Garbowski, Christopher. Lublin: Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Press, 2005. 75 pp. [No price information available]. ISBN: 83-227-2391-1.

[1] Christopher Garbowski’s Spiritual Values in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings focuses on Jackson’s cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy. An introductory chapter lays out the general themes of the book and—perhaps too briefly—the author’s methodological framework. In the first essay, Garbowski examines the meaning of Tolkien’s monsters (and their sources—Beowulf, in particular) in connection with ethical issues such as natural law and evil. The second essay explores fantasy as genre, touching on Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Tales,” children’s literature and its characteristics, Frank Capra, and Star Wars, and fleshes out the central question in the book: is mythopoesis possible in today’s disenchanted world? The third essay focuses on how the “sacramental” dimension of Tolkien’s trilogy is preserved (and modified) in Jackson’s films by stressing, for instance, the value of participation, community, and craftsmanship. In the fourth essay, Garbowski draws upon Viktor E. Frankl’s religious humanistic psychology and his concept of “self-transcendence” (54). The author examines the significance of the metaphor of life-as-journey in Tolkien and Jackson—a metaphor that implies freedom of choice. The final chapter concludes that Jackson has managed to preserve the sacramental dimension inherent in Tolkien’s work.

[2] The questions presented in this small book are not trivial ones. In the introduction, Garbowski makes a distinction between religious and spiritual values; the latter, according to Scheler, encompass “among other things our need for beauty, justice, and truth” (13). Even if Jackson has not felt “compelled” to address the religious values found in the novel, there are, in the film, spiritual values (14). The irreducibility of evil, the meaning of life in the light of inevitable death, the role played in human lives by art, creativity, sub-creation, co-creation, and (re)creation are all themes that, as Garbowski shows, we find in the film.

[3] This book makes two key contributions to the discussion of The Lord of the Rings and its cinematic adaptation. First, it brings to our attention the existence of complex interrelationships between ethics, literature, and cinematic art—thus, this is a book that could be of interest for those interested in ethics, as well as in literature and cinema. Second, throughout the four essays it also illustrates how mythopoesis—the “crafting” of myths—is indeed constitutive to human experience in Western culture.

[4] Some of the points discussed in the book, however, deserve greater clarification or further development. For example, Garbowski might have usefully drawn upon works on contemporary magic—and on contemporary representations of magic in children’s literature—to strengthen his argument in chapter 3. Also, the author’s brief focus on gender in The Lord of the Rings (found at the beginning of chapter 4) seems incomplete. Garbowski writes: “I tend to agree with critic Sandra Miesel that: ‘In Tolkien, feminine virtues make life worth living’” (30). This sounds dangerously essentialist—what are feminine virtues in Tolkien? Are they domestic work, beauty, care, or healing—Goldberry preparing dinner, Arwen sewing, or Eowyn taking care of her aging uncle? Saying that “the author achieves a certain plenitude in his imaginary world that simultaneously absorbs and transcends both gender sensibilities” (40) wipes away several decades of feminist studies in the fields of literature and religion. Drawing upon such studies, one could amend Miesel’s comment: “In Tolkien, feminine virtues make life worth living—for men.”

[5] Nonetheless, Garbowski’s book is fascinating and the author’s ideas emerge clearly from the text, in spite of the fact that its organization and presentation are sometimes perplexing. For example, the author discusses Frankl’s self-transcendence theory, which informs his interpretation of book and film in the final (and sharpest) essay. Given the importance of Frankl’s theories in the book, his work deserved an earlier and lengthier discussion. At times, the author’s somewhat elliptic style can make it difficult to follow the development of his argument, a difficulty not eased by the number of typographical errors throughout the text. His stylistic choices—which do not hinder the overall clarity of the work—may well depend on the different way European and Anglo-Saxon academics tend to organize essays. Roughly speaking, the Continental European tradition often requires the reader to make an effort to engage with the text, whereas the Anglo-Saxon tradition tends to be up front about the paper’s argument and its development. In other words, while the former considers the reader capable of understanding what is not made explicit, the second has a tendency to carefully—sometimes too carefully—“guide” the reader along the journey. When both traditions come together—as in Garbowski’s chapter 5—the results are excellent.

Maria Beatrice Bittarello
University of Stirling
maria.bittarello@liberliber.net