The World of Tolkien: Mythological Sources of The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is commonly regarded as a work of fantasy. Yet Tolkien himself saw his work as a body of myth with an inherent veracity at its core, not an invention, but a recovered truth. In the Middle-earth of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien created not an imaginary world, but an imaginary history of our own world.