J.R.R. Tolkien's Utopianism and the Classics (Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing)

Williams, Hamish

ISBN 10: 1350241466 / ISBN 13: 9781350241466

Edité par Bloomsbury Academic, 2024

A propos de cet article

2024. paperback. . . . . .

N° de réf. du vendeur V9781350241466

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: J.R.R. Tolkien's Utopianism and the Classics (Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing)
• Éditeur: Bloomsbury Academic
• Date de parution: 2024
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 1350241466
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9781350241466
• Reliure: Couverture souple
• État de l'article: New

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

This book opens up new perspectives on the English fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien, arguing that he was an influential thinker of utopianism in 20th-century fiction and that his scrutiny of utopias can be assessed through his dialogue with antiquity. Tolkien’s engagement with the ancient world often reflects an interest in retrotopianism: his fictional places – cities, forests, homes – draw on a rich (post-)classical narrative imagination of similar spaces. Importantly for Tolkien, such narratives entail ‘eutopian’ thought experiments: the decline and fall of distinctly ‘classical’ communities provide an utopian blueprint for future political restorations; the home as oikos becomes a space where an ideal ethical reciprocity between host and guest can be sought; the ‘ancient forest’ is an ambiguous, unsettling site where characters can experience necessary forms of awakening. From these perspectives, tokens of Platonic moderation, Augustan restoration, Homeric xenophilia, and the Ovidian material sublime are evident in Tolkien’s writing. Likewise, his retrotopianism also always entails a rewriting of ancient narratives in post-classical and modern terms. This study then explores how Tolkien’s use of the classical past can help us to align classical and utopian studies, and thus to reflect on the ranges and limits of utopianism in classical literature and thought.

À propos de l'auteur

Hamish Williams is Lecturer in European Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He previously held a Junior Fellowship at the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies in Warsaw, Poland, and a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of English and American Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. His main research area is classical reception studies, particularly post-classical afterlives in modern literature and popular genres, but he is broadly interested in modern literary studies, covering topics such as utopianism, mythmaking, hospitality and the sublime. He edited Tolkien and the Classical World (2021) and co-edited The Ancient Sea: The Utopian and Catastrophic in Classical Narratives and their Reception (2022).