Taxonomizing Goblins from Folklore to Fiction

Abstract

During the medieval and early modern periods, folkloric goblins were often presented as multifaceted creatures with unclear origins and as nebulous markers of the preternatural. Beginning in the 1800s, however, authors crafted new interpretations of these creatures that appropriated folkloric traditions to create a distinct kind of fictional goblin. The works of George MacDonald (d. 1905) and J. R. R. Tolkien (d. 1973) were essential to this process. MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872) fuses folklore with Darwinian evolutionary thought to present goblins as antagonistic, troglodytic schemers who devolved from humans. MacDonald’s ideas were influential on Tolkien, as he characterizes goblins as a corrupted and evil ‘race’—descriptions that utilize racialized language common in early twentieth-century England. Tolkien and MacDonald thus flattened folkloric goblins in their own works such that they became an entirely different (and specific) kind of fictional monster that reflected contemporary trends in English society.