Tolkien, the Inklings, and the Modern World

An intensive one-week Classical Learning Resource Center Course, June 8-11

We’ll explore the writings of the “Christian fantasists” of Oxford in the context of contemporary historical issues. The class will read and discuss The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien, The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis, and selections from Hannah Arendt’s The Origins Of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem, and from Ivan Ilyin’s On Resistance to Evil by Force. The focus will be on how Tolkien, Lewis, and their circle provided a Christian literary response to the horrors of the Twentieth Century in Europe and globally. Their imaginative storytelling helped preserve and rally themes from ancient Christian tradition in the face of secular “technocracy.”

Monday – Thursday. 9-10:30 a.m. Pacific ( 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern)

Readings

Monday: The Two Towers, 3:1-5; The Abolition of Man
https://www.platonism.divinity.cam.ac.uk/events/prof-rob-koons-tolkien-barfield-and-neoplatonism-how-metaphysics-moulded-middle-earth

Tuesday: The Two Towers, 3:6-11; Eichmann in Jerusalem (starting with Chapter 1)

Wednesday: The Two Towers, 4:1-5; The Origins of Totalitarianism (last section, on “Totalitarianism”)

Thursday: The Two Towers, 4:6-10; ; On Resistance to Evil by Force (skipping translator’s Introduction)