J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth - Softcover

Birzer, Bradley J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932236201 ISBN 13: 9781932236200

Publisher: ISI Books, 2003

Synopsis

Explores the twentieth-century Christian humanist's views on creation as seen in his construction of Middle Earth.

About this title

About the Author

Bradley J. Birzer is Assistant Professor of History at Hillsdale College. A Senior Fellow with the Center for the American Idea in Houston, he has written extensively on Tolkien, James Fenimore Cooper, the American Frontier and American Indians, and Christopher Dawson. Joseph Pearce is Writer in Residence at Ave Maria College. Among his books are Tolkien: Man and Myth, and Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile.

From Publishers Weekly

The past year has brought a bumper crop of spirituality-of-Tolkien books, no doubt fueled by the heightened interest generated by the new film series. Birzer's book differs somewhat from recent volumes on the Christian themes to be found in The Lord of the Rings, including Mark Eddy Smith's Tolkien's Ordinary Virtues and Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware's Finding God in the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's spirituality, says Birzer, was not generically Christian but specifically Roman Catholic: the lembas that sustains the company represents the Eucharist; Galadriel and Elbereth exemplify traits of the Virgin Mary; and the company looks to the restoration of a kingdom similar to the Holy Roman Empire. The best chapter of Birzer's study explores how Tolkien's "sanctifying myth" was informed by such Roman Catholic beliefs; Tolkien told a Jesuit friend, for example, that the trilogy was "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." Other chapters place Tolkien more generally within the usual canon of 20th-century Christian humanists, including his on-again, off-again friend, C. S. Lewis. Birzer is a fine writer who does a wonderful job of integrating primary sources such as letters, reminiscences and journals into his text; he also includes glimpses of unpublished materials, such as a scuttled LOTR chapter about Sam, as well as Tolkien's little-known attack on Lewis, "The Ulsterior Motive." This is, overall, a fine tribute to the man who, Birzer suggests, "resuscitated the notion that the fantastic may tell us more about reality than do scientific facts."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: ISI Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1932236201
• ISBN 13: 9781932236200
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 245