milton Keynes/Tolkien Society.
Ryan, J. S. (1984). Uncouth Innocence: Some Links between Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach and J.R.R. Tolkien. Inklings: Jahrbuch für Literatur und Asthetik, 2, pp. 25-41.
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Shippey, T. (2003). The Road to Middle-earth (revised and expanded edition, first edition 1982). Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Simonson, M. (2008). The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition. Zurich/Jena: Walking Tree Publishers.
Simonson, M. (forthcoming). Tolkien’s Triple Balance: A redemptive Model of Heroism for the Twentieth Century. In
Klinger, J. (Ed.), Constructions of Authorship in and around the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Zurich/Jena: Walking Tree Publishers.
Sly, D. (2000). Weaving Nets of Gloom: «Darkness Profound» in Tolkien and Milton. In Clark, G., Timmons, D. P. (Eds.), J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth (pp. 109-120). Westport (CT): Greenwood.
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Tolkien, J. R. R. (2000). The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (edited by H. Carpenter with the assistance of C. Tolkien, first edition 1981). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (2008). Tolkien On Fairy Stories (Expanded edition, with Commentary and Notes, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson). Hammersmith: HarperCollins.
Tolley, C. (1992). Tolkien and the Unfinished. In Battarbee, K. (Ed.), (1993). Scholarship and Fantasy: Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon (pp. 151-164). Anglicana Turkuensia, 12. Turku: University of Turku.
Toynbee, Ph. (1961, 6 August). Dissension among the Judges. The Observer.
Traversi, D. (1978). T.S. Eliot: The Longer Poems (first edition 1976). London: The Bodley Head.
Turgon. (2004). The Tolkien Fan’s Mediaeval Reader: Versions in modern prose. Cold Spring Harbor (NY): Cold Spring Press.
Walker, S. (2009). The Power of Tolkien’s Prose: Middle-Earth’s magical style. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wilson, E. (1956). «Oo, those Awful Orcs!». In Wilson, E., The Bit Between My Teeth: A Literary Chronicle of 1950-1965 (pp. 326-332). New York: Farrar.
Simonson, M. (2016). Epic and Romance in The Lord Of The Rings. El Futuro Del Pasado, 7, 65–84. https://doi.org/10.14516/fdp.2016.007.001.002
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