Sandra Miesel – Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work

What forms can religious experience take in a world without cult or creed? Organized religion is notably absent from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Secondary Universe of elves, dwarves, men, and hobbits despite the author’s own deep Catholic faith. Tolkien stated that his goal was „sub-creating” a universe whose natural form of religion would not directly contradict Catholic theology. Essays in Light Beyond All Shadow examine the full sweep of Tolkien’s legendarium, not only The Lord of the Rings but also The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and The History of Middle-Earth series plus Peter Jackson’s film trilogy.

Contributions to Light Beyond All Shadow probe both the mind of the maker and the world he made to uncover some of his fictional strategies, such as communicating through imagery. They suggest that Tolkien’s Catholic imagination was shaped by the visual appeal of his church’s worship and iconography. They seek other influences in St. Ignatius Loyola’s meditation technique and St. Philip Neri’s „Mediterranean” style of Catholicism. They propose that Tolkien communicates his story through Biblical typology familiar in the Middle Ages as well as mythic imagery with both Christian and pagan resonances. They defend his „comedy of grace” from charges of occultism and Manichaean dualism. They analyze Tolkien’s Christian friends, the Inklings, as a supportive literary community. They show that within Tolkien’s world, Nature is the Creator’s first book of revelation.

Like its earlier companion volume, The Ring and the Cross, edited by Paul E. Kerry, scholarship gathered in Light Beyond All Shadow aids our appreciation of what is real, meaningful, and true in Tolkien’s work.

List of Contributors: Russell W. Dalton, Matthew Dickerson, Colin Duriez, Julian Tim Morton Eilmann, Christopher Garbowski, Glen Robert Gill, Roger Ladd, Robert Lazu, Jared Lobdell, Sandra Miesel, John Warwick Montgomery, Anne C. Petty

About the Editors:

Paul E. Kerry is associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, visiting fellow at the Woolf Institute, and research associate at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge at Corpus Christi College, and visiting fellow at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge.

Sandra Miesel has analyzed, written and edited science fiction and fantasy. She is a frequent contributor of essays to the Catholic press on history, hagiography, and art   źródło opisu: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011 źródło okładki: Zdjęcie autorskie