THE FELLOWSHIP, THE RING, THE POWER

It should not come as a surprise to all Tolkien fans that the most famous fictional work of their favourite Oxford professor has steadily remained at the centre of literary debate since its first publication in the fifties.
As we know from the his selected letters, published by Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien started to discuss with his readers important subjects like Good and Evil, Christian values, Sub-creation, and many more as soon as The Lord of the Rings first appeared in the bookstores.
However, a true critical review and subsequent public debate of Tolkien's trilogy only began after the publication of the paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings, by Ballantine Books in 1965.
The chronological primacy should be attributed to the famous fantasy and science fiction writer Lin Carter, who in March 1969 published his A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings, a Study of the Invented World of Middle Earth. In his book Carter for the first time outlined the similarities and influences of Norse mythology on Tolkien's work.
In just three years the critical debate about The Lord of the Rings' literary roots, deeper meaning, and general values throve and became so sophisticated to yield what even today remains one of the most fundamental essays on Tolkien's work, namely, Master of Middle Earth: the Fiction of J.R.R.Tolkien by Paul H. Kocher, published in 1972 by Houghton Mifflin. It was followed in 1975 by the less insightful A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell, in 1978 Lightning From a Clear Sky by Richard Mathews finally brought us another exemplary and thorough analysis of the parallels between Tolkien's modern myth and the Norse mythology. Worth mentioning are also the 1982 The Road to Middle Earth by Thomas A. Shippey, and finally the 1983 Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World, written by Verlyn Flieger.
By this time the parameters of the debate about Tolkien's modern myth had mostly been established, although there was still ample space for further study of single topics, like the mythopoeic dimension of The Lord of the Rings, the direct relations with different ancient mythologies, the author's ethic vision, and many more. In fact, Verlyn Flieger had continued her studies of Tolkien's work and published again in 2001 A Question of Time: J.R.R.Tolkien’s Road to Faerie, and in 2005 Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology.
And yet, it now seems as though the previously frantic literary criticism of Tolkien's books has lately stagnated. Yes, we still got the studies of Douglas A. Anderson, that excellent magazine Tolkien Studies, and in 2005 The Lord of the Rings: a Reader's Companion, by Wayne G. Hammel & Christina Scull, but ultimately the whole subject matter seems largely exhausted or set aside.
A new generation of fans has taken the place of those readers who were eighteen years old during the seventies and nourished their imagination through Tolkien's books. This new generation has a different source of inspiration, the excellent silver screen adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and more recently of The Hobbit directed by Peter Jackson. They are excellent adaptations to be sure, as long as we only compare them to other movies and not to the far superior literary source material.
Unfortunately, this generational change seems to have also shifted the focus of the Tolkienian critical debate from the books to the movies. On the contrary, we strongly believe that it is still fundamental to refer to his literary work, because The Lord of the Rings is a lot more than a simple book. It is an integral myth of our times; a grandiose tableau of symbols and tradition, conceived against - and able to nurse - the many plagues of Modernity. We are therefore proud to present this, never before published in English, collection of critical essays.
We hope you will enjoy them as much as we have.