Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader

Unlike many of his contemporaries, J.R.R. Tolkien strongly believed that mythology is neither allegory nor historical fact but was instead "a true secondary world born out of language, to be experienced, not excavated." In Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, a collection of eighteen new and classic essays, Jane Chance and established and emerging Tolkien scholars explore the profound influence of late classical and medieval mythologies—ancient Greek, classical and medieval Latin, Old Norse, Old English, and Finnish. Tolkien used writings such as these as he shaped his own mythology in The Silmarillion and the literary masterpiece The Lord of the Rings.

Exploring the origins of Tolkien’s mythological influences, these essays illuminate the crucial episodes, characters, style, language, and concepts central to Tolkien’s complex worlds. The authors probe how such transformations of language and mythology take place in thematic and symbolic form in the novels. They then relate these episodes to Tolkien’s understanding of society, culture, history, heritage, tradition, nature, heroism, and love.

Among the contributors are well-known scholars Marjorie J. Burns, Michael D.C. Drout, Verlyn Flieger, David Lyle Jeffrey, Tom Shippey, and Richard C. West, whose essays examine Tolkien’s literary aesthetic in folklore, his love of philology (his own and medieval), and the philosophical and religious underpinnings of his narratives. The four sections of the book investigate his adaptation of late classical and medieval legends and histories as well as northern European mythological sources.

A well-rounded and essential reader for any Tolkien lover, Tolkien and the Invention of Myth also includes several classic essays on the author’s mythmaking. No other collection attempts to identify the various medieval mythologies woven into the tapestry of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and to examine how Tolkien rediscovered and reinvented tales of larger-than-life gods and heroes of northern myths.

Jane Chance, a professor of English at Rice University, specializes in medieval mythography and is general editor of three series, The Library of Medieval Women, the Praeger Series on the Middle Ages, and Greenwood Guides to Historic Events in the Medieval World. She is the author of more than eighteen books, editions, and translations, including Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England and The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power.