There and back again”: Reading Tolkien’s fantasy in South Africa

J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy1 is remarkable for its depth and groundedness, and this has established The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as classics, although their place is still being defined. Tolkien’s work continues to offer new pleasures as it is re-read. Things that give me special pleasure range from individual phrases to the intertextual engagement of Tolkien’s fantasy with older motifs: these idiosyncratic pleasures appear to derive from the text itself and its participation in a tradition of textual influence, so that, for me, the pleasure is independent of where one reads Tolkien.2 University teaching of English literature should equip students to cope with literature that is not of their own place and time. Within the South African academy, we should not be seduced into reading only contemporary literature from Africa, or reading only according to the tenets of postcolonialism. Twentieth-century fantasy should be accessible to students independently of their background, because it is inherently and deliberately different from ordinary reality. However, when I have had the pleasure and privilege of guiding students writing on Tolkien’s work, I have found that their responses to it are enriched if they are equipped to read works that are older or in some way other. Tolkien’s classic fantasy is a source of pleasure in many ways, and this delight and discovery is not and should not be limited to readers from certain backgrounds only.