Tolkien: A Look Behind "The Lord of the Rings"

Carter's study was intended to serve as an introduction to Tolkien for those unfamiliar with his work. His introduction briefly reviews the publishing phenomenon of The Lord of the Rings and its burgeoning popularity in the wake of the first paperback editions in the 1960s, after which he devotes three chapters to a short biography of the author through the late 1960s, including an account of how The Lord of the Rings was written.

Four chapters follow explaining Tolkien's invented Middle-earth and summarizing the stories of The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, for the benefit of readers who may not have yet actually read the works.

Carter next turns to the question of what the works are, a point of some confusion at the time. The then-current vogue for realistic fiction provided critics with few tools for evaluating an out-and-out fantasy on its own terms, and attempts were rife to deconstruct it as a satire or allegory. Carter gently but firmly debunks these efforts, supporting his argument by drawing on Tolkien's own published ruminations on the functions and purposes of fantasy.

He then contextualizes Tolkien's works by broadly sketching the history of written fantasy from its earliest appearance in the epic poetry of the ancient world through the heroic poetry of the Dark Ages and the prose romances of the medieval era, down to the fairy tales, ghost stories and gothic novels of the early modern era and the rediscovery of the genre by writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, prior to and contemporary with Tolkien. The origins of the modern genre are discovered in the writings of William Morris, Lord Dunsany and E. R. Eddison and followed through the works of authors they influenced, including H. P. Lovecraft, Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp, and Mervyn Peake.

Carter next highlights some of Tolkien's particular debts to his predecessors, early and modern, tracing the motifs and names he utilizes back to their beginnings in Norse mythology and highlighting other echoes in his work deriving from legend and history.

Finally noted is Tolkien's influence on contemporary fantasy, which was just beginning to make itself felt at the time Carter wrote, primarily in the juvenile fantasies of Carol Kendall, Alan Garner, and Lloyd Alexander.

In the second edition updated by Adam Roberts material on the story of The Silmarillion was added to the chapter "Tolkien Today," the "After Tolkien" section on recent fantasy authors was expanded, and some material on the 2001-2003 movie versions of The Lord of the Rings was included in the introduction.[5]

• Author's Note
• An Introduction

1. The Lives and Times of Professor Tolkien
2. How The Lord of the Rings Came to be Written
3. Tolkien Today
4. Of Middle-Earth and the Story of The Hobbit
5. The Story of The Fellowship of the Ring
6. The Story of The Two Towers
7. The Story of The Return of the King
8. The Trilogy—Satire or Allegory?
9. Tolkien's Theory of the Fairy Story
10. Fantasy in the Classical Epic
11. Fantasy in the Chanson de Geste
12. Fantasy in the Medieval Romance
13. The Men Who Invented Fantasy
14. Tolkien's Basic Sources
15. On the Naming of Names
16. Some People, Places, and Things

• Postscript: After Tolkien
• Appendix A: A Checklist of Critical Literature on The Lord of the Rings
• Appendix B: A Selected Bibliography

Richard C. West, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, assesses the book in these words: "The honor of the first worthwhile book on Tolkien must go to Carter, who was widely read in literature from ancient times to the twentieth century, and his 1969 book surveys a long list of works behind The Lord of the Rings from all periods. Unfortunately, he did not have the scholarly training to do this with sufficient rigor and the book has many factual errors throughout, but his enthusiasm is infectious."[6]

• Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings - a negative book review of the second edition by Nicholas Whyte