Book Review: "The High Hallow: Tolkien's Liturgical Imagination"

This turned out to be a most appropriate book to read over the Easter Triduum since as Tolkien said, the Resurrection of Jesus after His Passion and Death and Descent among the Dead is the ultimate Eucastrophe, that "sudden joyous turn" (p. 50). Please note that I purchased this book because I'd heard a few segments of the author's discussion of the book on the Son Rise Morning Show. According to the publisher, Emmaus Road in Steubenville, Ohio:

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.

The Table of Contents:

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

    Loss and Gains

    Ira et Studio: A Cautionary Note

Chapter 1: A Liturgical Life

    Words of Joy

    From Refuge to Trap

    The O Oriens and Magnificat: The Liturgical Imagination at Work

Chapter 2: Faerie and Liturgy

    The Wonder of Things: Faerie and Mythic Meaning

    Eucastrophe and Gloria

Chapter 3: From Daybreak to Evening: Faerie and Liturgical Renewal

Chapter 4: Tolkien's Liturgical Cosmos: The Role of Worship in Middle-Earth

    The Fundamental Mythology

    Tolkien's Valar and the Cosmic Liturgy

        Great Above All Gods: Eru and the Valar

        Tolkien, the Valar and the Oratory

    Worship in Rivendell: The Case of the Elves

    The Holy Mountain: Worship Among Tolkien's Men

    The Hobbits' Religious Restoration

        Bombadil and the Old Forest

        Lothlorien

        Initiation and Transformation

Chapter 5: Eala Earendel: Advent, the Calendar, and Tolkien's World

    Liturgical Imagination: Tolkien's Medieval Models

    The Calendar and Tolkien's Imagination

    Soaked with Exile: Adventist Themes in Tolkien

    The World's Chosen: Tolkien's Adventist Vikings ["Sigurd and Gudrun"]

        Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima

    The Bells of Christendom? Christmas in Tolkien's Works

        The Ring Goes South: Christmas in Middle Earth?

            [NB: The Fellowship of the Ring begins its quest on December 25]

Chapter 6: Paschal Patterns in The Lord of the Rings

    Paschal Patterning: What This Chapter is (and Is Not) About

    The Journey Through the Desert: The Lenten Quest

        From Death to Life

    Days of Rejoicing--Eastertide, Ascension, and the Renewed Kingdom

Conclusion

    The Horns of Hope: On Tolkien's Achievement

Appendix

    The Domestic Church: Family Life and Tolkien's Imagination

        "Something of Aeternitas": Tolkien and His Children

        "Companions in Shipwreck": Ronald and Edith

                Conclusion

Bibliography and Index

One thing I always appreciate in a book is when the author introduces me to an author I did not know before. In this case, Reinhard, Professor of English at Franciscan University of Steubenville, highlights Father Conrad Pepler, OP, author of Sacramental Prayer and Riches Despised: A Study of the Roots of Religion, listed in the Bibliography and cited in the text, and other works (including The English Religious Heritage).

Reinhard is careful to state his thesis and explore the complexity of Tolkien's own comments about his works, which are sometimes difficult to parse as they can seem contradictory unless one pays special attention to the philologist's word choices. Reinhard helps the reader navigate the paths of mythology, natural theology, and Catholic doctrine, theology, and liturgy in Tolkien's works from Smith of Wootton Major, to The Silmarillion, Sigurd and Gudrun, and of course The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

One of the main themes throughout the book is the loss of enchantment and the connection to nature in our mechanized, materialistic lives today--and indeed how some aspects of the liturgical life of Catholics have not fostered that enchantment and connection since the last decades of the 20th century. Reflecting Tolkien's own regret and even indignation at the changes in liturgy and the liturgical calendar after the Second Vatican Council, Reinhard highlights the loss of Ember and Rogation Days, reflecting the changing of the seasons with fasting, penance, and processions. He cites Pepler, Newman, Bouyer, Lewis, Hopkins, and others to demonstrate the need for these connections to nature and its mysteries, and how Tolkien's work continue to offer us a link to that necessary enchantment and wonder. 

One particular Parochial and Plain sermon by Newman, "The Powers of Nature" serves as a model for this way of thinking about the world around us:

On today's Festival [The feast of Saint Michael the Archangel], it well becomes us to direct our minds to the thought of those Blessed Servants of God, who have never tasted of sin; who are among us, though unseen, ever serving God joyfully on earth as well as in heaven; who minister, through their Maker's condescending will, to the redeemed in Christ, the heirs of salvation.

There have been ages of the world, in which men have thought too much of Angels, and paid them excessive honour; honoured them so perversely as to forget the supreme worship due to Almighty God. This is the sin of a dark age. But the sin of what is called an educated age, such as our own, is just the reverse: to account slightly of them, or not at all; to ascribe all we see around us, not to their agency, but to certain assumed laws of nature. This, I say, is likely to be our sin, in proportion as we are initiated into the learning of this world;—and this is the danger of many (so called) philosophical pursuits, now in fashion, and recommended zealously to the notice of large portions of the community, hitherto strangers to them,—chemistry, geology, and the like; the danger, that is, of resting in things seen, and forgetting unseen things, and our ignorance about them.

I will attempt to say what I mean more at length. The text informs us that Almighty God makes His Angels spirits or winds, and His Ministers a flame of fire. Let us consider what is implied in this.

