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				First published: October 1, 2025 - Last updated: October 1, 2025
			TITLE INFORMATION 
			
			Authors: T(imothy) S. Miller and Elizabeth Miller
			
 Title: Tolkien and Rape
 
 Subtitle: Sexual Terror, Sexual Violence, and the Woman’s Body in Middle-earth
 
 Journal: Extrapolation
 
 Volume: 62
 
 Issue: 2
 
 Year: June 2021
 
 Pages: 133-156
 
 pISSN: 0014-5483 - 
				Find a Library: WorldCat | 
			eISSN: 2047-7708 - 
				Find a Library: WorldCat
 
 Language: English
 
 Keywords: 
				Medieval History: 
					14th Century; 
				Modern History: 
					20th Century | 
				European History: 
					English History | 
				Cases: 
					Fictional Offenders and 
					Mythological Offenders / 
						Melkor; 
				Cases: 
					Fictional Victims and 
					Mythological Victims / 
						Arien; 
				Types: 
					Sexual Assault / 
						Rape; 
				Representations: 
					Literary Texts / 
						Geoffrey Chaucer, 
						J.R.R. Tolkien
 
 FULL TEXT
 
			
			Links:
			- Academia.edu (Free Access)
 
 - Liverpool University Press (Restricted Access)
 
 - ResearchGate (Free Access)
 
 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
 
			
			Authors:
			- 
				Elizabeth Miller: -
 
 - 
				Timothy S. Miller, 
					Department of English, 
					Florida Atlantic University - 
					Academia.edu, 
					Google Scholar, 
					ResearchGate
 
 Abstract: 
				»J. R. R. Tolkien’s representation of women in his fiction has generated a number of controversies since its original publication. This essay examines two major issues: an evasiveness in Tolkien’s treatment of sexual violence against women that is not disconnected from a gendered terror that underlies several moments in his works and functions to link women’s sexuality and desiring with death. Specifically, we read the author’s depiction of Shelob and her appetitive, arachnoid monstrosity as at once displacing sexual violence onto the monstrous feminine and evoking a revulsion at the aging female body. We next explore the consequences of the author’s depictions of women and his handling of sexual violence in close connection with his own 1939 public performance of Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale, a comic narrative turning on two rapes that Tolkien nevertheless conceals in a comparable fashion to his elision of sexual violence in Middle-earth.« 
				(Source: Extrapolation)
 
 Contents:
 
			
			
			|  | The Horror of the Woman’s Body in Time (p. 133) |  
			|  | Tolkien and the Trace of Sexual Assault (p. 143) |  
			|  | Notes (p. 151) |  
			|  | Works Cited (p. 154) |  Wikipedia: 
				History of Europe: 
					History of England | 
				Literature: 
					English literature / 
						Geoffrey Chaucer, 
						J. R. R. Tolkien | 
				Literature: 
					Fiction about rape / 
						The Reeve's Tale | 
				Myth: 
					Mythopoeia / 
						The Lord of the Rings, 
						Morgoth’s Ring, 
						The Silmarillion | 
				Sex and the law: 
					Rape / 
						History of rape
 |