Tolkien may not have intentionally created his fictive nations to mirror real nations, but his world certainly bears the scars of his experiences of war. The World Wars heightened his fear of losing everything that he loved about his local culture through literal obliteration or assimilation into another culture in the event of England’s losing. Tolkien saw the nation as a social construct that potentially could minimize losses, if not wholly protect local culture from the forces that threatened to destroy it. Yet he also perceived the nation’s limitations in its ability to protect culture. A nation could grow too large for itself, becoming obsessed with consuming other nations. For Tolkien, national property-amassing leads to a loss of the cultural identity that nationhood aims to preserve. When the forces threatening individual nations become overwhelming, those nations often need to join forces to prevent being taken over by other, more powerful countries. An examination of Tolkien’s fiction and numerous other sources, including essays and personal letters, suggests that he felt that separate nations should co-exist without imposing on one another, and that the nation taking over others would lose its own identity, whether gradually or suddenly. Despite Tolkien’s efforts to distance himself from what he felt modernity represented, his fiction (whether consciously or not) grapples with the mid-twentieth century ideological conflicts surrounding the nation. The resulting sense of loss and powerlessness underlies much of Tolkien’s fiction and leads him to a concept of the nation as an imperfect protector of culture, tempered by its need to rely on other nations.

When J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings was published in Swedish 1959-1961, the translation by Åke Ohlmarks was considered by most critics to be excellent. According to Ohlmarks, even J. R. R. Tolkien himself and his son Christopher were very pleased with it, which Ohlmarks was told by Christopher when he met him in 1975. This is, however, contradicted in the authorised biography of Tolkien by Carpenter (1978), in which Tolkien is said to have been most negative towards the way Ohlmarks handled the text. Before the biography was published, Christopher Tolkien and Ohlmarks had become bitter enemies, which might explain the re-evaluation. The schism has been described by Ohlmarks in his book Tolkiens arv (1978). But ever since The Lord of the Rings came out in paperback in 1971 there has been a discussion about the translation quality also in Sweden. When I first read the books in English I had the Swedish translation beside me. I soon discovered that Ohlmarks had taken great liberties with the text. I noticed that the descriptions were often more detailed in the Swedish translation than in the original and it was this fact that first roused my interest. Therefore, I decided to try to make a translation quality assessment of a part of the text, using a model by Juliane House.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att försöka finna de kristna motivens plats i berättandet i de tre Sagan om ringen-filmerna (The Lord of the Rings) av Peter Jackson. Arbete har lagts ned på att studera litteratur inom både religion och filosofi kring filmernas Midgård-berättelser, där dessa behandlar kristna motiv. Den etablerade forskningen kring detta ämne har hittills till stor del handlat om Tolkiens böcker och inte i särskilt stor utsträckning om filmerna. Därför kan uppsatsen anses relevant i en tid där filmen mer och mer ses som lika betydelsefullt medium som boken.Det resultat som har nåtts är att det förefaller vara en stor del av filmernas handling som har sitt ursprung inom kristendomens berättelser och motiv. Detta inte bara i filmernas stora och övergripande berättelse (i synnerhet berättelsen om Frodo och Sam) utan även i sidoberättelserna (särskilt de som berättar om Aragorn och Gandalf). Filmerna innehåller således en ansenlig mängd kristna motiv.

In mid twentieth century Britain, after the experience of total war, evil was not an abstract concept but a palpable reality. How was evil understood, and how did this understanding influence notions of English national identity? This thesis examines the lives and works of C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and J.R.R. Tolkien, members of the British literary club Inklings. It probes representations of evil, Englishness, gender and the erotic in their fiction and shows specifically how their science fiction, horror, and fantasy was a response to the moral and human devastation of two world wars. The thesis suggests that the Inkling’s middle brow literature opens a window on a wider sense of uncertainty and longing about Englishness in the eve of decolonization and decline.

Tolkien's aesthetic enjoyment of distance and antiquity in literature, his interest in the power of imagination, and his use of medieval romances and ancient fairy-tales as a means of rediscovering an enchanted vision of the world are analogous to the literary endeavours of the Romantics. Like them, he perceives that the real world is inherently different from how he imagines an ideal world. This thesis discovers that Tolkien's writings correspond in numerous ways to the modern form of elegiac romance, most notably because of their positive portrayals of mortality, and their depictions of intense yearning. The moral imperative to accept death, exemplified by the heroic ethos of Old English literature, clarifies why the effect of historicity is often noted in Tolkien's fictions: time is mimetic rather than mythological. Tolkien demonstrates that Fantasy is capable of reflecting the most sombre issues of the real world, particularly the inevitability of death.

