History Creator / JRRTolkien

* [[AllThereInTheManual All There In The Appendices And Posthumously Published Work]]
** The Appendices made up nearly half of ''The Return of the King''.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Tolkien himself was troubled by the UnfortunateImplications.
* {{Applicability}}: [[invoked]]The TropeNamer
* ArtifactOfDoom

* AuthorAppeal: In case you missed it, Tolkien likes linguistics, trees, music, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Tolkien dark-haired grey-eyed women.]]
** Also mythology and culture, particularly Norse.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking
* AuthorPhobia: Tolkien was bitten by a poisonous spider in his youth in South Africa and narrowly escaped death. Many of his works feature giant, malevolent arachnids, including the spiders of Mirkwood, Shelob, and Ungoliant. There was one upside to this event: the doctor that treated him is theorised to have been the basis of [[BigGood Gandalf]].

** He didn't actually ''fight'' in World War II, unlike some of his children. But he did accept a tentative offer from British military intelligence to advise their cryptography department -- though it turned out they never needed his services. [[WhatCouldHaveBeen Does this mean Tolkien almost got a shot at cracking Enigma?]]
*** Tolkien was a Lieutenant in the Signal Corps. While as such he didn't participate in the actual bang-bang fighting, he was deployed at the front line and lived in the trenches. He later stated ''we all were Orcs'' and modelled the Orc mode of fighting after the human wave attacks in WWI.

* ConLang
* ConstructedWorld

* CreationMyth: ''The Silmarillion'' begins with one, called ''Ainulindalë'', or "The Music (literally "singing") of the Ainur". The Ainur are basically the equivalent of the angels in Christianity.
* CrypticBackgroundReference
* CueTheSun
* DarkIsNotEvil / LightIsNotGood: Well, it ''usually'' is; there are exceptions.

--> “Some who have read the book, [[TakeThatCritics or at any rate have reviewed it]], have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”
* {{Doorstopper}}

* EldritchAbomination: Ungoliant in ''The Silmarillion''.
** Balrogs certainly count as such.
** Watcher of the Water in TheLordOfTheRings.
** Also, "Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things".

* EvilIsDeathlyCold
* EvilOverlord
* EvilTowerOfOminousness

** Gondor was a direct descendant of Númenor, whose culture sounds Punic. The fact they were bilingual (speaking both a Semitic-like Adûnaic language and Elvish Sindarin), were a seafaring people and worshipped an evil god named originally Melkor ("He who arises in might") match Ancient Carthage: speaker of both Punic and Greek, seafaring, worshipped a powerful and occasionally evil god who demanded human sacrifices and was named ''Melqart'' (an elision of ''Milk-Qart'', "King of the City").[[note]]It is important to note that the Punic Melkart was one god among many, the sacrifices were mostly conducted in times of crisis, and the people sacrificed were the small children of the ruling nobles as a token of shared sacrifice--like Rome, Carthage was an aristocratic republic, but unlike Rome, it didn't have an elaborate set of institutions formalizing relations among them. This made it important to emphasize the shared sacrifice in dangerous times.[[/note]]

** Please note that the languages he based his invented languages on do not necessarily determine the cultural equivalence of the people who use them. Sindarin was based on Welsh, and Quenya on Finnish, but Grey Elves aren't Welsh, and High Elves aren't Finns.
* FantasyPantheon
* FantasyWorldMap

* GiantSpiders: Ungoliant in ''The Silmarillion'', Mirkwood's spiders in ''The Hobbit'', and Shelob in ''The Lord of the Rings''.

* GondorCallsForAid
* {{Gotterdammerung}}

* HappilyMarried: To Edith, whom he considered his "Luthien."
* HealingHands

* HiddenElfVillage
* HighFantasy

* HumansAreWarriors: All humans except the men of Bree are warriors. Hobbits also avoid warfare, but even these get a few good blows in from time to time.
** The Edain, the three main human tribes allied to the Elves fit this exactly. They got to Elven country by hacking their way through Morgoth's servants. They were allowed land in exchange for fighting for the Elves, which they did with great vigor.

