Shadow of War is as Tolkiean a Game as it Gets

The video game Middle-earth: Shadow of War (2017) takes place in an alternate story-world that depicts events preceding LOTR and yet it does testimony to the very danger Tolkien envisioned for a possible sequel to LOTR when he said, “it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of [man’s] nature: their quick satiety with good” (Letters, No. 256). Shadow of War sheds a new ‘light’ on Tolkien’s conception of morality throughout the legendarium but threatens it at the same time. The game expresses a diabolical dualism of Dark Lord (Sauron) vs Bright Lord (Celebrimbor) and its gameplay focuses heavily on the anti-villain trope. At the core of this problematic, where good and evil seem to merge, is René Girard’s anthropological concept of mimetic rivalry. This is a paradox that occurs when antagonists confront one another so implacably that they begin to resemble one another more and more. The initial differences that separated them are now dissolved. On a more political level, the game also problematizes ideas of sovereignty and war: Orcish government and rebellious cults, Sauron’s vision of an earthly utopia, and a perpetual war of all against all in Mordor – political concepts which can be traced back to Thomas Hobbes’ political theory in Leviathan (1651). These elements, along with the mimetic rivalry, do extend Tolkien’s canonical storyworld, but are they also the inevitable dangers which the author had foreseen? Can we view Middle-earth: Shadow of War as a 21st century digital representation of Tolkien’s meaning behind the ‘new shadow’?

2014

In The Gods Return to Earth, C.S. Lewis opens his review of LotR by acclaiming the return of Heroic Romance, comparing Tolkien’s work with stories stretching back to Th e Odyssey (and beyond). Indeed he goes on to make the claim that the book also represents a revolution for this genre. Th is point of view in fact refl ects a dialectic argument which has faced artistic creation since ancient times. Should we look backwards taking classical inspiration, “standing on the shoulders of giants”, as Isaac Newton put it, or forwards, always aiming to “make it new” as Ezra Pound proclaimed, with a modern approach? Of course our own reaction probably says more about us than the work in question. Th is artistic opposition is still relevant today however. As far as Tolkien’s works are concerned, it now relates to six movies. Firstly, there is a new version of LotR in Peter Jackson’s original trilogy from 2001 to 2003 and more recently another three based on H, scheduled for annual release betw...

2023

“World-building, name-finding, language-crafting; the flaws in chivalric practice, and the ethics (Machiavellian and otherwise) that produce the moral complexities of Middle-earth and the Known World are thus the topics that Tweaking Things a Little considers. The modest title belies what lies within these covers: nimble readings, profound knowledge of the medieval world, original and provocative reading of both books and the TV show await the reader here. Pointing both back in time to the medieval underpinnings of Tolkien’s creation and outwards to the contemporary world that informs Martin’s pragmatic and politically astute thinking, these essays enthral, astonish and challenge. Best of all, they encourage us to journey back into Middle-earth and the Known World, with newly opened eyes and ears, to rediscover their wonders anew.” Carolyne Larrington, Professor of Medieval European Literature (University of Oxford), author of Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of ‘Game of Thrones’ (2015) and All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in ‘Game of Thrones’ (2021).

The article reports the results of a comparative content analysis of Lord of the Rings – book and movie-adaptation by Peter Jackson. The comparison encompasses qualitative and quantitative data regarding the amount of violence in book and film and the overall structure of the story. Analysis shows that though there is about twice the amount of violence to be found in the film, the structure of the plot in Jackson follows Tolkien´s tale quite close and also the depiction of violence, though rather drastic, does not exceed the original too much. Originally published in: Th. Fornet-Ponse et al. (eds.): Adaptations of Tolkien´s "Lord of the Rings". Hither Shore - Interdisciplinary Journal on Modern Fantasy Literature, Vol. 10. Köln: Scriptorium Oxoniae 2014. 44-61.

2007

The work of J.R.R. Tolkien has received a tremendous amount of critical attention that has focused upon his medieval roots or war allegories without considering the political elements of his mythological construction of Arda. Through the construction of a space of Derridian differance and play in the interchange of languages, Tolkien creates an idealized international pacifist system of interaction and interrelation. Tolkien constructed Arda around language and, throughout the narrative texts of Middle-earth, the power of language to transcend physical violence is foregrounded. Language is an alternative to physicality, as power rests in the word. While cynicism and critique dominated the majority of post-war writing, Tolkien's narratives about the communities of Middle-earth defending linguistic and cultural heterogeneity not only embraced the fantasy of Faerie, but also advocated for the ideals of pacifism and the embrace of difference.

2017

In this study efforts are made to prove that the fantasy is not escapist literature but a genre that is realistic in spirit and source. For the purpose of the study, C. S. Lewis' series titled The Chronicles of Narnia and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy will be advocated. This study examines the incessant battles of good against evil in both the fictional worlds. The key point that will be considered here is how these battles reflect the daily struggles of real life and how the battles fought, particularly in Middle-earth, are a reflection of the writer's own experience in the wake of the two World Wars. While dealing with the imagined and the impossible, fantasy tries to show us what is really possible. Where there is grief, there is the possibility of consolation; if there is hurt, there is a possibility of healing. By speaking to the reader about what they are, fantasies also tell them what they can become. In short, a reader's suspension of reali...

RECORTE - Revista Eletrônica UNICOR, 2011

This paper aims to disclose some relevant aspects of one of the most celebrated Fantasy authors-J. R. R. Tolkien. The twentieth-century witnessed a huge claim for Fantasy in the arts and media vehicles. This can be seen as a way to escape from a fragmented world made worse by two World Wars that brought desolation and lack of faith in spiritual values to modern and contemporary society. Rather than addressing Tolkien's fiction as an escapist device, we argue that it can be read as a strong metaphor of his own time instead, alluding to the horrors of the wars that have been experienced by the author.

personal.bgsu.edu

2014

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the themes and characters of the medieval Anglo-Saxon period that Professor J. R. R. Tolkien studied and applied to his writings through his productive literary life. With this study, I investigated the relations between the Germanic themes emerging from the poem "The Battle of Maldon" and the literary production of Tolkien, with a particular stress on the figure of the king and of the hero and the most debated word "ofermod".