On Analyzing Fantasy Literature From The Perspective Of Freud’s Id, Ego And Super-ego

J.R.R. Tolkien, an Anglo-Saxon linguistics professor became one of thecelebrated writers around the world in1937, and his fantasy book The Lord of the Rings(L.R.) has been regarded as “the classical fantasy of21th century” with a lasting effect.Fantasy literature is one branch of British and American literatures. As one of the mostrepresentative works of fantasy literature, L.R. ignited a fashion of creating, reading,reviewing, and researching fantasy literature, since it was published in1954. Thisbest-seller and what Tolkien described as the “secondary world” of fantasy literaturearoused attention of the academic circle.The Lord of the Rings has been translated into more than40languages.Nevertheless, when it is researched as a classic, neither the original nor the translation issimple a children’s book. The reasons for this go beyond the numerous characters andcomplicated relationships. Tolkien was a splendid linguist who has used variouslanguages and he created two languages within this book, which add the difficulty tounderstanding.Sigmund Freud’s theory of id, ego and super-ego was broadly applied to analyzecharacters in literary works. According to Freud, id, ego and super-ego are three levelsof people’s personality and they are tangled up together in terms of human beings’character. To prove its practical application in the field of literary analysis, not only didFreud himself use it to analyze Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Shakespear’s Hamlet,but also numerous critics made analyze of characters by using his theory.Therefore, in view of the influence and the difficulties of fantasy literature, thisthesis, by applying id, ego and super-ego in Freud’s theory as the theoretical framework,in the first place, analyzes the three main characters: Frodo, Saruman and Boromir,finding that each of them carries personality of id, ego and super-ego; in the secondplace, analyzes two group characters such as hobbits and wizards of L.R.; drawing a conclusion that every member in each group has characteristics of id, ego and super-egorespectively. Through such research, the author of the thesis tries to achieve thefollowing goals: help readers get a better understanding of L.R., and fantasy literature;comprehend the “secondary world” created by the writer of L.R.; and proposes a newway in the field of study of fantasy literature that is by using Freud’s theory of id, egoand super-ego to analyze this literary genre.