The Lord of the Rings

This article is about the book by J. R. R. Tolkien. For the title character and antagonist of the novel, see Sauron.

For the movie trilogy by Peter Jackson, see The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy saga by the British author J. R. R. Tolkien, his most popular work and a sequel to his popular fantasy novel The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings was written during World War II and originally published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955.

Three film adaptations have been made of the story told by the books: the first, by animator Ralph Bakshi, was released in 1978 (as the first part of what was originally intended to be a two-part adaptation of the story); the second, a 1980 television special; and the third, director Peter Jackson's epic film trilogy, released in three installments in 2001, 2002, and 2003, which starred Elijah Wood as the character Frodo Baggins. There are also two Collectible Card Games and multiple video games that take place in the book's setting of Middle-earth.

For more information regarding the fictional universe in which the story takes place, including lists of characters and locations, see Middle-earth.

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Artist's impression of The One Ring

Synopsis

Although a major work in itself, The Lord of the Rings is merely the last movement of a larger mythological cycle which Tolkien called his legendarium. The action is mainly set in what is conceived to be the lands of the real Earth inhabited by humanity but placed in a fictional time. Tolkien called this setting by a modern English rendering of the Old English Middangeard: Middle-earth.

The back story begins thousands of years before the action in the trilogy, with the rise of the eponymous Lord of the Rings, the Dark Lord Sauron, a malevolent incarnated spiritual being who possesses great supernatural powers and is the ruler of the dreaded realm of Mordor.

At the end of the First Age of Middle-earth, Sauron survives the catastrophic defeat and exile of his master, the diabolos figure Morgoth. During the Second Age, Sauron schemes to gain dominion over Middle-earth. In disguise as "Annatar", or Lord of Gifts, he aids Celebrimbor and the other Elven-smiths of Eregion in the forging of the Rings of Power, but then secretly forges the One Ring by which he could enslave their wearers. This plan fails when the Elves become aware of him and take off their rings. Sauron then launches a military campaign during which he captures the Seven Rings and the Nine Rings and distributes them to lords of the Dwarves and Men respectively. The Dwarves prove too tough to enslave, but the Men who possess the Nine become the Nazgûl, his most feared servants. The Three he fails to capture, and they remain in the possession of the Elves.

The king of Númenor, Ar-Pharazôn, arrives with overwhelming force. Sauron yields to the Númenoreans, and is taken to Númenor as a prisoner. The Valar, Lords of Valinor, want Sauron turned over to them, but Sauron had already started to poison the minds of the Númenoreans against them. Thus, Sauron sets into motion the events that bring about Númenor's destruction, by corrupting the king's mind, leading to an attempted invasion of Valinor and unleashing the wrath of Ilúvatar upon the Númenoreans, their land and Sauron. This nearly destroys him but he returns in spirit to Mordor, assumes a new form, and launches an attack against the Númenorean exiles (the faithful) led by Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anárion. However, the exiles have time to prepare, and forming the Last Alliance of Elves and Men with the king of the Eldar (and king of the Noldor descended from Fëanor) Ereinion Gil-galad son of Fingon they march against Mordor and besiege Barad-dûr, at which time Anárion is slain. Sauron himself is ultimately forced to engage in single combat with the leaders. Gil-galad and Elendil perish as they combat Sauron, and Elendil's sword Narsil breaks beneath him. Isildur cuts the One Ring from Sauron's hand with the hilt-shard of Narsil, and at this Sauron's spirit flees and does not reappear for many centuries.

So begins the Third Age of Middle-earth. A short time later while journeying to Rivendell, Isildur is ambushed by a band of Orcs and killed at the Gladden Fields. The Ring slips from his finger into the Great River Anduin and is lost for millennia.

In The Hobbit, the precursor to the saga, Tolkien relates the story of the seemingly accidental finding of the Ring by the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

The Lord of the Rings takes up the story about 60 years after the end of The Hobbit. It follows the adventures of an alliance of the various 'races' of Middle-Earth, including Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and Men, a coalition that hopes to destroy the dreaded Ring of Power, which has come into their possession at the very time Sauron once again threatens conquest.

Although the One Ring confers great powers in accordance to the bearer's moral stature (including invisibility), the alliance knows that the victory of Sauron is certain if the Ring falls back into his hands. The hero of the saga is the hobbit Frodo Baggins who, in order to destroy it, must secretly take the Ring into the very heart of Sauron's realm.

The Lord of the Rings is one of the very few books that is named after its villain, in contrast to the usual convention of a book being named after its hero.

Template:Endspoiler While The Lord of the Rings is by far the most popular of his works, Tolkien did not consider it to be his magnum opus: he bestowed that honour upon The Silmarillion. Whereas The Lord of the Rings is a story and literary venture, The Silmarillion is the basis of an entire legendarium, which provides the historical and linguistic context for the more popular work and his constructed languages.

