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Post by Séamus on Mar 5, 2018 8:02:31 GMT
Have just read in the newspaper about George Sayer, a friend of Tolkien and CS Lewis, having his memory honoured by a British educational institution, with the George Sayer Fellowship being launched this Thursday by Malvern College. Sayer's widow apparently always claimed that Tolkien would never have published LORD OF THE RINGS without her husband's influence.
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Post by Séamus on Sept 16, 2018 7:18:20 GMT
Why did Tolkien decide to surname the most obnoxious hobbit family Sackville-Baggins? His fellow catholic literati Vita Sackville-West would have to have been well known at the time and he can't have not noticed the similarity of name.
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Post by assisi on Oct 4, 2018 21:36:09 GMT
Peter Hitchen has recently penned an essay on the Game of Thrones books/series. As a preamble he talks about the lack of the idea of a God or Christ figure in Lord of the Rings. If he is right, is God or a Christ figure needed? Sauron could be the Devil, perhaps, but there is no God equivalent.Gandalf and Aragorn are nearly there but would seem too worldly to be God or Christ, I would have thought. Below is an excerpt from the essay "What men and women believe is so important that it is almost a solid fact, like an ocean or a castle. This is why I am often puzzled when I consider the curious absence of any explained common religious belief in J. R. R. Tolkien’s great epic The Lord of the Rings. Men in his Middle Earth are plainly quite sure that they live in a created universe and are subject to powers high above them. They can tell good from evil at a glance. They are unsurprised by the existence of elves, wraiths, orcs and wizards, trolls, incantations, rings of power, and mountains which open at the right password. All kinds of potent magic seem to be taken as a matter of course. But what do they believe about God? If it is explained, I have missed it. Perhaps Tolkien thought it simply didn’t matter, or could be assumed. And yet Tolkien was, probably above all things, an observant, thoughtful, and serious Roman Catholic. By contrast, his Anglican friend C. S. Lewis, with whom he disagreed about religion, left no doubt in his Narnia books that Aslan was worshipped in that country much as Christ is worshipped among us. Aslan’s image, for instance, is displayed aboard the Narnian ship The Dawn Treader. Meanwhile, in neighboring Calormen, they bow down before the terrible monster Tash, who eventually turns out to be real."The full essay is here: www.firstthings.com/article/2018/10/vice-and-fire
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Oct 4, 2018 23:01:52 GMT
Tolkien says in the introduction to the Silmarillion something to the effect that he deliberately left Christianity out of his mythos, I forget exactly why...perhaps because it would compromise its nature as a separate world.
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Post by Séamus on Oct 5, 2018 4:16:59 GMT
Peter Hitchen has recently penned an essay on the Game of Thrones books/series. As a preamble he talks about the lack of the idea of a God or Christ figure in Lord of the Rings. If he is right, is God or a Christ figure needed? Sauron could be the Devil, perhaps, but there is no God equivalent.Gandalf and Aragorn are nearly there but would seem too worldly to be God or Christ, I would have thought. Below is an excerpt from the essay ...etc... real."The full essay is here: www.firstthings.com/article/2018/10/vice-and-fireTolkien did say something about allegory being detrimental to literature. All the more surprising that many Catholics,or non-, find his stories to be quite spiritual, even more than Narnia, although this could be largely because The Rings saga was for a slightly older, but still wide, readership. It's hard to not see catholic influence in the story, even though weird people like Michael Jackson have tried to gothic-ise it all by making heroes of Gollum and the Orcs, never Tolkien's intentions I'd imagine. It may mean nothing, but, in a profession where scientologists,Jews and others are often overrepresented, out of the five major hobbit actors, three or four were either raised as Catholics or went to a catholic school, (one is a devout Lutheran) only one shows little church-influence on his cv. David Wenham (Faramir) who went to Christian Brothers college also had the leading role of St Damian of Molokai around the same time. It may mean nothing, of course. On the other hand, one wonders whether Lord of the Rings hasn't influenced catholic piety, especially the part about destruction of Mordor and it's armies after the disposing of the ring? I believe strongly in the importance of the Fatima message, but how often do we hear people saying that either the consecration of Russia wasn't valid or the third secret wasn't really revealed, precisely because they're expecting this: a 'destruction of Mordor' within several minutes in front of their eyes. (But not even the Incarnation and Redemption had that immediate effect: The Temple and Jerusalem were destroyed...but only several decades after the Resurrection, while Rome stood for another three centuries) Followers of more recent visionaries, meanwhile, say that the same 'destruction of Mordor' will happen when the Blessed Virgin is proclaimed co-repdemptorix, despite the fact the world and church only got worse after the Immaculate Conception and Assumption were officially proclaimed.
