Inklings

Review: The Last Romantic

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Cover image of "The Last Romantic" by Jeffrey W. Barbeau

The Last Romantic (Hansen Lectureship Series), Jeffrey W. Barbeau with contributions from Sarah Borden, Matthew Lundin, and Keith L. Johnson. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514010518) 2025.

Summary: The influence of Romanticism on C.S. Lewis in terms of imagination, subjectivity, memory and identity, and the sacraments.

As a young Christian, the logical arguments of Mere Christianity were helpful in confirming me in my own Christian conviction. They also served as a source of “reasons to believe” that i could share with my friends. So I went on to read other works by Lewis including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. These works captured my imagination and evoked both fear and love for the Lion who was on the move. Then I read Surprised by Joy, and how joy served as a signpost for Lewis in his journey to faith.

Jeffrey W. Barbeau helps me understand the subjective experience and Christian imagination I found in Lewis and its connection to the objective, logical arguments Lewis made for the Christian faith. What Barbeau develops in this book, a transcript of three Hansen Lectures, is the influence of nineteenth century Romantics on the thought of C.S. Lewis. He begins, though, with a debate during 1967 at his own institution, Wheaton College. Was Lewis’s thought infused with “the Romantic heresy”? The principles were Clyde Kilby, who obtained Lewis’s papers for Wheaton and introduced many in this country to Lewis, and Morris Inch, who took Lewis’s subjectivity to task.

Studying the marginalia in Lewis’s books, Barbeau traces interaction with Schleiermacher, Hegel, Marx, and Kant. He also shows the profound influence of Wordsworth, and especially Coleridge upon Lewis. While Lewis recognized that subjectivity could mislead, it could also evoke and mirror objective reality and point toward it. He shows how often in Lewis’s work, he begins with the personal to point toward the general, objective truth.

In the second lecture, Barbeau turns to what he calls “the anxiety of memory.” He observes that Lewis, in Surprised by Joy and A Grief Observed, draws on nineteenth century spiritual biography. He parallel’s Lewis to Sarah Eliza Congdon or Elmira, New York and the Journal she kept of her spiritual journey. Lewis didn’t know of Congdon but possessed a copy of John Wesley’s Journal. Again, for Lewis, Wordsworth and Coleridge released him from concerns about the “suffocatingly subjective” character of his own experience. Rather, Coleridge’s ability to connect spiritual intuition with objective theological truth was critical in the lead-up to Lewis’s conversion.

Finally, the third lecture focuses on how Romanticism influenced Lewis use of symbol. He unpacks Lewis’s view of nature, imagination, and of experiences of God. Barbeau shows how Lewis differed with figures like Nietzsche and Emerson, distinguishing nature’s power from nature worship. It is actually in the commonplaces of food and drink, and with our neighbors that we may most deeply encounter God, as in the bread and cup of the sacrament.

A distinctive contribution of Barbeau’s scholarship is his study not only of Lewis’s works but of his library. Lewis’s marginalia points to what he was thinking as he read philosophy, theology, and the works of the Romantics. Not only that, Barbeau retrieves Romanticism from the dustbin of evangelical thought as he elucidates the influence of figures like Coleridge on Lewis. It turns out the personal, the subjective, and the imagination may well point us to objective truth. Both cannot help but be inextricably involved in the Christian journey.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Reading Life

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Cover image of "The Reading Life" by .C.S. Lewis.

The Reading Life, C. S. Lewis. Harper One (ISBN: 9780062849977) 2019.

Summary: Essays and brief readings from his books, essay collections, and letters on the joys of reading.

It was a serendipitous find while looking for something else. This is not a “lost” book of C.S. Lewis but a recent compilation of writing by C, S. Lewis drawn from his various books as well as his correspondence. And all of this is on our lives as readers. What’s not to like for a C.S. Lewis fan and bibliophile, right?

Some of the material was familiar, for example his “The Case for Reading Old Books” in which he advocates we read one old book for every new one we read (or at least for every three. Or there is the biographical piece from Surprised by Joy on “Growing Up Amidst a Sea of Books.” But there are a number of pieces I either haven’t read or don’t remember (I don’t have Lewis’s eidetic memory).

