In a world and at a time when men have discarded the idea of intellectual truth, it is through the soul and in the imagination that they can, and must, be reached. In a recent address to the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, Cardinal Raymond Burke called for a return to Summorum Pontificum and greater access [...]
The astonishing appeal of Tolkien’s works to the millions upon millions of readers in the 20th and 21st centuries, joined today by millions upon millions of filmgoers, is evidence that a deep need and thirst for mythical imagery, religious values, and allegories of Good still characterize our fellow human beings. Virgil Nemoianu I [...]
Through Ben Reinhard’s book, readers can recognize more deeply the beautiful power of Tolkien’s enchantment and come to treasure it even more. The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, by Ben Reinhard (184 pages, Emmaus Road Publishing, 2025) The title of Ben Reinhard’s book might lead one to suppose it is another specialty entry in the [...]
It is the virtues—through God’s grace—that keep us on the straight and narrow path of morality, dignity, and freedom. And J.R.R. Tolkien, arguably the greatest mythmaker of our era, illustrated seven of these virtues in his books about the history of Middle Earth. To the headmaster, administration, faculty, parents, and, especially, to the Ascent Classical [...]
According to J.R.R. Tolkien, fairy stories offer recovery, escape and consolation from the sickness, confinement and hopelessness of this world of wickedness. They provide not an escape from reality but an escape to reality. It is an escape from the world of false philosophies and fake realities, rooted in Pride. I believe in fairytales. Take [...]
The experience of nostalgia is a feeling of beauty’s remoteness, but only because it is so far in the future. It is hope. I went for a long walk in Oxford the other night. The city, of course, is always enchanting, but in early summer and at night, it is so the most. When summer [...]
Though the approach to the mountain Weathertop is only one scene in “The Lord of the Rings,” it is a telling one. Through romance, imagery of light and color, the voluptuousness of his landscapes, and the holiness of song and poetry, J.R.R. Tolkien brilliantly reveals himself as a master of the English language and, especially, [...]
Victims of obsession, like Bilbo, struggle to see reality clearly, and even more to make the necessary choices. The exorcist, like Gandalf, helps the victim recognize what he is doing that enables the diabolical activity—in this case, keeping the ring—and to renounce whatever it is. “He said that it was ‘growing on his mind,’ and [...]
What will delight lovers of J.R.R. Tolkien most is the portrait of the man that is drawn in the pages of Holly Ordway's biography. In the final chapters, she summarizes his life as the extraordinary fleshed out in ordinary. While Tolkien is completing his magnum opus, he is also maintaining the daily routine of husband, [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien connected me to a world beyond anything I had yet experienced in rather idyllic Kansas. I so desperately wanted to escape into his mountain scene, explore every nook and cranny of that invented world, and meet a God who sang the universe into existence. Though I have read The Hobbit, The Lord of [...]
Any discussion of Christmas and literature brings to mind instantly the miserly figure of Scrooge and the ghosts in Dickens’ Christmas Carol. It is not likely, however, that such a discussion would bring to mind the medieval classic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Yet this epic of the Middle Ages, written by an anonymous [...]
Much as Evelyn Waugh insisted that the theme of "Brideshead Revisited" was “the operation of divine grace”, J.R.R. Tolkien insisted in a letter to a friend that “'The Lord of the Rings' is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” In the fourth and final essay in this survey of liturgy and literature we [...]
We are wired for stories, to make them, to know them, and to be formed by them. Story is everywhere, and is always the way out for meaning, especially the Ultimate Meaning, so that we may, though dimly, know Him who composes the tale, its main Character, and the One who continues to tell it. [...]
Arguably one of the finest stories in the Western Tradition, “Beowulf” concerns the advent of a hero and his timely end. Throughout, questions of fate, free will, good, and evil predominate. Most prominent, though, are the theological questions of will and grace, one pagan and the other Christian. In 1926, when merely a thirty-four year [...]