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
More content
b4b9e3
0
It is often said, “If you want to understand a man, read his books,” but if you want to understand the books a man wrote, you need to understand the books that he read, too. In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown explores the books in Tolkien’s library, more particularly, the books catalogued by Oronzo Cilli in Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist (2019) to determine what we can know about the sources of Tolkien’s imagination, particularly his Catholicism. We encounter some expected—C.S. Lewis, Andrew Lang—and not so expected sources (spoiler alert!), while also looking into Tolkien’s students and the lectures that he gave as a professor at Oxford. Have you ever wondered why Thomas Aquinas is so hard to read? Did Tolkien actually dislike allegory as much as he pretended? And what was it like for Peter, James, and John to see Jesus transfigured on the mountain and hear the Voice saying, “This is my beloved Son, hear Him”?