J.R.R. Tolkien's Utopianism and the Classics

Dr Hamish Williams (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

224 Seiten

2024
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-24146-6 (ISBN)

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This book opens up new perspectives on the English fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien, arguing that he was an influential thinker of utopianism in 20th-century fiction and that his scrutiny of utopias can be assessed through his dialogue with antiquity. Tolkien’s engagement with the ancient world often reflects an interest in retrotopianism: his fictional places – cities, forests, homes – draw on a rich (post-)classical narrative imagination of similar spaces.

Importantly for Tolkien, such narratives entail ‘eutopian’ thought experiments: the decline and fall of distinctly ‘classical’ communities provide an utopian blueprint for future political restorations; the home as oikos becomes a space where an ideal ethical reciprocity between host and guest can be sought; the ‘ancient forest’ is an ambiguous, unsettling site where characters can experience necessary forms of awakening. From these perspectives, tokens of Platonic moderation, Augustan restoration, Homeric xenophilia, and the Ovidian material sublime are evident in Tolkien’s writing. Likewise, his retrotopianism also always entails a rewriting of ancient narratives in post-classical and modern terms. This study then explores how Tolkien’s use of the classical past can help us to align classical and utopian studies, and thus to reflect on the ranges and limits of utopianism in classical literature and thought.

Hamish Williams is Lecturer in European Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He has co-edited Tolkien and the Classical World (2021) and The Ancient Sea: The Utopian and Catastrophic in Classical Narratives and their Reception (2022).

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Utopianism and Classicism: Tolkien’s New/Old Continent

1. Lapsarian Narratives: The Decline and Fall of Utopian Communities in Middle-Earth
2. Hospitality Narratives: The Ideal of the Home in an Odyssean Hobbit
3. Sublime Narratives: Classical Transcendence in Nature and Beyond in The Fellowship of the Ring

Epilogue

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	16.03.2023
Reihe/Serie	Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-350-24146-6 / 1350241466
ISBN-13	978-1-350-24146-6 / 9781350241466
Zustand	Neuware