Books and volumes

Writing

J.R.R. Tolkien did not originally intend to write a sequel to The Hobbit, and instead wrote several other children's tales, including Roverandom. As his main work, Tolkien began to outline the history of Arda, telling tales of the Silmarils, and many other stories of how the races and situations that we read about in the Lord of the Rings came to be. Tolkien died before he could complete and put together The Silmarillion, but his son Christopher Tolkien edited his father's work, filled in gaps, and published it in 1977. ^[1]

Tolkien had a deep desire to write a mythology for England, especially after his horrific experiences during the First World War. Thus to understand his writings we must be aware of how Tolkien the scholar influenced Tolkien the author. The writer of this mythology emerges as an Oxford philologist well acquainted with Northern European Medieval Literature including the great mythic works such as the Hervarar saga, the Völsunga saga, the influential Beowulf as well as other Old Norse, Old and Middle English Texts. He was also inspired by non-Germanic works such as the Finnish epic Kalevala. A man who had created his own language by the age of seven, he was driven by a desire to write a mythology for England influenced by his exposure and expertise of these ancient traditions. The need for such a myth was often a topic of conversation in his meetings with the Inklings, fellow Oxford scholars who have been described as Christian Romantics, meeting weekly and discussing Icelandic myths and their own unpublished compositions. Tolkien agreed with one of the other members of the group, C.S. Lewis, that if there were no adequate myths for England then they would have to write their own. Tolkien's work has been commonly interpreted in this light.

Persuaded by his publishers, he started 'a new Hobbit' in December 1937. After several false starts, the story of the One Ring soon emerged, and the book mutated from being a sequel to the Hobbit, to being, in theme, more a sequel to the unpublished Silmarillion. The idea of the first chapter (A Long-Expected Party) arrived fully-formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo's disappearance, the significance of the Ring, and the title The Lord of the Rings did not arrive until the Spring of 1938. Originally, he planned to write another story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however, he remembered the ring and its powers and decided to write about it instead. He began with Bilbo as the main character but decided that the story was too serious to use the fun-loving Hobbit and so Tolkien looked to use a member of Bilbo's family. He thought about using Bilbo's son but this generated some difficult questions — Where was his wife? How could Bilbo let his son go into that kind of danger? — so he looked for an alternate character to carry the ring. In Greek legend, it was a hero's nephew that gained the item of power, and so the Hobbit Frodo came into existence.

Writing was slow due to Tolkien's perfectionism, and was frequently interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and other academic duties. The first sentence of The Hobbit was in fact written on a blank page which a student had left on an exam paper which Tolkien was marking — "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit". He seems to have abandoned the book during most of 1943 and only re-started it in April 1944. This effort was written as a serial for Christopher Tolkien and C.S. Lewis — the former would be sent copies of chapters as they were written while he was serving in Africa in the Royal Air Force. He made another push in 1946, and showed a copy of the manuscript to his publishers in 1947. The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not finish revising earlier parts of the work until 1949.

A dispute with his publishers, Allen & Unwin, led to the book being offered to Collins in 1950. He intended The Silmarillion (itself largely unrevised at this point) to be published along with The Lord of the Rings, but A&U were unwilling to do this. After his contact at Collins, Milton Waldman, expressed the belief that The Lord of the Rings itself 'urgently needed cutting', he eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952. They did not do so, and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying "I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff".

Publication

For publication, due largely to post-war paper shortages, but also to keep the price of the first volume down, the book was divided into three volumes ( The Fellowship of the Ring: Books I and II; The Two Towers: Books III and IV; and The Return of the King: Books V and VI, 6 appendices). Delays in producing appendices, maps and especially indices led to these being published later than originally hoped — on 29 July 1954, 11 November 1954 and 20 October 1955 respectively in the United Kingdom, slightly later in the United States. The Return of the King was especially delayed. Tolkien, moreover, did not especially like the title The Return of the King, believing it gave away too much of the storyline. He had originally suggested The War of the Ring, which was dismissed by his publishers.

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Dust jacket of the 1968 UK edition

The books were published under a 'profit-sharing' arrangement, whereby Tolkien would not receive an advance or royalties until the books had broken even, after which he would take a large share of the profits.

An index to the entire 3-volume set at the end of third volume was promised in the first volume. However, this proved impractical to compile in a reasonable timescale. Later, in 1966, four indices, not compiled by Tolkien, were added to The Return of the King.

Because the three-volume binding was so widely distributed, the work is often referred to as the Lord of the Rings "trilogy". Tolkien himself made use of the term "trilogy" for the work, though he did at other times consider this incorrect, as it was written and conceived as a single novel.

A 1999 (Millennium Edition) British (ISBN 0-261-10387-3) 7-volume box set followed the six-book division authored by Tolkien, with the Appendices from the end of The Return of the King bound as a separate volume. The letters of Tolkien appeared on the spines of the boxed set which included a CD. To coincide with the film release, a new version of this popular edition was released featuring images from the films, such as:

• I - Frodo climbing the steps to Bag-end
• II - Aragorn and Arwen in Rivendell
• III - Gandalf in Moria
• IV - A swan boat from Lothlórien
• V - A black rider from the 'Flight to the Ford' sequence
• VI - The tower of Cirith Ungol (although this image featured in many of the promotional books (e.g. the 'FotR Photo Guide') from the first film, it did not feature in the films until Return of the King)
• App. - Frodo's hand holding the One Ring

This new imprint also omitted the CD. The new British ISBN was 0 00 763555 9. The individual names for books in this series were decided posthumously, based on a combination of suggestions Tolkien had made during his lifetime and the titles of the existing volumes — viz:

• T Book I: The Return of the Shadow
• O Book II: The Fellowship of the Ring
• L Book III: The Treason of Isengard
• K Book IV: The Journey to Mordor
• I Book V: The War of the Ring
• E Book VI: The Return of the King
• N Appendices

The name of the complete work is often abbreviated to 'LotR', 'LOTR', or simply 'LR', and the three volumes as FR, FOTR, or FotR (The Fellowship of the Ring), TT or TTT (The Two Towers), and RK, ROTK, or RotK (The Return of the King).

