Critical Introduction

As noted in our introduction to his essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” J.R.R. Tolkien(1892–1973) is the only author to appear in both of our volumes. He is now more widely known, though, for his novels of Middle Earth than for his scholarship. The Hobbit is the first of these novels and was intended for children. His Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King) continues the narrative in greater depth and complexity, and was targeted at an adult audience.

The Hobbit tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit. Tolkien introduces hobbits at the start of the novel:

Bilbo is a somewhat typical hobbit at the outset of the novel, when the great wizard Gandalf appears, bringing a party of warlike dwarves to his cozy hobbit hole, and sending him off on a great adventure to defeat the dragon Smaug and restore the dwarven king Thorin Oakenshield to his rightful place in their lost kingdom under the Lonely Mountain. Along the way, they meet elves, face trolls, fight giant wolves, and escape from giant spiders and goblins.

While he drew on his deep familiarity with Beowulf and other medieval tales of adventure and monstrosity, Tolkien is responsible, in many ways, for inventing Dungeons & Dragons, role-playing video games, and the modern fantasy genre, sometimes now called High Fantasy, in which elves, dwarves, wizards, and heroes battle with orcs, goblins, and dragons. There are countless pulp novels produced each year that still follow the basic formulas that Tolkien established, in which the humanoid “races” are characterized by certain physical and intellectual traits: elves are not only tall and elegant, with pointed ears, but also calm and wise; dwarves are not only short and stocky, with long beards, but also greedy and hot tempered; orcs are dark, violent, and evil.