February 2025
176 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback $39.95
ISBN 978-1-60635-492-6
ePub
ISBN 978-1-63101-567-0
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ISBN 978-1-63101-568-7
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Finding the Numinous
An Ecocritical Look at Dune and The Lord of the Rings
Forthcoming, Literature & Literary Criticism, Tolkien, Lewis, and Inkling StudiesWillow Wilson DiPasquale
Finding the Numinous explores the premise that the environments depicted in The Lord of the Rings and the Dune saga are not only for the purpose of world-building; rather, these imagined worlds’ environments are sacred spaces fundamental to understanding these texts and their authors’ purposes. Willow Wilson DiPasquale applies Tolkien’s three functions of fantasy—recovery, escape, and consolation—to demonstrate how both authors’ works are intrinsically connected to their ecocritical messages and overarching moral philosophies.
This book also compares Tolkien’s Roman Catholic viewpoint with Herbert’s Zen Buddhist perspective, arguing that the authors’ religious beliefs and biographical, historical, and cultural influences impacted how they chose to craft their creative works and write about nature.
Applying various ecocritical positions to the text, Finding the Numinous explores descriptions of the natural landscapes in both authors’ texts, as well as the relationships characters and communities have with those natural spaces. As our current society’s relationships with nature are increasingly challenged and changed by various ecocrises, DiPasquale convincingly argues, these worlds offer readers various environmental models to critique, to condemn, or, in some cases, to adopt.
Willow Wilson DiPasquale is an instructor of English and writing at Bryn Mawr College, Arcadia University, and Thomas Jefferson University. She is the author of “Shifting Sands: Heroes, Power, and the Environment in the Dune Saga” in Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert’s Epic Saga. She received the 2024 Arcadia University Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring’s Unsung Hero Award.
“Finding the Numinous is a crisply written, well-organized, side-by-side comparison of two of the most beloved ‘multimedia franchises’ in both geek literary culture and cult film fandom: Dune and The Lord of the Rings. In examining these novels through an ecocritical lens, Willow Wilson DiPasquale demonstrates that, more than any other works of science fiction and fantasy, these stories are ideally positioned to encourage their fans to embrace sustainability in the real world.”—Marc DiPaolo, author of Fire and Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones and Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography with Pseudonyms and Some Tall Tales
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“In Finding the Numinous, Willow Wilson DiPasquale shows how the ‘world-building’ in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert is not merely used as a backdrop in which the stories unfold but is an active presence in the plots, ideas, and moral framework of the narratives. This ecocritical approach sees the landscape and environment as agents in the tales, hence they are just as crucial as the characters or the events depicted in them. The result is an original interpretation that connects natural landscape to religious philosophy, thus resulting in a richer interpretation of the worlds and texts.”—Robert T. Tally Jr., Texas State University