The first part of the book contains his longer essays, though only one, on “The Achievements of J.R.R.Tolkien,” is longer than ten pages. “Why We Read, ” from An Experiment in Criticism, serves as a good introduction to the whole collection. Lewis makes the point that “[w]e want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own.” This is followed by “How to Know if You are a True Reader.” He offers five criteria, and I qualified. I suspect many drawn to this book qualify as well, or are on their way! There are wonderful discussions about children’s literature (the best being not just for children) fairy tales (as less deceptive than “realistic’ stories), and the marvellous.

One of the most important for our day is his discussion of “How to Murder Words.” We do so through inflation, verbiage, and speaking less descriptively and more evaluatively. We are “more anxious to express approval and disapproval of things than to describe them” Yet how can we judge a thing without knowing what it is? The following essay on “Saving Words from the Eulogistic Abyss” carries on this theme. The danger in our careless and imprecise use of words is that “[m]en do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say.”

As rich as was the first part, the short readings in the latter part of the book were an absolute find. Excerpted mostly from letters, I’d never seen most of this. For example, Lewis offers this pithy observation in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves: “If only one had time to read a little more: we either get shallow & broad or narrow and deep.” Like many of us, Lewis loved not only reading but also “Talking About Books.” He encourages reading for enjoyment, especially for children, denounces literary snobs, and says “all sensible people skip freely” that which is of no use to them.

Then there are the readings offering opinions of various writers. He praises Dante but excoriates Alexandre Dumas. He speaks of the utter importance of Plato and Aristotle, opines on Shakespeare and Tolstoy. And he has nothing but good to say about Jane Austen (in contrast to Henry James). He boasts: “I’ve been reading Pride and Prejudice on and off all my life and it doesn’t wear out a bit.”

I’ve only offered a sampler of the riches to be found in this slim volume. It is a gift to have so many of Lewis’s thoughts on reading in one place. I’ll leave you with his concluding comment on “Good Reading”:

A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling.

Review: Beren and Lúthien

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Cover image of "Beren and Lúthien" by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

Beren and Lúthien, J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien, with illustrations by Allen Lee. HarperCollins (ISBN: 9781328915337) 2018.

Summary: An edited collection of different versions and extracts of one of the most celebrated love stories of Middle-earth.

The tale of the love story of Beren and Lúthien was considered by J.R.R. Tolkien one of the chief stories of The Silmarillion, published posthumously with the editorial work of his son Christopher. Beren and Lúthien is one of the last edited works by Christopher Tolkien before his death in 2020, along with The Fall of Gondolin, which followed it. It reflects Christopher’s work in collecting, ordering, and editing his father’s various writings in creating the world of Middle-earth. As in other works, Tolkien’s telling of the story evolved over time and this work shows that development.

The story in brief, is of Beren, a refugee of wars with Morgoth that wiped out his people. He wanders into the elvish realm of king Thingol. There, he sees Lúthien (or Tinuviel) dancing in a glade and falls in love, which Lúthien reciprocates. But her father sets a high price for her hand, a Simaril (a precious and powerful jewel) in the crown of Morgoth. After many perils Beren is imprisoned. There are various versions, one involving imprisonment by a great cat. Sauron holds him captive in another. Lúthien, whose dances have the power to enthrall to sleep, comes to his rescue, aided by the great hound, Huan. They succeed in liberating Beren. Subsequently, she uses her powers to enter Morgoth’s fortress, subduing to sleep Morgoth long enough for Beren to cut the Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown.

Alas, they cannot escape without encountering the great wolf who guards the gate of Morgoth, now wide awake. All Beren can do is ram his hand down the wolf’s throat, which bites it off, holding the Silmaril, which drives the wolf mad, allowing their escape. How they recover the Silmaril and the further lore around Beren and Lúthien, in several versions, are all here.

As I’ve mentioned. Christopher Tolkien provides various versions of the story and extracts of parts of it from an early rendering with the cat, later replaced by Sauron, various passages with variations on the story, a lengthy verse rendering of much of the story in The Lay of Leithian, and various versions of the return and afterlife of Beren and Lúthien, as well as the subsequent history of the Silmaril.

In addition, Alan Lee provides nine full-color plates of incidents in the tale. Also, Christopher Tolkien adds an annotated list of names and glossary. This is helpful to keep straight so many names of persons and places.

In conclusion, Christopher Tolkien gives Middle-earth fans a trove of background surrounding this great story. In doing so, he helps us understand afresh the monumental world-building effort of J.R.R. Tolkien. It was so great that it took two generations (at least) to bring it all into published form.