* IGaveMyWord
* IHaveManyNames
* InhumanlyBeautifulRace: Elves in Tolkien's works are almost invariably described as being good looking. The three best looking females in Middle-earth are all Elves. The Valar also count, although they cheat, since their bodies are artificial and custom-made, so their beauty is limited only by ego and imagination.
* [[InterspeciesRomance Inter-people Romance]]: [[TearJerker Aegnor/Andreth]] (StarCrossedLovers... ''Oh, how!''), Finduilas/Túrin (one-sided, [[TriangRelations Type 5]] with Gwindor->F->T), Lúthien/Beren (married and mortal), Idril/Tuor (married and immortal), Arwen/Aragorn (married and mortal), Mithrellas/Imrazôr (married until she pulled a MissingMom), Melian/Thingol (angel and immortal elf).
** But Thingol got himself killed eventually, and Melian wandered off to, most likely, Fade Into Nothingness.

* LeftJustifiedFantasyMap

* TheLostWoods
* ManlyTears
* {{Mithril}}: the original
* {{Mordor}}
* MostWonderfulSound / HellIsThatNoise: [[invoked]]Part of Tolkien's aim in devising the Elvish languages and the BlackSpeech. He deliberately tried to make one sound beautiful and the other sound ugly.

* NarrativePoem

* OurElvesAreBetter: Very much not, [[TheThemeParkVersion even if many people mistakenly think so]]. Yes, Elves are in many ways more powerful, "magical" and skilled than humans (they had better be, as they had long enough to practice), but they are just as capable as any human to be stupid, chauvinist, and screw up monumentally – possibly ''more'' able than humans in fact, as greater power can have bigger results. In addition, humans are created to be ImmuneToFate, with the ultimate destiny of ourselves and the world left undetermined.
** Doubters are referred, for a start, to the story of Feanor, the greatest creative genius in the history of the Elves, whose stubbornness and selfishness led to the millenia-long exile of almost his ''entire branch'' of the High-elven people, the Noldor, from the Blessed Lands, to civil war in those same Blessed Lands between two of the three tribes of the High-elves, to the destruction of the Elven kingdoms of Beleriand and of Beleriand itself, and to the deaths of himself and almost all his sons.
** They do, however, appear to be this in ''The Lord of the Rings'', since it isn't concentrating on Elvish history, and so most of their bigger mistakes are found elsewhere. Now, since it's the most popular and well-known of Tolkien's works, this means it's easy for people to get the wrong impression. This being said, Galadriel is shown to be just as susceptible to the One Ring's power as anyone, although she is one of the handful who resist its power.
*** This is partly justified by the fact that elven leaders in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - Elrond (Rivendell), Thranduil (Mirkwood) and Galadriel and Celeborn (Lothlorien) - have all lived to see the decline of their race in Middle-Earth, and are trying to do what is best for their people while offering what assistance they can to the other races. Also, considering that Galadriel and Celeborn were alive during the war against Morgoth that destroyed Beleriand (caused by Feanor, as noted above), and that Elrond saw what the folly of his people could do (it was Fëanor's grandson whom Sauron taught how to make the rings of power), they had all probably wisened up to not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors.

* PalantirPloy: The Palantir devices in ''The Lord of the Rings'' are the trope-namers.

* ProphecyTwist[=/=]NoManOfWomanBorn

* RightfulKingReturns
* RingOfPower

-->"I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by ''arisch''. I am not of ''Aryan'' extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of ''Jewish'' origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have ''no'' ancestors of that gifted people."

* TimeAbyss

* TragicHero
* TranslationConvention: All of our real-world languages do not exist in Middle-earth, and so the common TranslationConvention applies. When not convention-translated, names and speech make use of either Tolkien's constructed languages, or of a real-world language used as stand-in for a fictional one. The latter ones are not chosen randomly, but to represent the relation between the respective "proper" languages, or a certain image. Languages regularly replaced by stand-in languages in the text are: "Westron" a.k.a. the "Common Speech" is ''always'' rendered as English (as it is the Third-Age-novel's POV-character's language), the Rohirric language by Anglo-Saxon a.k.a. Old English (to appear vaguely familiar to the hobbits' Westron-English), and the language used by the Dwarves and the Men of Dale by Old Norse. Information on the "translation" and what these languages "really" look like, can be found [[AllThereInTheManual in various appendices and additional texts]].

