The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power

Rating:
Summary: A dangerous business
Review: Arguably, Jane Chance's criticism of Tolkien's epic has a few flaws, but I cannot wholly agree with another reviewer that if we want to learn about Tolkien, read Tolkien. Certainly, we should do so before reading Chance, but by choosing to read other books about Tolkien's Middle-earth, we enter into a conversation with other minds, which provoke and tease our thoughts into new directions. Of course, its a bit hazardous. As Bilbo tells his nephew, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." Just so. And opening a book is every bit as unpredictable as opening a door. If we're not careful, Jane Chance too may sweep us into errors regarding Tolkien's wonderful epic, but any good reader already knows this. If we find that she falls short in her criticism, well then, we can at least articulate to ourselves why, arriving at a more profound understanding of Tolkien's work -- thanks, indirectly, to Jane Chance. For myself, I agree that a central concern of Tolkien is power (and I too wish Chance had defined the term "mythology of power" more concisely), but only one among many; all else is suspect. Nevertheless, I found Chance's criticism as good a place to start as any, and it has led me down more than one interesting path as I continue to re-read and enjoy all that Tolkien has given us.

Rating:
Summary: Don't take a Chance on this book
Review: I'm very disappointed in this book. The author is wrong about basic facts on which she bases her theories. To wit:

Frodo does not, as the author claims, use the Ring "to test resistance to institutionalized power and the power of others within the community." He doesn't "use" the Ring at all; if anything, it uses him. Gandalf's Elven ring does not save Frodo from the Nazgul at the Ford on the way to Rivendell; at that point in the story, we don't know that Gandalf has one of the Elven rings. "Mordor" may mean"murder" in Anglo-Saxon, and that may have been in the back of Tolkien's mind; but "Mordor" mean "black-land" in Sindarin, and that's the meaning Tolkien wanted for the land. Durin's Bane is not mithril or greed (though that is an issue), but the Balrog.

Dr. Chance does makes several interesting points, and for that reason I might, albeit with much hesitation, recommend this book to those who are familiar enough with LotR to avoid the pitfalls.

Rating:
Summary: Don't take a Chance on this book
Review: I'm very disappointed in this book. The author is wrong about basic facts on which she bases her theories. To wit:

Frodo does not, as the author claims, use the Ring "to test resistance to institutionalized power and the power of others within the community." He doesn't "use" the Ring at all; if anything, it uses him. Gandalf's Elven ring does not save Frodo from the Nazgul at the Ford on the way to Rivendell; at that point in the story, we don't know that Gandalf has one of the Elven rings. "Mordor" may mean"murder" in Anglo-Saxon, and that may have been in the back of Tolkien's mind; but "Mordor" mean "black-land" in Sindarin, and that's the meaning Tolkien wanted for the land. Durin's Bane is not mithril or greed (though that is an issue), but the Balrog.

Dr. Chance does makes several interesting points, and for that reason I might, albeit with much hesitation, recommend this book to those who are familiar enough with LotR to avoid the pitfalls.

Rating:
Summary: Power has many facets
Review: Jane Chance's discussion includes some valuable insights and a useful review of research, however it suffers from three main problems:

a. The discussion of power is one-sided and focuses too much on the power of language, while neglecting issues such as the power of vision and the gaze, which are just as prominent. This makes the application of Foucault's theories - a good idea in itself -superficial (The author refers to one book of his out of a vast corpus).
b. Any discussion of the structure of The Lord of the Rings cannot disregard the vast work that Christopher Tolkein has done on the various layers and stages of the volumes of the book.
c. Chance's book is marred by many errors: for example, how can Germany have blockaded England in 1946, a year after the end of the war? In this context, the author should have mentioned Tolkein's own discussion of the relationship between his work and the Second World War.

Rating:
Summary: The Mythology of Power
Review: Not really much insight here. Noteworthy and interesting points are scattered throughout, however they are certainly not helped by the general skimpiness of developed argument or sustained elaboration for a convincing case. All in all, the ideas are never explored to their fullest extent, and the general tone is that of a graduate student's thesis. In part this may be due to the decision to retrace the entire plot-line, rather than to develop particular themes in depth. Also, the academic liberal arts jargon is just bad.
Prof. Chance approaches LOTR and its mythology of power by way of a purely political hermeneutics, applying the theories of (mostly) Foucault to mythopoetic material that rises beyond explanation via mere politics. This Foucault influence is central, but at no point is it seriously questioned or demonstrated how it is even relevant or useful to the topic at hand - rather than, say, the concepts Tolkien drank in from epic poetry, fairy stories, world mythology, the Bible, or a thousand different philosophers (for example, how is Foucault more revealing here than Augustine, or Hobbes, or Rousseau?).
Somehow, it all fails to grasp the very personal, psychological, and metaphysical aspects of Tolkien's masterpiece, which speaks to us not primarily through the rationalism of politics but via the art of wonder: the magic of the journey, the crucible of morality and fellowship, innocence and experience, and the passages of life in relation to its underpinning wholeness.
It's disappointing and at times hilarious, though, when Prof. Chance sees LOTR as rather more concerned with "the political problem of the intellectual (22)" and "liberation from hegemony... A novel that mythologizes power and the problem of individual difference... the problem of individual and class difference within the social body or construct, the heroic power of knowledge and language in the political power struggle, and the ideal of kingship as healing and service, in a unique inversion of master-servant roles (23)". One gets the sense that it all boils down to "the role of understanding and tolerating differences within the community (24)", to "giving voice to the dispossessed of the twentieth century (25)". But interpreted this way, squintingly, the tale only seems to diminish into triviality. It becomes merely "a drama of the symbolic value of language (45)", wherein the Ring is a "challenge to [Frodo's] civic and political education (48)", and where "name-calling and hostile language...wound more than the...voice of an enemy like the Black Riders or Sauron (58)".
Admittedly, such platitudes are more than the pure baloney evoked here, and may well contain very important ideas, but they are, in the end, only tangents to the tale that Tolkien set down.