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International Journal of Servant-Leadership

Abstract

And then to Sam's utter surprise and confusion he [Aragorn the king] bowed his knee before them; and taking them by the hand, Frodo upon his right and Sam upon his left, he led them to the throne, and setting them upon it, he turned to the men and captains who stood by and spoke, so that his voice rang over all the host, crying: "Praise them with great praise!" -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King The fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien, respected philologist and revered fantasy writer, is subtly underpinned by the lifestyle and spirit of servant-leadership. Throughout his fictional Lord of the Rings [LOTR] trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring [FOTR] [1954a], The Two Towers [TTT] [1954b], and The Return of the King [ROTK][1955]), and the trilogy's prelude, The Hobbit (1937), the seminal work of twentieth-century fantasy, the choices of his characters to embrace or avoid servant-leadership and the outcomes of their decisions illuminate Robert Greenleaf's teachings in a unique and extremely influential way. How does servant-leadership, which arose in response to modern corporate culture, relate to Tolkien's fiction, which the author developed partly as an attempt to interpolate a national mythology for England (Shippey, 2000)? This question is important because, 34 years after his death, Tolkien's literary legacy of books and essays is deeply significant and very popular. If servant-leadership is promoted through its connection to Tolkien, such a connection will have had, perhaps in a subliminal way, a significant effect on propagating Greenleaf's teachings, an effect that is well worth exploring. Many of the precepts of servant-leadership are implicit in Tolkien's writings, and his books and the consequent movies have disseminated Greenleaf's ideas to a much larger audience than Greenleaf otherwise could have hoped for.

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