* WalkIntoMordor: TheMovie of ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' is the TropeNamer.
* WarIsHell: Constant theme since Tolkien is a WorldWarOne vet.

** For that matter, it's hard to keep from feeling wistful when reading the many fragments of unfinished stories and poems collected by his son Christopher in ''Literature/TheHistoryOfMiddleEarth''. There's even a whole volume of them entitled ''Unfinished Tales.''

* WorldBuilding
* WorldShapes
* WorldTree

** Norse mythology and culture too.

** They do, however, appear to be this in ''The Lord of the Rings'', since it isn't concentrating on Elvish history, and so most of their bigger mistakes are found elsewhere. Now, since it's the most popular and well-known of Tolkien's works, this means it's easy for people to get the wrong impression. This being said, Galadriel is shown to be just flawed as susceptible to the One Ring's power as anyone, although she is one of the handful who resist its power.
*** This is partly justified by the fact that elven leaders in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings: Elrond (Rivendell), Thranduil (Mirkwood) and Galadriel and Celeborn (Lothlorien) have all lived to see the decline of their race in Middle-Earth, and are trying to do what is best for their people while offering what assistance they can to the other races. Also, considering that Galadriel and Celeborn were alive during the war against Morgoth that destroyed Beleriand (caused by Feanor, as noted above), and that Elrond saw what the folly of his people could do (it was Fëanor's grandson whom Sauron taught how to make the rings of power), they had all probably wisened up to not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors.

** The Southrons are a vague, nonspecific representation of African peoples, as in the medieval writings Tolkien emulated, which always spoke of these in exotic terms. Similarly, the Easterlings are a vague representation of nomadic peoples from the East (ie Huns, Tartars, Mongols). However, the Easterlings of Khand are called Variags, a term used for Viking mercenaries in Constantinople.

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: In-universe, the Middle-earth books are translations of the writings of Bilbo (who wrote ''Literature/TheHobbit'' and translated ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' out of Elvish), Frodo and Sam (who wrote ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''), and the Anglo-Saxon sailor Ælfwine (who stumbled upon Tol Eressëa in the Middle Ages and learned of the Elder Days from the Elves).[[hottip:*:Ælfwine was written out of the published ''Silmarillion'' by Christopher Tolkien, but since he appears in JRRT's writings after ''[=LotR=]'', he apparently never abandoned the idea.]]

* BittersweetEnding: Half of the endings. The other half are just [[DownerEnding just plain depressing.

* BittersweetEnding

* CashCowFranchise: With all of the books about Middle-earth out, along with several movies (with a live-action, two-part Hobbit coming in 2012/13), several games, and tons of merchandise based on films and books, quite a bit of money has been made on Tolkien's world.

* ''Literature/TheHistoryOfMiddleEarth'' (12 volumes, 1983--96)
* ''Literature/TheHobbit'' (1937)
* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' (originally published in three volumes, 1954--55)
* ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' (1977)
* ''Literature/UnfinishedTalesOfNumenorAndMiddleEarth'' (1980)

** Gondor was a direct descendant of Númenor, whose culture sounds Punic. The fact they were bilingual (speaking both a Semitic-like Adûnaic language and Elvish Sindarin), were a seafaring people and worshipped an evil god named originally Melkor ("He who arises in might") match Ancient Carthage: speaker of both Punic and Greek, seafaring, worshipped an evil god who demanded human sacrifices and was named ''Melkart'' ("Mighty one").

* VitriolicBestBuds: Tolkien was this with C. S. Lewis, to the point that he frequently criticized his fellow author's books, such as ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. But, that's '''vitriolic''' best buds for you...

* SweetPollyOliver

* TurtleIsland: Fastitocalon

* WellDoneSonGuy: Faramir could be the poster boy for this trope.