Note that the titles The Return of the Shadow, The Treason of Isengard and The War of the Ring were used by Christopher Tolkien in The History of The Lord of the Rings.

Some locations and characters were inspired by Tolkien's childhood in Sarehole (then a Worcestershire village, now part of Birmingham) and Birmingham.

Publication history

The three parts were first published by Allen & Unwin in 1954–1955 several months apart. They were later reissued many times by multiple publishers, as one, three, six or seven volumes. Two current printings are ISBN 0-618-34399-7 (one-volume) and ISBN 0-618-34624-4 (three volume set).

In the early 1960s, Donald A. Wollheim, science fiction editor of the paperback publisher Ace Books, realized that The Lord of the Rings was not protected in the United States under American copyright law because the US hardcover edition had been bound from pages printed in the UK for the British edition. Ace Books proceeded to publish an edition, unauthorized by Tolkien and without royalties to him. Tolkien made these facts plain to US fans who wrote to him. Grass-roots pressure became so great that Ace books withdrew their edition and made a nominal payment to Tolkien, well below what he might have been due in an appropriate publication. However, this poor beginning was overshadowed when an authorized edition followed from Ballantine Books to tremendous commercial success. By the mid-1960s the books, due to their wide exposure on the American public stage, had become a true cultural phenomenon. The Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings dates from this time — Tolkien undertook various textual revisions to produce a version of the book that would have a valid US copyright.

The books have been translated, with various degrees of success, into dozens of other languages. Tolkien, an expert in philology, examined many of these translations, and had comments on each that illuminate both the translation process and his work. The fact that The Lord of the Rings is purportedly a translation of the Red Book of Westmarch, a book which Bilbo Baggins writes in the Westron language, gives translators an unusual degree of freedom in many aspects, and allows some 'improvement', such as the German Elb, which does not carry the connotations of mischief that the English "elf" does. In contrast to the usual modern practice, names intended to have a particular meaning in the English version are translated to provide a similar meaning in the target language: in German, for example, the name "Baggins" becomes "Beutlin", containing the word Beutel meaning "bag".

The enormous popular success of Tolkien's epic saga greatly expanded the demand for fantasy fiction. Largely thanks to The Lord of the Rings, the genre flowered throughout the 1960s. Many other books in a broadly similar vein were published (including the Earthsea books of Ursula K. Le Guin, the Thomas Covenant novels of Stephen R. Donaldson), and in the case of the Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake, and The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison, rediscovered. It also strongly influenced the role playing game industry that achieved popularity in the 1970s with Dungeons & Dragons, which featured many creatures that could be found in Tolkien's books.

As in all artistic fields, a great many lesser derivatives of the more prominent works appeared. The term "Tolkienesque" is used in the genre to refer to the oft-used and abused storyline of The Lord of the Rings: a group of adventurers embarking on a quest to save a magical fantasy world from the armies of an evil "dark lord", and is a testament to how much the popularity of these books has increased, since many critics initially decried Lord of the Rings as being "Wagner for children" (a reference to the Ring Cycle) — an especially interesting commentary in light of a possible interpretation of The Lord of The Rings as a Christian response to Wagner, for example following ATimes' pseudo-Oswald Spengler.

The books

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Cover design for the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

For character information see: List of Middle-earth characters

The Lord of the Rings began as a personal exploration by Tolkien of his interests in philology, religion (particularly Roman Catholicism), fairy tales, and Norse and Celtic mythology, but it was also crucially influenced by the effects of his military service during World War I. ^[2]

Tolkien detailed his jisafjkgdhfgjhsdfjkkgjsfdgf The concept of a "ring of power", which granted the wearer invisibility, is present in Plato's Republic, in the story of Gyges' ring (a story often compared to the Book of Job), but Tolkien's most likely immediate source was the Norse tale of Sigurd the Volsung, with which he would have been intimately familiar.

J. R. R. Tolkien once described The Lord of the Rings to his friend, the English Jesuit Father Robert Murray, as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."(The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 142). There are many theological themes underlying the narrative—the battle of Good versus Evil, the triumph of humility over pride, the activity of grace, Death and Immortality, Resurrection, Salvation, Repentance, Self-Sacrifice, Free Will, Humility, Justice, Fellowship, Authority and Healing.

In particular, the great virtues of Mercy and Pity (e.g. as shown by Bilbo and Frodo towards Gollum) win the day and the message from the Lord's Prayer "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" was reportedly very much in Tolkien's mind as he described Frodo's struggles against the power of the One Ring (Letters, 181 and 191).

Non-Christian religious motifs were strong influences in Tolkien's Middle-Earth. His Norse-like pantheon of gods, the Valar and Maiar (greater and lesser gods/angels), who are responsible for the creation and maintenance of everything from skies (Manwë) and seas (Ulmo) to dreams (Lórien) and dooms (Mandos), closely echo Norse mythology, although these Valar and Maiar are themselves creations of a monotheistic entity — Ilúvatar or Eru, "The One".

