Abstract
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has truly become an icon of popular culture since it was published in 1954-55. This paper argues that The Lord of the Rings is a work of “great literature” because it explores key dimensions of human nature in an artistically subtle and compelling manner. In doing so it addresses something essentially missing from popular culture—and this is exactly its main source of appeal. Tolkien was able to reach a contemporary audience because he virtually created a new genre of “fantasy” and through that medium (an epic within the framework of myth) opened up the reader to a larger, richer world in which took place a primordial drama of good versus evil by the individual acts of moral will played on a larger stage of the spirit.
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