Review: Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth

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Cover image of "Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth" by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. William Morrow (ASIN: B00796E7CA), 2012 (originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 1980).

Summary: A collection of stories, many in unfinished state, by J.R.R. Tolkien providing background information on the three ages of Numenor and Middle Earth, edited by his son.

The creation of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) is perhaps one of the most astounding instances of worldbuilding in fantasy fiction. Tolkien not only creates Middle-Earth but a whole history surrounding the events in his stories. He invented the languages spoken by the different races. He wrote backstories of many key figures appearing in these works or mentioned. Tolkien intended to publish at least some of this material but it was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1973.

Tolkien’s son, Christopher, has made a life’s work of marshalling this literary inheritance into print, beginning with The Silmarillion, in 1977. Here, Christopher Tolkien wove the extant fragments his father had written into a cohesive narrative of the three ages of Middle Earth. In Lost Tales, we see some of the raw materials with which he worked. Sometimes Tolkien changed names, or events. What Christopher Tolkien does is give us these stories, with some editing on his part, along with an extensive set of notes, annotations as it were on the text, changes made, and so forth.

The stories offer helpful background for any dedicated reader of Tolkien. The book follows the three ages of Middle Earth.

Part One: The First Age

This includes the story of Tuor, son of Huor, his captivity in and escape from Morgoth. Tolkien renders Tuor’s journey with the elf, Voronwe, and his coming to Gondolin, carrying the message of Ulmo, and being revealed in all his greatness. Also included is the tragic story of Hurin, son of Turin, involving his marriage to Nienor, not knowing she was his sister.

Part Two: The Second Age

This part opens with a description of the geography, people, and some history of Numenor, often referred to in LOTR. “Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife” tells the story of a prince who loves the sea, and voyaging to Middle Earth more than his wife. Perhaps most moving is the step his father the king takes in resigning his throne to this son. Tolkien follows with an account of the lineage of the kings of Numenor. The part ends with the marriage of Celeborn and Galadriel and we learn of the sadness that marked her life as well as her distinctive greatness.

Part Three: The Third Age

This section begins with the death of Isildur and the loss of the Great Ring in the battle of Gladden Fields. “Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan” traces the beginnings and long alliance between Rohan and Gondor, so crucial in the final war of the Ring. One of the delights of this collection is the story Gandalf tells Frodo of why he chose Bilbo as the thief to help the dwarves retake the Lonely Mountain. In “The Hunt for the Ring” we learn of the Nine Riders search for The Ring from when Gollum was questioned until Frodo leaves the Shire–as if we didn’t think the Nine sinister enough! In LOTR, we know Theoden lost his son in the battle of Isen. The final story is the account of this battle.

Part Four

The final part of the book includes three background essays. The first gives the background of the Druedain, wild men who inhabited the forests. The second and third were of greater interest. In “The Ishtari,” we learn the history of the wizards, sent by the Valar. We learn there were five, two who passed into the east and out of history. Tolkien traces the long and hidden resentment of Saruman toward Gandalf and of his treachery. Tolkien gives us all the names by which each were known. The last essay describes the nature and number of the Palantiri, including how they were used for seeing and communicating.

Christopher Tolkien appends an Index giving all the names used in the stories and a brief description of each–incredibly useful.

Comments

The success of this work encouraged Christopher Tolkien to embark on his twelve volume History of Middle Earth. This revealed to me the power of Tolkien’s worldmaking. We re-read his major works and want to read more of this world. That’s why an edited collection of unfinished works holds such a fascination. We will wade through pages of notes and even revel in indexes. We want to fix in our minds the contours of this world.

This is not for Tolkien newbies. Rather, it is for dedicated readers who aren’t contented with mere references to Numenor. This is for the afficionado, the one who wants to read everything connected with Tolkien. I would read it after The Silmarillion, which it followed, and after reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The stories vary in quality. The account of Turin and that of Aldarion and Erendis are great tragedies. The story of the choosing of Bilbo is just great fun. The lineage of Numenor’s kings and the essay on the Druedain fell into the category of “for your information.”

Review: The Wonders of Creation

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The Wonders of Creation: Learning Stewardship from Narnia and Middle-Earth (The Hansen Lectureship Series), Kristen Page, with contributions from Christina Bieber Lake, Noah J. Toly, and Emily Hunter McGowin. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: Discusses the value of Lewis’s and Tolkien’s fictional landscapes in fostering love and care for the creation of which we are part.

