Reading the Corpus: Environmental Bioethics in Tolkien’s Middle-earth

Abstract

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (Rings) continues to maintain influence throughout the genre of fantasy and in the cultural consciousness. Yet Tolkien’s work is rarely read for what it has to say about bodies and ethics. I utilise an interdisciplinary methodology to engage with fantasy literature from the framework of environmental bioethics. There is a gap in scholarship as the area of literary bioethics is a developing field and has not been interrogated in depth in the legendarium. Here I focus upon Rings, utilising supporting material from The Silmarillion. The text’s bodies are read as mediums of moral messaging which builds a foundation for ethical legibility. The selected texts are treated as fictional case studies to think through real-world dilemmas. I discuss the ethical implications of eugenics, racism, technology, politics, disability, fertility and gerontological issues. There are problematic issues surrounding race and disability in Tolkien’s work, which I complicate and treat with nuance in this thesis. I utilise critical theories of Aldo Leopold’s ‘land ethic’, Joel Michael Reynolds’ ‘extended body’, Rob Nixon’s ‘slow violence’, and Timothy Morton’s ‘dark ecology’ to challenge readings of embodiment and the environment. I seek to reframe the body as symbiotically connected to the environment. Thus, a de-anthropocentric perspective of the ‘human’ is developed and complicates the understanding of the ‘human’ and its boundaries. I not only reframe the ‘human’ body as symbiotically related to the environment, but I also reframe Middle-earth as a geocosm. Decentring the idea of the ‘human’ assists to destabilise the binaristic framing of bodies. Moreover, the Rings considers technological intervention in bodies. For instance, magical rings may be read as a technology that causes their users to become cyborgs; these cyborgs challenge and threaten bodily engagement with the earth. This thesis considers the body from an ethical perspective seeking to interrogate and complicate boundaries concerning the ‘human’ and ‘nature’.