Other pre-Christian mythological references can be seen:

• a "Green Man" (Tom Bombadil)
• wise men (the White Council, especially the Istari or Wizards)
• shapechangers (Beorn)
• undead spirits or ghosts (Barrow-wights, Oathbreakers)
• sentient non-humans (Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits and Ents)

Magic is utilised freely in Middle-earth. It is made manifest in the Ring itself, in the powers of the Elves, the magi Gandalf and Saruman, and in other magical beings, but (echoing Norse and Celtic mythology) magic is also present in the weapons and tools of warriors and craftsmen, in the perceptions and abilities of heroes, and in the natural world itself.

In this regard, a particularly compelling and attractive feature of both The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings concerns the civilisational relationship - indeed disparities - between The Shire (whose name and characteristics smack clearly of an England of somewhere between the 17th and even the late 19th centuries) and the lands beyond, which seem reminiscent of the early or late Middle Ages. While the bucolic lifestyle of the hobbits is clearly "behind" the ostensibly-sophisticated civilisation of Gondor, for example, as the only true metropolis of Middle Earth, with all the attendant organisational, defensive, architectural, artistic and cultural attainments, the situation looks quite the reverse on the smaller, everyday scale. The Shire seems to have "evolved beyond" magic and is in possession of such daily comforts and hallmarks of advanced civilisation as bathrooms, wardrobes, bookcases, mothballs, red lampshades, doorbells, doormats, umbrellas, teapots, cups and saucers, pocket watches, clocks, clean handkerchiefs, aprons, dressing gowns, waistcoats, flowerbeds, a postal service, town mayors interested in speechmaking and bureaucracy, etc. Outside The Shire, the only more complex machinery (semi-magical at that) seems to be in the hands of the evil forces of Saruman or Sauron. The differences in question are further underlined (in the "Rings" in particular) by Tolkien's gradual move from the largely down-to-earth and in essence modern (or at least "Edwardian") linguistic style used by the hobbits of the Shire in the early chapters, to the high-register and distinctly-archaic language employed by the nobility and ruling monarchs of the realms to the south-east.

Tolkien repeatedly insisted that his works were not an allegory of any kind, although the period of the books' publication, just after World War II, led to widespread speculation that the One Ring was an allegory for the nuclear bomb. There is indeed a strong theme of despair in the face of new mechanised warfare that Tolkien himself had experienced in the trenches of World War I. The development of a specially bred Orc army, and the destruction of the environment to aid this, also have modern resonances.

Nevertheless, Tolkien states in the introduction that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one, and it would be irresponsible to dismiss such direct statements on these matters lightly. Tolkien had already completed most of the book, and he had planned the ending in its entirety, before the first nuclear bombs were made known to the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The central action of the trilogy — a climactic, age-ending war between Good and Evil — is the central event of many world mythologies, notably Norse, but it is also a clear reference to the well-known description of World War I, which was commonly referred to as "the war to end all wars".

Although written before the advent of the A-bomb, "The Lord of the Rings" was crucially influenced by Tolkien's experiences during World War I, and it is significant that much of it was written while Tolkien's son was serving in World War II.

While Tolkien plausibly denied any specific 'nuclear' reference, it is clear that the Ring is a broad allegory for the concept of Absolute Power and its effects, and that the plot hinges on the view that anyone who seeks to gain absolute worldly power will inevitably be corrupted by it. There is also clear evidence that one of the main subtexts of the story -- the passing of a mythical "Golden Age" -- was influenced not only by Arthurian legend but also by Tolkien's contemporary anxieties about the growing encroachment of urbanisation and industrialisation into the "traditional" English lifestyle and countryside.

The plot of The Lord of the Rings builds from his earlier book The Hobbit and more obliquely from the history in the posthumously-published The Silmarillion, which contains the events that lead inexorably to the action in The Lord of the Rings. There are also Christian resonances in the fact that the 'smallest' inhabitants of Middle-Earth, the childlike hobbits, are the central characters of the book, playing pivotal roles in great events on which the fate of the entire world turns.

The Verse of the One Ring

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

The lines :

   One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

   One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

are inscribed in the language of Sauron and Mordor (the Black Speech) on the One Ring itself, and in the chapter The Council of Elrond are rendered in italics as:

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

The storyline

Main articles: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King

The story begins when the hobbit Frodo Baggins comes into possession of a magic ring found by his uncle Bilbo, whose story is told in The Hobbit. Bilbo's friend, the wizard Gandalf, discovers that this is in fact the Ring of Power, the instrument of Sauron's power and the object for which the Dark Lord has been searching since the end of the Second Age.

Evading Sauron's servants, the sinister Ringwraiths, Frodo smuggles the Ring to a high council attended by representatives of the major races of Middle-Earth, where it is decided that the only course of action that can save Middle-Earth is to destroy the Ring by taking it to Mordor and casting into the fires of the volcano Mount Doom, where it was forged.

Frodo volunteers for the task, but it is also revealed that the man the hobbits know as "Strider" is in fact Aragorn, the heir to the kingship of the realms of men, and that Sauron's forces can only be resisted if Aragorn takes up his inheritance and fulfils an ancient prophecy by wielding the sword Anduril, which has been forged anew from the shards of Narsil, the sword that cut the Ring from Sauron's finger.

