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J.R.R. Tolkien 11

Restoring the Shire: A Review of The Wonders of Creation

How else does their work inspire you to think differently about your own relationship to your own places? Take action in your own property, if you have it, and in…

True Myth in Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi

We taste myth when we read Piranesi, because in the story, like in Barfield’s exploration of how the meaning of words changes over time, we are taken out of our…

Who is Tom Bombadil? In Search of the “One-Answer-To-Rule-Them-All”

Wiley, throughout his book, handles the paradoxes and tensions of Tolkien’s text not as inconsistencies to be brushed aside, but rather as brushstrokes of a master artist at work. For…

Substitution and Exchange

If such substitution and exchange were genuinely possible, would we agree with Lewis that no gift was more gladly given? Would we too readily assume we could bear another’s burden…

The Green Knight: David Lowery’s Culturally Resonant Palimpsest of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The Green Knight is a subversive film that recommends the culturally decaying virtues of generosity, courtesy, fellowship, chastity, and piety. It is a true myth worth telling.
August 16, 2021

Holly Ordway On Tolkien’s Modern Reading

Holly Ordway is Cardinal Francis George Fellow of Faith and Culture of the Word on Fire Institute. Her new book, the first from the new Word on Fire Academic imprint,…

Celebrity, Success, and the Kingdom of Heaven

Atlanta, GA. It’s been a rough few years for celebrity evangelicals. In the summer of 2019, Joshua Harris—the Calvinist pastor who became a national sensation in the late ‘90s with…

Warnings Heeded and Unheeded: A Review of Live Not by Lies

Dreher, as prophet, gives a dire warning that, if true, means that many Christian dissidents will suffer loss of job, loss of reputation, and loss of social status. Will we…

Why Aren’t There More Conservative Anarchists? On Recovering a Consistent Philosophy of Conservative Anti-Statism

Both Dreher’s and Deneen’s projects impel vital questions: how can the Faith be preserved, and how can we protect ourselves from the progressive strain of liberalism? Perhaps a synthesis of…
September 13, 2019

Alone Together on the Internet

The happy traveler is apt to become even happier as he crosses a state line into Vermont or Maine. These two misfits of the continental 48 ban billboards (Hawaii and…

The Beauty of Tolkien’s Quest

Tolkien understands the deepest of our longings and makes us understand them better than before.
Mark T. Mitchell
June 2, 2011