Mythological Sources of Tolkien's Prose

Abstract

This thesis is focused on proving the fact that characters of the prose of John Ronald Reul Tolkien are based primarily on the sources from old mythology, namely the Old Germanic literature as Elder and Snorri´s Edda, the Old English epos Beowulf and other Northern and Celtic myths and tales. Due to a large number of characters, the work depicts only a group belonging to the evil side. The first part of the thesis discusses several wide spread opinions about the possible sources for Tolkien’s characters and tries to put the facts into a clearer context. In the second part, individual characters are compared with their sources from mythology, common features are shown and conclusions derived.