A "Fellowship of the Ring" is formed to aid Frodo on his task, but by the end of the first volume it has been scattered, leaving Frodo and his friend Samwise Gamgee to make the trip to Mordor on their own, assisted only by the dangerous creature Gollum, formerly of a race Gandalf describes as "not unlike hobbits". Gollum had possessed the Ring before it passed to Bilbo. A slave to the Ring's evil power, Gollum ostensibly helps the hobbits, but secretly he plots to destroy them and regain his "Precious".

In the second volume, a parallel story details the remaining Fellowship's aid to the country of Rohan in their war against the evil Saruman, leader of the order of wizards, whom Sauron has corrupted. In the first volume Gandalf is apparently killed in a battle with a giant subterranean monster, the Balrog, but he is reborn with greater powers and returns to Middle-Earth. At the end of the second volume four members of the Fellowship (Gandalf, Aragorn, the elf Legolas and the dwarf Gimli) help to defeat Saruman's armies at the Battle of Helm's Deep.

In the third volume, as Frodo and Sam near Mount Doom, the Fellowship assists in the final battles against the armies of Sauron, including the siege of the tower-city of Minas Tirith and the climactic life-or-death battle before the gates of Mordor, where the alliance fights desperately against Sauron's armies in order to distract Sauron from the Ring, hoping to gain time for Frodo to destroy it.

According to the Tolkien timeline, the events depicted in the story occurred between Bilbo's announcement of his September 22, 3001 TA birthday party, and Sam's re-arrival to Bag End on October 6, 3021. Most of the events portrayed in the story occur in 3018 and 3019, with Frodo heading out from Bag End on September 23 3018, and the destruction of the Ring six months later on March 25 3019.

Criticism

Tolkien's work has received mixed reviews since its inception, even amongst his group of friends The Inklings. Hugo Dyson was famously recorded as saying, during one of Tolkien's readings to the group, "Oh no! Not another elf!"

The book was characterised as "juvenile balderdash" by American critic Edmund Wilson in his essay "Oo, those awful Orcs", and in 1961 Philip Toynbee wrote, somewhat prematurely, that it had "passed into a merciful oblivion".^[3] Although she had never read The Lord of the Rings, Germaine Greer wrote "it has been my nightmare that Tolkien would turn out to be the most influential writer of the twentieth century. The bad dream has materialised."

W.H. Auden also criticised the book in a 1968 Critical Quarterly article, "Good and evil in The Lord of the Rings," objecting to Tolkien's conception of sentient species that are intrinsically evil without possibility of redemption. (This is a criticism often directed at Dungeons and Dragons-like fantasy worlds as well as at Fantasy literature in general, and a criticism that Tolkien himself increasingly struggled with during his last years.) On the other hand, in a 1956 New York Times book review, "At the end of the Quest, Victory," Auden also called the book "a masterpiece of its genre" that "succeeded where Milton failed" in depicting an epic battle between good and evil, and wrote that it "never violated" the "reader's sense of the credible."

Science-fiction author David Brin has criticised the books for unquestioning devotion to a traditional elitist social structure, their positive depiction of the slaughter of the opposing forces, and their romantic backward-looking worldview.^[4]

New York Times reviewer Judith Shulevitz criticised the "pedantry" of Tolkien's literary style, saying that he "formulated a high-minded belief in the importance of his mission as a literary preservationist, which turns out to be death to literature itself." [5]

China Mieville, a modern fantasy writer, criticised Tolkien's works as "reactionary." Mieville is also a detractor of later fantasy which draws heavily upon Tolkien's work, based on the idea that such work is cliché.

Another famous science fiction and fantasy author, Michael Moorcock, who fervently supports Mervyn Peake, is an almost equally fervent detractor of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. He met both Tolkien and C. S. Lewis in his teens, and claims to have liked them personally even though he does not admire them on artistic grounds. Moorcock criticises works like The Lord of the Rings for their Merry England point of view, famously equating Tolkien's work to Winnie-the-Pooh in his essay "Epic Pooh".^[6]

Praise

"The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them." — Sunday Times

"Among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century." — Sunday Telegraph

"Here are the beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron." — C.S. Lewis

"J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy remains the ultimate quest, the ultimate battle between good and evil, the ultimate chronicle of stewardship of the earth. Endlessly imitated, it never has been surpassed." — Kansas City Star

"A story magnificently told, with every kind of colour and movement and greatness." — New Statesman

"I wonder how could he have been able to invent all this stuff. It feels more like Tolkien discovered some sort of long-lost scrolls” (Morning Edition. National Public Radio 17 Dec. 2001.).— Peter Jackson

Adaptations

The Lord of the Rings on radio

The BBC produced a 13-part radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings in 1956, and a 6-part version of The Hobbit in 1966. In The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien Tolkien disparages this production, referring to the portrayal of Tom Bombadil as "Dreadful" and complaining bitterly about several other aspects of the dramatization. No recording of the 1956 series is known to exist, but The Hobbit has survived. It is a very faithful adaptation, incorporating some passing references to The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion.

