Tolkien's monsters

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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. [1] [2] 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.

Contents

Origins

The word "monster" has as its origin the Latin monstrum, "a marvel, prodigy, portent", in turn from Latin monstrare, "to show". [1] Monsters in Medieval Europe were often humanoid, but could also resemble wild beasts, but of enormous size; J. R. R. Tolkien followed both paths in creating his own monsters. [1]

Some of Tolkien's monsters may derive from his detailed knowledge of the Old English epic poem Beowulf ; Gollum has some attributes of Grendel, while the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit shares several features with the Beowulf dragon. [3] [4] The poem, too, speaks of Orcs, with the Old English compound orcneas, meaning "demon-corpses". In his famous 1936 lecture, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", Tolkien described the poem's monsters as central to its structure, changing the course of Beowulf scholarship. [1] Commentators have noted that Tolkien clearly preferred the epic's monsters to the critics. [5]

Humanoid, bestial, and beyond

Evil in mind or body

Tolkien's later, wordless trolls have been compared to Grendel, a monster in Beowulf. Illustration by J. R. Skelton, 1908 Stories of beowulf grendel.jpg
Tolkien's later, wordless trolls have been compared to Grendel, a monster in Beowulf . Illustration by J. R. Skelton, 1908

In the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , Jonathan Evans initially identifies two categories of monster in Tolkien's legendarium. The first includes Trolls, Orcs, and Balrogs, which are humanoid, but distorted in various ways; the second consists of malevolent beasts which resemble those of the natural world, but are much larger, such as the wolflike Wargs, the giant evil spiders – Ungoliant and her brood including Shelob – and the tentacled Watcher in the Water. [1] The featherless winged steeds of the Nazgûl are monstrous in the second way, gigantic but evidently based on nature, and "apt to evil". [1] Tolkien never names them, though he describes them as "fell beasts", and describes them in a letter as "pterodactylic". [T 1] [T 2]

Evans notes that Tolkien's dragons, "an especially important monstrous type", do not fit either of these categories, [1] and he treats those "extraordinarily large, reptilian creatures ... preternaturally evil monsters" separately. [7] Dragons are mentioned only in passing in The Lord of the Rings, but dragons that can speak but which are certainly not humanoid are important characters in both The Silmarillion and The Hobbit . [7]

Tolkien was not consistent in his allocation of monsters to these categories. In The Hobbit, the hill-trolls are initially comic; they are carnivorous but not particularly malevolent, have vulgar table manners, and speak, with Cockney accents. However, when the Wizard Gandalf outwits them, the scholar Christina Fawcett writes, these Trolls are seen as "monstrous, a warning against vice, captured forever in stone for their greed and anger". [6] The critic Gregory Hartley adds that the Trolls in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings are "more bestial" and much less like the trolls of Norse mythology; [8] Fawcett compares them to the monster Grendel in Beowulf . [6] Tolkien's description runs: "Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known... Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dûr." [T 3]

Evil in spirit

Other scholars sometimes add the Legendarium's powerful opponents to the list of monsters; Joe Abbott, writing in Mythlore , describes the Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron as monsters, intelligent and powerful but wholly gone over to evil. Abbott notes that in The Monsters and the Critics , Tolkien distinguished between ordinary monsters in the body, and monsters also in spirit: [9]

The distinction [is] between a devilish ogre, and a devil revealing himself in ogre-form—between a monster, devouring the body and bringing temporal death, that is inhabited by a cursed spirit, and a spirit of evil aiming ultimately at the soul and bringing eternal death" [9]

By going beyond the limits of the body with these monstrous Dark Lords, Tolkien had in Abbott's view made the "ultimate transformation" for a Christian author, creating "a far more terrifying monster". [9]

Themes

Evil and darkness

Tolkien's Roman Catholicism gave him a clear sense of good and evil, and a ready symbolism to hand: light symbolises good, and darkness evil, as it does in the Bible. [10] [11]

In The Fellowship of the Ring , the first evil being that the Hobbits encounter after leaving the Shire on the quest to destroy the One Ring is Old Man Willow, a powerful tree or tree-spirit who controls much of the Old Forest. He is wholly malevolent. [T 4] [12] Outside the entrance to Moria, the Fellowship is again attacked, this time by the Watcher in the Water. [1] It specifically seizes Frodo, the ring-bearer, as if it knew and opposed the quest. [T 5] Evans comments that though clearly deadly dangerous, the monster is vague, only sketchily described in the text. [1]

