The Lord of the Rings: (1) Conception

Abstract

In The Lord of the Rings, the work of his prime (it was begun in 1937, his forty-sixth year, and published in 1954–5), Tolkien realised for the first and only time the full potential of his creative imagination. The realisation was possible for two reasons: firstly because he constructed here a uniquely expansive form, which allowed the fullest embodiment to imaginative conceptions of (as it proved) great aesthetic and emotional potency; and secondly because he arrived in this work, after a twenty-year apprenticeship with many false starts, at a style, or range of styles, and an expertise in narrative, sufficient for the those conceptions to be made transparent. Chapter 2 will be largely devoted to examining the execution of the narrative and its styles; the present one to the form, and to the conceptions and their potency. But the distinction is, of course, unsustainable at the highest level of aesthetic coherence, and this will, I hope, become apparent by the time the analysis is complete.