A 1979 dramatization was broadcast in the USA and subsequently issued on tape and CD. No cast or credits appear on the audio packaging. Each of the actors was apparently recorded separately and then the various parts were edited together. Thus, unlike a BBC recording session where the actors are recorded together, none of the cast are actually interacting with each other and the performances suffer badly as a result.

In 1981 the BBC broadcast a new, ambitious dramatization of The Lord of the Rings in 26 half-hour instalments. See: The Lord of the Rings (1981 radio series).

The Lord of the Rings in film

Early efforts

The rights to The Lord of the Rings were held by Walt Disney for ten years, but the Disney company was unable to put together a film production. There were plans for the Beatles to do a version of The Lord of the Rings but those plans came to nothing.

It was even said that Stanley Kubrick had looked into the possibility of filming the story, but he abandoned the idea as too "immense" to be made into a movie. In the mid-1970s, film director John Boorman collaborated with current film rights holder and producer Saul Zaentz to do a live action picture, but the project proved too expensive to finance at that time; he ended up making Excalibur instead.^[7]

File:Lord of the Rings Part 1(b).jpg

Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings

In 1977, Rankin-Bass studios produced the first real film adaptation of any of Tolkien's works with an animated television version of The Hobbit. Shortly after, Saul Zaentz picked up where Rankin-Bass left off by producing an animated adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring and part of The Two Towers in 1978.

The Lord of the Rings Part 1 (later J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), originally released by United Artists was directed by Ralph Bakshi and used an animation technique called rotoscoping in which footage of live actors was filmed and then traced over.

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Rankin-Bass's The Return of the King

The film was part one of what was originally to be a two-part adaptation of Tolkien's story, Part I ending after the battle of Helm's Deep, but before Sam, Frodo and Gollum traverse the Dead Marshes, and Part II picking up from where the first film left off. Made for a minimal budget of US$8 million, the film made over US$30 million dollars at the box office.^[8] United Artists viewed the film as a flop, and refused to fund a Part II (covering the rest of the story), leaving the door open for Rankin-Bass to do the work for him with the 1980 animated television version of The Return of the King.

However, the Rankin-Bass film picked up from where the book began, and not from where Bakshi's film left off. Additionally, the change in style and character design was quite noticeable. Since the TV special was targeted to a younger audience, adult enthusiasts have complained that much of the depth and darkness of the book was discarded.

The New Line Cinema films

Main article: The Lord of the Rings film trilogy

Miramax Films developed a full-fledged live action adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, with Peter Jackson as director. Eventually, with Miramax becoming increasingly uneasy with the sheer scope of the proposed project, Jackson was given the opportunity to find another studio to take over. In 1998, New Line Cinema assumed production responsibility (while Miramax executives Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein retained on-screen credits as executive producers).

The three films were shot simultaneously. They featured extensive computer-generated imagery, including major battle scenes utilising the "Massive" software program. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released on December 19 2001, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on December 18 2002 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King worldwide on December 17 2003. All three won the Hugo Award for Best (Long-form) Dramatic Presentation in their respective years.

Jackson's adaptations garnered seventeen Oscars, four for The Fellowship of the Ring, two for The Two Towers, and eleven for The Return of the King; these covered many of the award categories. The Return of the King in fact won all of the eleven awards for which it was nominated, including Best Picture. With a total of 30 nominations, the trilogy also became the most-nominated in the Academy's history, surpassing the Godfather series' 28.

The Return of the King's Oscar sweep is widely seen as a proxy award for the whole series. Its 11 Oscars at the 2004 Academy Awards tied it for most awards won for one film with Titanic six years earlier and the 1959 version of Ben-Hur. It also broke the previous "sweep" record, beating Gigi and The Last Emperor (which each took 9 out of 9).

The visual-effects work has been acclaimed as groundbreaking, particularly the creation of the emotionally versatile digital character Gollum. The scale of the production alone — three films shot and edited back to back over a period of little more than three years — was unprecedented.

The films have also proven to be substantial box office successes. The premiere of The Return of the King took place in Wellington, New Zealand, on 1 December 2003 and was surrounded by fan celebrations and official promotions, the production of the films having contributed significantly to the New Zealand economy. It has made movie history as the largest Wednesday opening ever. The Return of the King was also the second film after Titanic to earn over US$1 billion worldwide; however, as none of these figures are adjusted for inflation, their significance is questionable. Adjusted for inflation, as of 24 March 2005, the three films rank (in order of release) as the 71st, 56th, and 48th highest-grossing films in the United States.^[9]

Devoted fans have also flocked to the locations where the trilogy was filmed in New Zealand, with many tour companies being dedicated to taking fans to and from the locations.

Despite these achievements, some have criticized the films for adopting a markedly different tone from Tolkien's original vision. Noted critic Roger Ebert wrote, "[Jackson] has taken an enchanting and unique work of literature and retold it in the terms of the modern action picture. [...] To do what he has done in this film must have been awesomely difficult, and he deserves applause, but to remain true to Tolkien would have been more difficult, and braver."^[10]

However, other critics have called the trilogy a masterpiece in epic film-making. Time magazine critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel included it in their list of the 100 greatest films of all time alongside classics such as Citizen Kane, The Godfather and Casablanca.

The trilogy's mythological basis is shared by contemporary major films such as the Harry Potter series, The Chronicles of Narnia and the forthcoming project The Ancestral Trail.

