ABSTRACT
J. R. R. Tolkien breathed new life into fantasy in the mid-1950s when he published The Lord of the Rings, the twentieth cen-tury's most influential work in the genre. Its immense popularity, its consummate literary craftsmanship, and the depth and complexity of its vision prompted the general public and critics alike to take fantasy more seriously. In contrast to Morris, Tolkien placed his literary oeuvre firmly within a Christian context, adding to the early religious fantasy of George MacDonald a body of work with greater richness and subtlety. He moved beyond allegory and symbolic moral fable to show that fantasy was fully capable of treating complex, sophisticated modern Christian issues.
