From Wilderland to East End and Back Again: On the Links between Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit
Abstract
The article focuses on the links between Harold Pinter’s only work of fiction entitled The Dwarfs: A Novel and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, with special emphasis on the figures of dwarfs as well as the characters of Len and Bilbo within the spaces of post-war London and Middle-earth, respectively. Pinter seems to have created a compelling multi-level variation on the themes from Tolkien’s book. A careful examination of the thematic and structural role of the dwarfs reveals intriguing echoes of Tolkien’s novel in Pinter’s book. The Dwarfs thus turn out to be infused with Pinteresquely transformed mythology and folklore to the extent which seems to have neither precedent nor continuation in his other writings.
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