J. R. R. Tolkien
The Return of the King
Engraved after Gustave Doré
- 56 plates
- Gustave Doré
The book
A city of seven walls is besieged; a steward burns himself alive; a king returns by the road of the dead. Two hobbits climb a mountain in a country made of ash, and the thing they carry is destroyed by accident rather than by resolve. Then everyone goes home and home is smaller.
Why Gustave Doré
The Pelennor is the largest crowd scene in the library and Doré is the only hand here who could hold it — his battle plates organise thousands of figures into a single readable action, which is a compositional skill that essentially died with the wood-engraving studios.
But the reason for the pairing is the last act. Mordor is a landscape of ash, slag and dead light, and Doré's Inferno is the only existing visual vocabulary for it.
What to look for
How little happens in the Mount Doom plates. The temptation is to draw struggle; Doré draws two small figures on an enormous slope, which is what the chapter is.
