Fantasy, imagination and history: a historiographical study of J.R.R. Tolkiens's The Lord of the rings and Gene Wolfe's The Book of the new sun

This thesis explores the representation of the historical imagination in fantastic literature through the close examination of two exemplary works of modern fantasy and science fiction: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. Building on an understanding of history which recognises the philosophical and fictional dimensions of the historical imagination, it develops close readings of The Lord of the Rings and The Book of the New Sun as works of "feigned history". While the existing body of fantasy criticism privileges an understanding of secondary world creation (cosmogenesis) as mythopoeisis, this thesis argues for a reading of fantastic cosmogenesis in terms of the historical imagination and its expression. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, it is argued, expresses the historical consciousness associated with Romantic anti-modernity through the themes and forms of cultural history, while Wolfe's Book of the New Sun reflects a more ambivalent approach to meaning, representation and historical understanding which may be traced to intellectual developments in the latter half of the twentieth century. Close studies of historical representation in The Lord of the Rings and The Book of the New Sun reveal that, despite differences in approaches to language, meaning and historical representation, they share a common historiographical thread which is identified as cultural history in the Romantic historiographic tradition. As exemplary texts of twentieth-century imagination, they embody important features of historical consciousness in our time.