Lord of the Rings

On the Tolkien and Medievalism handout, the "responsibility to be a good lord and repay fealty with honors and love" is documented. The lord and his servant have a working relationship to allow both parties to better their situation. I think that this closely resembles both Aeneas in Aeneid and the Portuguese in Lusiads because both the heroes within those epics were willing to sacrifice everything for the good of the state. Time and time again, we see Aeneas torn between his desires as a man and the sense of duty that continually drives him to sacrifice his own happiness.

The Lord of the Rings contains many other epic elements that are similar to those past epics, yet in the reading we see two unlikely heroes: a hobbit and a woman. These are definitely NOT the heroes Homer or Virgil would have written about. Yet in this trilogy we see the ordinary doing the extraordinary which is radically different from most epics (Omeros also falls into this category). Tolkien's variety of heroes seems to appeal to a much wider audience—there seems to be a hero that each individual could find admirable and perhaps emulate. If epics teach society how to behave and sacrifice for the greater good, Lord of the Rings certainly does accomplish that task.