Professor Rachel Fulton Brown takes you on a journey through the creation of JRR Tolkien’s legendarium, from its origins in Tolkien’s conversations with C.S. Lewis about the power of myth to its realization in the stories of the Silmarillion. Extended version of the course that she teaches at the University of Chicago.
Episode guide: https://fencingbearatprayer.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-forge-of-tolkien.html
Syllabus and course blog: http://tolkienmedievalandmodern.blogspot.com/
Dr. Rachel Fulton Brown is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago, where she teaches courses on the history of Christianity, medieval European religious, cultural, and intellectual history, and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. She blogs as Fencing Bear at Prayer, and she lectures on Logos, Tolkien, and medieval history at UATV. The Dragon Common Room is her online classroom for training poets in the arts of the Christian imagination. She and co-creators KJ Crilly, Kilts Khalfan, and Mel Wiggin host the Mosaic Ark on her UATV Logos and History channel.
Website: https://www.dragoncommonroom.com
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In giving birth to her first and only son Curufinwë, whom she called Fëanor, “Spirit of Fire,” Míriel was so weary that she could not even weep. She took herself to the gardens of Lórien and lay down to sleep, but her spirit left her body and so she died—or did she? If her husband Finwë did not know, neither, it seems, did the Valar, who convened a council to debate whether she should be held blameworthy for giving up Hope at the cost of her child-bearing. Why was Míriel so wearied, and what happened to her body after her spirit left it? Was her husband Finwë wrong to remarry when her body lay still in the Blessed Realm? And what did telling her story teach Tolkien about his own thinking on marriage, the relation between the sexes, childbearing, and death? In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown reads the story of Fëanor’s parents through “The Laws and Customs Among the Eldar” as a reflection on the way storytelling generates theology by raising questions that even author himself cannot resolve.