1. What a number of beautiful and wonderful objects does Nature present on every side of us! and how little we know concerning them! In some indeed we see symptoms of intelligence, and we get to form some idea of what they are. For instance, about brute animals we know little, but still we see they have sense, and we understand that their bodily form which meets the eye is but the index, the outside token of something we do not see. Much more in the case of men: we see them move, speak, and act, and we know that all we see takes place in consequence of their will, because they have a spirit within them, though we do not see it. But why do rivers flow? Why does rain fall? Why does the sun warm us? And the wind, why does it blow? Here our natural reason is at fault; we know, I say, that it is the spirit in man and in beast that makes man and beast move, but reason tells us of no spirit abiding in what is commonly called the natural world, to make it perform its ordinary duties. Of course, it is God's will which sustains it all; so does God's will enable us to move also, yet this does not hinder, but, in one sense we may be truly said to move ourselves: but how do the wind and water, earth and fire, move? . . .

Since Professor Reinhard gave me a new author to explore, cited Newman and many others I have explored, and brought me some wonderful meditations on Tolkien's liturgical imagination during these three great days--filled with mystery, suffering, glory, and angels!--I am grateful. The High Hallow highlighted many themes in The Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works I've neglected for several years. My late husband Mark enjoyed that great trilogy so much!

BTW: There is a call for the Cause for Tolkien's canonization to be opened. Here's a prayer to that end (for private devotion, of course):

“O Blessed Trinity, we thank You for having graced the Church with John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and for allowing the poetry of Your Creation, the mystery of the Passion of Your Son, and the symphony of the Holy Spirit, to shine through him and his sub-creative imagination. Trusting fully in Your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Wisdom of God Incarnate, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and is the way of achieving eternal communion with You. Grant us, by his intercession, and according to Your will, the graces we implore [….], hoping that he will soon be numbered among Your saints. Amen.”

Book Review: Simon Tolkien's "No Man's Land"

I went to Eighth Day Books (no longer a "bookeasy" with secret knocks at the back door or curbside service) on Thursday this week to browse. I stopped inside the front door to glance at the growing collection of books by and about Flannery O'Connor. Just to the right of them I saw two copies of the paperback edition of Simon Tolkien's World War I/Mining novel, No Man's Land, one of which I purchased (along with an edition of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical introduced by Etienne Gilson, an Image paperback (The Church Speaks to the Modern World: The Social Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII). I have been wanting to own and read both of these books for quite some time. Eighth Day Books had just received them recently so my timing was good.

My late husband Mark had in fact discovered the Tolkien novel among the new/future releases advertised by our local public library on his Kindle. He'd reserved the Ebook and the paperback in 2017 but it had never come through. He wanted me to read it out loud to him: we enjoyed sharing books that way.

So I started reading it immediately when I arrived home before going to Mass for Ascension Thursday (Extraordinary Form), continued it when I came home after Mass, and finished it yesterday morning. It was hard to put down. According to the publisher, Penguin Random House:

London, 1910: young Adam Raine’s impoverished childhood becomes even darker when his mother is killed in a workers’ protest march. His grieving father, Daniel, seeks a second chance for them in a coal mining town, where he begins working for the miners’ union. But tensions escalate between the miners and their employer, Sir John Scarsdale, and finally explode with tragic consequences.

In the aftermath, Adam is brought into the opulent Scarsdale family home where Sir John’s son subjects Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station. When, despite everything, Adam finds love with the beautiful parson’s daughter and wins a scholarship to Oxford, he starts to feel that his life is finally coming together—until the outbreak of war threatens to tear everything apart. Inspired by the real-life war experiences of the author’s grandfather J.R.R. Tolkien, No Man’s Land delivers a Dickensian, page-turning novel of Edwardian England and World War I.

As I read the novel, however, I thought less of Dickens and more of A.J. Cronin. I see the Dickensian aspects of the story in the descriptions of poverty and horrific living conditions in London and in the labor issues in the mining community of Scarsdale, but the spirit is more like A.J. Cronin's novels of young men fighting against the odds, encountering great loss and suffering, and finding their way to happiness and success, personally, not socially defined. I've read several of A.J. Cronin's novels: The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom, The Green Years, Shannon's Way, The Stars Look Down, and his autobiography, Adventures in Two Worlds (he was a doctor before he became a very successful novelist). Several of his books were made into movies or television mini-series.

Adam Raine is a Cronin-style protagonist: orphaned, always feeling separate from the people he lives with whether in London, Scarsdale, Oxford, or No Man's Land, encountering and overcoming many dangers--especially from conniving and morally-blunted people--absorbing loss and grief, and by the end of the novel he wants to be a writer because he wants the dead soldiers of World War I to speak beyond the grave. He wants the people of England to know what it was like to fight in the trenches. The novel ends with Adam on the way to the publisher with his manuscript!

Tolkien's omniscient narrator describes Adam's thoughts and recounts the events of his life vividly. Perhaps the best twist in the novel is that the term No Man's Land applies not only to aspects of his wartime experience at the Somme and even on leave during the war but also to his antagonist's situation, as Brice Scarsdale, the son of his mentor Sir John Scarsdale who is described above as "subject[ing] Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station" has both succeeded in obtaining everything he wanted but also has failed to enjoy or benefit from it because of one horrific action, or rather his actions after that action (not giving away much the plot, I hope!).

Simon Tolkien dedicated this novel to J.R.R. Tolkien: "This book honours the memory of my grandfather, J.R.R. Tolkien, who fought on the Somme between July and October 1916." The novel certainly does honour Tolkien, and I highly recommend it. I think that Mark would have liked the book, and it's so appropriate that I read it before the Memorial Day weekend. If you want a copy, there's still one on the shelf at Eighth Day Books!

The only thing that I wished for was for Adam to find faith in Jesus Christ, which the elder Tolkien so devoutly lived.

In the aftermath, Adam is brought into the opulent Scarsdale family home where Sir John’s son subjects Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station. When, despite everything, Adam finds love with the beautiful parson’s daughter and wins a scholarship to Oxford, he starts to feel that his life is finally coming together—until the outbreak of war threatens to tear everything apart. Inspired by the real-life war experiences of the author’s grandfather J.R.R. Tolkien, No Man’s Land delivers a Dickensian, page-turning novel of Edwardian England and World War I.

