Home is behind. L’esilio, il viaggio e il ritorno tra Tolkien e Virgilio

The paper aims to examine the relations between the works of Tolkien and Virgil’s Aeneid, with particular reference to the mythical motif of the journey. By a reasoned comparison between the Latin epos and Tolkien’s mythopoiesis, we intend to develop an analysis of the main topics involving the motives of journey and exile: the burden of power and the elect of fate (Aeneas fato profugus and Aragorn King Ranger), with a specific focus on Aeneas, exhausted by labores and subservient to the will of the fata, and the return of Aragorn as King. This is directly linked to the themes of exile and return: Virgil represents the Trojans arrived in Latium as heirs of italic Dardanus come back home; in Tolkien, the pattern of return doesn’t concern only the king of Gondor, but also the Bearer and the Elves. Thus, the motif of the journey appears as an essential guideline in both of the corpora, in the concept of formal and narrative level.