* DoggedNiceGuy

* DestructiveSaviour: The people of Beleriand are relentlessly harried and killed by the evil Morgoth. The desperate remnant calls upon the Valar -- extremely powerful gods or angels. The Valar come in force, launch the "War of Wrath" [[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=War_of_Wrath]] and utterly defeat Morgoth -- but in the process, nearly all of Beleriand is flooded and sinks under the sea, only a few mountain tops surviving as small islands.
** And what would become the Elven kingdom of Lindon, which was originally the eastern edge of Beleriand (the Blue Mountains being the border of Beleriand).
** The setting also has a Ragnarok equivalent in which the evil of Morgoth will be entirely purged from Middle Earth. Fortunately or not it will also be TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt as all of Ea will be ''remade''.

* DugTooDeep

* ChangingOfTheGuard: Between ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''
* ColdBloodedTorture: Both Sauron and Morgoth are fond of it.
* ColorCodedWizardry

* CrapsackWorld: Middle-Earth, especially during the Second Age.

'''Tolkien's Legendarium'''

The published books are:
* ''Literature/TheHobbit'' (1937)
* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' (originally published in three volumes, 1954--55)

* ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' (1977)
* ''Literature/UnfinishedTalesOfNumenorAndMiddleEarth'' (1980)
* ''Literature/TheHistoryOfMiddleEarth'' (12 volumes, 1983--96)

* ''Literature/LeafByNiggle''
* ''Literature/FarmerGilesOfHam''
* ''TheFatherChristmasLetters''
* ''Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics'': This lecture redefined the importance of ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}'' as a poem, rather than "a relic of the past".
* ''On Fairy Stories'': This lecture essentially inaugurated the academic study of FairyTales; we thus have it to thank for stories as varied as ''{{Shrek}}'', ''PrincessTutu'', ''Literature/NightsAtTheCircus'', and ''RevolutionaryGirlUtena''.
* ''The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún''

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking

** He didn't actually ''fight'' in World War II, unlike some of his children. But he did accept a tentative offer from British military intelligence to advise their cryptography department -- though it turned out they never needed his services. [[WhatCouldHaveBeen Does this mean Tolkien almost got a shot at cracking Enigma?]]

* TheCorruption

* DestructiveSaviour: The people of Beleriand are relentlessly harried and killed by the evil Morgoth. The desperate remnant calls upon the Valar -- extremely powerful gods or angels. The Valar come in force, launch the "War of Wrath" [[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=War_of_Wrath]] and utterly defeat Morgoth -- but in the process, nearly all of Beleriand is flooded and sinks under the sea, only a few mountain tops surviving as small islands.

** Also, "Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things".
* TheEveryman: Hobbits, who also double as the AudienceSurrogate in a world of mighty wizards and brave warriors.

* EvilIsDeathlyCold

* TheFairFolk: Tolkien's treatment of the High Elves was a reaction to the way elves were dealt with in contemporary fiction -- either as this or as childish fairies. In Tolkien only ignorant Men like Boromir regard Elves as TheFairFolk. However, Tolkien's conception then [[FollowTheLeader caught on among later fantasy writers]] and in the end people like TerryPratchett reacted in turn back towards TheFairFolk.

** The Southrons are a vague, nonspecific representation of African peoples, as in the medieval writings Tolkien emulated, which always spoke of these in exotic terms. Similarly, the Easterlings are a vague representation of nomadic peoples from the East (ie Huns, Tartars, Mongols). However, the Easterlings of Khand are called Variags, a term used for Viking mercenaries in Constantinople.

* GollumMadeMeDoIt

* InhumanlyBeautifulRace: Elves in Tolkien's works are almost invariably described as being good looking. The three best looking females in Middle-earth are all Elves. The Valar also count, although they cheat, since their bodies are artificial and custom-made, so their beauty is limited only by ego and imagination.

* [[MenDontCry "Real" men don't cry:]] [[AvertedTrope Oh the HELL they don't.]]
** To cite just one example: Aragorn is so overwhelmed with grief at the death of Boromir, weeping bitterly over the latter's body, that when Gimli and Legolas come upon the scene, they think at first that Aragorn himself has been perhaps mortally wounded.
** Also, Gandalf ''encourages'' Sam, Pippin, and Merry to weep when Frodo is going away forever.
--> ''"I will not say 'do not weep', for not all tears are an evil."''

