Chapter VII, an Epilogue to the book, consists of a very short introduction to the Ainulindalë – the cosmogonic myth opening The Silmarillion. This myth can be interpreted as Tolkien’s archetypal and most elaborate reflection on the problem of the relation of Art and Primary reality. According to this myth, Eru created the world, employing the collaboration of the Ainur, invited to adorn His music with their “own thoughts and devices”. Eru is not merely a passive, detached observer, but constantly participates in the process of sub-creation, by continuing to inspire and correct the Ainur’s sub-creating activities, harmonising them with each other, and maintaining the freedom to introduce “new and unforetold” entities into the eventual unfolding of their Music, which remains under His ultimate control. As Eru says to the rebellious artist Melkor, in a passage encapsulating Tolkien’s vision of the mystery of literary creation: “no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite”.

The introduction presents the aims, methodology, genre, audience, and content of the book. My focus is on Tolkien’s literary ‘theory’, as informed by his own self-exegesis, that is, by Tolkien’s “experiment” and “observation” of his own literary work and experience as a writer. This explains my methodology, which is primarily inductive and exegetical, grounded as it is on a series of close readings of passages from Tolkien’s works. At the same time, Tolkien’s ‘theory’, however idiosyncratic, cannot be detached from the literary discourses of his age, nor from the traditions in which it is anchored. Despite its scope and specialism, the book is not only addressed to Tolkien readers and scholars, but also to the educated reader of English literature, who might have strong biases about the literary merits of Tolkien’s enterprise. In the book I will thus illustrate the depth and complexity of Tolkien’s literature by focusing on its meta-literary sophistication, that is, its self-reflexive focus on the nature and purpose of literature.

Chapter III focuses on another key feature of Tolkien’s literary technique, namely the lavish use of omissions, allusive language, and, more specifically, the deletion of (almost) all the explicit references to the hidden ‘divine narrative’ underlying the story; these are scattered throughout the book, but always in a ‘hidden’ or ‘glimpsed’ form. The second part explores the theoretical implications of this poetics of ‘cloaking’ or ‘glimpsing’. This technique evokes in the reader a “heart-racking” longing for something unattainable. This is not just a (well-paralleled) strategy: rather, literature for Tolkien does not just come from the human mind, since human beings are only sub-creators, and the light that their works refract comes from a higher Light: incompleteness and cloaking are thus means by which Tolkien acknowledges the mysterious origin of his sub-creations, and at the same time expresses God’s high concern for freedom, His own and that of the human sub-creators and their readers.

Chapter IV discusses another important feature of Tolkien’s work, that is, the vast amount of narrative parallelism, both intra- and intertextual, focusing on some case studies (including the relation between the hero Beren and the hobbit Frodo in particular). These parallels are related to Tolkien’s belief in “the seamless web of story”, that is to say, to the view that there is only one single Tree of Tales, criss-crossing primary and secondary realities, which sprouts again and again with new branches and leaves, all different and yet all similar. This ‘organic’ image is helpful to understand key aspects of Tolkien’s literary ‘theory’, including his famous aversion to allegory, which is here related to his belief that literature embodies in new “modes” the same universal “motives” but in a way that is ‘unexpected’ and ‘unconscious’, and the conviction that all stories correlate with each other in a narrative chain having its centre in the Gospel Story.

Chapter VI offers a final overview of the main themes addressed in the book and integrates them into a cohesive, overarching framework. In the first part, I discuss the meta-literary implications of Gandalf’s fall as described in Chapter V and illustrate Tolkien’s concern for what can be properly described as a ‘death of the author’ – to use the concept of Roland Barthes. This is clarified through an extensive discussion of Tolkien’s meta-literary short story Leaf by Niggle, in which one can trace all main features of the ‘sub-creative death’. The second part explores other important elements of Tolkien’s ‘theory’, focusing on the meta-literary significance of Gandalf’s return, and introducing a related concept that I call ‘the resurrection of the author’. This concept is explored through a discussion of five ‘gifts’ bestowed to Niggle’s tree in the eponymous story by the Divine Voices (completion, realisation, ramification, harmony, and prophecy), which conjure up a vision of divine enhancement of human literature, with fascinating eschatological implications.

Chapter II reconstructs the complex frame narrative underlying The Lord of the Rings, according to which Tolkien came into possession of an old book, which allegedly included stories from an ancient past of the world and was written by three authors of Hobbit race; the book was soon supplemented by a large bulk of miscellaneous material, and was later heavily edited, through a process whose last stage was Tolkien’s own compilation and translation. The second part investigates the theoretical implications of this meta-textual frame. Some of these are related to Tolkien’s mythopoetic ambition and urgency for narrative ‘realism’; others reflect important aspects of the literary fabric of the novel, including its Hobbito-centrism, as regards both focalisation and themes. More deeply, the meta-textual frame allows Tolkien to express and self-reflect on his own experience as a writer, who perceived his stories as something ‘other’ from him, ‘given’ or ‘discovered’, and free from the control of his rational mind.

Chapter I elucidates Tolkien’s puzzling claim that The Lord of the Rings should be primarily considered as “an essay in linguistic aesthetic”. It first analyses a passing reference to the “cats of Queen Berúthiel”, described by Tolkien as the only element in The Lord of the Rings “which does not actually exist in legends written before it was begun”. This example introduces a discussion of a typical pattern of composition of Tolkien’s works: this begins as an experience of purely aesthetic fascination for a linguistic entity, which is then expanded into a narrative item, and later developed into a full, meaningful tale, through a heuristic process of ‘sub-creative discovery’. The second part of the chapter investigates the theoretical implications of such an approach, reconstructing Tolkien’s perceptions on the value and heuristic potential of a ‘gratuitous’ aesthetic event, and especially of a linguistic one, given the ‘divine’ inspiration of language and its original expression of both wonder at and knowledge of created reality.

Chapter V develops the analyses of Chapters III and IV through a close reading of one of the most problematic passages of The Lord of the Rings, namely the fall of Gandalf in Moria and his following return. With the help of Tolkien’s own (elusive) exegesis of the passage, the chapter reveals that this narrative event embodies two key meta-literary motives recurrent in his mythology. First is sub-creative submission, featuring the sub-creator’s humble decision to hand over their sub-creations to the supreme “Writer of the Story” (the Godhead Eru) and affirm their “naked hope” in Him. This is followed by the direct, miraculous intervention of Eru, which interferes with the ontology of sub-creations, disrupting “the Rules” of their secondary world; in this particular, Eru’s intrusion transcends the intentions of Gandalf and his divine authorities – the Valar, the archetypical secondary sub-creators – and results in the enhancement of their plans, and their eventual integration within a higher creative project.