In 1958, at a Dutch bash held in his honor, J.R.R. Tolkien told his audience: I look East, West, North, South, and I do not see Sauron. But I see that Saruman has many descendants. We Hobbits have against them no magic weapons. Yet, my gentle hobbits, I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. [...]
Humility is necessary in the case of Norman Rockwell, because his work itself has become trite. We think we know the pictures, so we do not ever bother to look. If they are to do their work of prompting us to a fresh perspective, and helping us to recover the things that have become trite, [...]
Over the past fifteen years, an immense number of books dealing with J.R.R. Tolkien have appeared on the bookshelves. No doubt Peter Jackson’s movies has provided some rather mighty advertising for the former Oxford don. Sadly, however, many recent authors who have written about Tolkien frequently fall into one of two camps: those who write about [...]
When the editor of Conservative Home phones me, he often begins by wryly declaiming some line or other from Tolkien. If I can, I reply with the next line, and so on. He tends to get the better of our exchanges: his knowledge of the text is encyclopaedic. Nor is he unusual among Tories. I watched [...]
Myth equals a truth that cannot be explained by mere fact. A fact is utilitarian: It demands verification and replication. A myth can emphasize the beauty of God’s creation as well as the sacramental nature of life. Myth holds an estranged place in the modern world. But this is the modern world’s fault, not myth’s. [...]
The field of “Tolkien studies” continues to evolve. The book based on the Exeter College conference, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration, is still available and remains one of the most interesting collections of academic essays on this topic. The journal of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, VII, has for thirty years [...]
Clyde Kilby, an English professor from Wheaton College, worked with Tolkien in the summer of 1966. “Tolkien was an Old Western Man who was staggered at the present direction of civilization,” Kilby recorded after a summer of conversations with Tolkien. “Even our much vaunted talk of equality he felt debased by our attempts to ‘mechanize [...]
Off I went to study at Oxford filled with the love of England and English literature only to find that the English had little love of their own most popular exports. I expected Oxford to be full of the cult of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, as Hannibal, Missouri brags about being the home of [...]
Nature is no doubt a life-study, or a study for eternity (for those so gifted); but there is a part of man which is not “Nature,” and which therefore is not obliged to study it, and is, in fact, wholly unsatisfied by it. – J. R. R. Tolkien Many of my essays for The Imaginative [...]
My wife has just sent me two links showing a linguistic family tree illustrating the relationship of the various modern European and Oriental languages with their Indo-European roots.[1] This use of a tree-metaphor to encapsulate the living traditionalism at the heart of language was one of the imaginative roots of J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation of the tree-like [...]
“In your presence there is abundance of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.” – Ps. 16.11 Perhaps it is the noticeable lack of concrete information surrounding what Heaven is and will be that so jibes against our modern mechanistic minds, but this is no doubt something that so many Christians find very [...]
My family and I spent much of the Christmas season this year in Middle Earth—or at any rate Peter Jackson’s version thereof. For a number of years now we have watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy over three days, starting on Christmas Eve. And, of course, the final installment of Mr. Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy [...]
Did Bilbo Baggins steal the One Ring from Gollum? Tolkien geeks debate the issue to this day. The more interesting question: Did author J.R.R. Tolkien steal the ring from composer Richard Wagner? In our chapter on the ring in our recently released book The Hobbit Party, we bring in everything from Plato and the Panopticon [...]
There is very little in our modern life that is more muddle-headed than the view that most moderns have of the Middle Ages. For most moderns the Middle Ages are dismissed as being barbaric and violent, whereas, of course, our own enlightened and progressive times are, by comparison, civilized and peaceful. One thinks, for instance, [...]