Celebrating Middle-earth
by John G. West Jr., editor
Chapters
Celebrating Middle-earth is based on a "Celebrating Middle-earth" conference held at Seattle Pacific University in November of 2001. There, siix gifted Tolkien scholars described the literary, moral, political and religious background to Tolkien's great epic.
1. "The Lord of the Rings as a Defense of Western Civilization"
by John G. West, Jr, Head of the Departme nt of Political Science at Seattle Pacific University and a Senior Fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. His publications include The Politics of Revelation and Reason, The C.S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics, and The Theology of Welfare.
In an age when writers and artists routinely scorned the wisdom of the past. . . . Tolkien's epic arrived like a bracing mountain wind, for it introduced modern readers to forms of literature that are unafraid to explore truth as well as ambiguity, beauty as well as ugliness, good as well as evil, and heroism as well as cowardice.
2. "Wartime Wisdom: Ten Uncommon Insights about Evil in The Lord of the Rings"
by Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, and the author of more than twenty-five books, including Back to Virtue, Between Heaven and Hell, Love is Stronger than Death, C.S. Lewis for the Third Millennium, and Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing.
This is our story. It is a mirror. We are fascinated by it most deeply because of its truth. . . . It is eternal truth made flesh. Only a great myth can do that astonishing feat, can translate the eternal truth of good and evil into the radically other medium of a temporal story. It makes the abstract concrete, the invisible visible, the Word flesh.
3. "The Literary Backgrounds of The Lord of the Rings
by Janet Leslie Blumberg, Professor of English (Emeritus) at Seattle Pacific University. Her research focuses on Medieval and Renaissance literature.
When you think of the legacy of what Tolkien had absorbed from Anglo-Saxon literature, then think of a dark and fatalistic world view that does not fear darkness or run away from the battle. Even in defeat, what matters is mod --inward goodness--that gleams out more strongly when we are being overwhelmed and defeated.
4. "True Myth: The Catholicism of The Lord of the Rings" by Joseph Pearce.
by Joseph Pearce, Writer-in-Residence at Ave Maria College in Michigan and co-editor of the St. Austin Review. He is author of Tolkien, Man and Myth: A Literary Life, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, and Literary Converts.
Tolkien argued that, far from being lies, myths were the best way of conveying truths which would otherwise be inexpressible. We have come from God and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God.
5. "Theology and Morality in The Lord of the Rings".
by Kerry L. Dearborn, Associate Professor of Theology at Seattle Pacific University. She has special interests in the writings of George MacDonald and the Christian imagination.
Tolkien's was a prophetic ministry, for he awakens the reader to the elf-lands, and woodlands, trees and beings that remind us that we are not in control, and that there is more to life than what we sleepily regard.
6. "The Lord of the Rings and the Meaning of Life"
by Phillip Goggans, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Seattle Pacific University. His primary scholarly interests are ancient philosophy and natural law theory.
Middle-earth, with all its wizardry and monsters, is a truer picture of the real world than the worlds fantasized by existentialists and metaphysical naturalists.
ISBN: 1-58742-012-0 (paperback) and 1-58742-013-9 (hardback), 107 pages
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