“What a tale we have been in”: Emplotment and the Exemplar Characters in The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter Series

Abstract

Linda Zagzebski's theory of moral exemplarity emphasizes the importance of admiration in developing ethical behavior. This essay argues that admiration involves wonder and distance and is best evoked by mixed or flawed characters; it demonstrates this through discussion of the characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Using Paul Ricoeur's taxonomy of prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration in narrative work, it discerns a self-reflexivity in the protagonists of these fantasy novels, which is echoed by that of the readers, who are brought to realize their own emplotment in larger narratives. Features in Tolkien and Rowling that aid this exploratory reading include the length and depth of the novels, the decentering of the reader's own reality, and their open endings, which offer an invitational role to further interpretation. Virtue is viewed more teleologically than in Zagzebski, for moral realism is woven into the metaphysics of these novels, which allows mimesis of flawed characters to be ethically productive.