London, 1910: young Adam Raine’s impoverished childhood becomes even darker when his mother is killed in a workers’ protest march. His grieving father, Daniel, seeks a second chance for them in a coal mining town, where he begins working for the miners’ union. But tensions escalate between the miners and their employer, Sir John Scarsdale, and finally explode with tragic consequences.

In the aftermath, Adam is brought into the opulent Scarsdale family home where Sir John’s son subjects Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station. When, despite everything, Adam finds love with the beautiful parson’s daughter and wins a scholarship to Oxford, he starts to feel that his life is finally coming together—until the outbreak of war threatens to tear everything apart. Inspired by the real-life war experiences of the author’s grandfather J.R.R. Tolkien, No Man’s Land delivers a Dickensian, page-turning novel of Edwardian England and World War I.

A Report on the Sunday Sessions of the Catholic Culture Conference

The Adult Education program of the Spiritual Life Center here in Wichita, Kansas recently presented the Fourth Annual Catholic Culture Conference. Joseph Pearce and Dale Ahlquist made presentations on Friday and Saturday and Brad (Bradley) Birzer from Hillsdale College spoke on Sunday. He was born and raised in Kansas and had attended a family wedding in Kansas City on Saturday before driving to Wichita on Sunday. He was born in Great Bend and grew up in Hutchinson--his mother and other family members met him during his presentations so there was a family reunion going on too.

He was a great presenter; his enthusiasm and knowledge of his subject was so evident. I enjoyed his talk on Russell Kirk because I had not read much about him. Here's a Catholic World Report introduction to Kirk that Professor Birzer wrote:

By almost any 21st-century American or western standard, Russell Amos Augustine Kirk (1918-1994) possessed a quirky, eccentric, and original personality. He was—to put it as simply as possible—genius. Descriptors like charitable, tolerant, loyal, intense, playful, mischievous, creative, imaginative, shy, romantic, brilliant, humble, eccentric, traditional, and innovative flow from the lips and pens of most of those who knew him personally. As with every person, of course, Kirk expressed an immense variety of emotions and thoughts during his life. No man or woman can be summed up in a sentence, let alone in a book or even in a series of books. Almost certainly, the person himself fails to apprehend all of his majesty and his failings. Of all appreciations of and attacks on Kirk, Dartmouth professor of English literature Jeffrey Hart says it best. “Russell Kirk was a fantastic individualist—in his own way, of course.”

Yet, of all major converts to Roman Catholicism in the 20th century, Kirk remains one of the least known. There were so many notable converts, as biographers such as Joseph Pearce have explored, that one middle-aged American’s conversion has understandably been overlooked. After all, Kirk is remembered mostly for his 1953 magnum opus, The Conservative Mind, and as the founder of intellectual and cultural conservatism. On the surface, Roman Catholicism is not inherently conservative, at least politically, and most Catholics would probably be more comfortable reading a Flannery O’Connor short story than a speech Kirk ghostwrote for Senator Barry Goldwater.

Still, it is unfortunate that Catholics have not paid more attention to Kirk’s story. His conversion to the Church not only provided a major asset to the faith but also reveals much about the nature of tradition, the continuity of the pagan and the Catholic, the fragility of civilization, and the sanctity of charity.

I bought Birzer's biography of Russell Kirk--and he bought a copy of my book. Very kind of him: we autographed each other's books.

He also spoke on J.R.R. Tolkien, emphasizing how much World War I influenced the creation of Tolkien's Catholic mythology of Middle Earth. This essay, from the Imaginative Conservative (which Birzer co-founded) gives you an inkling of what Birzer discussed:

One finds the most moving prose of The Lord of the Rings, somewhat surprisingly, in chapter two of Book Four (that is, the second chapter dealing with Frodo and Sam in The Two Towers), “The Passage of the Marshes.” In it, Tolkien offers a vast and broad claustrophobic landscape across which Frodo, Sam, and Gollum must travel.

As is typical with Tolkien, he allowed his experiences to influence and inform his writing, but he refused to let them dominate it. In a 1960 letter, he admitted that the approach came from his reading of William Morris as well as his own experiences in World War I.
"The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally, I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains." [Letter 226 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien].

That Tolkien mentions his experience in World War I at all is startling, as he rarely did this, and certainly not until the end of his life. In an interview eight years later, Tolkien confirmed the influence of his experience in the trenches on his writing. “I remember miles and miles of seething, tortured earth, perhaps best described in the chapters about the approaches to Mordor. It was a searing experience.” [Interview by Keith Brace, “In the Footsteps of Hobbits,” Birmingham Post (March 25, 1968)]

In almost every way, Tolkien’s “The Passage of the Marshes” presents a deeply frightening and suffocating experience for the reader, as the three figures—the two Hobbits and the decrepit Gollum, once a Hobbit himself—move across a landscape that has become, and continues to become through the chapter, devoid of grace. Unlike the area of the Old Forest (in The Fellowship of the Ring) that had once been the sight of a terrific battle in the North, the Dead Marshes, and the No-man’s land, just to the northwest of Mordor, has no guardian spirit or caretaker such as a Goldberry or Tom Bombadil. In the Old Forest, the evil of the angry trees and undead wights cannot prevail against the natural goodness of Tom and Goldberry, masters of the land. No such masters ever took hold of the Dead Marshes. Instead, there still lingers the rotting souls of elves, orcs, and men, all the remains of the Last Alliance against Sauron, a pyrrhic victory won more than 3,000 years earlier.

Birzer concludes:

If there is a passage in all of English literature that better describes the horrors of the twentieth-century—its world wars, its gulags, its holocaust camps—I have yet to encounter it.

