What is it about that word? Aroostook. The County, they call it here in Maine. A word is a tiny thing, a written word. It is smaller than a leaf—a word printed on a page. Rarely as big as a blade of grass. Don’t even bother comparing its size to a tree. And yet…. Words…
Over at Bruce Charlton’s Notions, the good professor shares some Ork-related humor: A simple household candle… or is it? Few have yet noticed the sinister resurgence of those who revere the name of Saruman. I became aware of the problem some years ago when a shiny black pillar was erected near to my place of…
Article by S. Dorman Tevildo Prince of Cats was the first imaginative incarnation of Sauron the Dark Lord, whose power was destroyed in the unmaking of his Ring in the Third Age of Middle-earth. As many know, the process of writing is drafting and redrafting, a sort of making and remaking. An early incarnation of…
Article by S.Dorman Author and journalist John Garth taught a course at Signum University on Tolkien’s War-time experience and its influence on language and creativity. J.R.R. Tolkien seems always to have been a lover of high diction, in communion with his love of philology and making languages, but Mr. Garth points out that Tolkien’s…
Article by Professor Bruce G Charlton An Inklings meeting was the (usually) Thursday late-evening meeting in CS (‘Jack’) Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford; to read work in progress, criticize it, and have conversations arising from this. It is important to recognise that the focus of the Inklings was the writing of its members; even…
Article by J. Conrad Matthews Last week, I was looking at some artwork for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I am playing in. The game had a new Dungeon Master, (not me!) and I was looking for a ‘look’ for my player. The sessions are lots of fun, the players are determining many of the…
An article by the wonderfully-named William Wildblood. The blog referred to in this article is Albion Awakening Mere Christians If there were patrons of this blog, in the sense of guiding lights, they might well be C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien with an honourable mention, particularly in Bruce Charlton’s case, of Owen Barfield. The stories…
This fascinating article about Tolkien and language is from a blog called: MARY LOVES THE UK an American’s Viewpoint of the United Kingdom Eärendil was a mariner that tarried in Arverenien; he built a boat of timber felled in Nimbrethil to journey in… ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1994) Clarification for all readers who have…
This is a repost of an article by an author with the excellent name of William WIldblood. A sentence in John Fitzgerald’s recent post set me thinking. He wrote “The body of work left behind by the Inklings has helped re-mythologise the world and baptise the contemporary imagination”. I haven’t read much by any of the…
“I can put it no plainer than than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by it’s maker. And that may be an encouraging thought.” — Gandalf What is encouraging about this thought? Only persons can mean things. If Gandalf is right, someone more powerful than Sauron is at work…