This paper is an introduction to recent developments in philosophy and critical theory that offer new directions in Tolkien studies. The aim is fourfold. First, to provide an introduction to the area of ‘Speculative Realism’ or ‘Object-Oriented Ontology’. Secondly, to show how twenty-first-century approaches such these as can provide startling new readings of Tolkien. Thirdly, to suggest how and why Tolkien’s own writing has influenced these new critical approaches. And fourthly, to explain how Tolkien’s writing might provide a perspective on the bigger conceptual and environmental concerns of the ‘Anthropocene’ today. These areas are covered by examining the representation and significance of darkness in the opening chapters of The Lord of the Rings, linking Tolkien’s depiction of darkness not only to earlier literary and cultural representations, but also to the ‘weird’ and the ‘eerie’ –from Neo-Platonic writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in late Antiquity to the medieval Christian theology of The Cloud of Unknowing and to what the philosopher Eugene Thacker today calls ‘Black Illumination’.