The Art of The Lord of the Rings: A Defense of the Aesthetic

This article provides something of a corrective to the ongoing trend in Tolkien studies to read his fiction theologically and attach aspects of it to specific Christian doctrine and practice. Tolkien made his resistance to such “symbolic or allegorical” interpretation very clear in his letters. I ar...

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Veröffentlicht in:Religion and the arts
1. VerfasserIn: Munro, Rebecca (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: Brill 2014
In: Religion and the arts
weitere Schlagwörter:B primary world verisimilitude sub-creation Eucatastrophe aesthetics theology literature
Online Zugang: Volltext (Verlag)
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:This article provides something of a corrective to the ongoing trend in Tolkien studies to read his fiction theologically and attach aspects of it to specific Christian doctrine and practice. Tolkien made his resistance to such “symbolic or allegorical” interpretation very clear in his letters. I argue that recognizing and reading Tolkien as a literary artist provides a more appropriate method by which we may appreciate The Lord of the Rings as the author intended, as literary art. Through such an approach, we may also come to a more accurate understanding of how Tolkien’s faith, as a Catholic Christian writer, enriches his masterpiece. Evidence for my argument comes from Tolkien’s writings and The Lord of the Rings, in which Tolkien’s aesthetic criteria for the art of story-telling is most fully embodied and demonstrated.
ISSN:1568-5292
Enthält:In: Religion and the arts
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685292-01805002