Wednesday, 25 July 2018

Tolkien's beatitudes - his affirmation even of clumsy, insufficient, vague wish-fulfillment fantasy fiction; so long as its motivations are Good

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Note: The Beatitudes are that part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel, which consists of a series of statements beginning wi...
3 comments:
Monday, 9 July 2018

Reading The Notion Club Papers - again...

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About forty pages in, and enjoying it more than ever! It begins with a kind of hobbit - talk section; perhaps the nearest thing to a trans...
Wednesday, 4 July 2018

Reading Tolkien's character from his face - viewing Tolkien in Oxford (1968) with the sound turned-off...

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There is an interesting ( and flawed ) half hour documentary about JRR Tolkien that was made in 1968 - see link below; and I was watching it...
6 comments:
Monday, 2 July 2018

Solving Tolkien's flat-earth versus spherical-earth problem with the help of Owen Barfield

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[Jeremy - in The Notion Club Papers, by JRR Tolkien] Sometimes I have a queer feeling that, if one could go back, one would find not myth ...
5 comments:
Saturday, 30 June 2018

Tolkien's How and Why problems in 'framing' his Legendarium for a modern audience - reflections on re-reading Interrupted Music by Verlyn Flieger (2005)

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As Verlyn Flieger clarifies in her 2005 book Interrupted Music ; Tolkien had two main problems in providing a 'frame' within-which t...
4 comments:
Saturday, 23 June 2018

Good and evil in Tolkien

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One of the most ridiculous statements made by those literary modernists who dislike Tolkien, and especially The Lord of the Rings, is when t...
5 comments:
Saturday, 16 June 2018

Tolkien - first picture of his genius

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The cover of John Garth's pamphlet 'Tolkien at Exeter College' gives us the first picture of JRR Tolkien (in 1914) in which h...
1 comment:
Monday, 11 June 2018

The root of The Problem with the 1977 Silmarillion

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John Garth (in Tolkien and the Great War - pages 279-80) puts his finger on the root of The Problem of the 1977, single volume Silmarillion...
Sunday, 10 June 2018

John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War (2003) - my audio book mini-review

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Powerful and profound One of the half-dozen best books ever written about Tolkien; and indeed one of the best books about friendship,...
2 comments:
Thursday, 7 June 2018

Tolkien and The Machine

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Melko's Machine-dragons invading Gondolin, by Roger Garland, as described in the Lost Tales and based on his personal experience o...
3 comments:
Wednesday, 6 June 2018

Qoheleth Resources for your Inklings collection!

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I've mentioned Richard Johnson's second-hand mail-order bookshop Qoheleth Resources before; but it is worth emphasising that thi...
1 comment:
Thursday, 31 May 2018

Superversive Inklings - Notice of a new blog

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Superversive Inklings This is going to be run by L Jagi Lamplighter (author of the on-going Rachel Griffin series of fantasy novels). One...
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Tuesday, 29 May 2018

Who is the 'coolest' background character in Lord of the Rings?

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I guess that everybody has their favourite? Mine is Imrahil - the Prince of Dol Amroth... What man, and what a place that is! beyond, in...
11 comments:
Monday, 21 May 2018

Re-reading the Lindop biography of Charles Williams

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I have been re-reading the biography of Charles Williams by Grevel Lindop, published in 2015, and which I reviewed at the time . I was surpr...
4 comments:
Sunday, 6 May 2018

Tolkien and fandom

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When I first became interested in JRR Tolkien in the middle 70s, there was not much attention paid to him by the British mass media - but...
6 comments:
Thursday, 3 May 2018

Tolkien as a 'spiritual father' - the experience of author Vox Day (Theodore Beale)

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Put not your faith in men by Vox Day I have been let down by all of my heroes and role models. Not some of them. Not most of them. All ...
Sunday, 29 April 2018

The Music of the Ainur - A guest post from John Fitzgerald

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And thus was the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar established at the last in the Deeps of Time and amidst the innumerable stars. ...
Tuesday, 10 April 2018

Barfield's understanding of the necessity for the completion of Romanticism

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Barfield's understanding of Romanticism as an uncompleted destiny is of primary importance to an integrated view of The Inklings. Barfie...
5 comments:
Monday, 12 March 2018

Review of The Flame Imperishable by Jonathan S McIntosh

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Jonathan S McIntosh. The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St Thomas and the metaphysics of Faerie . Angelico Press: Kettering, Ohio, USA. 201...
2 comments:
Sunday, 18 February 2018

If WW II was an allegory of Lord of the Rings...

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A first version of the following post appeared a couple of years ago , and proved popular among some people - including Fantasy author L J...
4 comments:
Wednesday, 14 February 2018

Tolkien and Giants

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Tolkien included Giants in several of his stories - although not in The Lord of the Rings - despite their appearance in The Hobbit . Thi...
2 comments:
Wednesday, 31 January 2018

Tolkien nods - the introductory description of Arwen

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I am currently reading aloud The Lord of the Rings, as a bedtime book; and am again absolutely delighted by it. I find every scene, indeed a...
9 comments:
Sunday, 28 January 2018

One of the most interesting books I have ever read... My Amazon (mini-)review of Sauron Defeated

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Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age (comprising The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part Four ; The Notion Club Papers ; and The D...
3 comments:
Monday, 11 December 2017

Why I am somewhat neglecting this blog...

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Because I am doing a lot of posting at the Owen Barfield Blog - in preparation for writing a book based upon it. But I will continue posti...