Curated category
Themes of The Lord of the Rings
- Tolkien's Middle-earth family treesJ. R. R. Tolkien approached his fantasy world as a philologist first and a storyteller second. He used family trees to explore the etymologies of character…
- Company of the RingIn the dark lands of Mordor, nine shadowy figures known as Black Riders or Ringwraiths ride in silence. They are the enemy that demands a counterforce. J.R.R.
- Addiction to power in The Lord of the RingsIn the fires of Mount Doom during the Second Age, the Dark Lord Sauron forged the One Ring to control all who wore other Rings of Power.
- Poetry in The Lord of the RingsThe Lord of the Rings contains 61 poems, and most readers skip them. The Tolkien scholar Michael Drout confirmed this from his own students.
- Quests in Middle-earthBilbo Baggins leaves Bag End in the Shire to hunt for treasure. Frodo Baggins also departs from Bag End, but his goal is to destroy a ring instead of keeping…
- Sound and language in Middle-earthJ. R. R. Tolkien was both a philologist and an author of high fantasy. He remarked to the poet Harvey Breit that he was a philologist and all his work was…
- Christianity in Middle-earthChristianity in Middle-earth is hidden in plain sight. In a letter to Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest and close friend, Tolkien described The Lord of the…
- Tolkien and raceIn 2009, scholar Dimitra Fimi published a book titled Tolkien, Race and Cultural History that examined conflicting academic arguments about J. R. R.
- Tolkien's mapsTolkien's maps of Middle-earth began not as illustration but as infrastructure. Before a single chapter of The Lord of the Rings was written in its final…
- Women in The Lord of the RingsJ. R. R. Tolkien lost his father in South Africa and his mother in England a few years later, leaving him an orphan as a boy.
- Themes of The Lord of the RingsThemes of The Lord of the Rings have occupied scholars for decades, starting with Tolkien's own account of what the book is about.