 | |
| Author | Timothy R. O'Neill |
|---|---|
| Genre | Literary criticism |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
Publication date | September 1979 |
| Pages | 200 |
| ISBN | 0-395-28208-X |
| OCLC | 5007475 |
| 828/.9/1209 | |
| LC Class | PR6039.O32 Z78 |
The Individuated Hobbit: Jung, Tolkien, and the Archetypes of Middle-Earth (1979) is a critical study of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien by Timothy R. O'Neill. It is written from a Jungian perspective, with particular emphasis on Jungian archetypes.
In the Preface, O’Neill writes that he was inspired to write this book as a rebuttal against some scholars’ attempts to analyze J.R.R. Tolkien’s works from a Freudian lens. [1] : x–xi
O’Neill uses the first two chapters to explain key concepts of Jungian theory, as well as psychoanalysis and Humanism, to provide readers with a working background knowledge of relevant theories about personality before diving into the contents of Tolkien’s novels. [1] : xii–xiii
The next chapters focus on applying the aforementioned theories to prominent fictional characters in Tolkien’s Middle-earth and connecting their personalities with Jungian archetypes. O’Neill argues that numerous characters, such as Frodo Baggins, exhibit the philosophical concept of self-realization. [1] : 86 Additionally, he connects Gandalf, Beorn, and Gollum with the archetypes of the Wise Old Man, [1] : 91–92 the Self, [1] : 114–116 and the Shadow, [1] : 133 respectively.
The final chapter discusses archetypes in relation to allegory. Although O’Neill acknowledges that Tolkien openly disliked allegory, he argues that Tolkien was perhaps unintentionally influenced by elements of Jungian theory nevertheless, meaning that allegorical studies of The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s other works are not necessarily fruitless. [1] : 153–154
The book was called "a compelling and influential Jungian reading" (2013) by Christopher Vaccaro, editor of The Body in Tolkien's Legendarium. [2]
The Tolkien scholar Thomas Honegger called it "the unsurpassed standard work on the subject" (2019). [3]
Shelob is a fictional monster in the form of a giant spider from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Her lair lies in Cirith Ungol leading into Mordor. The creature Gollum deliberately leads the Hobbit protagonist Frodo there in hopes of recovering the One Ring by letting Shelob attack Frodo. The plan is foiled when Samwise Gamgee temporarily blinds Shelob with the Phial of Galadriel, and then severely wounds her with Frodo's Elvish sword, Sting.
Tom Bombadil is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He first appeared in print in a 1934 poem called "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", which also included The Lord of the Rings characters Goldberry, Old Man Willow and the barrow-wight, from whom he rescues the hobbits. They were not then explicitly part of the older legends that became The Silmarillion, and are not mentioned in The Hobbit.
Bree is a fictional village in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, east of the Shire. Bree-land, which contains Bree and a few other villages, is the only place where Hobbits and Men lived side by side. It was inspired by the name of the Buckinghamshire village of Brill, meaning "hill-hill", which Tolkien visited regularly in his early years at the University of Oxford, and informed by his passion for linguistics.
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth is a collection of stories and essays by J. R. R. Tolkien that were never completed during his lifetime, but were edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and published in 1980. Many of the tales within are retold in The Silmarillion, albeit in modified forms; the work also contains a summary of the events of The Lord of the Rings told from a less personal perspective.
Ælfwine the mariner is a fictional character found in various early versions of J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium. Tolkien envisaged Ælfwine as an Anglo-Saxon who visited and befriended the Elves and acted as the source of later mythology. Thus, in the frame story, Ælfwine is the stated author of the various translations in Old English that appear in the twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth edited by Christopher Tolkien.
The term Middle-earth canon, also called Tolkien's canon, is used for the published writings of J. R. R. Tolkien regarding Middle-earth as a whole. The term is also used in Tolkien fandom to promote, discuss and debate the idea of a consistent fictional canon within a given subset of Tolkien's writings.
Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings, and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth. The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps, and inventing languages and names as a private project to create a mythology for England. The earliest story, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star", is from 1914; he revised and rewrote the legendarium stories for most of his adult life.
Middle-earth is the setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the Miðgarðr of Norse mythology and Middangeard in Old English works, including Beowulf. Middle-earth is the human-inhabited world, that is, the central continent of the Earth, in Tolkien's imagined mythological past. Tolkien's most widely read works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, are set entirely in Middle-earth. "Middle-earth" has also become a short-hand term for Tolkien's legendarium, his large body of fantasy writings, and for the entirety of his fictional world.
Timothy R. O'Neill was a U.S. Army officer, professor and camouflage expert, who in 1976 invented Dual-Tex, the first pattern of what would later be called digital camouflage. He has been called "father of digital camouflage". O'Neill wrote two works of fiction. In 1979 he published The Individuated Hobbit: Jung, Tolkien, and the Archetypes of Middle-Earth.