In a genius moment of anti-Romantic Romanticism, “The Passage of the Marshes” echoes the structure of a medieval church—from the “lights” of the purgatorial recesses to the buttresses of the decayed walls to the obscene graveyard. This is a church unprotected, unguarded, unclean. As Frodo and Sam journey through it, even memory itself is elusive and unattainable.

As ghosts, Frodo and Sam continue through this nightmare realm, itself devoid of grace, armed only with the Elvish lembas, what would be translated into English as “the bread of life.”

If there is a story in the English language that better grasps the meaning of life and perseverance in this world of sorrows, I have yet to encounter it.

I hope that Professor Birzer returns to Wichita soon to talk Christopher Dawson or Charles Carroll of Carrollton, about whom he has also written.

Pearce on Belloc and Tolkien (and Chesterton?)

From The National Catholic Register:

Although Belloc and Tolkien had much in common, not least of which was their shared and impassioned Catholicism, it is intriguing that they should differ so profoundly on the importance of the Anglo-Saxons.

Belloc’s view of history, for the most part astute and penetrative, was always skewed by a less-than-balanced Francophilia and an almost shrill Germanophobia. This was evident in his dismissive disregard of the contribution to Christian culture of the Germanic tribes of England prior to the Norman Conquest and his lauding of the Conquest itself as having brought England into the fullness of Christendom which was always, for Belloc, synonymous with the influence of France.

In contrast, Tolkien considered Anglo-Saxon England to have been idyllically Christian. Had he had his “whole case very carefully prepared” to counter Belloc’s attack on the Anglo-Saxons, he might have shown that Anglo-Saxon England was profoundly Catholic, to such a degree that the saintly Englishman, Boniface, had helped to evangelize Pagan Europe, while his contemporary, the truly venerable Bede, had exhibited the high culture that Saxon England enjoyed in abundance.

Whilst the former converted the Germans to Christ, the latter excelled in Latin and Greek, and classical and patristic literature, as well as Hebrew, medicine and astronomy. Bede also wrote homilies, lives of saints, hymns, epigrams, works on chronology and grammar, commentaries on the Old and New Testament, and, most famously, his seminal Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum which was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred the Great. At the time of his death in 735 Bede had just finished translating the Gospel of St. John into Anglo-Saxon. Almost six hundred years later, Dante expressed his own admiration for Bede’s achievement by placing him in the Paradiso of his Divina Commedia.

Pearce doesn't mention it, but Chesterton must have been influenced by Belloc, in spite of his admiration for Alfred the Great. As Chesterton writes in his A Short History of England (from Chapter 5. "St. Edward and the Norman Kings") he presents a mixed view of the Anglo-Saxons, although he does praise them for "christening" England:

As I have indicated, there is some unreality in talking about the Anglo-Saxon at all. The Anglo-Saxon is a mythical and straddling giant, who has presumably left one footprint in England and the other in Saxony. But there was a community, or rather group of communities, living in Britain before the Conquest under what we call Saxon names, and of a blood probably more Germanic and certainly less French than the same communities after the Conquest. And they have a modern reputation which is exactly the reverse of their real one. The value of the Anglo-Saxon is exaggerated, and yet his virtues are ignored. Our Anglo-Saxon blood is supposed to be the practical part of us; but as a fact the Anglo-Saxons were more hopelessly unpractical than any Celt. Their racial influence is supposed to be healthy, or, what many think the same thing, heathen. But as a fact these "Teutons" were the mystics. The Anglo-Saxons did one thing, and one thing only, thoroughly well, as they were fitted to do it thoroughly well. They christened England. Indeed, they christened it before it was born. The one thing the Angles obviously and certainly could not manage to do was to become English. But they did become Christians, and indeed showed a particular disposition to become monks. Moderns who talk vaguely of them as our hardy ancestors never do justice to the real good they did us, by thus opening our history, as it were, with the fable of an age of innocence, and beginning all our chronicles, as so many chronicles began, with the golden initial of a saint. By becoming monks they served us in many very valuable and special capacities, but not notably, perhaps, in the capacity of ancestors.

Chesterton does admire Alfred the Great, of course, having written his great poem The Ballad of the White Horse about this Anglo-Saxon hero (from Chapter 4. "The Defeat of the Barbarians"):

There is, from the first, something humble and even accidental about Alfred. He was a great understudy. The interest of his early life lies in this: that he combined an almost commonplace coolness, and readiness for the ceaseless small bargains and shifting combinations of all that period, with the flaming patience of saints in times of persecution. While he would dare anything for the faith, he would bargain in anything except the faith. He was a conqueror, with no ambition; an author only too glad to be a translator; a simple, concentrated, wary man, watching the fortunes of one thing, which he piloted both boldly and cautiously, and which he saved at last.

He had disappeared after what appeared to be the final heathen triumph and settlement, and is supposed to have lurked like an outlaw in a lonely islet in the impenetrable marshlands of the Parret; towards those wild western lands to which aboriginal races are held to have been driven by fate itself. But Alfred, as he himself wrote in words that are his challenge to the period, held that a Christian man was unconcerned with fate. He began once more to draw to him the bows and spears of the broken levies of the western shires, especially the men of Somerset; and in the spring of 878 he flung them at the lines before the fenced camp of the victorious Danes at Ethandune. His sudden assault was as successful as that at Ashdown, and it was followed by a siege which was successful in a different and very definite sense. Guthrum, the conqueror of England, and all his important supports, were here penned behind their palisades, and when at last they surrendered the Danish conquest had come to an end. Guthrum was baptized, and the Treaty of Wedmore secured the clearance of Wessex. The modern reader will smile at the baptism, and turn with greater interest to the terms of the treaty. In this acute attitude the modern reader will be vitally and hopelessly wrong. He must support the tedium of frequent references to the religious element in this part of English history, for without it there would never have been any English history at all. And nothing could clinch this truth more than the case of the Danes. In all the facts that followed, the baptism of Guthrum is really much more important than the Treaty of Wedmore. The treaty itself was a compromise, and even as such did not endure; a century afterwards a Danish king like Canute was really ruling in England. But though the Dane got the crown, he did not get rid of the cross. It was precisely Alfred's religious exaction that remained unalterable. 