I think it may safely be said that those of us who love the stories of Narnia and Middle-Earth love not only the stories but the places in which they occur. We imagine finding wardrobes leading into a forest with a lamppost or staying with the elves in Lothlorien. We delight in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver and take deep offense at the industrialization of the Shire and the assault on Fangorn Forest.

Kristen Page, a professor of biology and lifelong lover of these stories believes these stories have a power in them to encourage us to care for the creation we live in and not just the imagined ones of Narnia or Middle-Earth. She sets out her case in three chapters, reflecting the three lectures she gave as part of The Hansen Lectureship Series at The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. She is joined in this volume by Christina Bieber Lake, Noah J. Toly, and Emily Hunter McGowin who each offer a short response to one of her chapters.

In the first chapter, “Stepping Out of the Wardrobe,” Page shares her twin loves of reading about fictional landscapes and reading actual landscapes, something she teaches her students to do. She proposes that the fictional landscapes of Lewis and Tolkien, particularly forests, reflect the careful observation both men made of actual forests, particularly in the detailed descriptions of fictional places they offer in their books. She sees the connection going both ways. Treebeard’s outrage with what Saruman has done to trees he knew by name can translate to our own outrage at human depredations of our forests and land. She decries the plant blindness of many of our children, the removal of plant vocabulary from children’s dictionaries to make room for tech terms, and believes books like those of Lewis and Tolkien’s are one step in restoring plant literacy and the love of growing things. She also sees the hobbits care for the Shire as a model of sustainable practices.

The second chapter, “A Lament for the Creation,” begins with the scouring of the Shire when the hobbits return. Men from the south have turned it into an industrial wasteland, impoverishing its once flourishing inhabitants. The hobbits give themselves to setting things right. She then turns to our own ravaged ecosystems, oceans, rivers, the atmosphere and considers how stories may awaken us to action. She begins with our over-consumption, where we tax the capacity of the earth to restore itself and the industry created brownfields, often adjacent to the urban poor, whose health is impacted by their proximity. She also brings in her own research on how the destruction of habitats increase the threat of novel viruses and diseases as humans and animal species are brought into closer contact. Cocoa plantation spread in Africa, for example, correlates with the increased incidence of Ebola. She quotes an extended passage in Perelandra in which Ransom refuses to partake of a uniquely delicious fruit more than would sustain him, sensing this would not be right, suggesting that we might develop a similar sense. She proposes that lament, both for the creation and the harms that our excesses have caused our neighbors may lead to change, just as Fangorn’s lament in the company of the hobbits led to the resolve to act.

The third chapter, “Ask the Animals to Teach You,” is about regaining wonder. Whether it is the wonder of talking animals including the lordly Aslan, or the beauty of Lothlorien, reading these works fosters wonder for Page, as do her studies of animals, and of plant life. Tom Bombadil teaches us to take delight in things for themselves without reference to ourselves. Tolkien understood that trees communicate, which scientists are discovering to be the case. Wonder leads us to love the physical creation and give ourselves to care for and tend it.

Page’s presentations are accompanied by a center section of a selection of her exquisite nature photography. The responses by Lake, Toly, and McGowin are brief, adding their own disciplinary insights and personal experiences. I’ve appreciated all the Hansen Lectureship books that I’ve read, but this was a special treat. Most have featured humanities professors, who understandably bring their discipline’s critical skills to bear in their discussion of the Wade authors. This was so delightful as a scientist who is a devoted reader of Lewis and Tolkien, but not a scholar in their works, connected her scientific scholarship to the worlds and landscapes Lewis and Tolkien create and that readers love, and how this may open our eyes to our own world. May we read and love and care for those landscapes as deeply as is fitting of true lovers of Narnia and Middle-Earth!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Splendour in the Dark

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Splendour in the Dark, Jerry Root, annotations of Dymer by David C. Downing. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: An annotated edition of C. S. Lewis’s Dymer and three presentations with responses given as part of the Hansen Lectureship series at Wheaton’s Marion E. Wade Center.

Many of us, including me, who are fans of the works of C. S. Lewis have never read Dymer, his book-length narrative poem. There may be several reasons for this. It is poetry, less popular with many than prose. It does not receive the circulation that many of Lewis’s works have. Also, it was written before Lewis’s return to faith. Also, as a work of his youth, most critics thought it wasn’t very good.

