While anyone who knows anything about C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, or Owen Barfield knows of the existence of the Inklings, the group remains nearly impossible to define. Even the members of the group could not identify exactly what it was or what it meant. By the mid 1940s, Lewis defined it as a [...]
Once upon a time a professor of philology, (that is to say, a lover of language), was daydreaming in his university rooms when he scribbled on the back of an anonymous exam paper, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit…” Thus was begun a true story—one of the greatest of the true [...]
This weekend, I completed The Silmarillion. Not my first time. In fact, I have read The Silmarillion so many times since the fall of 1977, I have no idea what number of reading I’m actually on. Eight times? Nine? Ten? It was the first J.R.R. Tolkien I had ever encountered, even before The Hobbit or [...]
Tolkien and the Silmarillion, by Clyde S. Kilby (Harold Shaw, 1976) Unless you’re familiar with the excellent Wade Center, the chances are good you’ve never heard of Clyde S. Kilby (1902-1986), a professor of English at Wheaton College from 1935 until his retirement in 1981. Yet, every reader of The Imaginative Conservative should know this man [...]
The Fall of Arthur, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. by Christopher Tolkien (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2013). For those of us who have had a life-long passion for and of all things Tolkien, his unpublished poem “The Fall of Arthur” has always been a loving mystery for us. What could it be? How epic? Does [...]
It is difficult to overstate the influence of G.K. Chesterton. Apart from the numerous converts who have come to Christianity, at least in part, because of an encounter with his writings, two of the bestselling books of all time were written, at least in part, under Chesterton’s benign patronage. The Lord of the Rings and [...]
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 [...]