For the Inklings Festival

The Inklings Festival is less than a week away. On Friday, October 20, Joseph Pearce will talk about two of the poets of WWI, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and of course, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Here is the schedule for the lectures on Friday and Saturday:

World on Fire: How the Inklings Responded with Hope & Creativity by Joseph Pearce
"Tolkien & Lewis among the War Poets" - Friday, 7 PM

Anniversary Reception at Eighth Day Books - Friday, 8:30 PM

Beyond the Waste Land: Hope and War in the Work of Lewis - Saturday, 9:30 AM

War & Mordor: Hope and War in the Work of Tolkien - Saturday, 11:00 AM

The rest of the details are here.

I wrote a little essay for the Eighth Day Institute blog on some of the music of WWI, including the young Classical music composers who served in the trenches:

POPULAR music during World War I served to rouse the troops, comfort the grieving, and encourage patriotic spirit. Several classical composers served in the British armed forces during the war and their works reflected their experience, as did the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, subjects of this year’s Inklings Lecture Series.

Popular songs wistfully recalled home or reminded home to remember the soldiers who were away. Lewis and Tolkien must have heard these songs at home and at the front. One of the most popular songs, composed in 1914, was “Keep the Home Fires Burning” by Ivor Novello, sung here by the great Irish tenor, John McCormack, who recorded many of these songs, toured the USA during the war for the Red Cross, and also sang opera around the world . . .

George Butterworth died in action at the First Battle of Somme on August 5, 1916. Upon his death, his father found out that his son had been awarded medals for bravery, and his military commander found out that he was a promising composer. Butterworth was interested in the English folk song and traditional dancing, especially Morris dancing. He composed “A Shropshire Lad Rhapsody”, based on the poetry of A. E. Housman, and “The Banks of Green Willow.”

Frederick Septimus Kelly and William Dennis Browne were closely associated with the poet Rupert Brooke. Browne wrote the famous description of Brooke’s death and midnight burial on the Isle of Skyros among the olive groves. He died on June 15, 1915 during the Battle of Gallipoli.

Please read the rest on the Eighth Day Institute website. 

Third Annual Inklings Festival: OOM-PAH OctoberFest!

The Eighth Day Institute has announced the dates, speaker, and location for the Inklings Festival. Registration is open:

Our first two Inklings Festivals were a great success. But Kansas summers are scorchers and we all experienced that crazy heat both years (101 degrees in 2015, 106 degrees in 2016!).

So this year we've decided to make it an Octoberfest. And as a bonus, we've scheduled it in conjunction with the annual anniversary party for Eighth Day Books, which falls on the third weekend of October. So we'll be celebrating the Inklings and the 29th anniversary of Eighth Day Books!

Similar to the first two years, the emphasis is threefold: Inklings, Craftsmanship & Local.

World on Fire: How the Inklings Responded with Hope & Creativity

Plenary Lectures by Joseph Pearce

FRIDAY
7:00 pm    Lecture One at Journey the Way Church: "Tolkien & Lewis among the War Poets"

Tolkien & Lewis both fought in World War One, experiencing what Tolkien called the "animal horror" of trench warfare. The first lecture will place the two writers in the wider context of other writers who fought in the war, comparing their response to the war with that of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in particular.

8:30 pm    Anniversary reception at Eighth Day Books

SATURDAY

8:00 am    Doors open at Journey the Way Church for arrival and registration

9:00 am    Convocation and Introduction

9:30 am    Lecture Two - Beyond the Waste Land: Hope and War in the Work of Lewis

In the wake of World War One a spirit of cynicism prevailed in what became known as the Waste Land Generation. Lewis responded with a hope that transcended the despair of nihilism. The second lecture will focus on the transcendent hope in Lewis' work.

10:30 am  Break

11:00 am  Lecture Three - War & Mordor: Hope and War in the Work of Tolkien

Following on from lecture two, the third lecture will examine Tolkien's response to the experience of war, his horror at the advent of weapons of mass destruction, and his defence of the idea of a just war to defend civilization from the forces of evil.

Tolkien and the Battle of the Somme

From The New York Times:

Though the debt is largely overlooked, Tolkien’s supreme literary achievement, “The Lord of the Rings,” owes a great deal to his experience at the Somme. Reaching the front shortly after the offensive began, Tolkien served for four months as a battalion signals officer with the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers in the Picardy region of France.

Using telephones, flares, signal lights, pigeons and runners, he maintained communications between the army staff directing the battles from the rear and the officers in the field. According to the British historian Martin Gilbert, who interviewed Tolkien decades later about his combat experience, he came under intense enemy fire. He had heard “the fearful cries of men who had been hit,” Gilbert wrote. “Tolkien and his signalers were always vulnerable.

Tolkien’s creative mind found an outlet. He began writing the first drafts of his mythology about Middle-earth, as he recalled, “by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire.” In 1917, recuperating from trench fever, Tolkien composed a series of tales involving “gnomes,” dwarves and orcs engaged in a great struggle for his imaginary realm.

In the rent earth of the Somme Valley, he laid the foundation of his epic trilogy. 

I'm not sure that opening phrase, "though the debt is largely overlooked" is accurate. Many of those who've written about Tolkien have noted the influence of his WWI experiences. John Garth dedicated a book length study, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, to that debt:

“To be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than in 1939 . . . by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.”

