Themes of The Lord of the Rings This is, according to Shippey, a very modern, 20th-century theme, since in earlier, medieval times, power was considered to "reveal character", not alter it. Shippey mentions Lord Acton's famous statement in 1887, that ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men..."" He then goes on to point out authors that were dealing in the same themes of power and corruption at around the same time as Tolkien wrote his work. These authors include George Orwell with "Animal Farm" (1945), William Golding with "Lord of the Flies" (1954), and T. H. White with
The Fox, the Flies and the Hedgehog in the neo-Latin verse of Gabriele Faerno’s fable collection (1563), which closes on the sentiment Aristotle’s version of the fable is also followed by Samuel Croxall in his prose collection of "The Fables of Æsop" (1722). The story in La Fontaine's Fables (1694) is more or less the same, except that the fox has been wounded in the chase. La Fontaine too mentions Aristotle and the political lesson that he draws, while the circumstances are repeated in Brooke Boothby’s very short poetic version. William Somervile adapted the fable more long-windedly into “The wounded man and the swarm of flies”, taking