Explore the creative vision behind The Lord of the Rings as we read and discuss some of JRR Tolkien’s lesser-known poems, essays, and short stories.

Where: Media Room (front Library conference room)

Who: Drew Masterson

When: Bi-weekly on Friday at 2:30 p.m. (starting Jan 24)

Contact: Drew at drew@studycenter.net

Stories as epic and immersive as JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings don’t just happen. Tolkien’s great, decades-long endeavor to expand and develop Middle Earth flowed from a very thoughtful vision of human creativity and mythic storytelling. Indeed, it arose out of a profoundly Christian understanding of human nature.

In a handful of essays, poems, letters, and short stories, Tolkien offers us this majestic yet humble vision of the core human vocation, as he defends the merits of storytelling from his many Modernist and materialist critics. This small group will dive into some of those texts as we seek to better understand how Tolkien viewed his literary work. Ultimately, we aim to let Tolkien clarify our own vision of the primary human decision: what to do with the time that is given us.

Some of what we will read together:

- “Mythopoeia”: Tolkien’s poetic defense of the fundamental truthfulness of myths, written for a skeptical CS Lewis

- “On Fairy Stories”: the closest thing Tolkien ever wrote to an artistic manifesto

- “Smith of Wooten Major”: Tolkien’s greatest “fairy story”

- “Leaf by Niggle”: A profound, allegorical meditation on the eternal implications of our mortal lives