This month, fans around the world will flock to the cinema to watch the first of three installments of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit—the “prequel” to the award-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy that was also released in three parts between 2001 and 2003 (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be released in U.S. theaters Dec. [...]
When we survey that last 100 years in even the most cursory manner possible, the one objective and rather obvious thing that holds the century together is both the attempt to deconstruct the human person and the counter effort to uphold his dignity. Contempt and defense, seemingly in a Manichaen-like struggle. While the Gulags, the [...]
Over the last decade and a half, as many readers of TIC have probably noted, I’ve had the blessed opportunity of researching and writing about Russell Kirk (1918-1994), generally agreed upon as the founder of post-war American conservatism. At first, I did this mostly as a hobby, having become intensely interested in Christian Humanism through [...]
Irving Babbitt, C. S. Lewis, Russell Kirk In a world agog with labels and categories we too often leave important ideas behind. With paleocons, traditionalists, neocons, Leocons, libertarians, classical liberals, anarcho-capitalists, distributists, and agrarians, the right can be as bad as the left in its fetish for classification. One group that defies easy [...]
In the opening to his lengthy 1939 academic lecture to the University of St. Andrews, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien warned that those who entered myth did so at great peril to themselves and to the very realm of myth itself. That realm, Tolkien stated, is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: [...]
I am grateful to the founding parents and benefactors of the Lyceum that you have not had to grow up in a cultural wilderness as I did. Why anyone would be nostalgic for the 70’s I do not know. To give you an idea of how bad it was: In 1973, Admiral Jeremiah Denton returned [...]
With stealth and no small amount of cowardice, the Greeks creep out of their strange gift, a large wooden horse, under the cover of night and safely within the locked city walls. Rather than face Aeneas and the Trojans as men in battle, the Greeks unlock the gates, letting their murderous comrades in, and proceed [...]
Yet trees are not ‘trees’, until so named and seen– and never were so named, till those had seen who speech’s involuted breath unfurled, faint echo and dim picture of the world, but neither record nor a photograph, being divination, judgement, and a laugh, response of those who felt astir within by deep monition [...]
On the Feast of St Dominic, a beautiful, unique, and never to be seen again Rose faded from this earth. St. Dominic, pray for our Rose. But, I. . . . I am blessed. I beheld her twilight radiance for a bit. I cradle her gently for a bit. Even with all the voices of [...]
Julie Baldwin Joshua also said to the people, “Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will perform wonders among you.” (Joshua 3:5) “People in my grade look so much more mature than me,” said my 15 going on 16 year old sister. We peered into the computer screen, and looked at a girl we’ve [...]
The handsome youth climbed unsteadily onto a nearby picnic table and began to sing, waving his arms in abandon as the afternoon sun reflected off of the fine silver embroidery on his elven cloak. “Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness,” he roared tunelessly, “and when the ball was over there were four and [...]
For classical educators, developing the human person is the primary goal, and the cultural treasures of the past are the principal means to that goal. Making the thoughts, words, stories, and beauty of Christian civilization a living part of students gives them standards and ideals that direct their maturation into adults who help shape their [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien Myth connects us to those of the past and to those of the future. Through myth, we grasp the continuity of all of God’s Creations, of all of the soldiers in the Army of Christ: those who came before Him to prepare the way, those who fought beside Him during his [...]
Bradley J. Birzer The incarnate angel of Tolkien’s mythology, Gandalf the Grey, said it well in a conversation with Frodo. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” laments the young Hobbit. “So do I,” Gandalf replies, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not [...]