The Great War and Middle-earth

Common card · No. 333471

J. R. R. Tolkien took part in the First World War, known then as the Great War, and began his fantasy Middle-earth writings at that time. The Fall of Gondolin was the first prose work that he created after returning from the front, and it contains detailed descriptions of battle and streetfighting. He continued the dark tone in much of his legendarium, as seen in The Silmarillion. The Lord of the Rings, too, has been described as a war book. Tolkien was reluctant to explain influences on his writing, specifically denying that The Lord of the Rings was an allegory of the Second World War, but admitting to certain connections with the Great War. His friend and fellow-Oxford University literary discussion group Inkling C. S. Lewis however described the work as having just the quality of the Great War in many of its descriptions. Biographers and scholars including John Garth and Janet Brennan Croft have suggested multiple specific correspondences and the war's likely influences on Tolkien's...

Read on Wikipedia · Image US Department of History, US Military Academy West Point, Public domain