Abstract: Chateaubriand's Martyrs and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings defend two opposing approaches of time. The apologetic discourse of one is opposed by fiction of the other, without reference either to Christianity or to Antiquity. A comparison between Velléda and Galadriel allows us to nuance this opposition : both represent the past, and make it emerge at the moment when it is abolished. This past is identifiable with an Antiquity defined by each author as an alternative to the Greco-Roman world.