This work, a product of the Ken and Jean Hansen Lectureship may help make up for this on several fronts. The lectureship, taking place at Wheaton’s Marion E. Wade Center, which houses works and papers of Lewis, Tolkien, Sayers, and others in their literary circle, features scholarship on the Wade Center authors. Jerry Root is a Lewis scholar and author of several books. The book which includes the lectures by Root followed by responses, also opens with the poem, lightly annotated by David C. Downing, another Lewis scholar. Downing’s annotations are sparing, illuminating rather than distracting from the text. I recommend reading the poem first, followed by the lectures.

The poem was written in rhyme royal, a rhyme scheme used by Chaucer. The scheme is ABABBCC and the lines are in iambic pentameter. It consists of nine cantos, elaborating a narrative that had come to Lewis in his teens–and though written in his twenties, has that feel. A young man in the Perfect City is sitting in class, bored with lectures, gazes out the window, hears a lark, kills his lecturer and flees the city for nature. He wanders naked through a forest, finds a mansion-castle, wanders its halls, makes love with a woman he encounters, not knowing her name or remembering his face but knows that he loves her. After going out in the morning, he is barred from returning by an old crone who drives him away. In his wanderings he survives a narrow scrape with death, encounters a man suffering wounds from a revolt in the city that followed on Dymer’s actions led by a rebel named Bran. Perhaps as penance, he stays with the man until he dies, hears a lark, then a shot and comes upon a magician’s house and learned that the magician shot the lark. Drugged, Dymer dreams of his lover but recognizes these are dreams, awakens, cries for water, jumps through the window and escapes, being mortally wounded in the process. An angel comes, saying there is one more thing he must do–engage the beast laying waste to the land that is the offspring of his night in the castle. He does, he dies and the land springs to life.

Sounds like male adolescent imaginings to me! Yet there is also a journey into increasing insight, the shattering of illusions and a development from self-absorption to self-sacrifice. Sometimes the language seems stilted by the rhyme scheme, and at other times it soars.

All these things are acknowledged in the lectures and responses. Root argues that the big idea in this poem is that “reality is iconoclastic”–that it shatters idols, and that this poem was the place where Lewis first addressed this idea that recurs in Chronicles, Surprised by Joy, and other works all the way to Till We Have Faces. In his first lecture, Root retells the story (far better than my summary above) and traces the development of the idea. The second lecture focuses on the influences upon Lewis in writing the poem, mainly in mythology and the “Christina dream” of Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh. The third lecture then shows how the idea that reality is iconoclastic and many of the images of the early poem recur in deeper and richer form in Lewis’s later works. If Dymer is not a great work, it is certainly one helpful in understanding Lewis’s journey back to faith and the artistic imagination, informed and deepened by his faith, evident in his later works.

One example of how Root connects the imagery of Dymer to later works is noting the use of the mirror. In Dymer, the character sees a naked, wild-eyed man in the mansion-castle, only to realize it is himself he is seeing in a mirror. This occurs in The Great Divorce in the bus ride from hell to heaven, with Eustace Scrubb in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and with Queen Orual in Till We Have Faces. Root notes that these iconoclastic experiences not only reveal the really real, but expose the true self and fuel a quest for meaning, one that would eventually lead Lewis back into the arms of Christian faith.

Both Jeffrey Davis and Mark Lewis remind us of the flaws of the work, and Davis thinks that Lewis’s failure as a poet may have been a good thing, given the later impact of his prose work. Miho Nonaka, though slightly more appreciative of Root’s efforts also finds that Lewis may have been too close to Dymer, despite Lewis’s disavowals, and also critiques the intrusion of the narrator’s voice in his children’s fiction.

Even given these criticisms, really more of Lewis, Jerry Root (and the Hansen Lectureship) have done us a great favor in bringing Dymer to our attention. As I mentioned, I knew of the work but had relegated it to Lewis’s atheist years, seeing it, as it were, the work of a different author. Root helps show us the continuity rather than discontinuity in this work, the idea that reality is iconoclastic that will recur in later works, and the reflection on Lewis’s own development. Root (and Downing) have done a great service to every Inkling in acquainting us with this work!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Defending Middle-Earth

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Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien: Myth and Modernity, Patrick Curry. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Summary: A study of the enduring power of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, tracing it to both its counter to modernity and its genius as modern myth.

