Category: Literature
A distant, glorious echo: Tolkien and typology
In his foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien boldy declares his dislike of allegory and notes that, whatever critics and readers have suggested, the novel is most certainly not an allegory. Nonetheless, Christian readers...
Romance in Pride and Prejudice: Sometimes, We Settle
It is axiomatic that an artist’s work will be admired and disdained for a single set of qualities. Some admire the breadth and passion of Beethoven while others find his stamina and pathos tedious. Some admire the precision and pacing...
Jackson and Tolkien: Hollywood’s Infatuation With Angst
Matt’s piece on The Lord of the Rings a few weeks ago nicely summed up one of the major ways in which Peter Jackson’s view of the world diverges from Tolkien’s: its profoundly different moral vision. But Jackson’s storytelling sense...
Ruminations on Joy
A few weeks ago I read Zadie Smith’s essay, “Joy,” in the New York Review of Books. If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend doing so. It’s a beautifully written, decidedly contemporary reflection on joy with a tone...
Law and Les Miserables, Revisited
Ed. note: I’m thrilled to publish this reflection by on Les Mis. by Dr. Jason Hood, a friend of mine and author of an important upcoming book on imitation that you should really preorder right now. In its opening weeks...
What’s Wrong with the Hobbits? Jackson’s Malformed Moral Universe
Jeffrey Weiss thinks that Peter Jackson doesn’t understand the moral universe of J.R.R. Tolkien. That’s a thesis that I wholeheartedly endorse. But not quite in the same way that Weiss does, or at least not with the same bit of...
Of Women and the Freedom to be Holy
There is a story told in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein about a young French man and an Arabian woman who fall in love. As Frankenstein’s monster is telling his creator about how he came to understand language, sorrow, love, and human...
Ray Bradbury, J.R. R. Tolkien, and the Benefits of Nostalgia
In an excellent piece on Ray Bradbury’s nostalgia, Andy Rau tosses off this fascinating but undeveloped parenthetical: “Of the various Christian fantasists of the 20th century, I think only J.R.R. Tolkien matches Bradbury’s sad but determined nostalgia for what we’ve...
Adults in the Body of Children: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Midsummer Night’s Dream
Alan Jacobs passed along this fascinating little bit on Lewis’s story: My real criticism of this novel relates to a different matter. It is that it ends just when it is getting interesting. The Pevensie kids become the kings and...
Waking in the Dark Wood
Midway this way of life we’re bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right way was wholly lost and gone. Canto 1:1-3, Inferno Now, this is an interesting way to start a story. From...