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Post by Séamus on May 3, 2019 5:10:57 GMT
Irish journo Sarah McDonald had written a short piece in the current English St Anthony's Messanger about Tolkien's faith, particularly his mother's legacy and subsequent admiration for Our Lady. Mr Tolkien cited 25 March as the date of Mordor's destruction and McDonald suggests that he chose traditional Ladyday in purpose. The Archibald Prize is one of Australia's premier art exhibitions, entries must be of people who are at least mildly famous, the first penultimate award has gone to 'Through the Looking Glass', an image of David Wenham who played one of my favourite characters- Faramir- in the Jackson movie version (this was unveiled some months ago). The actor reportedly insisted on the artist including all his wrinkles, which seems to have impressed the judges of the 'Archibald Packing Room Prize'
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Post by cato on May 21, 2019 16:11:51 GMT
Peter Hitchen has recently penned an essay on the Game of Thrones books/series. As a preamble he talks about the lack of the idea of a God or Christ figure in Lord of the Rings. If he is right, is God or a Christ figure needed? Sauron could be the Devil, perhaps, but there is no God equivalent.Gandalf and Aragorn are nearly there but would seem too worldly to be God or Christ, I would have thought. Below I came across an essay I think by Fr Longnecker were he discusses the issue of God in the Lord of the Rings. He claimed Christ is present as Priest , Prophet and King. Gandalf is the priestly archetype . I have only started reading the book last week during a warm afternoon. As I am only on page 61 I am not sure which characters are prophet and King. I 'll try and retrieve the original article. I am pleasantly surprised at how much I am enjoying the LOR as fantasy literature is not my normal sort of reading.
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Post by assisi on May 21, 2019 20:18:05 GMT
Peter Hitchen has recently penned an essay on the Game of Thrones books/series. As a preamble he talks about the lack of the idea of a God or Christ figure in Lord of the Rings. If he is right, is God or a Christ figure needed? Sauron could be the Devil, perhaps, but there is no God equivalent.Gandalf and Aragorn are nearly there but would seem too worldly to be God or Christ, I would have thought. Below I came across an essay I think by Fr Longnecker were he discusses the issue of God in the Lord of the Rings. He claimed Christ is present as Priest , Prophet and King. Gandalf is the priestly archetype . I have only started reading the book last week during a warm afternoon. As I am only on page 61 I am not sure which characters are prophet and King. I 'll try and retrieve the original article. I am pleasantly surprised at how much I am enjoying the LOR as fantasy literature is not my normal sort of reading. I am pretty sure which character would be the King (without looking up Fr. Longnecker's article). As for the prophet, that's more difficult. I won't mention any names as it might spoil your enjoyment if you've just started the book. Come back when you are finished and let us know who you think is King and Prophet without revisiting Fr. Longnecker's article.
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Post by Séamus on May 22, 2019 7:58:28 GMT
Peter Hitchen has recently penned an essay on the Game of Thrones books/series. As a preamble he talks about the lack of the idea of a God or Christ figure in Lord of the Rings. If he is right, is God or a Christ figure needed? Sauron could be the Devil, perhaps, but there is no God equivalent.Gandalf and Aragorn are nearly there but would seem too worldly to be God or Christ, I would have thought. Below I came across an essay I think by Fr Longnecker were he discusses the issue of God in the Lord of the Rings. He claimed Christ is present as Priest , Prophet and King. Gandalf is the priestly archetype . I have only started reading the book last week during a warm afternoon. As I am only on page 61 I am not sure which characters are prophet and King. I 'll try and retrieve the original article. I am pleasantly surprised at how much I am enjoying the LOR as fantasy literature is not my normal sort of reading. As Catholic as he was it may or may not have been his intention to write so much into the story. The existence of a One God is more explicit in Silmarillion. Even then his creation story is deliberately different- Eru or Ilúvatar creates Ainur, similar to angels, except that at times they seem to be at least partly corporal,and charges them with creation after giving a mental blueprint of the final product (brings to one's mind Enya's The Forge Of The Angels track a bit),the first equivalent of Satan was Morgoth,a fallen Ainur. Sauron seems to have originally been an elf in Morgoth's service. Although there's an general consistency in all Tolkien's MiddleEarth tales, they were written and adapted over many years and, it must be said, a lot of the pieces either don't fit together or don't entirely make sense when taken as a whole. Morgoth and Sauron are a case in point. Morgoth was an Ainur but somehow ended up being so corporal that Lúthein and Beren come into his Castle disguised as beasts and, indeed, Lúthein could put him to sleep while Beren stole a silmaril from his crown. And yet protege Sauron, by the time the Rings trilogy was written, was virtually incorporeal, even movie producers choosing to leave him largely unseen ( we were actually supposed to glimpse him at the final destruction of Mordor.) Some of the earliest story versions mention Ilúvatar spiritually inspiring the actions of the heroes, spotlighting the God-aspect slightly. One of the roles which Sauron played in the primeval tales was originally meant for a discarded character- a giant cat lord in league with Morgoth
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