ABSTRACT
Tolkien, a major linguistic scholar, published The Hobbit in 1937, and The Lord ofthe Rings appeared in its three parts (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King) between 1954 and 1956. The Silmaril/ion was published posthumously, edited by Tolkien's son Christopher, in 1977. The entire cycle, aB of which was written amid the convention that Tolkien was the translator of ancient writings rather than the original author, presents a consistent account of an imagined world inhabited by men, elves, dwarfs and many others who live in a kind of parallel world to our own, possessing an independent history and mythology but sharing moral problems relating to evil andpower.
