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The Lord of the Rings trilogy has delighted millions of fans worldwide in book and movie form. With the theatrical release of the two-part film The Hobbit slated for 2012 and 2013, attention will once again turn to J. R. R. Tolkien's classic works. In a culture where truth is relative and morality is viewed as old-fashioned, we welcome the chance to view the world through hobbit eyes: we have free will, our choices matter, and living a morally heroic life is possible.In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Tolkien expert Matthew Dickerson shows how a Christian worldview and Christian themes undergird Tolkien's Middle-earth writings and how they are fundamentally important to understanding his vision. This revised and expanded edition of Following Gandalf includes new material on torture, social justice, and the importance of the body.

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Christianity

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 septembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441240323
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0490€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2003, 2012 by Matthew Dickerson
Published by Brazos Press a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.brazospress.com
Revised edition of Following Grandalf , © 2003 by Matthew Dickerson
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4032-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled JB are from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, copyright © 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd. and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.
To my wife, Deborah, and my sons, Thomas, Mark, and Peter, who allowed me to read The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings (including some of the appendixes!), and even The Silmarillion as part of family read-aloud.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
References and Conventions
Abbreviations for Works by J. R. R. Tolkien
A Note on Capitalization
Introduction
Finding Meaning in Fantasy
Where Is Middle-earth?
The Making of Books
Allegory and Applicability
1. On Hobbits, the Treatment of Prisoners, and the Ethics of War
Principles of Ethics in Warfare
Torture by the Enemy
The Ethics of the Wise
The Complexities of Narratives, and of Life
2. Epic Battles
The Battle of Five Armies
The Black Gate and the Skirmish with Southrons
The Rohirrim and the Anglo-Saxons
So Fair, So Desperate
Hope and Healing
The “Contest” at Helm’s Deep
War, the Individual, and Fellowship
3. Frodo and the Wisdom of the Wise
Spotting Wisdom in Middle-earth
The Wisdom of Gandalf
Military Might and True Hope
Faramir
The Wisdom of the Bagginses
4. Military Victory or Moral Victory?
Victory, at What Cost?
The Temptation of the Ring: Gandalf and Elrond
The Temptation of the Ring: Galadriel and Faramir
5. Human Freedom and Creativity
The Reality of Choice
Aragorn and the Doom of Choice
The Prophecies
6. The Gift of Ilúvatar and the Power of the Ring
The Domination of Wills
The Flame Imperishable
The Firstborn and the Followers
Free Will and Creativity
7. Moral Responsibility and Stewardship
Objective Morality and Judgment
Moral Responsibility
Another Word on (or against) Judgment
The Steward of Middle-earth
8. The Seen and the Unseen
The Salvation of Boromir
The Salvation of Sméagol
Saruman, Denethor, and Damnation as Un-Salvation
Bilbo and Frodo: Mercy for the Merciful
Social Justice and a Rejection of Gnosticism
9. A Shift in Tone
A Deepening of Voice
Attaching a Leaf
The Presence of Ilúvatar
The Purpose of Ilúvatar
The Power of Ilúvatar
Free Will and the Hand of Ilúvatar
10. Ilúvatar’s Theme and the Real War
Not a Christian Myth?
The Missing Piece
Sorrow and Loss
A Christian Myth?
The Absence and the Presence of the Incarnation
The Theme of Ilúvatar
The Real War and the Happy Ending
Notes
Sources
Back Cover
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Tom Shippey, who remains at the forefront of Tolkien scholarship, for his many years of indispensible scholarly work that is at once profoundly insightful and very enjoyable to read, and also for his personal encouragement (and occasional suggestions) over the past few years; to several other scholars and writers who, through talks and essays and especially personal conversations, have contributed to my understanding, including Jonathan Evans, Christopher Vaccaro, Charles Taliaferro, Michael Drout, David Bratman, Colin Duriez, Peter Kreeft, Thomas Howard, Sandra Miesel, and Paul Kerry; to literary colleagues at Middlebury College for many other stimulating conversations about Tolkien and related literary topics, especially Professors Kathy Skubikowski, John Elder, and Dan Brayton; to many years of Middlebury College students who have taken my Tolkien classes and made the effort to write insightful papers and engage in class discussions; to numerous readers as well as critics of Following Gandalf for their comments; to the late Professor Marion Singleton (of Dartmouth College), to whom I am greatly indebted for her teaching on writing, and literature, and writing about literature, and for investing in me as a person; and finally to my good friend David O’Hara for his friendship over the years, not only for the frequent discussions about philosophy, myth, and literature, but even more for the numerous times when we went fishing instead of discussing philosophy, myth, or literature.