One of the two "monstrous Watchers" of the Tower of Cirith Ungol, aware but immobile, possibly not even living Guetteur de Cirith Ungol.jpg
One of the two "monstrous Watchers" of the Tower of Cirith Ungol, aware but immobile, possibly not even living

Evans notes that "vaguer still", possibly not even living, are the "monstrous Watchers" that guard the gate of the Tower of Cirith Ungol, on a pass into the evil land of Mordor. [1] Tolkien describes them as aware, but immobile, with an indwelling "spirit of evil vigilance": [T 6]

They were like great figures seated upon thrones. Each had three joined bodies, and three heads facing outward, and inward, and across the gateway. The heads had vulture-faces, and on their great knees were laid clawlike hands. They seemed to be carved out of huge blocks of stone, immovable, and yet they were aware: some dreadful spirit of evil vigilance abode in them. They knew an enemy. Visible or invisible none could pass unheeded. They would forbid his entry, or his escape. [T 6]

The monstrous Watchers are defeated by the Elvish light of the Phial of Galadriel; Sam holds it up "and the shadows under the dark arch fled"; Sam sees "a glitter in the black stones of their eyes", full of malice, and their will is broken. [T 6]

The light of the Phial of Galadriel is effective, too, against Middle-earth's giant spider Shelob, [1] [2] daughter of the line of the evil Ungoliant. Shelob is both evil and ancient, "bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness". [1] [T 7] The opposition of Galadriel and Shelob has been interpreted psychologically in terms of Jungian archetypes. [13] The medievalist Alaric Hall states more generally that in The Lord of the Rings, as in Beowulf and the Grettis saga , the opposition of protagonists and monsters is psychological as much as physical, since "heroes cannot defeat their enemies without taking something from them to themselves." [14] The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that Galadriel's light is a splintered remnant of that of the Two Trees of Valinor, which were consumed into the limitless darkness of Shelob's earliest ancestor, Ungoliant. That light contained and symbolised divine power; its destruction was the embodiment of evil. [11]

Undead

Alive long past his expected lifespan, but monstrous: Gollum by Frederic Bennet, 2014 (detail) Gollum s journey commences by Frederic Bennett (detail).jpg
Alive long past his expected lifespan, but monstrous: Gollum by Frederic Bennet, 2014 (detail)

Other monsters in The Lord of the Rings are humanoid, but undead, like the barrow-wight who traps the Hobbits soon after they have left Tom Bombadil's house. Such wights are found in Norse mythology. [T 9] [T 10] Far more powerful are the Nazgûl, undead and invisible but still physical ringwraiths, able to ride horses and to wield weapons; they were once kings of Men, but were trapped by Sauron with the gift of Rings of Power. [T 11] [T 12]

Gollum, too, once a member of a peaceful group of Hobbits, has become a desperate monster, alive but with his mind almost destroyed, constantly seeking the One Ring, after bearing it for many centuries. [T 13] [T 8] Flieger suggests that Gollum is Tolkien's central monster-figure, likening him to both Grendel and the Beowulf dragon, "the twisted, broken, outcast hobbit whose manlike shape and dragonlike greed combine both the Beowulf kinds of monster in one figure". [15]

Souls and sentience

Orcs are depicted as wholly evil, meaning that they could be slaughtered without regret. All the same, Orcs are human-like in being able to speak, and in having a similar concept of good and evil, a moral sense of fairness, even if they are not able to apply their morals to themselves. This presented Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, with a problem: since "evil cannot make, only mock", the at least somewhat sentient and morally-aware Orcs could not have been created by evil as a genuinely new and separate species; but the alternative, that they were corrupted from one of Middle-earth's free peoples, such as Elves, which would imply that they were fully sentient and had immortal souls, was equally unpalatable to him. [16] [4] Tolkien realized that some of the decisions he had made in his 1937 children's book The Hobbit, showing his goblins (orcs) [1] as even slightly civilised, and giving his animals the power of speech, clearly implied sentience; this conflicted with the more measured theology behind his Legendarium. [8] The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that the orcs in The Lord of the Rings were almost certainly created just to equip Middle-earth with "a continual supply of enemies over whom one need feel no compunction", [17] or in Tolkien's words from "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", "the infantry of the old war", ready to be slaughtered. [17] Shippey states that all the same, orcs share the human concept of good and evil, with a familiar sense of morality, though he comments that, like many people, orcs are quite unable to apply their morals to themselves. In his view, Tolkien, as a Catholic, took it as a given that "evil cannot make, only mock", so orcs could not have an equal and opposite morality to that of men or elves. [18] Shippey notes that in The Two Towers, Tolkien has the orc Gorbag disapprove of the "regular elvish trick" of seeming to abandon a comrade, as he wrongly supposes Sam has done with Frodo. Shippey describes the implied view of evil as Boethian, that evil is the absence of good; he notes however that Tolkien did not agree with that point of view, believing that evil had to be actively combatted, with war if necessary, the Manichean position. [19]

