Abstract
Content warning: this paper discusses suicide and suicidal thoughts.
Tolkien’s interest in Old Germanic heroism had a profound impact upon the hobbits of The Lord of the Rings, and the Christianised form of heroism that they represent. In his essays, ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936) and ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’ (1953), Tolkien praises the loving, paternalistic relationship between a lord and his retainers in Old English poetry; this aspect of medieval heroism is retained in Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin However, Tolkien also highlights several shortcomings of the Old Germanic ‘Northern Courage’. In particular, his essays criticise overly proud lords such as Byrhtnoð and Beowulf, who place their retainers’ lives at risk needlessly; and courage that is motivated by despair rather than love. To correct these faults, in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien contrasts the Northern Courage of Denethor and Éowyn with what I term Hobbit Courage. In Hobbit Courage, Tolkien adapts the Germanic lord-retainer relationship to align it with his Christian morals, in order to present a more suitable form of heroism for a post-World War Two audience.
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https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5632-8086
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