{"collection":"Sources of Lord of the Ring","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_ring_two_two31_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_ring_two_two31_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_ring_two_two31_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/ring/two/two31.htm","summary":"This is a chapter excerpt from E. R. Eddison's 1922 high fantasy novel *The Worm Ouroboros*, written in an archaic, Jacobean prose style that self-consciously imitates Renaissance English. The passage follows Lord Gro, a courtier and turncoat figure, as he rides alone at night through a richly described northern wilderness on a mission of penance and political realignment \u2014 deserting his royal patron to aid the people he once helped oppress. At the chapter's center is a visionary encounter: Gro stumbles upon mountain nymphs, fauns, and capripeds dancing silently on a hidden terrace, which he interprets as a supernatural confirmation that his change of allegiance is sanctioned by the living spirit of the land itself. What makes the passage distinctive is Gro's extended interior monologue justifying his habitual treachery as a noble philosophical principle \u2014 he argues he is drawn not to winners but to lost causes and beautiful declensions, to \"sunrise and sundown\" rather than triumphant noon. Eddison's prose is unusually dense and ceremonious even for the fantasy genre, blending Norse-flavored geography with classical mythology and Elizabethan rhetoric. Readers drawn to ornate world-building, morally complex anti-heroes, and a literary register closer to Malory or Sidney than Tolkien will find this excerpt representative of the whole novel's distinctive appeal.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Worm Ouroboros: XXV. Lord Gro and the Lady Mevrian","tradition":"Sources of Lord of the Ring","translated_text":null,"word_count":4844}