Wargs, great wolf-like beasts, can attack independently, as they do while the Fellowship of the Ring is going south from Rivendell, [T 14] and soon after Thorin's Company emerged from the Misty Mountains. The group of wargs in The Hobbit could speak, though never pleasantly. [T 15] Hartley treats wargs as "personified animals", noting that Tolkien writes about their actions using verbs like "[to] plan" and "[to] guard", implying in his view that the wargs are monstrous, "more than mere beasts"; but all the same, he denies that they "possess autonomous wills". [8]

Fallen angels

Melkor has been compared to Lucifer as he is a powerful spirit-being and rebels against his creator. Illustration of Lucifer devouring human souls for Dante Alighieri's Inferno, canto 33. Pietro di Piasi, Venice, 1491. Lucifer from Petrus de Plasiis Divine Comedy 1491.png
Melkor has been compared to Lucifer as he is a powerful spirit-being and rebels against his creator. Illustration of Lucifer devouring human souls for Dante Alighieri's Inferno , canto 33. Pietro di Piasi, Venice, 1491.

Some of Tolkien's monsters are certainly sentient, as they are angel-like beings, powerful Ainur, fallen into evil. This is just as in Christianity, where the devil Lucifer is understood to be a fallen angel, having been indeed once the greatest of the angels. These characters had immortal souls, were created good by the one God (Eru Iluvatar in the Legendarium), but had made the choice of evil by their own free will. The evil Lords of the Legendarium are extremely powerful. Melkor (later renamed Morgoth) particularly resembles Lucifer, as he is described as having been the most powerful of the Ainur before he turned to darkness. He has indeed been interpreted as analogous to Satan as, like Lucifer, he rebels against his creator. [20] He physically and symbolically destroys the Two Trees of Valinor, which brought light to the world. When some of their light is captured and embodied in the jewel-like Silmarils, he steals them and places them in his crown. [T 16] [T 17]

Morgoth's servant, Sauron, was similarly described as the Dark Lord; he had been a Maia serving the Vala Aulë but, on betraying the other Maiar, became Morgoth's principal lieutenant and then, in the absence of Morgoth, the Dark Lord of Middle-earth in his own right. Tolkien has a character in The Lord of the Rings, Elrond, state that "Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." [21] [9]

The fire-demons or Balrogs, too, come into this category, at least in Tolkien's later writings, where they were described as Maia corrupted by Melkor. [T 18] In The Lord of the Rings, the Wizard Gandalf names the Balrog of Khazad-Dum as "a foe beyond any of you" and "flame of Udûn", meaning an immortal but evil being, with power similar to his own. [T 19] [22]

Adaptations and legacy

Tolkien's Middle-earth and its monsters have been documented in Clash of the Gods: Tolkien's Monsters, a 2009 television programme in the History Channel's Clash of the Gods series. [23] Jason Seratino, writing on Complex, has listed his ten favourite Tolkien monsters in movies, describing the Great Goblin as "a slimy cross between Sloth and the Elephant Man". [24] Artists including Alan Lee, John Howe, [lower-alpha 1] and Ted Nasmith have created paintings of Tolkien's monsters, including those published in Tolkien's Dragons & Monsters: A Book of 20 Postcards. [25] [26]

Notes

  1. Such as Howe's painting of a Nazgûl riding a winged monster, File:Darktower.jpg.

Related Research Articles

In the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, a warg is a particularly large and evil kind of wolf that could be ridden by orcs. He derived the name and characteristics of his wargs by combining meanings and myths from Old Norse and Old English. In Norse mythology, a vargr is a wolf, especially the wolf Fenrir that destroyed the god Odin in the battle of Ragnarök, and the wolves Sköll and Hati, Fenrir's children, who perpetually chase the Sun and Moon. In Old English, a wearh is an outcast who may be strangled to death.

