A New Historical Interpretation Of The Lord Of The Rings

The Lord of the Rings, one of the best-selling novels of the twentieth century in the west, is a series of works of Tolkien the professor of Oxford University. It is the Middle Earth of the whole story, which includes the environment, characters, scene settings, especially various conflicts around the story of the lord of the rings, attracted thousands of readers. In this thesis, on the basis of reference to Tolkien’s life and his life experiences on the The Lord of the Rings, I will make in-depth analysis on the background and historical roots of The Lord of the Rings with the approach of the New Historicism, to elucidate Tolkien’s deep creative thoughts.The concrete structure is to first describe the basic theory of New Historicism that is to take historical investigation into the study of literature, emphasizing the interaction and mutual influence between literature and history, holding the opinion that literature should be part of the large cultural networks. Then, using the two most important characteristics of the New Historicism, that is the historicity of texts and textuality of history, I will make analysis of the historical roots, the author’s personal experiences and background of the times of the text creation and text recreation process of The Lord of the Rings one by one. Among them, I will make the detailed analysis of the historicity of texts from three dimensions of historical background, religion and culture and the heroic images; I will elaborate on textuality of history from two dimensions of the Anglo-Saxon culture and the mythology text. I may finally draw the conclusion that, under the view of the new historicism, literature does not seek to restore the true colors of history on explaining the history; although literature is the vivid and meaningful art form on revealing the original history, it cannot avoid its subjectivity. Meanwhile, the subjectivity of the text depends largely on the author’s own political ideas and cultural background.The above analysis shows that Tolkien searches for the nature of human beings through returning to the tradition and reconstructing the modern mythology, and conforms to the psychological tendency of common public with the nontraditional hero images, leading the spirit of people to rise freely.