Many in the critical community have puzzled over the public acceptance and staying power of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Patrick Curry notes that Tolkien has been described as “paternalistic, reactionary, anti-intellectual, racist, fascistic and…irrelevant.” Curry believes the nature of the books account for their success. It is a myth about an earlier age of the earth drawn from both Norse and Anglo-Saxon material, fashioned into a truly unique place, not to be read allegorically, yet one that speaks into late modernity, a project more or less exhausted.

He describes the work as centered around three domains. The first is the social, centered around the Shire, where community, local government, and love of place dominate. There are many such places throughout Middle-Earth from Lothlorien to Fangorn forest to Gondor, all standing in contrast to the soulless industrial wasteland of Mordor. The social domain is nested within a second domain, an ecological or natural one of Middle-Earth. Everything, from the mountains and rivers to Tolkien’s beloved trees, pulses with life and the peoples of Middle-Earth live harmoniously within these domains–Elves in the forests, dwarves in the mountains and hobbits in the Shire, and the Ents shepherding their trees. Surrounding Middle-Earth is the Sea representing the spiritual–the ethical, the questions of death and life, the ultimate.

Curry’s exploration of the latter notes how Tolkien did not impose Christian theology by another name on his story, unlike the Narnia Chronicles of C. S. Lewis. Oddly enough, Curry notes that Tolkien combines a polytheistic pantheon at war with evil with a kind of animism, that resacralizes nature. All this combines with Christian virtues of humility, courage, hospitality, and compassion drawing together a fellowship of the “differents.”

Curry proposes that a Middle-Earth with this character, these domains, speaks powerfully to modernity-weary readers, tired of big and bureaucratic states, alarmed by the exploitation of the planet, and groping for a spirituality that embraces all of life. But he believes it is also powerful, certainly in the English speaking world because Tolkien succeeded in his project of fashioning a contemporary myth, a story neither true nor false, but one that explains something of the origins and place and future of not only those in the story but that of the reader as well.

Curry’s discussion rings true for me in many ways. The Shire of the hobbits is the local membership of Wendell Berry’s Port William, calling us away from identity-less exurbia. The love of all nature, and especially the forests speaks into a land stripped of trees, seemingly destined for a Mordor-like wasteland. Then there is the surrounding sea, the reminder of lives answerable to something greater, destined for something beyond, longing for God knows what.

Finally the mythopoeic elements helps explain the power of this story for me, that only grows as I age–not merely the adventure but the hope and loss of which life consists. And there is the power of traveling with the Fellowship, the Nine who faced wonder and danger and sorry and strove to overcome. Having traveled so far, and through so many readings, we each face the question of what then shall we be and “what to do with the time that is given us.”

Review: The Road to Middle-Earth

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The Road to Middle Earth

The Road to Middle-Earth, Tom Shippey. New York: Houghton Mifflin, rev. ed. 2003.

Summary: A study of Tolkien’s methods in creating the narratives of Middle-Earth, including words, names, maps, poetry, and mythology.

For most of us who have read (and re-read) J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and other stories, we marvel at the world Tolkien creates, complete with fascinating names, a variety of languages with poetry and mythologies of beginnings, and the entry of evil into their world. Creatures who previously only inhabited the fairy tales of childhood come alive: dwarves, elves, trolls, wights, and orcs, as well as Tolkien’s unique creation, those lovable hobbits. One wonders, how did he do all that? We might wonder where Christopher Tolkien, his son, has gotten all the material for twelve volumes of Middle-Earth history and more.

Tom Shippey’s book helps answer that question, and is a boon to those who wish to delve (an appropriate word) into the depths underneath the stories we love. Shippey begins with what it meant for Tolkien to be a philologist. It was a time when the field of English studies was riven between “lit versus lang.” Tolkien was a philologist. He loved languages, particularly the languages from which modern English came. Shippey observes that for Tolkien, the story arose from the language and the world he created provided a place for the languages. The book traces all of this, the people and place names, the poetry and song, the map of Middle-Earth and a mythology to make sense of it all.

