Tolkien and the Classics

Was the Middle-earth world of Tokein’s Lord of the Rings destined to decline and fade away?

This free public lecture will investigate author J.R.R Tolkien’s reception and reinvention of the Classics, focusing on his use of narratives of decline. Narratives of decline are widespread in ancient culture, in both philosophical and literary discourse. They normally posit a gradual moral and ontological degradation from an idealised Golden Age, which goes hand in hand with the detachment of the gods from mortal affairs.

Narratives of decline are also at the core of Tolkien’s mythology. This talk will discuss the reception of classical narratives of decline in Tolkien’s legendarium, pointing out intertextual relationships and thematic similarities, but also contrasts and differences, especially as regards their attribution in Tolkien to the Elves.

Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini is Tutor and Fellow in Latin at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which he joined in 2021 after working at St Andrews, Magdalen College Oxford, and Princeton. He has published extensively on Latin language and literature, the philosophy of language, the reception of the Classics, and the theory of fiction. His publications include five books (notably monographs on the verb ‘to be’ in Latin and Tolkien’s theory of fiction), five edited volumes, and over fifty peer-reviewed articles. He is also a founder of the Oxford Tolkien Network and Tolkien Consultant for the forthcoming movie The Hunt for Gollum.

This talk is one of a series presented by the Department of Classics at the University of Canterbury, with the support of the UC Teece Museum.