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To the extent that Tolkien's fantasy meets his own criteria for faL. ie as the "eucatastrophic " tale which points toward "Evangelium," the eschaton when God's plan in creation will be fulfilled and the effects of the fall overcome, Tolkien may be described as a gospel writer. That he intended his work to be read as "gospel," "the good news of the Kingdom of God," is suggested by its allusions to biblical and classical mythology, its linear view of history, its presentation as a compilation of received tradition. collected and translated by many hands from a wide variety of sources, by the location of Middle Earth in the distant past of our own world and by the author's attempt to create a world which comforms to familiar patterns of evolution. Less successful is his effort to provide his tale with a consistent Christian point of view. / Dans la mesure, cette oeuvre d'imagination repond aux crit6res de f6erie de Tolkien en tant que conte "eucatastrophic" qui montre le chemin vers "I'Evangelium", cette eschatalogie qui se situe au moment o0 la volontê de Dieu est accomplie et les effets de la chute sont surmontes, Tolkien peut etre. considers comme un auteur biblique. Le fait qu'il est voulu que son oeuvre soit lue en tant qu'"&angile", "la bonne nouvelle du Royaunie de Dieu" est suggêre par diffèrentes choses: les allusions faites a la mythologie biblique et classique, la vision linêaire de l'histoire, la presentation du texte en tant que compilation d'une tradition provenant de sources diverses, transmise, recueillie et traduite par diffèrentes personnes, la situation geographique dans "Middle earth"(l'empire du Milieu) dans un passé lointain, le fait que l'auteur ait essay6 de crêer un monde conforme au processus connu de l'êvolution. 10anmoins l'auteur n'a pas rêussi dans ce conte a maintenir un point de vue chrêtien. fr

This thesis examines three genre high fantasy texts published between 1954 and 2001: J. R. R. Tolkien’s 'The Lord of the Rings', Ursula K. Le Guin’s 'Earthsea' cycle and Patricia A. McKillip’s 'The Riddle-Master’s Game'. The emphasis is on examining how the three texts use a common set of structures to articulate a developing argument about forms of human engagement with the physical world in the face of environmental crisis. Using theories of literary ecology and narrative paradigm, I examine the common structure shared by the three high fantasies and the weight of ethical implications it carries. The texts position the transcendent impulse of the mode of tragedy, and the behaviour it generates, as the source of crisis, and posit as a solution to the problem the integrative ethic characteristic of the comedic mode. They argue that a transition between these two ethics is necessary for the continued survival of the Secondary World. This thesis examines each text’s use of narrative paradigm to articulate methods by which this ethical transition may be achieved. An argumentative trend is documented across the three fantasies through the representation of situation, problem and solution. In each text, as the Secondary World becomes more completely a closed physical system, the source of the solution to the problem caused by the transcendent presence and the achievement of ethical transition are both relocated within the control of human actors. The three fantasies express a gradual movement toward the acceptance of not only human responsibility for, but the necessity for action to remedy, the damaged state of the world. I argue that the texts’ dominant concern is with the human relationship with and to context. Indeed, I argue that the three fantasies reflect the developing understanding of the human role in not only precipitating, but responding to, environmental crisis, and may function as both a reflection of and an intervention in that crisis. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2004

This thesis examines three genre high fantasy texts published between 1954 and 2001: J. R. R. Tolkien’s 'The Lord of the Rings', Ursula K. Le Guin’s 'Earthsea' cycle and Patricia A. McKillip’s 'The Riddle-Master’s Game'. The emphasis is on examining how the three texts use a common set of structures to articulate a developing argument about forms of human engagement with the physical world in the face of environmental crisis. Using theories of literary ecology and narrative paradigm, I examine the common structure shared by the three high fantasies and the weight of ethical implications it carries. The texts position the transcendent impulse of the mode of tragedy, and the behaviour it generates, as the source of crisis, and posit as a solution to the problem the integrative ethic characteristic of the comedic mode. They argue that a transition between these two ethics is necessary for the continued survival of the Secondary World. This thesis examines each text’s use of narrative paradigm to articulate methods by which this ethical transition may be achieved. An argumentative trend is documented across the three fantasies through the representation of situation, problem and solution. In each text, as the Secondary World becomes more completely a closed physical system, the source of the solution to the problem caused by the transcendent presence and the achievement of ethical transition are both relocated within the control of human actors. The three fantasies express a gradual movement toward the acceptance of not only human responsibility for, but the necessity for action to remedy, the damaged state of the world. I argue that the texts’ dominant concern is with the human relationship with and to context. Indeed, I argue that the three fantasies reflect the developing understanding of the human role in not only precipitating, but responding to, environmental crisis, and may function as both a reflection of and an intervention in that crisis. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2004

Stuttgart, FH, Diplomarb., 2002.