He analyzes the stories and what he calls “interlacement” as a series of different stories intersect in this grand story. He also unfolds Tolkien’s lifetime work of establishing the history behind The Lord of the Rings, including the account that made up The Silmarillion, finished by Christopher Tolkien. Tolkien worked for decades on various pieces of the history, developing languages, drawing on Old English and other languages to come up with words, and then going back and forth, harmonizing his account. He would devise stories and characters like Tom Bombadil and then try to fit them into his growing narrative. Names changed over times as Trotter became Strider and Aragorn. It appears that Tolkien often could be drawn down rabbit trails as he sought to elaborate the bones of the history of Middle-Earth. The story “Leaf by Niggle” is a parable of Tolkien’s creative process. It is a story of an artist so meticulous that he only paints one leaf. Oh, what a leaf Tolkien painted, even if he left much unfinished work to Christopher!

The book includes several afterwords, the most interesting of which is a comparison of the text of Lord of the Rings with Peter Jackson’s version, underscoring what can be done with text versus film, and the plot choices Jackson made, sometimes illuminating, sometimes questionable.

If all the poems and strange names in Lord of the Rings are off-putting to you, this probably isn’t the book for you. Shippey plunges deeply into all of this and Tolkien’s creative process that resulted in the story. It can be heavy wading, and is probably done best after reading Lord of the Rings several times and having the text at your side. If you love all this stuff, you will love this book and won’t mind some of the sections which get fairly technical with lots of unfamiliar words.

Tolkien probably started developing the ideas that led to The Lord of the Rings around 1914. The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954 and 1955. His other major work, The Silmarillion, was published posthumously in 1977. In an era where some fan fiction writers crank out a work every year or two, Shippey helps us understand why it took so long to produce these works and why these works are considered so great by so many. Shippey makes the case that in creating this mythology in the English language, Tolkien was “The Author of the Century.” Tolkien did not merely create a story. He created a world.

Review: Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality

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Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality

Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality, Gary S. Selby. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.

Summary: A survey of the works of C.S. Lewis through the lens of their incarnational spirituality, discussing how Lewis brings together spiritual formation and the embodied life.

One of the intriguing questions about the works of C. S. Lewis is how one accounts for their popularity and staying power. I believe one of the responses Gary S. Selby might give is the ability Lewis had to connect spiritual truth to our lived experiences as flesh and blood human beings. He writes:

“Red beef and strong beer.” Those were the words C. S. Lewis used to describe life under the rigorous tutelage of his beloved mentor, William T. Kirkpatrick, “The Great Knock”. . . .

Lewis’s choice of words to describe the crucible of Kirkpatrick’s instruction clearly shows his gift for using language to stir our imagination. It also underscores his appreciation for the earthy, embodied stuff of life. Lewis loved food, drink, laughter, and good conversation. He relished an amble in the English countryside, a joy made all the more delightful by his anticipation of the cozy fire and pint of ale that awaited him in a pub at day’s end. But I also believe that this phrase gives us a clue to what, for Lewis, it meant to be spiritual. It points to the possibility that savoring the sensations of taste and touch, sight and smell and hearing, these experiences that are often the richest of our earthly lives, represented a doorway into the presence of God and the first step of the spiritual journey (pp. 1-2).

In this book, Selby surveys the works of Lewis to develop the character of Lewis’s “earthy” spirituality, which he sees as the antidote to a kind of spirituality detached from our bodily existence. He begins by tracing what is perhaps the most well-known account of this in Surprised by Joy, recounting Lewis’s experiences of longing, punctuated by joy and sometimes sadness or wistfulness, as he read Norse poetry or glimpsed a beautiful scene in nature or even his brother’s imaginary world of Boxen. While we long for our Creator, we are often put off by perceptions of God as distant or severe, until we, like Lewis discover the God who is “not safe–but good.” He narrates the negative spirituality of Lewis’s early life, paralleled at many points by the counsel Screwtape receives, and the redemption of ordinary and everyday desire that points to the glory of God. He speaks of a new kind of consciousness, contrasted with the illusions that accompany the existence of the damned, that becomes honestly self aware of one’s sin, as well as the grace to choose the will of God. He goes on to treat the development of virtue in our lives.

