Tolkien imagines his work to be a translation from some language or languages of middle-earth. If we took this seriously, we would then have to ask exactly what sort of translator Tolkien was. His idea of "literary" language owes everything to Alfred Lord Tennyson: Victorian faux-medievalism. Since there is no "original" text, can we imagine alternative translations? Or is the entire project defined by this particular style? Tolkien's conception of evil is also curiously simplistic. Evil is not human frailty, or even alienation from divinity, but a metaphysical force arising out of a single magical personage in the East.