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 [...]
As a person who has read and written about J.R.R. Tolkien for decades, I am often asked about his political views. In a sense, this is a funny question, as Tolkien really despised most politics. In fact, he really thought of himself as very anti-political. His few statements on the matter reveal just how unpolitical [...]
Tolkien succeeds in portraying the goodness of the Shire, of Rivendell, of Gondor, of Rohan in compelling, tangible ways. The most remarkable aspect of Tolkien’s vision is his ability to make the good desirable. Near the end of The Return of the King movie, while Frodo and Sam are making the arduous climb up Mount [...]
Despite the thematic richness inherent in Tolkien’s stories, Stratford Caldecott helps us glimpse their unified background, one inspired by the author’s Catholic Credo. We thus receive a new proof of what it means for a work of art to be Christian, not so much in content as in spirit. Stratford Caldecott Alongside authors [...]