Ungoliant is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, described as an evil spirit in the form of a giant spider. Her name means "dark spider" in Sindarin. She is mentioned briefly in The Lord of the Rings, and plays a supporting role in The Silmarillion, enabling the Dark Lord Melkor to destroy the Two Trees of Valinor, darkening the world.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, Man and Men denote humans, whether male or female, in contrast to Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and other humanoid races. Men are described as the second or younger people, created after the Elves, and differing from them in being mortal. Along with Ents and Dwarves, these are the "free peoples" of Middle-earth, differing from the enslaved peoples such as Orcs.

A Balrog is a powerful demonic monster in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. One first appeared in print in his high-fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, where the Fellowship of the Ring encounter a Balrog known as Durin's Bane in the Mines of Moria. Balrogs appear also in Tolkien's The Silmarillion and his legendarium. Balrogs are tall and menacing beings who can shroud themselves in fire, darkness, and shadow. They are armed with fiery whips "of many thongs", and occasionally use long swords.

Trolls are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and feature in films and games adapted from his novels. They are portrayed as monstrously large humanoids of great strength and poor intellect. In The Hobbit, like the dwarf Alviss of Norse mythology, they must be below ground before dawn or turn to stone, whereas in The Lord of the Rings they are able to face daylight.

The fictional races and peoples that appear in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth include the seven listed in Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings: Elves, Men, Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents, Orcs and Trolls, as well as spirits such as the Valar and Maiar. Other beings of Middle-earth are of unclear nature such as Tom Bombadil and his wife Goldberry.

The cosmology of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium combines aspects of Christian theology and metaphysics with pre-modern cosmological concepts in the flat Earth paradigm, along with the modern spherical Earth view of the Solar System.

Mirkwood is a name used for a great dark fictional forest in novels by Sir Walter Scott and William Morris in the 19th century, and by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 20th century. The critic Tom Shippey explains that the name evoked the excitement of the wildness of Europe's ancient North.

The Maiar are a fictional class of beings from J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy legendarium. Supernatural and angelic, they are "lesser Ainur" who entered the cosmos of in the beginning of time. The name Maiar is in the Quenya tongue from the Elvish root maya- "excellent, admirable".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Middle-earth</span> Continent in Tolkiens legendarium

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.

Morgoth Bauglir is a character, one of the godlike Valar, from Tolkien's legendarium. He is the primary antagonist of The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin.

In the fictional world of J. R. R. Tolkien, Moria, also named Khazad-dûm, is an ancient subterranean complex in Middle-earth, comprising a vast labyrinthine network of tunnels, chambers, mines and halls under the Misty Mountains, with doors on both the western and the eastern sides of the mountain range. Moria is introduced in Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, and is a major scene of action in The Lord of the Rings.

An orc, in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy fiction, is a race of humanoid monsters, which he also calls "goblin".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sauron</span> Primary antagonist in Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings

Sauron is the title character and the primary antagonist, through the forging of the One Ring, of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, where he rules the land of Mordor and has the ambition of ruling the whole of Middle-earth. In the same work, he is identified as the "Necromancer" of Tolkien's earlier novel The Hobbit. The Silmarillion describes him as the chief lieutenant of the first Dark Lord, Morgoth. Tolkien noted that the Ainur, the "angelic" powers of his constructed myth, "were capable of many degrees of error and failing", but by far the worst was "the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron". Sauron appears most often as "the Eye", as if disembodied.

The impression of depth in The Lord of the Rings is an aesthetic effect deliberately sought by its author, J. R. R. Tolkien. It was intended to give the reader the feeling that the work had "deep roots in the past", and hence that it was attractively authentic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naming of weapons in Middle-earth</span> Named weapons in Tolkiens Middle-earth

The naming of weapons in Middle-earth is the giving of names to swords and other powerful weapons in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He derived the naming of weapons from his knowledge of Medieval times; the practice is found in Norse mythology and in the Old English poem Beowulf. Among the many weapons named by Tolkien are Orcrist and Glamdring in The Hobbit, and Narsil / Andúril in The Lord of the Rings. Such weapons carry powerful symbolism, embodying the identity and ancestry of their owners.

