| Tolkien's aesthetic enjoyment of distance and antiquity in literature, his interest in the power of imagination, and his use of medieval romances and ancient fairy-tales as a means of rediscovering an enchanted vision of the world are analogous to the literary endeavours of the Romantics. Like them, he perceives that the real world is inherently different from how he imagines an ideal world. This thesis discovers that Tolkien's writings correspond in numerous ways to the modern form of elegiac romance, most notably because of their positive portrayals of mortality, and their depictions of intense yearning. The moral imperative to accept death, exemplified by the heroic ethos of Old English literature, clarifies why the effect of historicity is often noted in Tolkien's fictions: time is mimetic rather than mythological. Tolkien demonstrates that Fantasy is capable of reflecting the most sombre issues of the real world, particularly the inevitability of death. |
