The High Hallow: Tolkien's Liturgical Imagination - Hardcover

Ben Reinhard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 164585440X ISBN 13: 9781645854401

Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2025

Synopsis

J. R. R. Tolkien famously described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." But while these words have been widely and enthusiastically quoted in Catholic studies of Tolkien's legendarium, readers have not always paid sufficient attention to what Catholic and religious would have meant to Tolkien himself. To do so is to misunderstand the full import of the phrase.

From his childhood as an altar server and "junior inmate" of the Birmingham Oratory to daily Mass with his children as an adult, Tolkien's Catholic religion was, at its heart, a liturgical affair. To be religious and Catholic in the Tolkienian sense is to be rooted in the prayer of the Church.

The High Hallow: Tolkien's Liturgical Imagination takes this claim seriously: The Lord of the Rings (and Tolkien's myth as a whole) is the product of an imagination seeped in liturgical prayer. In the course of its argument, the Ben Reinhard examines the liturgical pieties that governed Tolkien's life from childhood to old age, the ways in which the liturgy colored Tolkien's theory of myth and fantasy, and the alleged absence of religion in Middle-earth. Most importantly, he shows how the plots, themes, and characters of Tolkien's beloved works can be traced to the patterns of the Church's liturgical year.

About this title

About the Author

Ben Reinhard is Professor of English at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he teaches courses in medieval literature, mythology, and the Inklings. A graduate of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame, he has written articles and essays for a wide range of scholarly and popular publications, and his translation of Beowulf was published in 2022. He lives in southeast Ohio with his wife and five children, where they attempt to live a sanctified and orderly life in a chaotic and disintegrated world, fighting the long defeat.

Edition details

• Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 164585440X
• ISBN 13: 9781645854401
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184