<i>Tolkiens Art: A Mythology for England</i> 1979 book by Jane Chance

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien's moral dilemma</span> Ethical issue with Orcs in Middle-earth fiction

J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, created what he came to feel was a dilemma for himself with his supposedly evil Middle-earth peoples like Orcs, when he made them able to speak, so they were sentient and sapient, and portrayed them talking about right and wrong. This meant, he believed, that they were open to morality, like Men. In Tolkien's Christian framework, that in turn meant they must have souls, so killing them would be wrong without very good reason. Orcs serve as the principal forces of the enemy in The Lord of the Rings, where they are slaughtered in large numbers in the battles of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor Fields in particular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien and the Norse</span> Theme in Tolkiens Middle-earth writings

Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Among these are Norse mythology, seen in his Dwarves, Wargs, Trolls, Beorn and the barrow-wight, places such as Mirkwood, characters including the Wizards Gandalf and Saruman and the Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron derived from the Norse god Odin, magical artefacts like the One Ring and Aragorn's sword Andúril, and the quality that Tolkien called "Northern courage". The powerful Valar, too, somewhat resemble the pantheon of Norse gods, the Æsir.

References

Primary

  1. Tolkien 1955 , book 5, ch. 6, "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields"
  2. Carpenter 2023 , #211 to Rhona Beare, 14 October 1958
  3. Tolkien 1955 , Appendix F "Of Other Races"
  4. Tolkien 1954a , book 1, ch. 7 "In the House of Tom Bombadil"
  5. Tolkien 1954a , book 2, ch. 4 "A Journey in the Dark"
  6. 1 2 3 4 Tolkien 1955 , book 6, ch. 1 "The Tower of Cirith Ungol"
  7. Tolkien 1954 , book 4, chapter 9: "Shelob's Lair."
  8. 1 2 Tolkien 1954a , book 1, ch. 2 " The Shadow of the Past "
  9. Tolkien 1954a , book 1, ch. 8 "Fog on the Barrow-downs"
  10. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2014). Beowulf : a translation and commentary, together with Sellic spell. London: HarperCollins. pp. 163–164. ISBN   978-0-00-759006-3. OCLC   875629841.
  11. Tolkien 1977 , " Akallabêth "
  12. Tolkien 1980 , 4. "The Hunt for the Ring" i. "Of the Journey of the Black Riders"}
  13. Tolkien 1937 , ch. 5 "Riddles in the Dark"
  14. Tolkien 1954a , book 2, ch. 4 "A Journey in the Dark"
  15. Tolkien 1937 , ch. 6 "Out of the Frying-pan into the Fire"
  16. Tolkien 1977 , " Quenta Silmarillion ", ch. 6 "Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor"
  17. Tolkien 1977 , " Quenta Silmarillion ", ch. 9 "Of the Flight of the Noldor"
  18. Tolkien 1977 , " Valaquenta "
  19. Tolkien 1954a , book 2, ch. 5 "The Bridge of Khazad-dûm"

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  7. 1 2 Evans 2013a, pp. 128–130.
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  10. Biese, Mary (12 October 2020). "The Monsters and the Lights: Evil, Darkness, and Light in Tolkien's Legendarium". Clarifying Catholicism. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  11. 1 2 Flieger, Verlyn (1983). Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 6–61, 89–90, 144-145 and passim. ISBN   978-0-8028-1955-0.
  12. Saguaro, Shelley; Thacker, Deborah Cogan (2013). Chapter 9. Tolkien and Trees J. R. R. Tolkien The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Palgrave Macmillan (New Casebooks). pp. 138–154. ISBN   978-1-137-26399-5.
  13. Grant, Patrick (1973). "Tolkien: Archetype and Word". Cross Currents (Winter 1973): 365–380. Archived from the original on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  14. Hall, Alaric. "The One Ring (Lord of the Rings, lecture 7)". Alaric Hall. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
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  16. Shippey 2005, pp. 265, 362, 438.
  17. 1 2 Shippey 2005, p. 265.
  18. Shippey 2005, pp. 362, 438 (chapter 5, note 14).
  19. Shippey 2001, pp. 131–133.
  20. 1 2 Carter, Lin (2011). Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord Of The Rings. London, England: Hachette UK. p. pt 16. ISBN   978-0-575-11666-5.
  21. Rosebury, Brian (2003). Tolkien : A Cultural Phenomenon. Palgrave. pp. 35–41. ISBN   978-1403-91263-3.
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  23. "Clash of the Gods: Tolkien's Monsters". Described and Captioned Media Program. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  24. Serafino, Jason. "The 10 Best Tolkien Monsters In Movies". Complex. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  25. GoodKnight, Glen (1994). "Snapshots of Places and Monsters". Mythlore . 20 (2): 35.
  26. Tolkien's Dragons & Monsters: A Book of 20 Postcards. Art by Alan Lee, John Howe, Ted Nasmith, Roger Garland, Inger Edelfeldt and Carol Emery Phenix. London: HarperCollins. 1993.

Sources