Larisa S. Sokolova, Postgraduate Student, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya Street, 25 A, building 1, 121069, Moscow, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3084-8711
Dreams and visions are an important subject for J.R.R. Tolkien, British writer and philologist who became a classic of high fantasy literature. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories” he states his twofold position regarding the use of dreams as a motivation of fantastic elements in a “fairystory”: he excludes from the title “fairy-story” any story that explains its marvels by a common dream but uses a term “real dream” to describe dreams caused by external magic forces and therefore appropriate in “fairy-stories”. He upholds this position in his own fiction. This study compares the dreams in two still under-researched abandoned novels by Tolkien, “The Lost Road” (1937) and “The Notion Club Papers” (1945), highlights the role of visual images in them and connects the novels to the rich literary tradition of dreams and dream-travels. The study found two distinct kinds of dreams in both novels. The first are “verbal” dreams: they provide characters with information about unknown languages but lack vusial images, their form is unsignificant but their substance is highly important. The second are “visual” dreams that consist of visible images; their form is significant and their content may or may not be important. While in “The Lost Road” “visual” dreams are of secondary importance, in “The Notion Club Papers” they become equal with “verbal” dreams. The dreams in “The Notion Club Papers” continue the tradition of Old Irish immrams and medieval allegory poems amd show connections to the “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighiery and various works by G.P. Lovecraft. Tolkien uses dreams in the structure of his novels to show that his characters aspire for knowledge – a trait which has become a symbol of the 20 th century.
J.R.R. Tolkien; fantastic literature; visual; dream; fantasy.
20.04.2025
06.06.2025
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