Recovery and Transcendence for the Contemporary Mythmaker

[Recovery and Transcendence for the Contemporary Mythmaker] is one ofthe most persuasive and open-minded of the various appropriations ofTolkien to a religious or spiritual meaning. [...] At its heart is the anti-reductionistpsychological/religious theory of the concentration camp survivor,Viktor Frankl. Frankl explains human motivation primarily as a quest formeaning, a response to the 'pull' of discerned values, rather than as whollydetermined by the 'push' of instinctual drives: through this quest, human'growth' is possible even in the most dire circumstances. Such features ofTolkien's work as his theory and practice of 'eucatastrophe', the morally fittinghappy ending in the face of great adversity which vouchsafes a glimpseof transcendent joy, and his conception of art as a mode of 'recovery',whereby the too-familiar known world is seen afresh 'as we were meant tosee it', are assimilated to Frankl's view, as is the exploratory, developmental,'dialogic' quality of Tolkien's myth-making. But Garbowski draws on manysources, from folklore to Hollywood, and ranges widely through Tolkien'swriting, alert always to the ethical and spiritual implications of the protagonist'spredicaments. The book is of additional interest as an example of thesignificant response to Tolkien in Eastern Europe, a response based on hiscelebration of small, imperilled homelands and his sombre awareness ofcontemporary evil, as well as on his implicitly Christian values.From ABES Annotated Bibliography of English StudiesChristopher Garbowski is Associate Professor at the Institute of English atMaria Curie Sk³odowska University in Lublin, Poland. He is the author ofKrzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue Series (1996).