So J.R.R. Tolkien responded to critics who saw The Lord of the Rings as a reaction to the Second World War. Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe. This biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology into life. It shows how, after two of these brilliant young men were killed, Tolkien pursued the dream they had all shared by launching his epic of good and evil.

This is the first substantially new biography of Tolkien since 1977, meticulously researched and distilled from his personal wartime papers and a multitude of other sources.

John Garth argues that the foundation of tragic experience in the First World War is the key to Middle-earth's enduring power. Tolkien used his mythic imagination not to escape from reality but to reflect and transform the cataclysm of his generation. While his contemporaries surrendered to disillusionment, he kept enchantment alive, reshaping an entire literary tradition into a form that resonates to this day.

The author of the NYT piece has his own book to sell, that also addresses the impact of the Great War on C.S. Lewis:

The untold story of how the First World War shaped the lives, faith, and writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis

The First World War laid waste to a continent and permanently altered the political and religious landscape of the West. For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence—and the end of faith. Yet for J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been no [The] Hobbit, no [The] Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis.

Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis sparked by the conflict.

Happy Birthday to J.R.R. Tolkien: A Toast Tonight!

According to The Tolkien Society website:

The name “Tolkien” (pron.: Tol-keen; equal stress on both syllables) is believed to be of German origin; Toll-kühn: foolishly brave, or stupidly clever – hence the pseudonym “Oxymore” which he occasionally used. His father’s side of the family appears to have migrated from Saxony in the 18th century, but over the century and a half before his birth had become thoroughly Anglicised. Certainly his father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, considered himself nothing if not English. Arthur was a bank clerk, and went to South Africa in the 1890s for better prospects of promotion. There he was joined by his bride, Mabel Suffield, whose family were not only English through and through, but West Midlands since time immemorial. So John Ronald (“Ronald” to family and early friends) was born in Bloemfontein, S.A., on 3 January 1892. His memories of Africa were slight but vivid, including a scary encounter with a large hairy spider, and influenced his later writing to some extent; slight, because on 15 February 1896 his father died, and he, his mother and his younger brother Hilary returned to England – or more particularly, the West Midlands.

The Tolkien Society celebrates his birthday with a toast:

Each year on 3 January, the Tolkien Society encourages Tolkien fans from across the world to celebrate the Professor’s birthday with a simple toast-drinking ceremony.

At 9pm your local time, we invite Tolkien fans to raise a glass and toast the birthday of this much loved author. The toast is simply: 

The Professor!

Happy birthday, Beren.

A Tree that Inspired Tolkien

This is Oxfordshire reports some bad news for a tree that's said to have inspired Tolkien's creation of the Ents of Middle Earth. With the headline "The Ent is nigh for Tolkien tree" they note recent damage to the tree and the decision to cut it down: 

IT is said to have influenced the work of JRR Tolkien and inspired creatures in Lord of the Rings.

But now an iconic pinus negra – or black pine – is being felled in Oxford University’s Botanic Garden after two of its limbs fell off over the weekend.

Experts at Oxford City Council and the university have examined the 20-metre tall tree and decided it has to be cut down, but have not been able to determine what caused the limbs to fall off, damaging a wall.

Dr Alison Foster, acting director of the garden, said: “The black pine was a highlight of many people’s visits to the Botanic Garden and we are very sad to lose such an iconic tree.”

Tolkien, who was a fellow of Pembroke College and Merton College and is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, was extremely fond of the tree and has been pictured sitting underneath it and standing beside it.

The article goes to explain how much Tolkien “hated the wanton destruction of trees for no reason . . ." Those scenes in The Lord of the Rings, both in the books and the films, when Saruman's Orcs destroy the forests of Isengard to create weapons (The Fellowship of the Ring) and then when the Ents discover what Saruman has done and march to besiege him and destroy Isengard (The Two Towers) certainly demonstrate Tolkien's feelings. [The image of Treebeard is from Wikipedia Commons, created by Tom Loback and used under a Creative Commons License: Attribution: I, TTThom.]

With those sentiments about trees, Tolkien agreed with the spirit of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "Binsey Poplars. felled 1879":

MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

Tolkien, WWI, and The Ring

From the BBC, an examination of how J.R.R. Tolkien's World War I experience influenced The Lord of the Rings, including this focus on Frodo's "shell-shock" back home in the Shire:

Shell-shock was prevalent among men on both sides of No Man’s Land, and by the end of the conflict around 80,000 British soldiers had been treated for the condition. Symptoms included vivid hallucinations and nightmares reliving traumatic events, anxiety and depression, emotional numbing and changes in personality.

Tolkien would have been well aware of its effects from his time in hospital and on the front line. He presents a sympathetic view in The Lord of the Rings by afflicting Frodo with the condition while carrying and after having destroyed the Ring.
 

Even before reaching Mordor, Frodo experiences sudden temporary blindness on a few occasions, a common symptom of shell-shock, and as he gets nearer to Mount Doom he experiences a loss of taste and smell, uncontrollable trembling, exhaustion and bouts of anxiety.

Pacifism and withdrawal

Upon his return to the Shire, a change in Frodo's personality becomes increasingly evident. The Shire is overrun with thugs and hooligans, and while Merry and Pippin call the hobbits to arms, Frodo refuses to take part and insists that no-one be hurt or killed.
 

Shell-shocked soldiers, including the poet Siegfried Sassoon, often became pacifists after the war. Many also began to lose interest in things they had once found enjoyable, and isolated themselves from society as a way of protecting themselves from reminders of their traumatic experiences.
 

While Merry, Pippin and Sam reintegrate successfully back into Shire life, Frodo quietly withdraws and is plagued by terrifying flashbacks and nightmares.

John Rhys-Davies, who portrayed Gimli the irascible dwarf in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, presents the series. More about Tolkien and WWI in this book.

