Taking his readers into the depths of a majestic and expansive literary world, one to which he brings fresh illumination as if to the darkness of Khazad-dûm, Giuseppe Pezzini combines rigorous scholarship with an engaging style to reveal the full scale of J. R. R. Tolkien's vision of the 'mystery of literary creation'. Through fragments garnered from across a scattered body of writing, and acute readings of primary texts (some well-known, others less familiar or recently published), the author divulges the unparalleled complexity of Tolkien's work while demonstrating its rich exploration of literature's very nature and purpose. Eschewing any overemphasis on context or comparisons, Pezzini offers rather a uniquely sustained, focused engagement with Tolkien and his 'theory' on their own terms. He helps us discover – or rediscover – a fascination for Tolkien's literary accomplishment while correcting long-standing biases against its nature and merits that have persisted fifty years after his death.

‘Pezzini helps us relish Tolkien's vision: a passionate love of reality, a dedication to human freedom – and responsibility – within a rich ecology beyond our control, and a “death of the author” that does Roland Barthes one better, embracing all the imperfect splendor of the gifts of art we make to each other.'

Lori Peterson Branch - Associate Professor of English, The University of Iowa

‘Wonderfully learned and lucid. Here, at last, is a comprehensive account of Tolkien's achievement as a writer who also thought deeply about the act of writing itself. Pezzini explores the ‘mystery' of what it means to invent or create a work of literature according to Tolkien's particular example, but that example has, it turns out, vast implications for literary theory at large.'

Michael D. Hurley - Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Cambridge

‘Giuseppe Pezzini's masterful exegesis roams across Tolkien's vast oeuvre to show how his stories embody their own unique Christian literary theory. As Pezzini reveals, Tolkien's writing is shaped throughout by humility and generosity in his role as a ‘sub-creator'. Together they account for his astonishing care for his imagined world and the wonder and devotion that it has inspired in so many readers.'

John Holmes - Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture, University of Birmingham