I looked at the nature of World War One friendships, then at how Peter Jackson had portrayed Frodo and Sam in his films, and finally at how subsequent fanfic writers have generally represented the two.īut as I was thinking about the medievalized elements in Frodo and Sam’s friendship, I was struck by one moment in Return of the King when the two of them are near the end of their climb up Mount Doom. While I wanted to show how a tradition of male friendship can be traced back to the early medieval period (and I could have gone beyond that, of course, but I only had 20 minutes for my talk!), I also tried to place the Frodo-Sam relationship in a modern and contemporary context. I wanted to show that a tradition of male friendship, especially in war, stretches far back in time.įor example, just as Roland has his Oliver in the Song of Roland (here pictured in a 14th-century manuscript):Īnd Beowulf has his Wiglaf (by J.H.F. That paper (without the images) is included in the proceedings now on sale by the Tolkien Society.īack in 2005, my presentation, “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, The First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings,” discussed the Frodo and Sam relationship in both medieval and modern contexts.

As I indicated in a previous entry, I wanted to post some of the images that I used when delivering my Tolkien 2005 conference paper.

Lord of the rings medieval