Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation

Taking his readers into the depths of a majestic and expansive literary world, one to which he brings fresh illumination as if to the darkness of Khazad-dûm, Giuseppe Pezzini combines rigorous scholarship with an engaging style to reveal the full scale of J. R. R. Tolkien's vision of the 'mystery of literary creation'. Through fragments garnered from across a scattered body of writing, and acute readings of primary texts (some well-known, others less familiar or recently published), the author divulges the unparalleled complexity of Tolkien's work while demonstrating its rich exploration of literature's very nature and purpose. Eschewing any overemphasis on context or comparisons, Pezzini offers rather a uniquely sustained, focused engagement with Tolkien and his 'theory' on their own terms. He helps us discover – or rediscover – a fascination for Tolkien's literary accomplishment while correcting long-standing biases against its nature and merits that have persisted fifty years after his death.

• A comprehensive reconstruction of Tolkien's theoretical views on the nature of literary creation, systematised for the first time through a painstaking analysis of fragments spanning his vast output
• Approaches Tolkien and his 'theory' on their own terms, making his notion of 'sub-creation' accessible to non-specialised readers and allowing them to discover and appreciate the literary sophistication and theoretical significance of popular texts
• The essential reader for anyone interested in Tolkien's views and thoughts on the nature and purpose of literature, explicitly or literarily expressed