The past few years have shown some waning in the exceptional popularity of J.J.R. Tolkien’s fantasy writings, but the “Tolkien phenomenon” is a clearly established fact of modern literary history. I am certain that his works will be read and studied for many decades and even more certain that they are deserving of such reading and study. [...]
The leaves were long, the grass was green, The hemlock-umbels tall and fair, And in the glade a light was seen Of stars in shadow shimmering. Tinuviel was dancing there To music of a pipe unseen, And light of stars was in her hair, And in her raiment glimmering. There Beren came from mountains cold, [...]
Is it possible that the popular Indiana Jones trilogy is a cleverly-structured, well-thought-out, theologically-astute analogy of the Christian spiritual quest? I do not suggest that it is an allegory, and I realize it is always possible to read too much into popular film and fiction, but might there be more meaning there than meets the [...]
Even J.R.R. Tolkien, interestingly enough, could not pinpoint exactly when the mythology began. One can most certainly date the mythology if only in its barest, least recognizable form sometime prior to his participation in the Great War, when the young man wrote his poem, “The Voyage of Eärendil the Evening Star.”[1] In a letter written [...]
If we reconstruct J.R.R. Tolkien’s reading of Genesis from the opening pages of The Silmarillion, then, on Tolkien’s interpretation, only days four through six involve the actualization of material existence, whereas the first three days concern creation in an immaterial realm. Stratford Caldecott notes three correspondences between Genesis and Tolkien’s myth: between heaven and the [...]
Hoping to prove successful in combining a love of things old with mythology and with a desire to uphold the dignity of the human person in a world rent asunder by warring ideologies, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis challenged each other to create deep works of the imagination. After a “toss up,” the two men [...]
The wisdom of poetic cosmology is that it gives us a complete experience of the hierarchies of order within creation, ranging from the celestial to the corporeal. We ourselves can see the poetic wisdom about song and creation operative, for example, in the book of Genesis. This is possible if we read the poetry of [...]
Those who have read The Lord of the Rings will know about the palantiri, the seeing stones which we look into at our peril. Anyone who looks into one of these stones does not see a complete lie. On the contrary, what he sees might be true. The problem is not that he is seeing [...]
Since the appearance of John Garth’s excellent Tolkien and the Great War in 2003, a number of scholars and writers have explored the role and influence of war on the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and other members of the Inklings. In reviewing Mr. Garth’s book when it came out, I noted that the [...]
The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, by Philip Zaleski & Carol Zaleski (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) “Every great man nowadays has his disciples,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “and it is always Judas who writes the biography.” Even conceding that Wilde was writing for effect and with his usual affectation, it is nonetheless true [...]
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be [...]
I became infected with this most deadly disease when I was ten years old. The 1966 World Book Encyclopedia Yearbook arrived, and working my way through it I came across the obituary of T.S. Eliot. There he was in his “five piece suit” gazing at the camera in that lugubriously quizzical way he had. I [...]
On my many travels giving talks on topics related to Christian literature, I am often asked why the Christian Literary Revival of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has come to an end. Why are there no writers of the caliber of Newman, Hopkins, Chesterton, Belloc, Eliot, Greene, Waugh, Tolkien or Lewis today? Or, to cross [...]
The great G.K. Chesterton had a huge impact on my embrace of Christian orthodoxy. It would, in fact, be no exaggeration to say that his was the greatest single influence, under grace, on my conversion. I was, therefore, highly gratified to discover, during the research for my book Literary Converts, that Chesterton also had a [...]