The primary aim of the present paper is to define residual narratives based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s works. Our approach is comparative and interdisciplinary since we take a close look at how the term residual is used in different fields, such as sociology or cultural studies, and try to render the meaning of the new literary term by comparing it to and differentiating it from other similar concepts. Thus, on the one hand, the study is theoretical, based, for example, on Raymond Williams’s “residual culture”’ theory. On the other hand, there is the practical part of the research that analyses Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, highlighting the main aspects of residual narratives. In the concluding part, we shall also examine to what extent these residual narratives can be regarded as spaces in between.
