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  • III - The Lords of the West

  • Giuseppe Pezzini, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
  • Book:
    Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation
    Published online:
    17 April 2025
    Print publication:
    08 May 2025, pp 149-205

  • Summary

    Chapter III focuses on another key feature of Tolkien’s literary technique, namely the lavish use of omissions, allusive language, and, more specifically, the deletion of (almost) all the explicit references to the hidden ‘divine narrative’ underlying the story; these are scattered throughout the book, but always in a ‘hidden’ or ‘glimpsed’ form. The second part explores the theoretical implications of this poetics of ‘cloaking’ or ‘glimpsing’. This technique evokes in the reader a “heart-racking” longing for something unattainable. This is not just a (well-paralleled) strategy: rather, literature for Tolkien does not just come from the human mind, since human beings are only sub-creators, and the light that their works refract comes from a higher Light: incompleteness and cloaking are thus means by which Tolkien acknowledges the mysterious origin of his sub-creations, and at the same time expresses God’s high concern for freedom, His own and that of the human sub-creators and their readers.