"The Gods Return to Earth" is the title of the first literary review of The Lord of the Rings. It was written by C.S. Lewis and originally published in Time and Tide on 14 August 1954 (p. 1082) reviewing The Fellowship of the Ring.
In the article Lewis likened the book with a "lightning from a clear sky", and compared it to Blake's Songs of Innocence. For him it marked a triumphant and relieving return of the heroic romance in the anti-romantic age, while at the same time being a revolutionary work in that genre.[1]
References
- ↑ Quoted in Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, p. xxxvi