One Ring to Bind Them All: Tolkien's Mythology

InOne Ring to Bind Them All, Anne Petty shows that when viewed through the combined methodologies of Joseph Campbell, Vladimir Propp, and Claude Levi-Strauss a folkloristic/mythic structure is seen to underlie Tolkien's epic work. The Lord of the Ringsis 20th-century mythology manifested in the familiar pattern of the three-stage hero quest made popular by Campbell—departure, initiation, and return—and in the elemental motifs of folktales, as discovered by Propp and expanded upon by Levi-Strauss.

This cross-disciplinary analysis shows that Tolkien presented to modern readers and other writers a rich array of reinvented mythic archetypes and icons: the desperate quest (good vs. evil); a magical object that embodies or initiates the quest (the ring); the wise wizard who oversees or aids the quest (Gandalf); the reluctant hero, an ordinary person with untapped abilities (Frodo); the hero's loyal friend and supporter (Sam); the warrior king whose true identity is hidden (Strider/Aragorm); the goddess figure (Galadriel); and so on.

Petty asserts that through The HobbittandThe Lord of the RingsTolkien created a fully realized world that evokes a sense of authentic history and is imbued with clarity and a beauty of linguistic expression, a world that continues to draw new audiences to the myth of Middle-earth.