* NurseryRhyme
* OnlyOneName, {{Patronymic}}s
* ThemeNaming, various kinds: Theme Family Naming (including ThemeTwinNaming and AlphabeticalThemeNaming), naming conventions along a dynasty (be they birth or ruling names), or general ones (e.g. the hobbit tradition of naming girls after [[FloralThemeNaming flowers]] or [[RockThemeNaming gemstones]]).

* NoManOfWomanBorn: ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is co-TropeNamer with Creator/{{Shakespeare}}.

* {{Oxbridge}}: Quite possibly the most widely-read writer to come out of Oxford's walls.

* RavensAndCrows

* SecondHandStorytelling

* SpeakFriendAndEnter: ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is the TropeNamer.

* ThrowingDownTheGauntlet

* TranslationConvention: All of our real-world languages do not exist in Middle-earth, and so the common TranslationConvention applies. When not convention-translated, names and speech make use of either Tolkien's constructed languages, or of a real-world language used as stand-in for a fictional one. The latter ones are not chosen randomly, but to represent the relation between the respective "proper" languages, or a certain image. Languages regularly replaced by stand-in languages in the text are: "Westron" a.k.a. the "Common Speech" is ''always'' rendered as English (as it is the Third-Age-novel's POV-character's language), the Rohirric language by Anglo-Saxon a.k.a. Old English (to appear vaguely familiar to the hobbits' Westron-English), and the language used by the Dwarves and the Men of Dale by Old Norse. Information on the "translation" and what these languages "really" look like, can be found [[AllThereInTheManual in various appendices and additional texts]].

* VitriolicBestBuds: Tolkien was this with C. S. Lewis, to the point that he frequently criticized his fellow author's books, such as ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. But, that's '''vitriolic''' best buds for you...

* WellDoneSonGuy: Faramir could be the poster boy for this trope.

** Most likely has something to do with his knowledge of medieval culture. Weeping was not considered a sign of softness or weakness in those days. Rather, it was a sign of extreme passion and hot bloodedness.

* AuthorPhobia: Tolkien was bitten by a poisonous spider in his youth in South Africa and narrowly escaped death. Many of his works feature giant, malevolent arachnids, including the spiders of Mirkwood, Shelob, and Ungoliant.

* IAmXSonOfY: The standard form of WarriorPrince self-address in the Tolkien universe.

* ''Smith of Wootton Major''
* ''Leaf by Niggle''

** The Edain, the three main human tribes allied to the Elves fit this exactly. They got to Elven country by hacking their way through Morgoths servants(presumably leaving [[AtopAPileOfCorpses a trail of dead monsters]] in their wake. They were allowed land in exchange for fighting for the Elves, which they did with great vigor.

** Tolkien also sent a StronglyWordedLetter to AAMilne, complaining about the AdaptationDecay from ''TheWindInTheWillows'' in ''Toad of Toad Hall'' and saying that his children were appalled. Somewhat HilariousInHindsight as Tolkien fans are famously equally stringent about AdaptationDecay in Tolkien's own works.

* {{Tsundere}}: Towards CSLewis and, even more severely, DorothyLSayers.

* VitriolicBestBuds: Tolkien was this with CSLewis, to the point that he frequently criticized his fellow author's books, such as ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. But, that's '''vitriolic''' best buds for you...

** Tolkien once proposed coauthoring a scholarly book on linguistics with his academic colleague and friend CSLewis. Lewis started the manuscript, but unfortunately they never got around to finishing it. [[http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2009/07/CSLewis070809.html]]

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis

* DeathOfTheAuthor
* DearNegativeReader: Magnificently deployed in his introduction to the second edition of ''TheLordOfTheRings'':

* InhumanlyBeautifulRace: Elves in JRRTolkien's works are almost invariably described as being good looking. The three best looking females in Middle-earth are all Elves. The Valar also count, although they cheat, since their bodies are artificial and custom-made, so their beauty is limited only by ego and imagination.