Matthew Dickerson, September 2011
References and Conventions
Citations to works by J. R. R. Tolkien are given parenthetically in the text, using the conventions and abbreviations described here and below. Citations from The Lord of the Rings are from the Houghton Mifflin second edition. Because of the many different editions and typesettings of this three-volume work (with different page numberings), references are by volume number and chapter number (rather than by page number), in uppercase and lowercase Roman numerals respectively. Thus the reference “III/iv” refers to volume 3, chapter 4 of The Lord of the Rings , a chapter titled “The Siege of Gondor” found in The Return of the King . Except where noted, Scripture citations come from the Douay-Rheims Catholic edition commonly in use during the lifetime of Tolkien. All other works (authors other than Tolkien) are cited using endnotes, with a list of sources at the end of the book.
Abbreviations for Works by J. R. R. Tolkien “Fairy” “On Fairy-Stories.” In The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays . Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Foreword Foreword to The Lord of the Rings . 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Hobbit The Annotated Hobbit . Revised and expanded ed., annotated by Douglas A. Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. “Homecoming” “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” In The Tolkien Reader . New York: Ballantine, 1966. Letters The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien . Selected and edited by Humphrey Carpenter, with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. “Monsters” “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” In The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays . Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Morgoth Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One . Vol. 10 of The History of Middle-Earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. “Niggle” “Leaf by Niggle.” In Tree and Leaf , including the poem “Mythopoeia,” with an introduction by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Prologue Prologue to The Lord of the Rings . 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Silm The Silmarillion . 1st American ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Treason The Treason of Isengard: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part Two . Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
A Note on Capitalization
There does not seem to be any standard and consistently used convention for the capitalization of races. My preferred convention is to capitalize a race (Dwarf, Hobbit, Elf, etc.) only when it is used to refer to the race as a whole, or to characteristics of that race, and to leave the word lowercased when referring to any number of individuals of that race (for example, “the hobbits Merry and Pippin” or “the hobbits of the Shire”). This convention, however, is not universally used in Tolkien scholarship, and there are places in the text where a distinction is difficult to make. For this reason, I leave lowercased all the following race names: dwarf/dwarves, elf/elves, goblin/goblins, hobbit/hobbits, orc/orcs, troll/trolls, wizard/wizards. Of these, only hobbit is a linguistic creation of Tolkien. Though his conception of elves, goblins, trolls, and even dwarves is unique, these names appear in other earlier literature and Tolkien borrowed something from previous conceptions. As for orcs, they belong to the same race as goblins, and so do not constitute a new race (even if Tolkien’s concept of them matured from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings ). Likewise, hobbits belong to the race of men and so do not constitute a new race. Only the Ents though the word ent itself, like the word orc , can be traced to Old English and Old Norse are a race entirely of Tolkien’s creation. For that reason, and to keep consistent with Tolkien’s own usage, Ent/Ents will remain capitalized, along with Entwives and Entings.
Introduction
“Middle-earth,” by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Finding Meaning in Fantasy
In October 1958, three years after J. R. R. Tolkien’s long labors writing and revising The Lord of the Rings had reached fruition with its third and final volume at last in print, [1] the author wrote a long and interesting letter to a fan named Rhona Beare. Miss Beare had posed a series of questions about the languages, history, and cultures of Middle-earth. In his response, Tolkien makes what for some readers may seem a very curious claim: Middle-earth, he explains, is our own world , and the tales told in The