Abstract
Emmanuel Lévinas’s philosophy and J.R.R. Tolkien’s creative work both upheld the rights of the individual Other in the face of dogmatism and totalitarianism. For both Tolkien and Lévinas, who is often credited with being the originator of the concept of alterity, our relationship with the Other is necessarily an ethical relationship established through language. To respond to the Other while acknowledging his or her absolute Otherness is also to accept responsibility for him or her. The presence of many of Lévinas’s principles in the relationships between radically different characters in Tolkien’s legendarium suggests that Tolkien’s fiction was on the cutting edge of philosophical enquiry. Well before the publication of Lévinas’s major works, Tolkien had begun exploring themes related to language as the primal expression of our responsibility toward the Other.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Chance, Jane. “Tolkien and the Other: Race and Gender in Middle-earth.” In Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers, 171–188. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Critchley, Simon and Robert Bernasconi. The Cambridge Companion to Lévinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Edwards, Jonathan. “The Anthropology of Arda: Creation, Theology, and the Race of Men.” In Tolkien the Medievalist, edited by Jane Chance, 194–224. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Fimi, Dmitra. Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Flieger, Verlyn. “Tolkien’s Wild Men: From Medieval to Modern.” In Tolkien the Medievalist, edited by Jane Chance, 95–105. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Hagège, Clause. On the Death and Life of Languages. Translated by Jody Gladding. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009.
Lévinas, Emmanuel. Alterity and Transcendance. Translated by Michael B. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
-----. Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998.
-----. Entre nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre. Paris: Librairie Générale Française [Livre de -Poche] 1991.
-----. Humanism of the Other. Translated by Nidra Poller. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
-----. Otherwise than Being. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998.
-----. Totality and Infinity. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 1969.
Nettle, Daniel and Suzanne Romaine. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
National Geographic Mission Program and Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. “Disappearing Languages, Enduring Voices- Documenting the World’s Endangered Languages.” Accessed April 30, 2013. http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/enduring-voices/.
Ponzo, Augusto. “Corps, langage et altérité chez Emmanuel Lévinas.” in Semiotica 148-1/4 (2004): 137–151.
Rogers, Hope. “No Triumph without Loss: Problems of Intercultural Marriage in Tolkien’s Works.” Tolkien Studies 10 (2013): 69–87.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Emmanuel Lévinas.” First published July 23, 2006. Revised Aug 3, 2011. Accessed April 29, 2013. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/Lévinas/.
Steinfels, Peter. “Emmanuel Lévinas, 90, French Ethical Philosopher.” New York Times, December 27, 1995. Accessed April 29, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/27/world/emmanuel-Lévinas-90-french-ethical-philosopher.
Tadie, Joseph. “‘That the World Not Be Usurped’: Emmanuel Lévinas and J. R. R. Tolkien on Serving Others as Release from Bondage.” In Tolkien Among the Moderns, edited by Ralph C. Wood, 219–246. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2015.
Tolkien, J. R. R. “English and Welsh.” In The Monsters and the Critics, 162–197. London: Harper Collins, 2006.
-----. The Fellowship of the Ring. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
-----. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
-----. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
-----. The Silmarillion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
-----. The Two Towers. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Treanor, Brian. Aspects of Alterity: Lévinas, Marcel and the Contemporary Debate. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dawson, D. (2017). Language and Alterity in Tolkien and Lévinas. In: Vaccaro, C., Kisor, Y. (eds) Tolkien and Alterity. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61018-4_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61018-4_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61017-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61018-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)