Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power Review

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Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power ReviewNot really much insight here. Noteworthy and interesting points are scattered throughout, however they are certainly not helped by the general skimpiness of developed argument or sustained elaboration for a convincing case. All in all, the ideas are never explored to their fullest extent, and the general tone is that of a graduate student's thesis. In part this may be due to the decision to retrace the entire plot-line, rather than to develop particular themes in depth. Also, the academic liberal arts jargon is just bad.
Prof. Chance approaches LOTR and its mythology of power by way of a purely political hermeneutics, applying the theories of (mostly) Foucault to mythopoetic material that rises beyond explanation via mere politics. This Foucault influence is central, but at no point is it seriously questioned or demonstrated how it is even relevant or useful to the topic at hand - rather than, say, the concepts Tolkien drank in from epic poetry, fairy stories, world mythology, the Bible, or a thousand different philosophers (for example, how is Foucault more revealing here than Augustine, or Hobbes, or Rousseau?).
Somehow, it all fails to grasp the very personal, psychological, and metaphysical aspects of Tolkien's masterpiece, which speaks to us not primarily through the rationalism of politics but via the art of wonder: the magic of the journey, the crucible of morality and fellowship, innocence and experience, and the passages of life in relation to its underpinning wholeness.
It's disappointing and at times hilarious, though, when Prof. Chance sees LOTR as rather more concerned with "the political problem of the intellectual (22)" and "liberation from hegemony... A novel that mythologizes power and the problem of individual difference... the problem of individual and class difference within the social body or construct, the heroic power of knowledge and language in the political power struggle, and the ideal of kingship as healing and service, in a unique inversion of master-servant roles (23)". One gets the sense that it all boils down to "the role of understanding and tolerating differences within the community (24)", to "giving voice to the dispossessed of the twentieth century (25)". But interpreted this way, squintingly, the tale only seems to diminish into triviality. It becomes merely "a drama of the symbolic value of language (45)", wherein the Ring is a "challenge to [Frodo's] civic and political education (48)", and where "name-calling and hostile language...wound more than the...voice of an enemy like the Black Riders or Sauron (58)".
Admittedly, such platitudes are more than the pure baloney evoked here, and may well contain very important ideas, but they are, in the end, only tangents to the tale that Tolkien set down.Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power Overview

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