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 early December 1940, Tolkien’s second oldest son Michael, then aged 20, was injured in an accident and admitted to Worcester Royal Infirmary. While there, he formed an attachment with his nurse, Joan Griffiths, and seems to have told his father that he purposed to marry her. In March 1941, Tolkien wrote a long letter to Michael about sex, marriage, and the ways of women and men, seemingly to discourage Michael from making a hasty commitment. No more inclined to listen to his father than his father had been to listen to his guardian, Fr. Francis Morgan, Michael married his nurse on November 11, 1941, three weeks after turning 21. The marriage produced three children and lasted until Joan’s death in 1982; Michael followed her to the grave in 1984, and they are buried together at St. David’s Franciscan Priory in Wales. Perhaps his father’s letter did its job after all? In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown offers a close reading of Tolkien’s argument in Letter 43, raising the question students always ask: was Tolkien a misogynist—or simply wise about the trials of living in a fallen world?