The Lord of the Rings on stage

2006 musical production

London-based theatre producer Kevin Wallace and his partner, Saul Zaentz, representing the Tolkien estate, in association with Toronto theatre-owner David Mirvish, have produced a four-hour stage musical adaptation of The Lord of the Rings that has a cast of 55 actors and cost C$27 million (US$23.2 million). The show was written by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus, with music by A. R. Rahman and Värttinä, collaborating with Christopher Nightingale. The director is Matthew Warchus; choreography is by Peter Darling; set and costume design are by Rob Howell. The production began performances on February 4, 2006, had its press opening on March 23 2006 at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre, the day before its gala premiere. The production received mostly mixed to poor notices.

The show has already secured a London transfer to the Dominion Theatre from March 2007, and New York from late 2007/early 2008 is in the pipeline.

The director explained his vision of the play’s format by saying, "We have not attempted to pull the novel towards the standard conventions of musical theatre, but rather to expand those conventions so that they will accommodate Tolkien's material. As a result, we will be presenting a hybrid of text, physical theatre, music and spectacle never previously seen on this scale. To read the novel is to experience the events of Middle-earth in the mind’s eye; to watch the films is to view Middle-earth as though through a giant window. Only in the theatre are we actually plunged into the events as they happen. The environment surrounds us. We participate. We are in Middle-earth."

2001-2003 Cincinnati production

Original three full-length stage adaptations of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003) were staged in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America. The first production unfortunately suffered from lack of funding and a clear artistic vision from the producing company. Sequels (TTT and RotK), however, were well received by audiences and critics alike. All three adaptations were written by Blake Bowden, an American child psychologist, actor, and playwright, who also assumed the role of Samwise Gamgee. Huge puppets were created by Carus Waggoner and Rick Couch; a full orchestrated score was composed by Grammy nominee Steve Goers; graphics, inspired by Tolkien's original artwork, were designed by Jay Nungesser. Aretta Baumgartner directed the puppetry work and was awarded a Cincinnati Entertainment Award for her portrayal of Gollum. The latter two productions were directed by actor, director, and SAFD fight choreographer Gina Cerimele-Mechley. Joe Sofranko played Frodo. The Return of the King was produced as the innaugural production of Clear Stage Cincinnati. It was presented at the Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati. All three productions were endorsed by The American Hobbit Association and approved by Tolkien Enterprises. Images of characters from ROTK, reviews, awards, etc. are available at Clear Stage Cincinnati ROTK.

The Lord of the Rings in video gaming

The trilogy has been reproduced in video game form a number of times over the last two decades. Following up the popular 1982 text adventure based on The Hobbit on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, among others, Melbourne House released Lord of the Rings for the aforementioned two computers in 1986. It was, however, an "illustrated adventure" as opposed to a text adventure. A BBC Micro text adventure released around the same time was unrelated to Melbourne's titles except for the literary origin.

In 1987, Melbourne House began to release a number of titles based on a licence from the Tolkien estate. The first of these was Shadows of Mordor, another text adventure, followed up by War in Middle-earth, a turn-based strategy game, for the Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.

In 1990, Interplay, in collaboration with Electronic Arts (who would later obtain the licences to the film trilogy), released Lord of the Rings Vol. 1, a role-playing game based on the events of the first book. A second and third installment were planned, but the third was never released because Interplay couldn't decide whether to do it as an RPG like the first two, or as a strategy game. Interplay's games mostly appeared on the PC and Amiga, but later they did a Lord of the Rings game for the Super Nintendo, which played nothing like their PC games and instead was more like The Legend of Zelda.

Thereafter, no official Lord of the Rings titles were released (in part due to the falling popularity of the books) until the release of the film trilogy in 2001-2003, when enthusiasm for the story peaked again. Electronic Arts obtained the licences for the three films, although they only produced games for The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Sierra Entertainment, having lost out on the film licences, obtained the licence to produce games based on the books (as opposed to the film trilogy) instead, entitling them to use the story, but not the music or video material from the film.

This gave rise to an unusual situation. Electronic Arts produced no adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, but Sierra did. However, they did produce adaptations of The Two Towers and The Return of the King, whereas Sierra did no such thing. This produced a "complete trilogy" of games (albeit unofficial). Sierra's entry to the series received average reviews, and Electronic Arts' entries received rave reviews, although Peter Jackson has criticized EA for leaving him out of the development process and has declared that he is unhappy with the quality of the titles.

While Sierra Entertainment's access to the book rights prevented them from using material from the film, it permitted them to include elements of the Lord of the Rings books that were not in the films. EA, on the other hand, were not permitted to do this, as they were only licensed to develop games based on the films, which left out elements of the original story or deviated in places.

Fans' opinions differ on the better of the two styles. Some prefer EA's action-oriented hack and slash-style games, which tend to pass on large segments of the story and place a reliance on film clips and the film's music, citing the almost cinematic quality that the game produces as similar to the film. Others preferred the Sierra adventure title, which, while featuring less action and epic battles than the EA title, cover the story in greater detail and offer a more cerebral challenge.

Sierra's consequent adaptation of The Hobbit also received average reviews. It is unknown which developer/publisher would assume the task of adapting a film version of The Hobbit to a video game, especially since Jackson chose to work with Michel Ancel and Ubisoft on King Kong in light of his displeasure with EA.