Tolkien's Beowulf

J.R.R. Tolkien's son Christopher has edited his father's translation and notes about the great poem Beowulf. Craig Williamson reviews it for The Wall Street Journal:

 

Over a thousand years before Bilbo Baggins crept into Smaug's lair to lift a cup from the dragon's hoard, a nameless slave came slinking into the dragon's cave in "Beowulf" to steal a cup that led to the worm's fiery retaliation. Long before Frodo Baggins battled the forces of evil in Gollum, Shelob and Sauron, Beowulf did battle with the monster Grendel, his mother and the dragon. Before there was Tolkien's Middle-earth, there was the Old English middangeard (literally, "middle-yard, middle-world"), a place where history and fantasy met, where heroes did battle with both their real enemies and the creatures of their collective imagination.

 

Tolkien was a scholar of Old English before he was the father of modern fantasy fiction, and he drew upon "Beowulf" and other Old English poems in the shaping of his imaginary worlds. Like Beowulf, for example, Frodo is both threatened by the exterior forces of monsters and men and vulnerable to the internal pull of pride and power. Gollum, like Grendel, is associated with kin-killing, an evil that undermines human fellowship in each story. And Aragorn's lament for past ages as he rides past the burial mounds near Rohan echoes the elegiac themes in the song of the last survivor in "Beowulf."

Now at last we have Tolkien's version of the poem, as well as several other important texts related to it. First and foremost is his prose translation, which he completed in 1926 at the age of 34 and revised over the years and which his son Christopher, who edited this volume, characterizes as "in one sense complete, but at the same time evidently 'unfinished.' " There is also a generous selection of lecture notes and commentary on the Old English text, geared to Tolkien's translation. This is followed by three versions, one in Old English, two in modern English, of a short story, "Sellic Spell" (a phrase from "Beowulf" that means "marvelous story"), and two versions of a short ballad by Tolkien called "The Lay of Beowulf."

Williamson discusses briefly the "ethics" of publishing these works that Tolkien had not prepared himself for publication:

The ethics of publishing an author's unfinished works are admittedly complex, but Christopher Tolkien has argued that his father's drafts, works in progress and commentaries are important to our understanding of his work. Both scholars and lay readers have long awaited Tolkien's "Beowulf" translation and its related materials, and everyone will find something of enduring interest in this collection. For Tolkien, "Beowulf" was both a brilliant and haunting work in its own right and an inspiration for his own fiction. It is a poem that will move us as readers, not forever but as long as we last. Or as Tolkien says, "It must ever call with a profound appeal—until the dragon comes."

The HarperCollins site announcing the publication has further comments by Christopher Tolkien:

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself, in the written form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection has been made, to form also a commentary on the translation in this book.

From his creative attention to detail in these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if he entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel’s terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot.

Tolkien and Lewis at Eighth Day Books

My husband and I enjoyed celebrating one of Eighth Day Books' two anniversaries Saturday night (the May anniversary is of its moving to its present location at 2838 East Douglas; the September anniversary is of its opening; last year was its 25th anniversary!). I baked a carrot cake and Warren's wife Chris had prepared a nice selection of snacks--a group of our friends met and we sat and talked about books, and education, and faith, and family for about three hours.


But now, to my purchases that evening: The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary from OUP and Medieval Literary: A Compendium of Medieval Knowledge with the Guidance of C.S. Lewis from Fons Vitae! When Warren showed me the latter I immediately thought of C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, which I own in the old Cambridge University Press paperback, and which is filled with notes taken on mimeographed pages, recycled from the WSU History Department! I also bought two beautiful cards from the Laughing Elephant press, with illustrations by Marie Angel and quotations by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Jakob Bohme, like this one:

Only at Eighth Day Books, I think, could one find such a combination of erudition and beauty, friendship and delight, wine and cheese, snacks and cake, memories and future hopes--we are planning a reunion of our Ignatius J. Reilly reading group there in a few months--so many of the joys of life. Speaking of memories, one of my most cherished memories of Eighth Day Books was the night we all gathered for my book reading and signing! Here's a picture of my late father and my sister. Thinking of him this Memorial Day, I recall how proud he was of me that night, how much he enjoyed the festivity, and of course, how much I and all my family miss him!

Touchstone on Tolkien and Peter Jackson

I came to The Lord of the Rings trilogy late: my husband was surprised that I had never read it, probably about ten years ago. Then we enjoyed the trilogy of movies, even though we noticed that Peter Jackson did not always "follow the book" and left out much of the poetry and some of the spirituality, over-emphasizing the battles and even the tempting power of the Ring.

Donald T. Williams, Professor of English and Director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia, explains why Peter Jackson did not "get" much of the spirit of The Lord of the Rings in a Touchstone Magazine article, noting that Tolkien, following a long tradition in literature, created role models for us to follow that Jackson could not accept as realistic:

Literature, then, has the serious moral purpose of providing role models that help us form the ideals and aspirations we live by; it achieves that purpose through concrete images of virtue and vice. Great literature is also fun; as Horace said, it teaches and delights.

But it does teach. Where in history or experience will you find a better picture of wise counsel than Gandalf, of sacrificial service than Frodo, of loyal friendship than Sam Gamgee, of leadership than Aragorn, of single-minded devotion in love than Aragorn and Arwen, of personal integrity than Faramir? I would hate to have had to live my life without the example and the inspiration that those characters have provided along the way.

