Tolkienists.org

This paper will examine how landscapes are alive, and play an essential role in Alan Lee’s illustrations. Forests reflect the atmosphere, or mood of the story at a particular moment. While retaining their natural shape, volume, and lines, caves or underground tunnels are re-worked and re-designed to become habitable, and represent the beings inhabiting them. Though Nature has encroached upon them, left-over ruins tell the story of an earlier age. Open vistas talk as much about the world, and culture of that place, as about the story unfolding at that time/​era. Dramatic moments are captured in natural surroundings that reflect the mood of that moment. Nature is not just the backdrop in Alan Lee’s illustrations, but helps to provide the history of the place, tells the tale, moves the plot forward, and gives clues as to the potential outcome of the story.