Fuga dalla modernità (fuga verso il mito). L’Escape nelle opere di Tolkien

Abstract

The Lord of The Rings is not a book for children or a fantasy saga based on pure escape, but it’s an epic tale about surviving to the ugliness of modern life. In On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien explains his concept of ‘escape’: a vital impulse to ‘sub-creation’, a saving moment for every human being; its final product is the creation of a different world, shaped on Beauty, and placed in a mythical and eternal time. According to Tolkien, fantasy has three main functions: recovery, escape and consolation, intertwined in an indissoluble way. This refreshing fantasy allows men to escape from the prison of a life restricted by lies, meaningless formalities and influences. And through it, men can once again look to reality with freshness, seeing it without any present mark in a mythical air; escape starts a process that finds its fulfilment into the ‘eucatastrophe’, that is not only the simple ‘happy ending’ of fairy-stories, but is an echo of the Evangelium in the real world.