Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Ring Cycle: Journeying Through The Language Of Tolkien’S Third Age With Corpus Linguistics, Michael Livesey

Journal of Tolkien Research

This article explores the journey taken by the One Ring across J.R.R. Tolkien’s Third Age writings. It employs a digital humanities approach to analyse linguistic patterns in Tolkien’s use of the word ring, across The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Specifically, the article employs corpus linguistic methods to track shifts in the quantities and qualities of the Ring’s appearance across these texts. It uses techniques of keyness and collocation analysis to trace transformations in these quantities/qualities, including: a) the Ring’s transition from a central to a peripheral place in the Third Age’s narrative arc; and b) …