“Retinas and Palates” resumes the discussion of physical pleasures in which these are taken up into praise that says “my God, how wonderful you are” and turns the delight in earthy things such as food or sex or beauty properly enjoyed into the praise of their Maker. Temptation to sin is to turn such pleasures away from God toward oneself in ways forbidden. Likewise, when we learn to delight in and learn from “the other,” those different from us, we are immeasurably enriched. He uses Lewis’s Space Trilogy to trace the development of Ransom as he encounters the various species of Malacandra and the unfallen Green Lady of Perelandra that fits him to lead the resistance to That Hideous Strength in his little religious community of St. Anne’s. I had never thought of how his experiences of the Other might have fitted him for this.

Selby concludes with Lewis’s portrayal of the Christian hope of resurrected embodied life, a life even more real, “harder” and “deeper” and more beautiful than all we have experienced. He ends where he began, with joy, and how often we disconnect joy from God, when in fact joy is at the heart of what it means to be the redeemed, embodied creatures of God.

So what is the value of one more book about C. S. Lewis and his works? In Lewis’s “Meditation in a Toolshed,” Lewis distinguishes between looking at a beam of light versus looking along that beam.  Selby’s work helps us look along a particular beam of the writing of Lewis, the light it sheds on Lewis richly textured embodied spirituality. We might notice hints of that as we look at his works, but Selby invites us to see along the beam of the earthy spirituality running through Lewis’s works, to see the source of pleasure and joy and how this might shape embodied lives of worship, virtue and hope. This book helped me not only see new things in Lewis but helped me recognize with greater clarity the connections between the experiences of everyday life in the body and the good God who so made us.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

 

 

Review: The Greater Trumps

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The Greater Trumps

The Greater Trumps, Charles Williams. New York: Open Road Media, 2015 (originally published in 1932).

Summary: An legacy of a singular pack of tarot cards that correspond to images of the Greater Trumps arranged in a dance on a platform of gold in the retreat of a gypsy master drives his grandson to risk love and life to uncover the powers of the cards.

Charles Williams is known as one of the members of the Inklings who wrote supernatural fantasy thrillers. Lesser known was his interest in the occult arts, particularly through the influence of A. E. Waite and his Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. This work reflects some of those interests, centered around the Tarot.

Lothair Coningsby, an English civil servant of undistinguished refinement, inherits a small legacy from a friend including various packs of cards. Among them is a most unusual early set of Tarot cards representing the Greater Trumps, a suit of twenty-two cards. As it happens, his daughter Nancy is deeply in love with Henry Lee, a descendant of Gypsies, whose grandfather, Aaron is a master who has devoted his life to the studies of occult mysteries. In his home is an inner sanctum with a gold table on which the figures of the Greater Trumps are arranged in the dance. When Henry sees the cards he realizes that they are the exact visual counterparts of the statues on his grandfather’s table. To bring the cards together with the statues would be to unleash great power, and great insights into the mysteries of the universe.

Henry explains their powers to Nancy:

“It’s said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That’s of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it’s said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.”

There is only one problem. Coningsby will not part with the cards. So Henry and his grandfather invite the Coningsbys to spend the Christmas holidays. This includes not only Lothair and Nancy, but also Sybil, the most spiritually centered, who seems to have a mystical communion with the world about her, and brother Ralph, a young man who lives in a common-sense, practical world. Coningsby reluctantly brings the cards and permits them to be tested in the presence of the figures, which come to life in a glorious dance. When Coningsby continues to withhold the cards, Henry determines to “borrow” the cards, and use them to whip up a super cyclonic snow storm to strand Lothair, out for his Christmas walk, and bring about his death.

He succeeds in whipping up the storm, but Nancy catches him in the act, disrupting his efforts, but also the power to end the storm. Lothair is saved when Sybil braves the storm, and with the help of Henry’s half-crazed Aunt Joanna, brings him back to the house. But this is only a temporary respite as the unleashed powers behind the snow storm threaten the destruction of the house, and all those in it.

Is there a power greater than that unleashed by the cards? When arcane knowledge cannot save, is there anything else that can? Nancy, Sybil, and even Lothair and Henry choose in different ways to lay down their lives. Will they succeed, and what will happen to them in the process? What will happen to crazed Joanna, and will she find the lost child?

Like William’s other works, seemingly unremarkable people in an ordinary English village and manor house become caught up supernatural events reflecting unleashed spiritual powers in a sequence of fantastic and sometimes bizarre events (like the gold cloud). Christians who have reservations reading about the “occult” may decide this work is not for them. Yet what Williams portrays is both the perils of the pursuit of spiritual power and hidden knowledge, and the greater power of love.