« Tous ceux qui vivent en ces jours d’après » - Antiquité et gothisme « hanté » chez J. R. R. Tolkien

The close connection between memory and emotion suggests that the ancient past may only be recalled in ways that feel like loss. Tolkien elaborates on this effect as he finds it in ancient epic poetry and related classical traditions. He sough to emulate that effect in his fictions, hence the profound and generally melancholy feeling of Middle-earth. We are thus invited to consider further how fiction as history-writing centers on what might have been in connection with, as we will see it called, darkness as an aesthetic category.