Frygate
Sybil Unrest
You're correct, Frygate. Tolkien did have a great deal to do with C S Lewis' conversion. Tolkien was a devout Catholic all his life.
However I feel I must point out that Tolkien did state that he never intended his book to be a Christian allegory, unlike Lewis.
The war between Mordor and the rest of Middle Earth could as easily be an allegory of the Second World War.
I really do think that he did, in fact, intend it to be an allegory
It's too many points to overlook
Nope.
I took a course on Lewis and Tolkien (and we read the Chronicles of Narnia AND the LOTR as well as three other books... all in 16 weeks!) and I am a Lewisian, a Tolkienian, a Mediaevalist, and an Anglophile.
Tolkien never meant for the LOTR to be seen as allegorical. He stated that one COULD look at it as such, but it was not intended that way so we have no real knowledge of what (or who) represents anything in the stories.
Lewis, on the other hand, DID mean for Narnia to be seen as allegory.
He and Tolkien disagreed on a few facts that had to do with writing. Lewis thought that a story should have allegory behind it (see Till We Have Faces, and Pilgrim's Regress) where as, Tolkien hated allegory and said it took away from the story.
Lewis grew up in an Anglican home, but he denied faith because of 'logic' and some of his schooling. Later in life, with the help of Tolkien and Lewis' brother and other friends, became a Theist. Mainly, he believed that there was A god. Then, he became a Christian, namely an Anglican.
Lewis and Tolkien did not go to school together, but they did end up meeting via friends and then Lewis joined Tolkien on staff at Oxford University (even though in different colleges, Tolkien in Exeter College and Lewis in Magdalen College).
They were also part of the Inklings consisting of Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Christopher Tolkien (J. R. R. Tolkien's son), Warren "Warnie" Lewis (C. S. Lewis's elder brother), Roger Lancelyn Green, Adam Fox, Hugo Dyson, Robert Havard, J. A. W. Bennett, Lord David Cecil, and Nevill Coghill, Percy Bates, Charles Leslie Wrenn, Colin Hardie, James Dundas-Grant, John Wain, R. B. McCallum, Gervase Mathew, C. E. Stevens, E. R. Eddison (some visiting more often than others). this was a literary guild and they were not all Christian.
Just because there are too many points to overlook in a book to make it an allegory does not mean it was MEANT to be an allegory by the author. Everything can be allegorical to someone or another.
Reply