The popularity of real-time strategy (RTS) titles led Sierra and EA to independently produce two RTS games. Sierra produced The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring in 2003, based on the books. The title was well received by the press and fans, but some criticized the overwhelming similarity of the game to Warcraft III. A year later, EA released The Battle for Middle-earth, based on the films. The title was given rave reviews in the gaming media and sold well. Sierra have since produced no games based on the trilogy.

EA released an RPG in 2004 entitled The Third Age, based on the universe portrayed in the films, though not the original story. It was based on an original story that runs parallel to the events of the movies. The game received average reviews, with many quoting the poor quality of the story in relation to its source. The game also contains a range of unrelated situations that divert from the original plot, such as the final melee combat versus the Eye of Sauron.

In July 2005, EA was granted the rights to develop games based on the books, alongside the separate agreement for games based on the New Line films.

EA released Battle for Middle-earth II on 2 March 2006. An online MMORPG by Turbine, Inc., entitled The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar and endorsed by Tolkien Enterprises is also in production.

EA is also working on a game called The Lord of the Rings: The White Council. IGN expects The White Coucnil to continue on from the side-story of The Third Age

Unofficial games have also been made based on the books. One of the most lasting is Angband, an open-source game based loosely on the Silmarillion.

The Lord of the Rings in art

Illustrators

Many illustrators have rendered their vision of Middle-earth in various media, and some have used their Tolkien illustration as a stepping-stone to larger careers, including:

• Cor Blok
• John Howe
• Alan Lee
• Ted Nasmith
• The Brothers Hildebrandt
• Queen Margrethe II of Denmark

The Lord of the Rings in Music

The many songs in The Lord of the Rings have also given inspiration to many musicians to set them to music. Most notable is the music of Donald Swann because it was approved by Tolkien himself and the music of The Tolkien Ensemble because they, with backing from the Tolkien estate, have set all the songs and poems from The Lord of the Rings to music.

Pop culture references to The Lord of the Rings

Main article: The Lord of the Rings in pop culture

See also

• The Lord of the Rings Online
• The Cursed Ring - Links The Lord of the Rings to Plato's 'The Ring of Gyges' and Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.
• DVD TV Games, reference to The Lord of the Rings DVD TV game developed by Hasbro and released in 2005.
• The Tolkien Relation, by William Ready ISBN 0-446-30110-8 - An inquiry by the author examining the sources and symbolism of the work.
• J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, ISBN 0-618-05702-1.
• Elendor, an internet roleplaying community simulating the story of Lord of the Rings.
• Hex Combat, a Lord of the Rings themed collectible miniatures game
• Bestiary of Middle-earth
• Works inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien

References

1. ^ Shippey, Tom (2003). The Road to Middle-earth. Mifflin Company. ISBN-10:0618257608
2. ^ ""Influences of Lord of the Ring"". Retrieved 16 April. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
3. ^ ""Rings fellowship keeps on growing"". Retrieved 9 January. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
4. ^ ""We Hobbits are a Merry Folk: an incautious and heretical re-apprisal of J.R.R. Tolkien"". Retrieved 9 January. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
5. ^ ""Epic Pooh"". Retrieved 27 January. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
6. ^ ""The One Ring" forum thread "John Boorman's LOTR Screenplay"". Retrieved 9 January. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
7. ^ "IMDB box office data". Retrieved 9 January. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
8. ^ "Figures for all-time US box office grosses at boxofficemojo.com". Retrieved 9 January. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
9. ^ "Roger Ebert's review of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers". Retrieved 27 January. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

External links

• The Lord of the Rings Wiki, an external wiki
• Great forum about The Lord of the Rings in French!!!
• The official Tolkien website.
• Tolkien News - News relating to The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's works.
• LotR Fanatics Plaza - LotR and Tolkien Fan Forum and Library
• Council of Elrond - news and scholarship
• The Encyclopedia of Arda - Mark Fisher's tribute site to the works of Tolkien
• Ardapedia - Slovak Tolkien Encyclopedia
• Tolkien Herr der Ringe - Portal (German)
• Tolkien Gateway - Tolkien encyclopedia with over 4,000 articles.
• Complete Lord of the Rings merchandise catalogue
• The Tolkien Wiki Community
• Tolkien Online: The One Ring - A fan site, with message boards. Not to be confused with the site below.
• TheOneRing.net - forged by and for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien
• MonoMyth.org - Mythological Structure of Fellowship of the Ring
• UK Tolkien Bibliography
• Textual sources of the Lord of the Rings at sacred-texts.com; includes full etexts of the Kalevala, Norse Sagas, Welsh Mabinoginen and The Worm Ouroboros.
• Guide to currently available US editions of the books of J.R.R. Tolkien
• The web site of the Tolkien Society: lot of Tolkien materials and studies.
• The Tolkien Sarcasm Page has an extensive collection of tongue-in-cheek scholarly articles on the works of Tolkien.
• Photo's of the LOTR Collection
• The Lord of the Rings film trilogy at the Arts & Faith Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films list
• Boorman and Pallenberg's plans for an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, from the theonering.com message board
• On the 1997-poll which placed Tolkien's LOTR as "best novel of the 20th century".
• Official site of the Lord of the Rings stage production