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    J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth
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    J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth
    Unavailable
    J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth
    Ebook338 pages4 hours

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

    By Bradley J. Birzer

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Since the appearance of The Lord of the Rings in 1954, J. R. R. Tolkien’s works have always sold briskly, appealing to a wide and diverse audience of intellectuals, religious believers, fantasy enthusiasts, and science fiction aficionados. Now, Peter Jackson’s film version of Tolkien’s trilogy—with its accompanying Rings-related paraphernalia and publicity—is playing a unique role in the dissemination of Tolkien’s imaginative creation to the masses. Yet, for most readers and viewers, the underlying meaning of Middle-earth has remained obscure.

    Bradley Birzer has remedied that with this fresh study. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth, Birzer explains the surprisingly specific religious symbolism that permeates Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium. He also explores the social and political views that motivated the Oxford don, ultimately situating Tolkien within the Christian humanist tradition represented by Thomas More and T. S. Eliot, Dante and C. S. Lewis. Birzer argues that through the genre of myth Tolkien created a world that is essentially truer than the one we think we see around us every day, a world that transcends the colorless disenchantment of our postmodern age.

    “A small knowledge of history,” Tolkien once wrote, “depresses one with the sense of the everlasting weight of human iniquity.” As Birzer demonstrates, Tolkien’s recognition of evil became mythologically manifest in the guise of Ringwraiths, Orcs, Sauron, and other dark beings. But Tolkien was ultimately optimistic: even weak, bumbling hobbits and humans, as long as they cling to the Good, can finally prevail. Bradley Birzer has performed a great service in elucidating Tolkien’s powerful moral vision.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 13, 2014
    ISBN9781497648913
    Unavailable
    J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth
    Author

    Bradley J. Birzer

    Bradley J. Birzer holds the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in History at Hillsdale College. The author or editor of four other books, he has written and taught extensively on the American experience. Birzer also serves as chairman of the board of academic advisors for the Center for the American Idea in Houston and as a nonresident fellow for the McConnell Center, University of Louisville. He and his family live in Michigan.

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    Reviews for J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth

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    • 4/5
      The aim of the author is to help a reader understand the philosophical underpinnings of the world(s) Tolkien created. He does this by using a tremendous amount of sources (a quarter of the books is the appendix in the back listing all of them) and is clearly very familiar with more of Tolkien's writing than just the the popular Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Simarillion.

      The author delves into Tolkien's past and faith and genuflects in depth on the way these inform the philosophy of the Lord of the Rings world. His explanation of the difference between true myth and allegory in the writings of Tolkien is one of the clearest I have run across. If you recall Tolkien was very specific that his work was in no way allegory. Yet, it reflected his faith very deeply and at times very clearly. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and his world has many reflections of the religious way Tolkien saw our world. I was very interested in the different biblical arch types represented by the characters Tolkien wrote and how Tolkien described how he came up with characters.

      This books also deals (lightly) with some of the different movements that have adopted Tolkien's writing, the hippies, environmentalists, and even an effort by Italian fascists to use his works to support their aims. How Tolkien felt or would be likely to feel about these sorts of attempted usage is briefly discussed.

      While this volume contains a biography of sorts of Tolkien this was not written to tell the story of his life but as the title tells you, to help readers understand the philosophy of Middle Earth. Probably not for the causal reader or someone who is looking for Tolkien's story.

      1 person found this helpful