Recovering Consolation
eBook - ePub

Recovering Consolation

Sam's Enchanted Path in The Lord of the Rings

  1. 154 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Recovering Consolation

Sam's Enchanted Path in The Lord of the Rings

About this book

Although Tolkien's letters call Samwise Gamgee the "chief hero" of The Lord of the Rings, Sam is easily underestimated by both readers and critics. Recovering Consolation focuses attention on Sam's point of view throughout the long journey that is the novel. This book responds to Frodo's famous words at the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, imagining a child speaking to a parent: "I want to hear more about Sam, dad; why didn't they put in more of his talk, dad? That's what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn't have got far without Sam, would he, dad?"Listening to Sam not only makes us laugh but also shows him to be, like Tolkien himself, a master of mythopoesis; as the novel's narrator puts it, "Sam had more on his mind than gardening." Yet the concrete act of gardening, another passion that Sam shares with Tolkien, should help us to understand how consolation is recovered, as is well explained in Tolkien's great essay, "On Fairy Stories." Both there and in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien offers a "theological aesthetic" that has much to teach us. Although we may not realize it while laughing along with Sam, this humble servant-hobbit is key to this aesthetic.

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Yes, you can access Recovering Consolation by Greg Maillet in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literary Criticism in Science Fiction. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Introduction
  3. Book One
  4. Book Two
  5. Book Four
  6. Book Six
  7. Conclusion
  8. Bibliography