But he notes that Peter Jackson does not accept these models of virtue--they are too good to be true--and therefore, Jackson and his creative team introduce doubt and weakness where Tolkien depicts self-sacrifice, loyalty, love, and devotion:

Peter Jackson, by contrast, comes from a more modern tradition that is suspicious of such moral didacticism and is more focused on "realism" (though this realism is somewhat inconsistently pursued, one might think, when it leads to a rabbit-drawn sledge that can travel over dry ground and doesn't need snow, as in Jackson's The Hobbit). Jackson apparently thinks the characters Tolkien gave us are too simply good to be fully believable to modern audiences, and so he feels obligated to "complicate" them, to give them internal conflicts other than the ones they actually have, in the hopes that we will better be able to relate to them.

Or so his consistent changes to Tolkien's characters would suggest. By this process, Faramir's "I wouldn't pick this thing [the One Ring] up if I found it lying in the road" becomes "Tell my father I send him a powerful weapon!" By this process, Aragorn becomes ambivalent about taking up his kingship rather than devoted to his calling with fixed purpose. By this process, Arwen actually contemplates deserting Aragorn and going to the Grey Havens to escape from Middle Earth despite their earlier pact, and he thinks she would.

Read the rest here.

Also At the Bodleian: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis in the Summer Exhibit

In addition to the Gerard Manley Hopkins' manuscript new, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are featured in a Bodleian exhibit on "Magical Books: from the Middle Ages to Middle-earth":

The Bodleian’s summer exhibition, Magical Books: from the Middle Ages to Middle-earth, opens to the public on Thursday, 23 May and will feature the work of five celebrated authors of children’s fantasy literature: C.S. LEWIS, J.R.R. TOLKIEN, SUSAN COOPER, ALAN GARNER and PHILIP PULLMAN.

From Bodleian’s unique holdings of these authors’ papers, the Magical Books exhibition will include a selection of Tolkien’s original artwork for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; C.S. Lewis’s ‘Lefay notebook’ and his map of Narnia, and manuscripts of novels and poems by Alan Garner, Philip Pullman and Susan Cooper, many of which will be exhibited here for the first time.

On public display for the first time will be the manuscript of ‘The Fall of Arthur’, a previously unknown work by Tolkien. The poem was one of several projects left uncompleted at the time of the author’s death. It is published for the first time on 23 May 2013, the day the exhibition opens to the public.

The exhibition also celebrates the authors’ links with Oxford and with the historic Bodleian Library in particular. All five authors were Oxford-educated and are considered members of the group of writers informally known as the ‘Oxford School’.

Susan Cooper is known for her The Dark Rising sequence of books; Alan Garner for children's books that retell traditional British folk tales; Philip Pullman for the controversial His Dark Materials trilogy.

There is a book about the exhibition and a series of lectures.

Note: picture taken by Stephanie A. Mann

Oh, to be in Oxford in March!

For this Tolkien conference: 

J. R. R. Tolkien is one of the best known authors of the twentieth century, and his books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have entertained and intrigued readers alike for decades, becoming some of the most popular books of all time. Many people will have read these novels, or seen the filmed adaptations, but have had little opportunity to take their interests further. To meet this need the Oxford Tolkien Spring School is being organised by the University of Oxford's English Faculty (where Tolkien taught for most of his career), aimed at those who have read some of Tolkien's fiction and wish to discover more. A series of introductory lectures by world-leading Tolkien scholars have been assembled, to take place in the English Faculty, University of Oxford, over the 21-23 March, 2013. Talks will cover Tolkien's life, his work as an academic, his mythology, the influences of medieval literature on his fiction, his languages, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and his other lesser known works. There will also be panel discussions looking at Tolkien's place in the the literary canon. There will also be opportunities to see the sights of Oxford that were so important to Tolkien and his colleagues, as well as an introduction to some of the Tolkien collections at the University.

More info here and here!

I certainly look forward to our day in Oxford on our way from York to London on the Catholic Martyrs of England pilgrimage. We will focus more on Blessed John Henry Newman--and of course, the many Catholic Martyrs from Oxford (like St. Edmund Campion)--but Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings won't be far from my thoughts, at least.

The itinerary for that day in Oxford includes visiting the Anglican St. Mary's to see the martyr's shrine; Oriel and Trinity Colleges, and the Oxford Oratory. Lunch at the "Bird and the Baby" would fit in nicely, with shopping at St. Philip's Bookstore and Blackwells! The tour's spiritual director, Father Steve Mateja, will celebrate Mass at St. Aloysius, the Oxford Oratory. Should be a splendid day in Oxford!

Father Majeta and I will be on Teresa Tomeo's Catholic Connection radio show one morning this week, and I'll let you know!

Tolkien the Artist

Per this article in The Guardian, J.R.R. Tolkien's imagination expressed itself not merely in words but in images:

The film series of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit is unlikely to come anywhere near matching the author's own visualisation of his imaginary world. We know what director Peter Jackson thinks the landscape of Middle Earth is like, from his previous films of The Lord of the Rings, as well as pre-released images from the first instalment of The Hobbit. Jackson's use of location to make the fantastic seem real is impressive. Yet his images are ponderous compared to the ethereal drawings and paintings in which Tolkien pictured places such as Rivendell and the Shire.

Tolkien imagined his otherworld of hobbits, elves and wizards in pictures, as well as words. The Hobbit was first published in 1937. As he wrote it, in the 30s, he made beguiling pictures and designs that map and depict the landscapes through which Bilbo Baggins was to journey.

Tolkien designed the cover for that first edition of The Hobbit. It immediately promises a rich and strange world within: layers of trees in green, white and purple fold over one another towards stylised mountain peaks and the great disc of the sun. Runes are inscribed along the edges of the design. Runic writing is the script of the elves in Middle Earth – but Tolkien did not invent it. Runes were used by the Vikings to inscribe memorials and spells. The Viking connection is telling, for Tolkien's art has a Scandinavian quality. The dreamlike elegance of The Hobbit's original cover is reminiscent of modern northern European art as well as ancient Viking designs.

Read the rest here.