Well, I’m Back: Samwise Gamgee and the Future of Tolkien’s Literary Pastoral

Authors

MG Prezioso, Harvard UniversityFollow

Abstract

This article examines the treatment of the literary pastoral in The Lord of the Rings in order to demonstrate that Tolkien’s pastoral, often considered a vestige of authorial nostalgia, is as forward-looking as it is wistful. Through Samwise Gamgee and his connection to the Shire, Tolkien presents a pastoral that, though rooted in memory, is as mutable as nature itself – one that orients the reader forward and conveys that change is not only something to be accepted, but also embraced.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

ORCID ID

0000-0001-6425-7129