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings have often been accused of embodying outmoded attitudes to race. However, scholars have noted that he was influenced by Victorian attitudes to race and to a literary tradition of monsters, and that he was anti-racist both in peacetime and during the two World Wars.
Tolkien's monsters are the evil beings, such as Orcs, Trolls, and giant spiders, who oppose and sometimes fight the protagonists in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Tolkien was an expert on Old English, especially Beowulf, and several of his monsters share aspects of the Beowulf monsters; his Trolls have been likened to Grendel, the Orcs' name harks back to the poem's orcneas, and the dragon Smaug has multiple attributes of the Beowulf dragon. The European medieval tradition of monsters makes them either humanoid but distorted, or like wild beasts, but very large and malevolent; Tolkien follows both traditions, with monsters like Orcs of the first kind and Wargs of the second. Some scholars add Tolkien's immensely powerful Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron to the list, as monstrous enemies in spirit as well as in body. Scholars have noted that the monsters' evil nature reflects Tolkien's Roman Catholicism, a religion which has a clear conception of good and evil.
Gergely Nagy is a Hungarian medievalist and Tolkien scholar.
J. R. R. Tolkien's presentation of heroism in The Lord of the Rings is based on medieval tradition, but modifies it, as there is no single hero but a combination of heroes with contrasting attributes. Aragorn is the man born to be a hero, of a line of kings; he emerges from the wilds and is uniformly bold and restrained. Frodo is an unheroic, home-loving Hobbit who has heroism thrust upon him when he learns that the ring he has inherited from his cousin Bilbo is the One Ring that would enable the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth. His servant Sam sets out to take care of his beloved master, and rises through the privations of the quest to destroy the Ring to become heroic.
J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the bestselling fantasy The Lord of the Rings, was largely rejected by the literary establishment during his lifetime, but has since been accepted into the literary canon, if not as a modernist then certainly as a modern writer responding to his times. He fought in the First World War, and saw the rural England that he loved built over and industrialised. His Middle-earth fantasy writings, consisting largely of a legendarium which was not published until after his death, embodied his realism about the century's traumatic events, and his Christian hope.
J. R. R. Tolkien used frame stories throughout his Middle-earth writings, especially his legendarium, to make the works resemble a genuine mythology written and edited by many hands over a long period of time. He described in detail how his fictional characters wrote their books and transmitted them to others, and showed how later in-universe editors annotated the material.
J. R. R. Tolkien took part in the First World War, known then as the Great War, and began his fantasy Middle-earth writings at that time. The Fall of Gondolin was the first prose work that he created after returning from the front, and it contains detailed descriptions of battle and streetfighting. He continued the dark tone in much of his legendarium, as seen in The Silmarillion. The Lord of the Rings, too, has been described as a war book.
Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England' is a 1979 book of Tolkien scholarship by Jane Chance, writing then as Jane Chance Nitzsche. The book looks in turn at Tolkien's essays "On Fairy-Stories" and "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"; The Hobbit; the fairy-stories "Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith of Wootton Major"; the minor works "Lay of Autrou and Itroun", "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth", "Imram", and Farmer Giles of Ham; The Lord of the Rings; and very briefly in the concluding section, The Silmarillion. In 2001, a second edition extended all the chapters but still treated The Silmarillion, that Tolkien worked on throughout his life, as a sort of coda.
Scholars, including psychoanalysts, have commented that J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories about both Bilbo Baggins, protagonist of The Hobbit, and Frodo Baggins, protagonist of The Lord of the Rings, constitute psychological journeys. Bilbo returns from his journey to help recover the Dwarves' treasure from Smaug the dragon's lair in the Lonely Mountain changed, but wiser and more experienced. Frodo returns from his journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom scarred by multiple weapons, and is unable to settle back into the normal life of his home, the Shire.
The appearance of mental illness in Middle-earth has been discussed by scholars of literature and by psychiatrists. Middle-earth is the fantasy world created by J. R. R. Tolkien. His novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are both set in Middle-earth, and peopled with realistically-drawn characters who experience life much as people do in the real world. Characters as diverse as Denethor, Théoden, Beorn, Gollum, and Frodo have been seen as exemplifying conditions including paranoia, bipolar depression, schizoid personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
J. R. R. Tolkien decided to increase the reader's feeling that the story in his 1954–55 book The Lord of the Rings was real, by framing the main text with an elaborate editorial apparatus that extends and comments upon it. This material, mainly in the book's appendices, effectively includes a fictional editorial figure much like himself who is interested in philology, and who says he is translating a manuscript which has somehow come into his hands, having somehow survived the thousands of years since the Third Age. He called the book a heroic romance, giving it a medieval feeling, and describing its time-frame as the remote past. Among the steps he took to make its setting, Middle-earth, believable were to develop its geography, history, peoples, genealogies, and unseen background in great detail, complete with editorial commentary in each case.
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