Joseph Pearce, a hobbit in exile, muses on the Shire. O to be in England Now that April’s there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now! —Robert [...]
In almost every way, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Passage of the Marshes” presents a deeply frightening and suffocating experience for the reader, as the two Hobbits and the decrepit Gollum move across a landscape that has become devoid of grace… While nearly every decent human being under the age of sixty-five loves and appreciates J.R.R. Tolkien’s [...]
The value of fairy stories lies in the fact that they serve as a lens by which the heavenly can be seen on the earth, a lens by which the deepest and most important realities are grasped. They allow us to judge evil from the perspective of the good, and the imperfect from the perspective [...]
The consoling power of P.G. Wodehouse’s work arises not so much from the humor as from the detail in which he renders his worlds. Had he merely been funny, the consolation, the reprieve from the troubles of mundane life, would have been lesser…. Comedy is a funny thing. It can ask us to look at [...]
The Mayberry that we see in the first few seasons of “The Andy Griffith Show” is systematically undermined, desecrated, and destroyed by the iconoclasm of sixties’ ideological hedonism. Believe it or not, I had never heard of Andy Griffith until I was forty years old. For some reason, The Andy Griffith Show had never made [...]
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien fought to defend Faith and Family from attacks upon them by modern-day dragons, but they would not wield the power of the Deplorable Word, nor the power of the Ring, to destroy their enemies, simultaneously destroying the lives of innocent victims in the process. In “Litany of the Lost,” a [...]
The Hobbit shows us that we are those who look beyond ourselves to the goodness, truth, and beauty of objective reality; and we are those who see our lives as a journey, a quest, an adventure, the purpose of which is to get to the heaven-haven of the reward... “In a hole in the ground there lived [...]
Even when addressing non-Christians, Christian humanism’s willing receptiveness of the supernatural opens itself to the truths of revelation and of the human religious experience, allowing it to speak intimately and truthfully to the whole person… The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien, and the Romance of History by Lee Oser (University of Missouri Press, [...]
The so-called Boromir Option raises the question as to whether it is ever permissible to use evil means in pursuit of a good end… In a recent essay for the Imaginative Conservative I wrote about what I called the Mercutio Option, based on the character in Romeo & Juliet who cursed both the warring factions [...]
Through the Tea Club he formed with his young classmates, J.R.R. Tolkien felt his first comradery among friends dedicated to something higher than themselves… Long before Tolkien began his own personal mythology, he had already lived a rather full life. Joy as well as tragedy had filled it. His father had passed away while Tolkien, [...]
Religion shaped the Inklings as much or even more than did whatever generational zeitgeist one might want to attribute to the group… Though not the best-known Inkling, Adam Fox had the privilege of being the first of the group to arrive in this world. Through no choice of his own, he appeared on July 13, [...]
Taken together, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and G.K. Chesterton might not be a holy trinity but they are certainly a holy triumvirate enabling us to see the world with rooted clarity and childlike wisdom. One of the most interesting and spontaneously thought-provoking questions that I’ve ever been asked in an interview was asked by an [...]
The chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by this knowledge to praise and thanks. What will you do? Editor’s Note: This address was delivered to the graduating class of Hillsdale Academy, [...]
G.K. Chesterton had a profound impact on the visions of both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, so much so that he could be said to have baptized their imaginations… Editor’s Note: Joseph Pearce recently granted the following interview to The Whetstone, a student newspaper of Montreal College, North Carolina. What do you see as your role, your calling, and [...]