Tolkien w oczach mediewisty

The Lord of the Rings, ever since its publication, has been something of a nuisance to traditional literary critics and has been maligned often and with zest. The main reason for these strong—and often irrational—reactions are primarily due to the fact that The Lord of the Rings does not fit into the literary mainstream and challenges standard critical assumptions about what a work of twentieth-century fiction should be like. The standard tool-kit of the literary critic seems utterly inadequate. Mediaevalists, in contrast, have often taken a more sympathetic view of Tolkien’s work. Honegger’s article Tolkien Through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist will therefore present several ‘mediaeval’ approaches towards Tolkien, evaluate their critical value and discuss their contribution towards a more adequate understanding of Tolkien’s literary work.